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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: March 29, 2004
Latest Update: March 29, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Coercing the Worker in a Tight Labor Market

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2004.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This piece is based on an L.A. Times article of March 29, 2004: Unusual Pledge Upsets 'Night Gallery' Artists by Bob Pool, at p. B 1. Backup.

At issue here is the cost of legal representation in everyday civil matters. An artist is hired to paint a metal security door on Hollywood Blvd. as part of the city's beautification plan to continue attracting tourists to the area. The city beautification program has underpriced the cost of the labor, and the artists ask for more money, consistent with their normal fees. The city declines, but offers them instead a bonus at the end. Meanwhile, other city committee's take the part of the artists, and the city is ordered by a court to pay a stated amount. When the artists go to pick up the last of their weekly checks for the project, at least some of them are offered half of the amount ordered by the court, and all claimed to have been coerced to sign a "will not complain or say anything bad about the city officers in charge of the program" in order to get their halved pay.

This is a frightening example of coporate tactics invading local civic commissions and groups, and the terrifying results. Another example was offered in the opinion section of the LA Times of March 28, 2004: A Big-Box Ballot Bully. . . Backup. In that case Wal-Mart has put up a ballot issue to get around the opposition of the City Government in Inglewood to the creation of a Wal-Mart superstore in the Inglewood area. The Times makes clear that there are complex and difficult governance issues involved, like traffic congestion, sewerage, and many others, that Wal-Mart attempts to skirt on the ballot issue. Moreover, the ballot issue seems to have it's own "silencing" clause, just likethe Hollywood Beautification Committee's. No changes can be made to the law if passed in the ballot issue without another ballot issue that gets two-thirds of the popular vote.

These are means of eroding our rights and our democratic governance. We who are concerned at bridging the gap between the academy and the community must find ways of bringing these issues to awareness now, at these relatively early stages, before the whole situation becomes intolerable.

Discussion Questions

1. We would label these incidents "precedent-setting" in legal terms. What does that mean?

   Consider that once the beautification committee has successfully forced artists to refrain from complaining to get their wages, then it can do so again, and offer as a justification that there is a precedent that shows that it has the right to do so. Once Wal-Mart has successfully by-passed the city council and court challenges, it can use those tactics anywhere, and point to the Inglewood case as a precedent in which it was permitted by the justice system to do so. That means that once you let it happen, it gets even harder to ward off in the future.

2. Who stands to be hurt in each of these cases?

   Consider that the artists are most likely free-lance, no union, no institutional support. Hard to afford litigation against an agency.

   Consider that some workers will be helped by jobs at Wal-Mart. But consider also that Wal-Mart fights unions and pays woefully inadequate wages. Consider that consumers who like Wal-Mart's low prices will be helped. But at the cost of harm to other workers.

   Consider that if sewerage and road and traffic costs increase because of the greatly increased numbers of people drawn to the small city for the jobs and bargains, that the city will have to pay those costs, and cannot, according to the ballot issue, confront Wal-Mart over this increased cost of doing business that the city must now tax its citizens to pay for.

3. Consider this issue as a project for the Naked Space Exhibit.

   Could you conceive of visuals that might help create awareness? Could you conceive of posters that might help the city express its fears?

4. Could some of you who took part in the supermarket strike compare these issues?

   Consider the advantage given the ownership through cost of legal expense and through the need to have the wages to exist. Consider the meaning that your strike had for the people who were involved and who will be involved in these situations.