SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Workers protest against the failure from their employers to provide adequate protections in the workplace of the Amazon delivery hub on National May Day Walkout/Sickout by workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, Innstacart and Shipt amid the Covid-19 pandemic on May 1, 2020, in Hawthorne, California. (Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)
A Whistleblowing Visionary Offers a Ticket to Our Future--If We Take It
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a reputation for legislative mastery. She frequently uses it on behalf of corporate interests, however, not the invisible workers making less than minimum wage.
May 26, 2020
When senior corporate executives walk off the job because they can't stomach their companies' worker rights abuses, we should all pay attention. That's even more true when those abuses include the suppression of workplace speech addressing public health concerns in the midst of a raging pandemic. The very same issues driving Tim Wray's departure from Amazon also fuel our campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
Tim is a world-famous software genius who helped invent the modern Internet. He was paid a reported million dollars a year as a Distinguished Engineer at Amazon, yet walked off the job in disgust earlier this month.
In his blog--a medium which, again, might not even exist without him--Bray said he couldn't "serve or drink the poison" of the company's culture, and was effectively forced to "quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19." He added that he regretted leaving behind the "rewarding fun" of his job along with his sky-high salary.
Bray stood in solidarity with workers placed at greatest risk--not only by the coronavirus pandemic, but also by corporate corner-cutting. Some folks are lucky enough to have jobs that we can do from home. We remain safely quarantined, while Amazon workers have been picking, packing and delivering everything ordered by those folks working from home--all the while, without paid sick leave, hazard pay, or even proper protective gear.
One worker, Christian Smalls, tried to organize his colleagues and demand conditions that wouldn't make them all sick. Amazon retaliated by firing him, and several others--all women and/or people of color, according to Bray.
Here in the Bay Area, we pat ourselves on the back for our values of equality and fair treatment regardless of race, gender, religion or orientation. But far too many workers remain precarious. And when they speak out about their working conditions, or seek fair wages, they get fired--often with no notice, thanks to "at-will employment" and the nature of the "gig economy."
The companies aren't the only ones taking advantage of workers.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a reputation for legislative mastery. She frequently uses it on behalf of corporate interests, but not the invisible workers making less than minimum wage by driving for Lyft and Uber, shopping for Instacart and Postmates, and delivering packages for Amazon. Their brave organizing in the face of unsafe--and even deadly--treatment seeks common sense policies like paid sick leave, which she has no time for.
Instead, Pelosi has repeatedly helped megacorporations like Amazon. She supported half a trillion dollars in corporate bailouts, and lavished tax breaks averaging over $1.6 million each to 43,000 of the wealthiest Americans--while including only a pitiful one-time payment of $1,200 for some taxpayers.
Pelosi claimed she wasn't able to insert worker protections or higher worker payments into the CARES Act because of the inflexible Unanimous Consent Voice Vote procedure necessitated by the pandemic, but that's not the real reason she wanted that procedure. According to The Intercept, it's usually used only for uncontroversial bills, like naming post office buildings. But it also happens to be really good at hiding who voted for what, thus removing any accountability for Pelosi and others.
As far as the pandemic goes, the Voice Vote could easily have been replaced by proxy voting or electronic voting if Pelosi cared at all about San Francisco's working class, women, and people of color. But she doesn't. She proved it again with the recent interim stimulus bill, which according to the Economic Policy Institute once again left out any meaningful protection for workers.
Tim Bray wrote that "A combination of antitrust and living-wage and worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously enforced, offers a clear path forward...Don't say it can't be done, because France is doing it."
It can, indeed, be done. But it can't be done until we replace Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Shahid Buttar
Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, grassroots community organizer, and democratic socialist running for U.S. Congress in CA-12 to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2020.
When senior corporate executives walk off the job because they can't stomach their companies' worker rights abuses, we should all pay attention. That's even more true when those abuses include the suppression of workplace speech addressing public health concerns in the midst of a raging pandemic. The very same issues driving Tim Wray's departure from Amazon also fuel our campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
Tim is a world-famous software genius who helped invent the modern Internet. He was paid a reported million dollars a year as a Distinguished Engineer at Amazon, yet walked off the job in disgust earlier this month.
In his blog--a medium which, again, might not even exist without him--Bray said he couldn't "serve or drink the poison" of the company's culture, and was effectively forced to "quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19." He added that he regretted leaving behind the "rewarding fun" of his job along with his sky-high salary.
Bray stood in solidarity with workers placed at greatest risk--not only by the coronavirus pandemic, but also by corporate corner-cutting. Some folks are lucky enough to have jobs that we can do from home. We remain safely quarantined, while Amazon workers have been picking, packing and delivering everything ordered by those folks working from home--all the while, without paid sick leave, hazard pay, or even proper protective gear.
One worker, Christian Smalls, tried to organize his colleagues and demand conditions that wouldn't make them all sick. Amazon retaliated by firing him, and several others--all women and/or people of color, according to Bray.
Here in the Bay Area, we pat ourselves on the back for our values of equality and fair treatment regardless of race, gender, religion or orientation. But far too many workers remain precarious. And when they speak out about their working conditions, or seek fair wages, they get fired--often with no notice, thanks to "at-will employment" and the nature of the "gig economy."
The companies aren't the only ones taking advantage of workers.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a reputation for legislative mastery. She frequently uses it on behalf of corporate interests, but not the invisible workers making less than minimum wage by driving for Lyft and Uber, shopping for Instacart and Postmates, and delivering packages for Amazon. Their brave organizing in the face of unsafe--and even deadly--treatment seeks common sense policies like paid sick leave, which she has no time for.
Instead, Pelosi has repeatedly helped megacorporations like Amazon. She supported half a trillion dollars in corporate bailouts, and lavished tax breaks averaging over $1.6 million each to 43,000 of the wealthiest Americans--while including only a pitiful one-time payment of $1,200 for some taxpayers.
Pelosi claimed she wasn't able to insert worker protections or higher worker payments into the CARES Act because of the inflexible Unanimous Consent Voice Vote procedure necessitated by the pandemic, but that's not the real reason she wanted that procedure. According to The Intercept, it's usually used only for uncontroversial bills, like naming post office buildings. But it also happens to be really good at hiding who voted for what, thus removing any accountability for Pelosi and others.
As far as the pandemic goes, the Voice Vote could easily have been replaced by proxy voting or electronic voting if Pelosi cared at all about San Francisco's working class, women, and people of color. But she doesn't. She proved it again with the recent interim stimulus bill, which according to the Economic Policy Institute once again left out any meaningful protection for workers.
Tim Bray wrote that "A combination of antitrust and living-wage and worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously enforced, offers a clear path forward...Don't say it can't be done, because France is doing it."
It can, indeed, be done. But it can't be done until we replace Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
Shahid Buttar
Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, grassroots community organizer, and democratic socialist running for U.S. Congress in CA-12 to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2020.
When senior corporate executives walk off the job because they can't stomach their companies' worker rights abuses, we should all pay attention. That's even more true when those abuses include the suppression of workplace speech addressing public health concerns in the midst of a raging pandemic. The very same issues driving Tim Wray's departure from Amazon also fuel our campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
Tim is a world-famous software genius who helped invent the modern Internet. He was paid a reported million dollars a year as a Distinguished Engineer at Amazon, yet walked off the job in disgust earlier this month.
In his blog--a medium which, again, might not even exist without him--Bray said he couldn't "serve or drink the poison" of the company's culture, and was effectively forced to "quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19." He added that he regretted leaving behind the "rewarding fun" of his job along with his sky-high salary.
Bray stood in solidarity with workers placed at greatest risk--not only by the coronavirus pandemic, but also by corporate corner-cutting. Some folks are lucky enough to have jobs that we can do from home. We remain safely quarantined, while Amazon workers have been picking, packing and delivering everything ordered by those folks working from home--all the while, without paid sick leave, hazard pay, or even proper protective gear.
One worker, Christian Smalls, tried to organize his colleagues and demand conditions that wouldn't make them all sick. Amazon retaliated by firing him, and several others--all women and/or people of color, according to Bray.
Here in the Bay Area, we pat ourselves on the back for our values of equality and fair treatment regardless of race, gender, religion or orientation. But far too many workers remain precarious. And when they speak out about their working conditions, or seek fair wages, they get fired--often with no notice, thanks to "at-will employment" and the nature of the "gig economy."
The companies aren't the only ones taking advantage of workers.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a reputation for legislative mastery. She frequently uses it on behalf of corporate interests, but not the invisible workers making less than minimum wage by driving for Lyft and Uber, shopping for Instacart and Postmates, and delivering packages for Amazon. Their brave organizing in the face of unsafe--and even deadly--treatment seeks common sense policies like paid sick leave, which she has no time for.
Instead, Pelosi has repeatedly helped megacorporations like Amazon. She supported half a trillion dollars in corporate bailouts, and lavished tax breaks averaging over $1.6 million each to 43,000 of the wealthiest Americans--while including only a pitiful one-time payment of $1,200 for some taxpayers.
Pelosi claimed she wasn't able to insert worker protections or higher worker payments into the CARES Act because of the inflexible Unanimous Consent Voice Vote procedure necessitated by the pandemic, but that's not the real reason she wanted that procedure. According to The Intercept, it's usually used only for uncontroversial bills, like naming post office buildings. But it also happens to be really good at hiding who voted for what, thus removing any accountability for Pelosi and others.
As far as the pandemic goes, the Voice Vote could easily have been replaced by proxy voting or electronic voting if Pelosi cared at all about San Francisco's working class, women, and people of color. But she doesn't. She proved it again with the recent interim stimulus bill, which according to the Economic Policy Institute once again left out any meaningful protection for workers.
Tim Bray wrote that "A combination of antitrust and living-wage and worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously enforced, offers a clear path forward...Don't say it can't be done, because France is doing it."
It can, indeed, be done. But it can't be done until we replace Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in the House.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.