13 December 2021
Dear Mayor Jones:
The death toll from the storms and tornadoes Friday night highlights
the need for citywide emergency plans. I hope you will consider the proposals I
put forward both in my letter about future water shortages, and in my most
recent letter about building self-sustaining neighborhoods while also tackling
chronic unemployment.
If the St. Louis area were facing the same challenges as
Kentucky, would we be prepared? Would residents without power have somewhere to
go? Especially poor people? I hope there is a plan in place. I hope there are
reciprocal agreements with other cities and counties, that should we need to
seek refuge in another area we have brother/sister communities that will host
our displaced (and we theirs).
And the bad management of trillion-dollar Amazon needs to be
addressed. It’s not enough to look at the managers of this particular
warehouse. These six people died because of the overall culture of work and
employment in this country. They died because we lack unions which gives voice
to labor and is the only power strong enough to leverage bad management and greed.
I hope the City of Saint Louis supports unions for all
employees in every kind of job and industry. The people who do the work deserve
a voice. And the collective knowledge of
people who perform the labor needs to be collected and retained. We will all
prosper when unions prosper.
In addition to supporting and encouraging unions among city
businesses, there are several other things that could be done to increase safe,
sustainable employment in Saint Louis (and everywhere else).
Businesses need to shut down when emergency alerts are
issued. The safety of workers should be the priority. It is ridiculous to even
have to say that. And the public needs to be asked to take this into
consideration too. As a culture, we
should not expect people to work through tornado warnings and bad storms
because we ordered something we can’t live without for another day.
We need to promote a healthier, more relaxed culture, both
in our work life and our leisure. What can we do to be sure no one is so
desperate for something they ordered from Amazon that it can’t be a day late
due to weather? Can we make sure the
city is able to stock up on essentials, and have supplies locally? The cultural aspect of this is also part of
the city-wide emergency planning for disasters- making sure we know what people
need, and that they have it. Let’s start talking about it.
But there are a lot of other things, too. Amazon’s turnover rate for hourly
associates is 150%. That is obscene.
Companies should be sanctioned and or fined for failing to have anything below
50%. They should at least be questioned.
And all companies should be required to interview applicants receiving
unemployment. (It is difficult to take the myth “no one wants to work anymore”
seriously because not only are many of these places chronically understaffed
and badly managed, they also often do not call back even 10% of the
applications they receive.)
When I apply for a job, I am often subject to background
checks, reference checks, credit report, and a full list of my past employment,
including dates, employers, etc. Many of these companies will not interview me,
but I must submit all my personal data to them.
As an employee and as a temporary, I have worked at many
places that did not keep enough in the bank to cover payroll. Or the owners were in debt, on the verge of
bankruptcy. Sometimes the writing is on the wall, and sometimes it is not. But it is the employees who suffer when the
pension plan has been gambled away in Vegas or drained by executive stock buy
backs, or when they show up at work one day to find the doors locked and the
coffers emptied.
Society would benefit from more transparency from
businesses. Payroll accounts should be
required and transparent. The history of each position should be available as
well. How long has this position
existed, how many people have filled it, and what are the common complaints in
exit interviews? And just as an employee’s past is transparent for scrutiny, so
should owners and managers. Workers have a right to know who they are working
for, including familial connections.
While it may not be possible to institute these changes in the
private sector, the opportunity exists to hold recipients of government assistance
(i.e., taxpayer funded) accountable to these standards. Any business that
receives TIFs or grants needs to have all their details transparent and
available to the public.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/communities-of-color-paid-for-amazons-new-warehouse-through-tax-breaks
I will cover independent and contract-based workers like
Uber in more depth in a later letter, but Saint Louis city should strive to
create special protections for all the independent laborers as well. We need to become a safer place to live, for
everyone, and that includes working conditions and our response to extreme
weather, as well as the more discussed (and funded) issues like crime.
Thank you for your time,
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