Four immigrant temp workers were killed in New Jersey recently when a van carrying them home from a warehouse crashed — a stark reminder of what temp workers face on a regular basis.
For many, low pay made lower by wage theft and rigged transportation options are the reality. Many receive less than the state’s minimum wage or get shorted in their paychecks, especially if there is overtime involved. They are bused from a pickup spot to work, sometimes by shady van operators who pay their drivers minimally and fail to ensure van safety.
Simply put: These workers are exploited. Their status — many of these workers are in the country without legal authorization — allows their bosses to take advantage, because they fear if they speak up and demand their rights they will face deportation.
Few details were reported about the crash, but it does seem to match much of what I’ve heard and reported on over the years: Men and women who “arrived” from Mexico and South and Central America only recently and who worked in suburban warehouses, while living in urban immigrant enclaves.
“This bus always has a problem,” a family member told News 12. “They’re supposed to get home at 11 p.m., sometimes they get home at 4 a.m. because the bus runs out of gas or they get lost. It’s always something with this bus.”
Temps are just part of a large and vulnerable class of workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, but who also include gig and service workers and adjunct faculty like me. They are contingent, disconnected in many ways from their workplaces, and not just seen but treated as replaceable and disposable.
In New Jersey, state Sen. Joe Cryan (D-Union) has introduced legislation meant to offer temporary workers some protections, a bill that is needed in New Jersey to address the dangers imposed on temps. The bill — S511, cosponsored by Democrat Teresa Ruiz of Essex County — would regulate temporary employment agencies, ban agencies from retaliating against workers, allow workers to directly contract with workplaces, and prohibit agencies from charging for transportation. The bill has passed both legislative courses and awaits Gov. Phil Murphy’s signature.
This “Temp Worker Bill of Rights,” and similar bills on the table around the country, present a huge step in the right direction. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the American economy will limit its effectiveness. The temp-worker industry is part of the gig economy and is structured around speed, flexibility, and profit, but is sold to workers as a way of becoming their own bosses and allowing workers a kind of freedom they do not enjoy in more traditional jobs. This industry, which has its tentacles in everything from warehouses and transportation to service work and academia, is not about worker empowerment, however. It is about cutting costs. It is about creating a just-in-time supply of human resources that can be expanded and contracted as the needs of the corporate world dictate.
Individual bills that help individual classes of workers need to be part of a larger effort to restructure the economy so that workers are seen as more than replaceable cogs in a race to lower wages and cut costs, vulnerable to threats and feeling they have little recourse. Activists get this. Most contemporary unions do, as well. Our voices, however, are drowned out by money and by business and government bureaucracies that work in tandem to limit our efforts.
Workers at Starbucks, Amazon and other service companies are banding together, increasing their power and forcing their employers to improve conditions and pay. Railworkers, nurses, public school teachers and college instructors — all have threatened to strike or have actually walked out. Most have won concessions as part of a wave of union victories the likes of which we have not seen in years.
Unions need to support temp workers. They need to support immigrants, need to push back against the assaults on immigration coming from the right. And for the most part they do. And we need to support unions. Strong unions raise the boats of all workers, both by raising the pay of their members and by setting standards for others. They are the vanguard for the reformation of the economy.
Hank Kalet is a poet, essayist, and journalist. He teaches at Rutgers University. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Substack: hankkalet.Substack.com
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2022
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