By Stephanie Behne
Kim Bobo sees the silver lining in the nation’s current financial crisis.
In 1996, Bobo founded the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice and has since led its effort to unite the religious community with the labor movement. For much of that time, championing the rights of working poor—janitors, construction workers, those in the restaurant industry—has been the mainstay of her work. But today’s financial breakdown is bringing another dimension—as it transcends race and class, with most of America’s workforce, including those in white-collar occupations, at the crux of its troubles.
To Bobo, it’s an opportune time to advance her cause. The scale of the faltering economy has helped to bring wage and labor issues to the public’s attention in ways it hasn’t before. And she feels that there’s a new sense of urgency—to bring a change to an issue that has long been seen as affecting only small segments of the workforce but is now felt by those at all levels of the social spectrum. “If you’re going to share the pain and hard times, you’re going to share the prosperity and good times,” says Bobo, author of the book, “Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It.”
From the beginning of her life, Bobo has felt moved to work for change. She was brought up in the religious tradition and taught to reach out to those in need. “It’s hard to read the Scriptures and not get a sense that part of what we’re called to do here on earth is to help people and make things better,” she says.
She began combating hunger for the church-based lobby group Bread for the World in New York and then in Washington, D.C. Then she became a community organizer and taught in Chicago at the Midwest Academy. She says workers’ problems were apparent in all her work, and yet she was startled to find that almost no religious organizations had labor liaisons.
In 1991, Bobo founded the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, eventually launching the national Interfaith Worker Justice in 1996. The organization, housed in Chicago’s historic Edgewater Presbyterian building on the North Side, reaches out to low-wage workers on issues such as lost wages, benefits and working conditions. Today, it has grown to include 40 affiliates around the country and 20 workers’ centers providing direct services.
Even after years of work, Bobo says she feels as energized today as ever before. “I feel like I come to work today from the same place that I came 30 years ago,” she says. “How can I make a difference that’s going to be effective? We can organize to get some changes that will not only be good for this crisis but can put us on a path of more fairness for the coming decades— which is clearly what we need.”
The Chicago Reporter recently spoke with Bobo to talk about her work.
You recently wrote that the nation needs a labor secretary who really cares about workers. What do you mean?
The mission of the U.S. Department of Labor ought to be three main functions: One, it ought to play a leadership role in terms of creating and stimulating jobs, right? Currently, the Department of Labor does virtually nothing in that category—absolutely nothing. And given so many people unemployed … you still need to provide some leadership to say we need to be creating and stimulating jobs. Second, there needs to be job training for folks. If people don’t have high school educations, and they don’t have additional training beyond that, you’re going to really have a hard time in this job market. If that’s the case, then how do we rethink the entire structure of society to do more training for people? High schools have to do a better job; community colleges have to do more. We got to have job training for people coming out of prison. How else are they going to stay out of prison? It’s got to be a serious intention. The third responsibility of the Department of Labor is to enforce the law. We have a whole set of workplace laws, some of which are good, some of which, frankly, need to be updated. It’s really a role of creating what are the laws that are relevant for the American workplace right now and then making sure that we enforce the laws. The secretary of labor should be talking about all 3 of these things, and instead … she can’t reach out to workers.
Why haven’t workers’ needs been addressed by the current administration?
I think this administration has had such an ideology of, ‘If we just sort of create wealth for the wealthy, for one set of folks, it’s all going to trickle down.’ This has been such a prominent ideology for this administration. And the way to do that is to free of regulation. It clearly is not working, right? Workers are in a huge crisis right now. It has been clear we have seen problems in economic disparity and conditions in the workplace not improving in the last 20 years—it’s really not a Bush Administration thing—but clearly things have been exacerbated in the last few years. Immediately, we need to extend unemployment insurance—ensure that workers are paid all their money. We need to look at how the economic stimulus can really benefit workers directly and not enhance just a few. There are things we need to do immediately.
Do you think workers might feel pressured to keep quiet because there are fewer jobs and many employers are cutting their workforces?
There’s been a bunch of studies that when workers are trying to organize unions and employers threaten to close the plant, then they lose their[union] election, right? When people feel economically threatened, they also often feel afraid to [bring] up concerns. I think probably the bigger place we see that in this society is with immigrants, particularly when we have 10 or 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country and many of the folks in the workplace.
People feel afraid to step forward, and rightly so because employers, often when workers complain, they call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—it’s used as a means of keeping people down. So I think that’s a fear. Having said that, if you look at when the largest gains in union organizing were made in this country, people really fighting for better wages and benefits, it was in the 1930s. We saw huge gains in the ’40s and ’50s. In the ’30s when this was happening, it was a time when the country as a whole was in great economic turmoil. So I don’t know that we can say that the fact that we’re in an economically challenging time will mean that there can’t be some gains made for workers.
Will you put into perspective illegal immigration and low-wage earners?
The good news on this is that the labor laws are very clear—they apply to workers regardless of their immigration status. Most people don’t know that. We’ve talked about how people are afraid, and unethical employers take advantage of that. When unethical employers are allowed to take advantage of immigrant workers, it drives down wages not only for them but for everybody. When that happens, it ends up pitting immigrant workers against other low-wage workers in ways that are terribly unhealthy for the society. What do [we do] about that as a society? First, we’ve got to have a rational plan for immigration. This pretending it doesn’t exist obviously is not working. Secondly, we have to enforce the basic labor laws so unethical employers are not allowed to drive down wages in any industry, and you do that by creating an environment where workers feel safe to complain.
How do employers steal wages?
One way is 2 million, or maybe as many as 3 million, who don’t pay the minimum wage. That’s one way. Flat out illegal. The second very prevalent way is employers misclassify workers as independent contractors when they’re really employees. Estimates are that there are over 3 million workers who are misclassified. Now [that] sounds kind of benign, but it’s really not. If you’re misclassified as an independent contractor, you’re probably not getting overtime, you’re not getting unemployment [insurance], you’re not getting employer’s side FICA and you’re not getting workers’ comp—which means if you get injured on the job or you don’t have a job and something happens, you’re on the public dole, and the employer hasn’t paid anything toward that.
Many millions—nobody quite knows how many—are eligible for overtime and aren’t paid overtime. It’s nursing home workers, it’s actually stockbrokers, it’s a huge set of folks. It’s millions and millions of dollars. That’s where the biggest dollar theft is—people not paid overtime. Another common thing is restaurant workers not getting their tips or having illegal deductions taken. A bowl gets broken and they take it out of their wages, right?
The other thing that we see a lot in our workers’ centers . . . is workers just not getting paid. They agree to do a job for a week or two weeks, particularly in the residential construction area, and then at the end of the period, the person won’t pay them. Related to that is last paychecks—somebody gets fired. They’ve worked a week, and the employer fires them. Well, they’re owed for that week of work, but employers often won’t pay that. Again, where it’s a few hundred dollars and it’s important to that worker, but it’s not exactly thrilling for most attorneys to take the case.
Why should an average person think more about wage theft?
First, it probably is happening to somebody they know. They probably just don’t recognize it. Secondly, for those of us, particularly in the religious community who care about poverty—and I think most people care about poverty—what better way to address it quickly than to make sure people get paid for the hours they work? I think we should care because it is one [means] for reducing poverty in this society that is a very measurable thing we can do. The second thing is, if we allow wage theft to go unchecked, it really undermines ethical businesses. If you’re an ethical business that’s paying decent wages—all the wages you should, plus maybe some health care and some paid sick days—you’re competing against an employer who’s stealing wages and providing no benefits—you’re at a severe competitive disadvantage. I think we need to care about wage theft because we should care about ethical businesses. Fourthly, at this time when we’re trying to stimulate the economy, what better way than to make sure that wages get in the hands of workers? That means that wages get spent immediately in the community. Immediately. That is the best form of economic stimulus.
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