I've been thinking a lot about unions lately. Too much, in fact. I've been following what's going on in Wisconsin and Idaho and Iowa closely, and with no small amount of sadness. In part it's personal, since I'm a future teacher. But it's also something I've grown up believing in, long before I ever knew I wanted to be an educator. I remember reading The Jungle and The Grapes of Wrath in high school, and railing at the injustices of capitalism. I still believe very strongly that employers rarely have the best interest of their workers at heart, and I stand behind unions as a (admittedly imperfect) means of protecting the vast majority, those of us who will never stand at the top of a large corporation.
I recently watched an excellent American Experience episode about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (you can watch it here), and it highlighted how the victims' deaths altered the course of the labor movement in this country. Their deaths led to a surge of labor laws protecting workers' safety and quality of life, and we owe the success of both private and public sector unions in no small part to them.
I've been working for an online tutoring company for the last month, teaching English to people in Korea using a Skype-like voIp protocol. The company I'm working for is based out of the Philippines, and I had a feeling in my gut from the very beginning that they were shady because they don't have a real office in the States, it's next to impossible to get ahold of anyone, and they hired me after just a phone interview. But I needed the money, and it allowed me to work from home, so I figured I'd give it a chance. Fast forward a few weeks, and *surprise!* they shorted me on my first paychecks. It took me awhile to figure this out because I wasn't keeping as careful records as I should have, but I finally noticed today that I'd been underpaid for the last three weeks. I emailed my bosses in the States and also in the Philippines explaining the dates I had been underpaid for and how much I felt I was owed. My boss in the States--who is a very kind woman--called me back right away. She agreed that yes, I had been underpaid for training and she'd get on it right away. But she said that my pay had been docked in the following two weeks because "some of my calls had been more than 2 minutes over the time limit." This was the first time I'd ever heard of this policy, and it didn't sit well with me. Most of the tutoring sessions are 10 minutes long, and I often have as many as 9 or 10 back-to-back. It's inevitable that sometimes I go over, because if someone waits to the end to ask me a bunch of questions, I'm not about to hang up on them. If that were to happen in the beginning of a long stretch of calls, I'd be running behind for all the subsequent calls as well, completely unaware that while I was making call after call after call and completing the tutoring sessions, I was in fact NOT being paid for them since I was calling at 10:12 instead of at 10:10. That's questionable ethics, for sure. But it also didn't sit well with me because I had a strong suspicion it was illegal. I told my boss I was uncomfortable with this practice and needed some time to think about it, and we left it at that for today. She said she'd speak to the office in the Philippines and get back to me (which will be later tonight because of the time difference).
As soon as I was done with work, I started researching New York's labor laws. And OF COURSE it's illegal to dock someone's pay. You can't dock a worker's pay for ANY reason, even gross negligence, unless it's in their best interest (i.e., health insurance) and with written consent. So even if this clause were stipulated in my contract (which it's not), and I'd signed it, it would still be illegal because it's obviously not in my best interest. The law is very straight forward. I called the Labor Office just to make sure, and the woman assured me that it doesn't matter where they're based, if I'm working in New York they are violating the law.
So now I'm in this crappy position of wanting what I'm due, but also not wanting to lose the job. I'm pretty sure that's what will happen if I rock the boat. But I'm certainly not the kind of person who can swallow this, so of course I'm going to talk to her tomorrow. If worse comes to worse, I'll file a complaint with the labor bureau.
I wouldn't presume to compare my situation to sweatshop workers in the Gilded Age, but it does really illustrate for me the crappiness of human nature. This company makes so much money off of me, and yet they have the audacity to dock my wages even when I'm still completing my assignment! It's the nature of capitalism that the ones at the top will always want more, and they'll take as much as they can get away with, screw everyone else.
The worst part is, there's not much I can do. Even if (when) I get my money back, I probably won't have a job and they'll still be screwing everyone else who works for them. But at least I have the emails of all the other New York employees, so if/when they do fire me, I do plan on sending everyone else a link to the labor statute! (You can read the statute here and file a claim on this form, in case you're curious.)
