Most evenings you’d see her as you entered the restaurant. Six or seven nights a week, my aunt met customers at the front door of the Double-T Diner in Baltimore, Md., with the warmest, most genuine smile ever. On the job, Virginia always dressed appropriately – hair neat as a pin, makeup just right and clothing not a thread out of place. She was the best restaurant hostess (she preferred that title herself) I ever knew.
“You never know who might arrive,” she told me. “Best to be prepared.”
My aunt Virginia came by her job naturally. Her husband Angelo and other members of her Greek-American family had acquired the restaurant in the 1950s. And in those days, if you could, everybody in the family pitched in. Another uncle worked in the bakery at the back of the Double-T. My grandfather often prepared his specialty, crab cakes, there. And one summer I worked as a busboy in the kitchen. The big difference was that I got paid a modest salary. My aunt didn’t.
Oh, she never went without. But because she never officially received a paycheque, I learned recently, when Virginia retired, the U.S. old-age pension system had no record of her, so she received no pension for all her years of work. What’s more, because the family had never allowed a union to represent any of the workers – hostesses, waitresses, busboys, dishwashers, cashiers, etc. – nobody else had any basic assistance for health care, dental, injury on the job, or ultimately any collective bargaining rights to seek wage increases for loyalty or seniority.
Decades later, employees’ attempts to acquire protection or at least representation in large international packing and distributing companies – such as Amazon – have put the issue of workers’ rights and wages on a collision course with corporate profits in North America.
Most recently, Teamsters Local 362 have filed for a vote on union representation at an Amazon centre in the town of Nisku, just outside Edmonton. The union says that 40 per cent of the fulfilment centre workers have signed cards calling for union representation; that would trigger a vote at the plant.
Two more Teamsters locals have told CBC that so-called precariously employed essential workers at two Amazon facilities in Ontario are signing similar membership cards. An Amazon spokesman responded: “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees,” Dave Bauer said.
Recent history in the United States suggests otherwise. Back in March of this year, Associated Press in the U.S. interviewed Linda Burns, a gig worker in Alabama. She explained that her Amazon job had her picking up customers’ orders and moving them to packers in a massive warehouse. If she didn’t pass along enough orders to meet company quotas, she faced dismissal.
“They are treating us like robots rather than humans,” Burns told AP.
I can imagine all of my anti-union friends and acquaintances rolling their eyes and making claims of workers feeding at the union trough, and forcing private enterprise companies out of business with “outrageous” minimum-wage demands. Well, I understand how difficult it’s been for businesses – especially during COVID lockdowns and restrictions – to stay afloat. I’ve been a freelance writer (i.e. self-proprietorship) for 50 years; I get it!
But I’d remind anyone in business about the view from the other side, especially skilled women who, because they’ve had to quit or take a leave-of-absence from their jobs to care for children at home during the pandemic, are under-represented in the workplace. Have you tried to feed a family with Ontario’s minimum wage (Oct. 1 it went up a dime to $14.35 per hour)?
This week, Monte McNaughton, Ontario’s minister of labour, introduced legislation to reduce what experts call “availability creep.” His “right to disconnect” bill would entitle workers to ignore workplace emails and phone calls when not on the job.
Fair enough. But if it really cared about Ontario’s workers, the government might consult unions, who’ve had workers’ rights as their highest priority much longer. McNaughton might do better to increase the minimum wage to respectability, instead.
From 1979 to 1987, I served as president of the ACTRA Writers Guild of Alberta. I joined negotiations on behalf of writers facing TV Ontario and ACCESS (its Alberta equivalent). We negotiated fair rates for our scripts. We sought funds to assist freelance writers (gig workers of the day) to receive some health coverage and pensions – a hardly feeding at a trough or driving broadcasters out of business.
Back in the 1960s when I worked as a busboy at that family diner in Baltimore, I wish I’d told my aunt, the diner’s hostess, to protect herself by demanding an actual paycheque. If she’d had a union representing her, it would have ensured her such basic human rights.