On Decent Treatment for Our Service Workers
With the jobs for many of our workers being outsourced -- manufacturing to China, high tech to India, etc. -- not much is left for a vast number of Americans but service jobs -- fast food, household work, retail clerking, etc. Hence the conditions of work, if not the salaries from same, ought to be as comfortable and humanely operated as possible. Such is, however, not the case in too many instances. In our Morningside Heights (Columbia University) neighborhood we had until two years ago a happy university market. The half owner, however, was obliged to sell to satisfy the estate interests of his deceased partner and a new outfit bought the lease from Columbia and proceded to change things radically -- mainly getting rid of all but a handful of loyal workers by cutting their salaries drastically. Those of us who watched this process were horrified at the hardships imposed upon the laid off workers and word of bad treatment of a few who had tried to remain on with the new owners, a small chain growing in sizs by acquiring and revamping markets such as ours.
One small item that I noticed along the way was that the young women who manned our checkout counters in our new market were working long hours without rest periods and stools to sit on to ease their tired backs and feet -- some were pregnant and at least one noted the pain of her back one day. So I explored the ins and outs as reported below of acquiring stools for these young women to ease their working conditions. What I discovered was a bit of an American horror. Unlike our counterpart nations in Europe and Canada, American retailers quite cruelly have by tradition made things quite uncomfortable for their workers as some of the comments below indicate. The NY Times did a story on my efforts to be assistance and responses have been flowing in since by email and phone. Some are included in what follows, including one that reports that the denial of such conveniences as seating contravenes one of our little known and unenforced NY State Labor laws:
Following upon publication in the NY Times City section yesterday (5/15/05) of "As They Ring It Up, They Should Be Sitting Down," I received a number of communications by phone and email indicating not only support for the proposal that young women working long hours on their feet behind checkout counters should have stools upon which to rest, but that such are mandated by NY State Labor Law 203-b!
To quote Steve Landis fully:
Professor Kent,
It was a pleasure speaking with you this morning and reading about you in this morning’s New York Times.
As I indicated, I practice labor and employment law and am the Chair of the New York County Lawyers’ Association Labor Relations & Employment Law Committee. In my practice, I previously dealt with a similar issue and thought I could be help solve your concerns. Below is the statutory provision that we discussed, which I expect will be helpful to you in regarding the absence of chairs at the Morton Williams supermarket. For your convenience, I have cut and pasted the language, along with the url, so that you can refer to it in your further discussions:
NYS Labor Law §203-b
§203-b. Seats for female employees. A sufficient number of suitable seats, with backs where practicable, shall be provided and maintained in every factory, mercantile establishment, freight or passenger elevator, hotel and restaurant for female employees who shall be allowed to use the seats to such an extent as may be reasonable for the preservation of their health. In factories, female employees shall be allowed to use such seats whenever they are engaged in work which can be properly performed in a sitting posture. In mercantile establishments, at least one seat shall be provided for every three female employees and if the duties of such employees are to be performed principally in front of a counter, table, desk or fixture, such seats shall be placed in front thereof, or if such duties are to be performed principally behind such counter, table, desk or fixture they shall be placed behind the same.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/c54/a9.html
I wish you the best of luck. Please let me know how it turns out.
Steven S. Landis
Shebitz Berman & Cohen, P.C.
800 Third Avenue, 30th Floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 832-2797
slandis@shebitzlaw.com
...................................................................
Where have all the retail clerk unions been on this one?
Other callers such as Monica Strauss noted that European countries routinely provide seating arrangements for check out clerks.
Vincent Valdmanis reported: I read in today's NY Times of your efforts to get chairs for the cashiers at Morton Williams on 115th and Broadway. In the article Avi Kaner says "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools." If he looked outside the country he would. Switzerland has scrupulous ergonomic standards for workers, especially in the service sector. There cashiers at grocery stores (the two principle chains being Migros and Coop) don't simply sit, they sit on modern height-adjustable swivel seats with high-density foam supports. There are also a number of other ergonomic features of their check-out lines, including placement of lightweight flat LCD computer screens on adjustable swing arms and locating computer keypads at or below the cashier's waist level.
Some comments from those who have been there and suffered it:
Thanks for taking this on. Many years ago I worked at Gimbels East (remember that?) on East 86th Street. I had a full-time day job and worked evenings and weekends at Gimbels . We were not allowed to sit or even lean. It was very difficult. It is not healthy to stand without rest for hours at a time. Any health consequences may not show up until years later.
M
Susan suggests:
Re stools for cashiers and sales people -- I've had many jobs in the course of my life, including waitressing and selling things from behind sales counters, both of which kept me on my feet. I was a lot younger at the time, so that helped, and waitressing is much more active than selling or cashiering, so that helps with circulation can say that a major reason most companies do not want sales people and cashiers sitting is because it makes them look too relaxed, not sufficiently "ready to serve." You see this everywhere -- airline check-in people, fast-food check-out people, sales people from small stores to large department stores, etc. (Do postal clerks sit? If so, it's probably
written into their contracts.)
In jobs that include some sort of movement -- including bagging groceries on check-out lines, the standing is not as bad as it may seem to someone who's never done it, and one gets used to it. What is bad is not getting enough breaks in order to stretch, move around or to put your feet up. A half-hour lunch break during an eight-hour shift does not seem nearly enough "down-time." I think NY state law requires a one-hour break for every eight hours worked, so the cashiers at M-W should probably also be getting two fifteen-minute breaks during their shifts as well.
Tom Fedorek notes:
I am very seldom in agreement with anything Ed Kent has to say, but on this issue I believe his point is well taken. Many, many moons ago, I used to manage a store. My cashiers always had the option of sitting, although many chose to work standing. The chairs and stools at the counters were never an impediment to the efficient processing of sales. Ringing a register is a tiring job and there is no plausible reason why cashiers who would prefer to sit should not have the option of doing so. Tom Fedorek
And I responded to Carla Zanoni who quite acutely noted the gender bias in the old law:
Needless to say, you are quite right about the gender bias. This is an old law. However, one notices that there seems to be some gender bias as well in employment practices in retail stores where women 'man' the registers and men do the stocking jobs. And the gender stats in NYC unemployment would suggest that minority women (many of those affected) are getting jobs more readily. There is a telling record of discrimination against women as presumably all know. The AT&T suit back in the 1970s as I recall first took on the gender bias in jobs (women only as operators and men a repair people). Here are some key cases along the way:
http://www.equalrights.org/about/history.asp
The stools thing looks to me to be typical bias -- in this instance inflicted on women by men owners and supervisors of establishments who don't get pregnant, have to stand on their feet for lengthy periods without relief, etc.
Best, Ed Kent
specdiva wrote:
Although I agree with the sentiment and support the cause, does anyone else find this wording a little sexist? Why is this only for women? Are women too weak to work through a day while men are strong enough to handle it?
Odd.
Carla Zanoni
.......................................................................
As a footnote to the above, I had been most recently sketching for two of my Brooklyn College classes Henry David Thoreau's creation of the concept of 'civil disobedience' as a device for protesting specific injustices and the effective use of it by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. I had suggested that we should all pursue King's marvelous example when we discover such injustices as outlined in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in which he suggests the stages leading up to active (law breaking) civil disobedience: 1) identify the injustice, 2) negotiate to try to resolve it, 3) prepare to undertake a civil disobedient action which is: a) public, b) non-violent, c) targeted at the specific injustice , d) carried out lovingly, e) with willingness to accept arrest and punishment.
In this specific case it looks as though the shoe is on the other foot -- all those markets NOT providing comfortable seating for their "female" employees are violating NY State law!!! Hopefully they will rectify this presumably legally punishable deficit ASAP.
I urge any and all who share this concern to bring this matter to the attention of their local market managers et al. Boycotts can be arranged later for those stores that still refuse to provide stools ensuring basic decent treatment of their employees. Hopefully Avi Kaner will become our neighborhood hero by making Morton Williams University Market the first of our Morningside Heights markets to comply with State Labor Law 203-b?
..............................................................
For those who missed it, here is yesterday's article:
Morningside Heights
As They Ring It Up, Should They Be Sitting Down?
By SUH-KYUNG YOON
Published: May 15, 2005
The last time Edward Kent went to the Morton Williams University Supermarket at 115th Street and Broadway, he left with a shopping list - four stools high enough to reach the cash register, and low enough to bag groceries.
Aching backs behind the counter at Morton Williams?
Mr. Kent, a 72-year-old philosophy professor at Brooklyn College, had noticed while standing on the checkout line that the cashiers had nowhere to sit. "Their legs must hurt, their backs must hurt, and one of the checkout women I saw was pregnant," he said. So Mr. Kent swung into action, negotiating a special price for stools at a local hardware store and discussing the hazards of standing with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In the last three weeks, he has e-mailed each of his findings to Avi Kaner, vice president of Morton Williams. Mr. Kaner has not returned phone calls, but in e-mail responses to Mr. Kent, he wrote that "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools" and that the chain's store supervisors "all think it's a bad idea." The supervisors, he wrote, believed that cashiers sitting on stools might develop backaches as they reached over to lift and bag groceries, or might slip off the stools, leading to injuries, lawsuits and rising insurance premiums.
Most of the cashiers and their customers know nothing about the wrangling over the stools. Elizabeth Marhela, 19, is on her feet throughout her eight-hour shift, minus her 30-minute lunch break. Would she like a stool? "That would be great so that we can rest our feet," she replied. "But who's this guy doing this?"
The dust-up over the stools is the latest involving the grocery stores on this site. Two years ago, when Morton Williams, a Bronx-based chain of 10 supermarkets, replaced the University Food Market, some local residents were dismayed by the departure of a beloved if down-at-the-heels market. Morton Williams, which is decorated with black-and-white photographs of Columbia University and a sign flashing quotations of Cicero, Saki and P. J. O'Rourke ("Never serve oysters during a month that has no paycheck in it"), is open 24 hours a day and stocked with organic cheeses and fresh scallops.
In his efforts to get the cashiers seats, Mr. Kent has negotiated a deal for four 29-inch stools for $108 plus tax at University Houseware, on Broadway and 113th Street. He has also offered to chip in $10 and take up a collection if needed, and, in an e-mail to Mr. Kaner, said that he would even pick up the stools himself if not for the "problems with my back this week."
Mr. Kent also seems ready to broaden his mission. "It's not just Morton Williams," he said. "Why shouldn't every cashier have a stool to rest on?"
One small item that I noticed along the way was that the young women who manned our checkout counters in our new market were working long hours without rest periods and stools to sit on to ease their tired backs and feet -- some were pregnant and at least one noted the pain of her back one day. So I explored the ins and outs as reported below of acquiring stools for these young women to ease their working conditions. What I discovered was a bit of an American horror. Unlike our counterpart nations in Europe and Canada, American retailers quite cruelly have by tradition made things quite uncomfortable for their workers as some of the comments below indicate. The NY Times did a story on my efforts to be assistance and responses have been flowing in since by email and phone. Some are included in what follows, including one that reports that the denial of such conveniences as seating contravenes one of our little known and unenforced NY State Labor laws:
Following upon publication in the NY Times City section yesterday (5/15/05) of "As They Ring It Up, They Should Be Sitting Down," I received a number of communications by phone and email indicating not only support for the proposal that young women working long hours on their feet behind checkout counters should have stools upon which to rest, but that such are mandated by NY State Labor Law 203-b!
To quote Steve Landis fully:
Professor Kent,
It was a pleasure speaking with you this morning and reading about you in this morning’s New York Times.
As I indicated, I practice labor and employment law and am the Chair of the New York County Lawyers’ Association Labor Relations & Employment Law Committee. In my practice, I previously dealt with a similar issue and thought I could be help solve your concerns. Below is the statutory provision that we discussed, which I expect will be helpful to you in regarding the absence of chairs at the Morton Williams supermarket. For your convenience, I have cut and pasted the language, along with the url, so that you can refer to it in your further discussions:
NYS Labor Law §203-b
§203-b. Seats for female employees. A sufficient number of suitable seats, with backs where practicable, shall be provided and maintained in every factory, mercantile establishment, freight or passenger elevator, hotel and restaurant for female employees who shall be allowed to use the seats to such an extent as may be reasonable for the preservation of their health. In factories, female employees shall be allowed to use such seats whenever they are engaged in work which can be properly performed in a sitting posture. In mercantile establishments, at least one seat shall be provided for every three female employees and if the duties of such employees are to be performed principally in front of a counter, table, desk or fixture, such seats shall be placed in front thereof, or if such duties are to be performed principally behind such counter, table, desk or fixture they shall be placed behind the same.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/c54/a9.html
I wish you the best of luck. Please let me know how it turns out.
Steven S. Landis
Shebitz Berman & Cohen, P.C.
800 Third Avenue, 30th Floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 832-2797
...................................................................
Where have all the retail clerk unions been on this one?
Other callers such as Monica Strauss noted that European countries routinely provide seating arrangements for check out clerks.
Vincent Valdmanis reported: I read in today's NY Times of your efforts to get chairs for the cashiers at Morton Williams on 115th and Broadway. In the article Avi Kaner says "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools." If he looked outside the country he would. Switzerland has scrupulous ergonomic standards for workers, especially in the service sector. There cashiers at grocery stores (the two principle chains being Migros and Coop) don't simply sit, they sit on modern height-adjustable swivel seats with high-density foam supports. There are also a number of other ergonomic features of their check-out lines, including placement of lightweight flat LCD computer screens on adjustable swing arms and locating computer keypads at or below the cashier's waist level.
Some comments from those who have been there and suffered it:
Thanks for taking this on. Many years ago I worked at Gimbels East (remember that?) on East 86th Street. I had a full-time day job and worked evenings and weekends at Gimbels . We were not allowed to sit or even lean. It was very difficult. It is not healthy to stand without rest for hours at a time. Any health consequences may not show up until years later.
M
Susan suggests:
Re stools for cashiers and sales people -- I've had many jobs in the course of my life, including waitressing and selling things from behind sales counters, both of which kept me on my feet. I was a lot younger at the time, so that helped, and waitressing is much more active than selling or cashiering, so that helps with circulation can say that a major reason most companies do not want sales people and cashiers sitting is because it makes them look too relaxed, not sufficiently "ready to serve." You see this everywhere -- airline check-in people, fast-food check-out people, sales people from small stores to large department stores, etc. (Do postal clerks sit? If so, it's probably
written into their contracts.)
In jobs that include some sort of movement -- including bagging groceries on check-out lines, the standing is not as bad as it may seem to someone who's never done it, and one gets used to it. What is bad is not getting enough breaks in order to stretch, move around or to put your feet up. A half-hour lunch break during an eight-hour shift does not seem nearly enough "down-time." I think NY state law requires a one-hour break for every eight hours worked, so the cashiers at M-W should probably also be getting two fifteen-minute breaks during their shifts as well.
Tom Fedorek notes:
I am very seldom in agreement with anything Ed Kent has to say, but on this issue I believe his point is well taken. Many, many moons ago, I used to manage a store. My cashiers always had the option of sitting, although many chose to work standing. The chairs and stools at the counters were never an impediment to the efficient processing of sales. Ringing a register is a tiring job and there is no plausible reason why cashiers who would prefer to sit should not have the option of doing so. Tom Fedorek
And I responded to Carla Zanoni who quite acutely noted the gender bias in the old law:
Needless to say, you are quite right about the gender bias. This is an old law. However, one notices that there seems to be some gender bias as well in employment practices in retail stores where women 'man' the registers and men do the stocking jobs. And the gender stats in NYC unemployment would suggest that minority women (many of those affected) are getting jobs more readily. There is a telling record of discrimination against women as presumably all know. The AT&T suit back in the 1970s as I recall first took on the gender bias in jobs (women only as operators and men a repair people). Here are some key cases along the way:
http://www.equalrights.org/about/history.asp
The stools thing looks to me to be typical bias -- in this instance inflicted on women by men owners and supervisors of establishments who don't get pregnant, have to stand on their feet for lengthy periods without relief, etc.
Best, Ed Kent
specdiva wrote:
Although I agree with the sentiment and support the cause, does anyone else find this wording a little sexist? Why is this only for women? Are women too weak to work through a day while men are strong enough to handle it?
Odd.
Carla Zanoni
.......................................................................
As a footnote to the above, I had been most recently sketching for two of my Brooklyn College classes Henry David Thoreau's creation of the concept of 'civil disobedience' as a device for protesting specific injustices and the effective use of it by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. I had suggested that we should all pursue King's marvelous example when we discover such injustices as outlined in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in which he suggests the stages leading up to active (law breaking) civil disobedience: 1) identify the injustice, 2) negotiate to try to resolve it, 3) prepare to undertake a civil disobedient action which is: a) public, b) non-violent, c) targeted at the specific injustice , d) carried out lovingly, e) with willingness to accept arrest and punishment.
In this specific case it looks as though the shoe is on the other foot -- all those markets NOT providing comfortable seating for their "female" employees are violating NY State law!!! Hopefully they will rectify this presumably legally punishable deficit ASAP.
I urge any and all who share this concern to bring this matter to the attention of their local market managers et al. Boycotts can be arranged later for those stores that still refuse to provide stools ensuring basic decent treatment of their employees. Hopefully Avi Kaner will become our neighborhood hero by making Morton Williams University Market the first of our Morningside Heights markets to comply with State Labor Law 203-b?
..............................................................
For those who missed it, here is yesterday's article:
Morningside Heights
As They Ring It Up, Should They Be Sitting Down?
By SUH-KYUNG YOON
Published: May 15, 2005
The last time Edward Kent went to the Morton Williams University Supermarket at 115th Street and Broadway, he left with a shopping list - four stools high enough to reach the cash register, and low enough to bag groceries.
Aching backs behind the counter at Morton Williams?
Mr. Kent, a 72-year-old philosophy professor at Brooklyn College, had noticed while standing on the checkout line that the cashiers had nowhere to sit. "Their legs must hurt, their backs must hurt, and one of the checkout women I saw was pregnant," he said. So Mr. Kent swung into action, negotiating a special price for stools at a local hardware store and discussing the hazards of standing with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In the last three weeks, he has e-mailed each of his findings to Avi Kaner, vice president of Morton Williams. Mr. Kaner has not returned phone calls, but in e-mail responses to Mr. Kent, he wrote that "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools" and that the chain's store supervisors "all think it's a bad idea." The supervisors, he wrote, believed that cashiers sitting on stools might develop backaches as they reached over to lift and bag groceries, or might slip off the stools, leading to injuries, lawsuits and rising insurance premiums.
Most of the cashiers and their customers know nothing about the wrangling over the stools. Elizabeth Marhela, 19, is on her feet throughout her eight-hour shift, minus her 30-minute lunch break. Would she like a stool? "That would be great so that we can rest our feet," she replied. "But who's this guy doing this?"
The dust-up over the stools is the latest involving the grocery stores on this site. Two years ago, when Morton Williams, a Bronx-based chain of 10 supermarkets, replaced the University Food Market, some local residents were dismayed by the departure of a beloved if down-at-the-heels market. Morton Williams, which is decorated with black-and-white photographs of Columbia University and a sign flashing quotations of Cicero, Saki and P. J. O'Rourke ("Never serve oysters during a month that has no paycheck in it"), is open 24 hours a day and stocked with organic cheeses and fresh scallops.
In his efforts to get the cashiers seats, Mr. Kent has negotiated a deal for four 29-inch stools for $108 plus tax at University Houseware, on Broadway and 113th Street. He has also offered to chip in $10 and take up a collection if needed, and, in an e-mail to Mr. Kaner, said that he would even pick up the stools himself if not for the "problems with my back this week."
Mr. Kent also seems ready to broaden his mission. "It's not just Morton Williams," he said. "Why shouldn't every cashier have a stool to rest on?"
posted by Ed Kent at 8:09 AM
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