The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

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from The Nation:



The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday
My life as a temp in California’s Inland Empire, the belly of the online shopping beast.

Gabriel Thompson
November 26, 2013


The call from the temp agency comes in late October. I’ve passed the drug test, cleared the background check, sat down for a quick interview—“Can you lift fifty-pound boxes?”—and completed a worksheet of basic math problems. Now there’s a job. A warehouse just outside the city of Ontario, about forty miles east of Los Angeles, needs more bodies to meet the holiday crush.

They do work for Walmart, Best Buy, “all sorts of big companies,” says the female voice on the line. Orientation starts at 8:15 am; pay is $9 an hour. “Make sure you’re early.” Before hanging up she repeats the order. “Be early.”

On an overcast Tuesday, I pull into the parking lot, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Looming to my left is a giant rectangle of windowless cement. At 800,000 square feet, the warehouse is the size of Madison Square Garden, big enough that any misplaced products are as good as lost. I get my picture snapped for an ID badge and join thirty other new hires in the cafeteria. It is a diverse group, evenly divided by gender, mostly Latino but with a fair number of whites and blacks. As we sit, several men swap rumors of better opportunities elsewhere: a warehouse where pay starts at $12 an hour, another with productivity bonuses that can boost hourly wages to $15. But those are direct hire positions, and hard to land. During my job search, each warehouse I visited gave directions to the nearest temp agency.

After waiting twenty minutes, we are ushered into a room upstairs. A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. “I know you were told to be here at 8:15,” she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, “but that was just to make sure you got here early.” .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush

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1. du rec.