Frito-Lays workers on strike after a year of dropping dead on the factory floor and being swept away for replacements

[crimson5pheonix]

Frito-Lay Workers Are on Strike for Their Lives

Hundreds of workers are on strike at the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas. Many of them are working 12-hour days, seven days a week, and some haven’t had a day off in five months — conditions that are literally killing them.

jacobinmag.com

The pandemic has caused a massive increase in the consumption, and thus production of bagged foods like potato chips. Probably not the healthiest thing, but far from concerns of your health, workers at the plant that's been making these chips have been working, quite literally 12 hour days, 7 days a week, for months. They're overworked to the point where some are dropping dead on the floor in a non-air conditioned building with their bosses telling them to move the body so the next guy can take over. Frito-Lays could hire more people and alleviate this issue, but they'd rather just kill off their own workers.

 

[Seanchaidh]

This is why I'm skeptical of the idea that sometimes appears in Marxian scholarship that capitalists concern themselves with the reproduction of labor at all. No, they actually can and do impose working conditions that are less than survival if workers let them. The system depends on the reproduction of labor in aggregate, but capitalists have outsourced this concern to the workers themselves, even going so far as to fight against them about it sometimes, such as in this case.

 

[BrawlMan]

The guys at the top can go fuck themselves. They should be getting sued for shit like this. A class action lawsuit.

 

[ObsidianJones]

This is the exact sort of thing that makes me want to hog-tie my sense of fairness and just treatment, shove them both in a closet, and ride on sons of bitches until simple unknown footsteps causes them and everyone like them to piss their pants in fear that their end has come.

Then after a few hundred breaths, I realize that following through wouldn't make me a hero. It would make me just another guy who thinks he should be the Batman and the Punisher. And it takes more strength to not give in than anything else.

But let these freaking bastards rot in jail. These are Human. God. Damned. Lives. Screw your profits.

You people are the very reason that humanity wants there to be a Hell.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

"A-buh-duh, why don't they just get better jobs, I will tell them this because they're obviously too stupid to think of it themselves, a-buh-duh."

 

[Drathnoxis]

Wow, and OH&S isn't shutting them down? Or does the US not have that? Canada has laws about how many days you can work without a day off, I think it's 3 weeks. The owners would be in jail over this.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Wow, and OH&S isn't shutting them down? Or does the US not have that? Canada has laws about how many days you can work without a day off, I think it's 3 weeks. The owners would be in jail over this.

For all the complaints that the US is turning into a socialist hellhole...no, we do not have that.
At best, individual people can crowdfund a legal battle against highly paid corporate lawyers in a court system predominantly run by Ivy League judges.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

At best, individual people can crowdfund a legal battle against highly paid corporate lawyers in a court system predominantly run by Ivy League judges.

And the typical reward the victims see is either a check for less than a dollar, or a coupon for something. Meanwhile, the trial lawyers walk off with millions.

 

[Worgen]

Wow, and OH&S isn't shutting them down? Or does the US not have that? Canada has laws about how many days you can work without a day off, I think it's 3 weeks. The owners would be in jail over this.

This sort of thing largely falls under state employment laws. I think from the federal level employers have to pay hourly workers overtime for over 40 hours a week and then there are rules about being fired for certain reasons like your gender, skin color or marital status. Everything else is state level and if they are in a right to work state then they can be fired for almost any reason with no recourse out side of the aforementioned and you have to prove them to get compensation. There are no national laws about vacation or how many hours is too many except for specific jobs like pilot or truck driver.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

And the typical reward the victims see is either a check for less than a dollar, or a coupon for something. Meanwhile, the trial lawyers walk off with millions.

Yeah, when I found out the reward for wage theft is just "they have to pay you what they owe" I didn't bother bringing up when my last job would short me an hour here or there.

It's quite literally not worth it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Remember when we used to watch movies with bad guys like this and roll our eyes at how overly evil they were written?

Yeah...

 

[Baffle]

For anyone who hasn't read the whole article:

“We would rather nobody buy any Frito-Lay products — Fritos, Doritos, Tostitos, Funyuns, Cheetos, all those — while we’re on strike. We make all of those in Topeka, Kansas. We also would rather nobody buys PepsiCo products while we’re on the line. PepsiCo is the owner of Frito-Lay.”

You can only do what you can do, but that sounds manageable.

 

[Agema]

Yeah, when I found out the reward for wage theft is just "they have to pay you what they owe" I didn't bother bringing up when my last job would short me an hour here or there.

It's quite literally not worth it.

Similar stuff in the UK. The Tories reformed the systems whereby workers could take their employers to tribunals, which purely coincidentally placed a much higher burden and risk on the workers. Shifting the cost-benefit analysis towards making workers unwilling to take action is great for the people who pay for Conservative re-election campaigns.

 

[AnxietyProne]

Frito-Lay Workers Are on Strike for Their Lives

Hundreds of workers are on strike at the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas. Many of them are working 12-hour days, seven days a week, and some haven’t had a day off in five months — conditions that are literally killing them.

jacobinmag.com

The pandemic has caused a massive increase in the consumption, and thus production of bagged foods like potato chips. Probably not the healthiest thing, but far from concerns of your health, workers at the plant that's been making these chips have been working, quite literally 12 hour days, 7 days a week, for months. They're overworked to the point where some are dropping dead on the floor in a non-air conditioned building with their bosses telling them to move the body so the next guy can take over. Frito-Lays could hire more people and alleviate this issue, but they'd rather just kill off their own workers.

But if we don't allow this and accept it, we turn into

COMMUNISTS!

 

[Phoenixmgs]

This is how most very low skill jobs are. If you complain or anything, they just fire you and get someone else from the staffing agency. Some places like *cough*Southside Recycling/Reserve Management Group*cough* (that I worked at as a tech) use a staffing company that use illegals so that the employees couldn't really make complaints. I'm not going to say it's right or anything, but if you're gonna get mad at Frito-Lay/Pepsi and stop buying their products (which is fairly easy honestly, I really just like their Honey BBQ Flavor Twists), you're going to have to stop buying a whole bunch of other stuff. For example, the people the pick fruit are treated horrible and that's where most of California's coronvirus spikes came from, migrant farmers that aren't citizens that live together onsite and if you take a day off, you're basically fired. It's a much bigger issue than just Frito-Lay/Pepsi.

 

[Seanchaidh]

This is how most very low skill jobs are. If you complain or anything, they just fire you and get someone else from the staffing agency. Some places like *cough*Southside Recycling/Reserve Management Group*cough* (that I worked at as a tech) use a staffing company that use illegals so that the employees couldn't really make complaints. I'm not going to say it's right or anything, but if you're gonna get mad at Frito-Lay/Pepsi and stop buying their products (which is fairly easy honestly, I really just like their Honey BBQ Flavor Twists), you're going to have to stop buying a whole bunch of other stuff. For example, the people the pick fruit are treated horrible and that's where most of California's coronvirus spikes came from, migrant farmers that aren't citizens that live together onsite and if you take a day off, you're basically fired. It's a much bigger issue than just Frito-Lay/Pepsi.

Yes, capitalism is, in fact, bad.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Yes, capitalism is, in fact, bad.

Or capitalism has good and bad parts to it just like any other system and taking all the good parts of the different systems into a hybrid system is probably the right answer.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Or capitalism has good and bad parts to it just like any other system and taking all the good parts of the different systems into a hybrid system is probably the right answer.

Sure, but none of those are what makes capitalism distinct from modern anti-capitalist alternatives.

 

[Buyetyen]

This is how most very low skill jobs are. If you complain or anything, they just fire you and get someone else from the staffing agency. Some places like *cough*Southside Recycling/Reserve Management Group*cough* (that I worked at as a tech) use a staffing company that use illegals so that the employees couldn't really make complaints. I'm not going to say it's right or anything, but if you're gonna get mad at Frito-Lay/Pepsi and stop buying their products (which is fairly easy honestly, I really just like their Honey BBQ Flavor Twists), you're going to have to stop buying a whole bunch of other stuff. For example, the people the pick fruit are treated horrible and that's where most of California's coronvirus spikes came from, migrant farmers that aren't citizens that live together onsite and if you take a day off, you're basically fired. It's a much bigger issue than just Frito-Lay/Pepsi.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, full stop. That doesn't mean we don't get to pick our battles.

 

[Gergar12]

Middle managers and corporate execs are the worst. Just hire more people, you greedy bastards.