You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM

The CVDSA Covid-19 Response Working Group interviewed Scarlett Moore, a barista at Starbucks in downtown Burlington, about how the store is responding to the pandemic and what workers are doing.

In a recent letter to “partners”, Starbucks says it is committed to “ensuring your safety and well-being, supporting our public health and government officials and being in service to our communities.”  How has Starbucks lived up it commitments?

When the pandemic broke out in China, Starbucks closed stores and they didn’t have an option not to.  When the pandemic came to the United States I think that Starbucks response was so delayed that workers had to take action on their own to demand the types of environments we think are safe to work in. So when Starbucks originally promised store closures and catastrophe pay for 30 days, that was the result of workers organizing, mostly online across many stores, thousands of workers demanding that stores shut down.  Starbucks had to respond to that. We certainly benefited from that in Burlington. Starbucks did provide pay (called “catastrophe pay”) when stores closed. There were problems with the way it was calculated, but it has been really helpful to a lot of people. 

What about working conditions in your store?

Because of its location in a mall, my store in Burlington closed right away. Other stores like the one in Essex Junction, Vermont with drive-throughs stayed open longer. They did not however provide PPE to workers who were working at the windows within 6 feet of customers, where you still could contract the virus. So, what I heard is that when the rest of the Starbucks closed down, the customer load increased so much that it was impossible to complete recommended measures like washing hands and sanitizing between each transaction because of the level of production workers were being asked to maintain by managers. Eventually, that came to a head, and there weren’t enough people willing to work in those conditions.  People won’t work when our lives are lives are on the line for $11/hour.

Workers at your store wrote a letter to management. What were they asking for?

On April 16, when we read the letter from Rossan Williams, the Exec. Vice President of Starbucks U.S., it was like getting whiplash. The letter to us read that we were being pushed back to work in unsafe conditions on threat of losing our jobs, whether or not it was cloaked in compassionate language. So we read that and were immediately concerned that the company was prioritizing its profits over our lives. We knew we had the ability to do something about that, and so we should. We wrote a letter to our manager and to our district manager, which essentially said that we would not be returning to work until the Vermont stay at home order had been lifted. We asked them to extend our catastrophe pay until that point. One of our main concerns is that baristas are not essential workers. Serving coffee is not essential work. There is no socially useful reason we should be asked to return to work. It’s all about restoring the profitability of the store, and that’s just not acceptable. Our lives are worth more than that.

So we wrote a short and sweet letter to management saying that we had made the decision on our own that our store was staying closed, regardless of the priorities of the company.

How did Starbucks respond?

We gave the letter to our manager during a Zoom meeting with our store’s staff. We discussed our concerns about our safety in being asked to return to work.  Another concern on the call was that our location was on Church Street, an area of non-essential services largely for upper middle class people, and that by opening the store we were actually encouraging people to step out of their homes during a stay at home order and come to a shopping district. We felt that was not only unsafe for us, but also creating unsafe conditions for the rest of our community as well.

Although the manager said he was proud of us, the letter and our concerns were to the best of our knowledge passed up to the district manager and to upper management. This was something that we were ready for.  We did not hear back for another 48 hours. And then a @StarbucksHelp account responded to one of my tweets saying that the store had never intended to open before the stay at home order was lifted. This message was given in individual calls to all the baristas at our location by the district manager and store manager the following morning. A few days after that we had a meeting where management didn’t mention our letter at all, but reiterated that the store was never going to open until the 16th.  They told us that because Starbucks serves food, it is an essential service, and that it was their choice to have been closed this whole time.

I would say this type of response is an attempt to gaslight workers and distract us from what we won. Getting an extra 12 paid days off is a real victory that comes out of solidarity and comes out of community.  And I think the response we’ve gotten is to convince us that we didn’t win anything by our coming together, and that our action was superfluous and didn’t have a concrete benefit for all of our lives. We know that’s not true.  But it is true that my store is staying closed until the stay at home order is lifted, while every other store in the district to the best of my knowledge will be opening up May 6.

What are lessons that you learned?

Everything that happened took place in a very short period of time, about 24 to 36 hours.

It is inspiring to see how store workers could come together in such a short time. We’ve seen an enormous political shift in the last few years, and many of the people I work with are looking at a job market that is really terrifying. The economy seems to be crashing down all around us, and we are having to respond in the best ways that we can. That is always going to be through solidarity in our workplace. This is a feeling that has been building for a long time. Problems always exist in our workplaces. We are asked to work for wages that are lower than what we deserve. Never mind the pandemic, we are put in situations that are unsafe at work. We face sexism, and LGBTQ+ discrimination and racism in the workplace all the time, and we don’t have a company that stands up for us. We learn over time that we have to stand up for each other.

Friday, May 1, 2020 7pm – 9pm,

Join us in a guided conversation about Jo Freeman’s classic essay on organizational structure and how to build successful ones.

Join us online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88498229836 and please e-mail marindemsoc@gmail.com for the password.

Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman.

Eugene DSA’s Labor Committee is doing a series of worker profiles, to give a face to the current situation and show how people’s lives are changing. Questions are borrowed from the Working People podcast. Our first interview is with a local carpenter who took a voluntary layoff.

Tell us about what’s been happening with you, your loved ones, your community, your job, your coworkers, your organization, etc. 

Here in Oregon many workplaces are participating in the “stay-at-home” order. I work as a carpenter on a big job at the University of Oregon. Construction has been deemed an “essential service” during the self isolation period. I found that it was almost impossible to practice social distancing on the jobsite. There was some effort being made to clean handrails and provide sanitizer, but on a jobsite we have to work in close proximity with others. There are too many situations that make social distancing impossible such as, team lifting, riding an elevator or working in a confined space. 

The option was provided to me to take a voluntary lay off. I’m lucky that I was able to take the offer. I don’t think it’s worth risking one’s life to build a new building for a currently closed university. 

What challenges have you been facing during all of this (physical, psychological, economic, social, etc)? Are you being forced to work in unsafe conditions? Have you been laid off and trying to get unemployment? 

The working conditions were definitely unsafe. In general unless there is an organized pressure from workers to improve the safety nothing will be done about the issue. The general contractor makes concessions towards safety in regards to insurance cost. They say explicitly that they can’t afford workplace injuries. I don’t think they can be held accountable for illness due to a pandemic, so they only address the issue to the extent that there is pressure from the state or a union. There is no place on the job to eat lunch, there’s typically only one or two hand washing stations for hundreds of tradesmen.  

I’m lucky in that I am a union member. My insurance is tied to our union fund rather than my employer so I won’t  lose my insurance for at least a few months. I’m worried about what could happen after that. I am also worried about my co-workers, most of them are in a much more difficult position than I am. I have a partner that I can be insured through, I have little debt, and no family. 

Nearly all of my co-workers have continued to work, no doubt because they have no choice. Their families have always come before their own health and safety. It’s a sad reality of working in construction. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs a person can do.  

Furthermore those who are unlucky enough to be without a union are in a much more difficult position. The pay is typically about 30-40% less and most employers provide no insurance at all. Those folks can’t stop work and if they get sick they risk losing everything if they are forced to seek medical care. It’s a truly difficult situation.  

Personally I’ve been using my time away from work to do the things that are most important in life. I’ve been working with my local DSA chapter to reach out to others and help. I’m gardening, reading, and fishing. We could all slow down quite a bit and enrich our lives so much. I wish everyone could have that experience. It’s just too bad it takes a crisis to see these things. We all deserve happiness and leisure, it is a human right

What do you think people around the country don’t know/understand about people in your situation? What do you think they need to know?

I am afraid that there are those that will use this issue as another front for the culture wars. I don’t think that everyone takes public health seriously. This will be another situation that will further the class divide in this country. A very few people stand to make a tremendous profit from this crisis.  We should all ask ourselves “who’s lining their pockets right now?” because those people are our greatest threat. Most of the media will not hold them accountable. It’s up to us.

What are you, your family, community, coworkers, etc. doing to address these (or other) issues? What do you think needs to be done? Do you have any advice to offer people who are listening who may be in similar situations?

Construction is NOT AN ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY! Unless you are constructing an emergency medical facility there is simply no reason to risk your life for your job. In fact even if you are building an emergency medical facility, it isn’t for you. It’s for a private corporation to profit from your precarious position.  If there is one thing I could tell all workers everywhere it’s to get organized! Talk to each other, make plans, make strategies, stand together not apart. 

Are there any final words you want to share? Any lessons/thoughts you want to share or emotions you just want to vent? 

To all the essential workers out there, we see you, we hear you. If this situation has taught us anything it’s that we are nothing without our grocery clerks, nurses, doctors, growers, pickers, child care providers, janitors, teachers and drivers. We in the building trades should stand in solidarity with them. The long decline of workplace organizing needs to stop right here. Organize for the future!

In this episode of the RS podcast, Heart in a Heartless World,, our guest is Colleen Shaddox, a devout Roman Catholic, a committed socialist, and a veteran healthcare journalist. Shaddox’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and many other outlets. Along with her co-author Joanne Goldblum, Shaddox just completed a book on the everyday lives of persons living in poverty and the broken policies that cause their suffering. Shaddox is interviewed in this episode by the Religion and Socialism Working Group member Fran Quigley. They discuss the connection between Catholicism and socialism, what socialism has to say about the COVID-19 pandemic and access to healthcare, what progressive Christians should be doing in response to reactionary Christianity, and Colleen’s interesting paths to Roman Catholicism, socialism, and writing about healthcare. “It’s Matthew 25, right?” Shaddox says. “You're supposed to feed the hungry and care for the sick, and we don't do that under capitalism.” Some of Colleen Shaddox’s healthcare journalism can be found here, and her book can be pre-ordered here. Look on our website for more about DSA’s Religion and Socialism Working Group.

Chancellor Jeb Spaulding thought he could get away with closing three of Vermont’s six state colleges. His proposal would have had a devastating impact on working class people; it would have slashed hundreds of jobs from the state colleges, destroyed the economies of whole sections of the state, especially the Northeast Kingdom, and foreclosed opportunities for young people to get education for skilled high paying jobs like nursing.

But professors, staff, and the communities that depend on the colleges rose up and stopped Spaulding in his tracks. Over 37,000 people signed a petition demanding that the proposal be withdrawn, thousands called their state legislators, and hundreds of cars turned out to a massive parade that shut down Montpelier in a concert of honking horns. Faced with this outpouring of anger, the proposed vote was delayed and then withdrawn in a humiliating setback for Spaulding.

The working class of Vermont has scored an initial victory against a tidal wave of austerity measures that Governor Phil Scott is threatening. But no one should be under any illusions that the state colleges are safe; the Governor made clear that he wants the legislature to pass a budget with devastating cuts to our public institutions.

The movement spearheaded by unions, students, and communities must prepare for the next phase of the struggle. We should demand that the state fully fund public education at all levels, using money from the federal bailout, cuts in corporate welfare, and taxes on the rich.

We must reject the entire case that Spaulding and the Governor are making that they have no alternative but to cut education spending given the budgetary constraints imposed on them by the coronavirus and recession. In reality, this is a manufactured crisis, and one that can be easily solved.

It is the product of several decades of neoliberal cuts to public funding of education. The Democrats and Republicans have level-funded state appropriations for higher education for decades, dropping Vermont from 3rd in per capita spending in the country in 1989 to 49th today. Both parties are responsible for setting the state colleges up to fail amidst this crisis.

While we have stopped the closures for now, it is clear that the Governor is still determined to force through cuts, and we must be prepared to mobilize again to stop him. In these efforts, we must not fall for any of the Governor’s tricks. One that he floated is pitting state colleges against K through 12 education, saying that if we cannot pay for both, we have to cut one.

We know that he’s been angling to slash funding for primary and secondary education as part of his plan for school consolidation. We must reject Scott’s divide and rule tactic; working class people should have the right to high quality education with well-paid union teachers and staff from pre-kindergarten through college.

There is plenty of money to pay for all of this. It is merely a question of priorities. If the federal government can bailout the big corporations and banks with trillions of dollars, it and the state can find the money to meet Vermont workers’ need for education.

We should demand that the Governor and legislature generate the money in the following ways. First, they should take $25 million from $1.25 billion from Washington to cover the immediate shortfall in funding for the state colleges. Second, they should raise taxes on the rich, which they have cut for decades, to bankroll education for the future.

And, third, if they have to cut anything, they should cut corporate welfare schemes like the Remote Worker Program, Vermont Training Program, and the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive. However rhetorically innocuous in name, these programs are frankly just giveaways to the bosses and rich.

It will take a fight to win these demands, because they challenge the neoliberal logic accepted by most of the political class in Montpelier and Washington. Save for a few exceptions like Progressive Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman and Progressive Senator Anthony Pollina, and members of the Vermont Worker’s Caucus, most of the politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, were slow to respond and only agreed to delay and then withdraw the proposed cuts, when the petitions, calls, and car protest forced them to.

But if we stay united, if we reject Governors divide and conquer strategy, if we maintain pressure on our elected officials through a diversity of tactics, we can win. We must build on our initial victory of stopping the closures and intensify our organizing, mobilizing, and protesting until we have secured education at every level as fully funded public right for all working class people.

We interviewed Meaghan Diffenderfer, a member of UE Local 203 at City Market. We discussed the role the Union had to play in advocating for safety practices, hazard pay, and the shifting balance of power at work. The UE (United Electrical Workers) is a nationwide union that represents members in a number of workplaces both private and public, service industry and manufacturing alike. 

What are workers able to achieve through collective representation at City Market?

I think one of the most important aspects of being unionized is that, being in an industry where employees are often seen as expendable/ replaceable, there are a lot of protections to be sure employees are not terminated without cause… 

We also have the power to organize ourselves and community members when big issues arise without backlash that is often presented by other employers; we can speak up when there are unsafe conditions, or policies that are harmful to our employees, and often demand change and win, creating a safer workplace for ourselves and help set an industry standard.

Since the onset of the COVID crisis what have been the major concerns of the workers? 

The biggest concern has been for employee safety and protection from exposure. The union leadership has been instrumental in gathering concerns from employees (needing more appropriate PPE, less customers in the store, enforced distancing, more sanitizing) and demanding them from Management.

 What implementations has the union been able to win? 

We've gotten hazard pay, bandannas provided for PPE use, Plexiglas for the cashiers in the front end, increased security, and limited store capacity. At the beginning of the crisis, when demands were made for protocol changes, we were often told that Management was working on it and looking at different options. Now when we demanded change, it happened at a much faster rate. I acknowledge some delay was due to taking time to research what options might be available, but unfortunately the truth of this crisis is that there literally is not time, and a lot of these protections should have been implemented weeks before they were.

You won a $3/hour hazard pay increase. How did that happen? Can you talk about the social media campaign the union launched and what effect that had?

We did win hazard pay, or a “staff appreciation bonus”, which has been substantial in making employees feel better about continuing to put our lives on the line during these unprecedented times. Shortly after Governor Scott declared the state of emergency, and seeing that other grocery chains in the area were securing hazard pay, we requested to enter negotiations with management on this issue and other pressing employee safety measures. After the first meeting between management and the union, it was clear that additional compensation was not going to be an easy win. We took to social media to communicate with our union membership with updates about bargaining, but saw a lot of engagement from community members. When it was clear that hazard pay was something we were going to have to fight tooth and nail for, we began a fairly simple social media campaign. 

We had members fill out a sheet of paper with why they deserve hazard pay, and take a photo with it to post online. This was particularly effective for a few reasons: 1) We put faces to our struggle. It is one thing to read a story about a person's working conditions. It’s another thing entirely to see the face of that person and, especially for co-op members, recognize that community member and 2) as individuals shelter in place, there’s an increase in screen time! This resulted in hundreds of thousands of people seeing our posts, and they were shared literally coast to coast. 

We made sure to create a VERY clear ask in our posts, and made sure it was the same with each photo shared. We requested that people reach out to Co-op leadership and demand hazard pay, PPE, and other protections for employees. With a new abundance of time that could be used flexibly, there was an outpouring of calls and emails to our General Manager that most certainly had an impact at the next bargaining session. This barrage of  communication from community members near and far meant that Co-op management was faced with a real dilemma- give employees hazard pay and save the Co-op’s public image, or lose a significant amount of business and equity from disappointed Co-op members. We are delighted that management and the union were able to settle on a fair hazard pay, and that we get this moment in time to start to re-align the Co-op with it’s founding values.  

These are major victories yet there are you still issues the City Market workers face.

We're still seeing an influx of customers coming in to only buy a few items, which continues to put our employees at an increased risk of exposure. I think as we fully implement store capacity limits, individuals will be more conscious of what they are coming in for and shopping more efficiently.  We've also been working with Management to figure out how to best handle the influx of delivery and curbside pickup requests, which has been hard with the current staffing levels on our delivery team.

How can fellow workers show solidarity with the employees of City Market?

One of the greatest things that has happened from this crisis is the power shift from management believing they hold power to the union and co-op members realizing the power they hold. When our posts were being shared and questions were asked on the Co-op social media posts, as well as individuals calling and emailing in their concerns for employee safety, it was a clear message to Management that not only were the union's demands founded, they were backed by the co-op equity holders. 

So continue to share our posts, question decisions that are founded on public image and not employee safety, and please, please don't come to the store if you aren't feeling well! Shop quickly, with protection, and always practice social distancing- or at least the most you can in our small aisles.

The cooperation between community members and store employees is an inspiring example of workers’ ability to effectively wield collective power in order to create necessary change. 

Do you have anything else to add?

A huge thank you to all those who took the time to join our fight for hazard pay and safe working conditions- so many of us literally found the strength to keep going to work knowing that you all had our back and are fighting with us. Solidarity forever!

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM.

You don’t get exactly the same feeling of solidarity when you wave at each other from the driver’s seat, but the horn makes up a lot of the difference.

If it were not already clear, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a disgusting arm of the US government. They hound and harrass migrants, separate children from families, and do it all with a smirk on their face. The people they target have been scapegoated as ‘criminals,’ ‘aliens,’ and worse. Many come to the US fleeing violence linked to the US government itself. In many ways, ICE is the logical conclusion of the age old tradition of American Nativism -- brutalization. 

ICE operates a data center in Williston, Vermont, which coordinates these operations. So, we honked like hell to tell them off. On April 17th, Migrant Justice and Community Voices for Immigrant Rights organized Vermont’s first pandemic-era car protest with the help of the Vermont Peace and Justice Center. Members of CVDSA’s Covid-19 Response Working group lined up with the others in the Home Depot parking lot in Williston. Community Voices for Immigrant rights member Bria Yazic roused us with a speech that made the stakes clear. From the hood of the car, Bria made the following demands:

1. Release all detainees

2. Stop ICE arrests and deportations

3. Close the ICE data center in Williston, VT

4. Ensure that undocumented essential workers receive benefits and are included in COVID-19 response plans.

These demands are crucial at a bare minimum--the pandemic has only made the continuous human rights crisis worse. 

At the Mexican border, ICE detains people and throws them back into the desert without any medical examination. ICE holds many others in detention and the US government pushes Mexico to do the same thing. With overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, these detention centers (aka prisons) leave detainees at a huge risk and with few resources. Many detainees that ICE deported from detention centers have already tested positive for covid-19, exacerbating the spread of the virus. It’s not an exaggeration to say detention is a death sentence.

In an effort to keep safe, protestors took strict measures to stay socially distant. For 45 minutes, we laid on our horns while we drove Harvest Lane. And it was loud! 

This protest was a crucial effort to register discontent and make public our resistance to ICE, but I hope we can build further from here. As Thelma from Migrant Justice, speaking through an interpreter, laid out: 

“We have to free all of our people who are suffering…[especially] in a situation that puts their lives in danger from the virus.” 

For me, freeing all the people means fighting like hell against detention centers, and beyond that. We need farmworkers to be free from exploitative labor, cramped living conditions, and exposure to toxins at work. We need to fight for everyone suffering in Vermont, about 40,000 of whom filed unemployment claims in the wake of the crisis. We need to fight for an end to US hegemony abroad. Onward to May Day, when we’ll fight for just that.

With the Covid-19 crisis taking almost all the national and local attention, and rightfully so, it can be difficult to speak about struggles that began long before the crisis and that will likely continue after the crises abates. Within the Champlain Valley DSA, we are certainly strongly responding to Covid-19, with an adjunct working group created specifically for this crisis. However, we can't forget about the other struggles, and in this case, I want to talk specifically about the need for continued vigilance in the fight against creeping fascism.

The BTV Clean Up Crew began as an idea in August 2019, when I was looking for a clever way of removing fascist propaganda that had been cropping up in Burlington. At the time, I had just come across a large poster for the neo-Nazi group the Patriot Front, plastered on the window of Memorial Auditorium, urging Burlington residents to call ICE on their immigrant neighbors. I was disgusted, and I was worried that the poster had stayed up there longer than it had any right to. I immediately started thinking about a project that could focus on removing propaganda like this before anybody else can see it. That same weekend, I went on a short hike on the Riverside Trail, and I couldn't help but notice the build-up of roadside garbage. I decided that I would go out every weekend and pick-up roadside trash, and at the same time, ensure that any fascist propaganda is removed. When I announced the idea to some of my friends in the DSA, the response was very positive, and a small group of us began regularly going on "clean-up" sessions.

After about two of these sessions, a neo-Nazi rally happened in Portland, Oregon that I was following closely on social media. At that rally, the Portland group "Popular Mobilization" came up with a strategy to prevent future rallies from happening. They asked their supporters to pledge a donation to a local immigrant rights organization for every fascist that shows up to the rally. The group ended up raising $30,000 for Causa Oregon, and I was blown away by the success of the idea. I knew that we had to adapt the concept to the situation in Burlington. InBurlington, we were luckily not having any physical fascist rallies, but the sticker problem was growing more and more. I adapted the idea so that we would ask people to pledge a donation for every sticker or poster we remove, and at that point, the BTV Clean Up Crew in its current form was born.

Over the last eight months, I have been grateful and humbled by the response we have received. We got covered in Seven Days. We have raised nearly $2,000 for amazing local organizations like Migrant Justice, Outright Vermont, and Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington. And we have ensured that fascist propaganda gets removed quickly, before any media can cover it or targeted groups have to see it. We've built community resiliency to racism and discrimination that was intended to terrify the most vulnerable members of our community, and we've effectively stood up for our neighbors.

With the Covid-19 crisis currently occupying nearly all of our time, the Clean Up Crew has had to adapt our tactics. We don't go out in groups anymore, and clean up sessions have become solitary events. However, I think it is important that we don't let our guard down, despite the need for social distancing. Fascists in other parts of the country have taken advantage of the empty streets to spread more propaganda, and we need to make sure that this doesn't happen here. Keep reporting any stickers you see, and keep following our page on Facebook and Twitter. Keep your eyes peeled when you are out, and keep the streets safe for everybody who lives here. There was a joke post on Tumblr that spread fairly quickly after the fascist attack in Charlottesville in August of 2017. It read, "Sometimes antisocial - always antifascist." In these times, this has become less of a joke and more of a call to action.

Let's keep the work going.