Workers and Community Vow to Stop "Business as Usual" at Elite After Owner Dismisses Concerns. San Lucas worker-leaders presented horror stories of abuses and made recommendations for reforms to Elite Labor Services owner Harvey Cole and a crowd of over 50 workers and community members at a Community Meeting on the Day Labor Abuses at Elite. The objective of the April 28th meeting was to set community conditions for Elite to follow, when it relocates to Logan Square on May 7th. Day laborer and San Lucas Workers Center member Raquel Arroyo stated: "What we want is justice and we want Elite to stop treating us like animals."
Black, Puerto Rican, and immigrant day laborers described to the crowd and their boss multiple and repeated abuses, such as unpaid and delayed wages, discrimination, unsafe transportation, getting passed over on the 2000 Elite audit for illegal deductions, no opportunity to go from temp to perm, general treatment of disrespect by all Elite staff, and off-duty police harassing workers. Community members also testified to the neightborhood costs of day labor abuses. Carmen Flores-Rance told Cole: "Eighty percent of the people eating at our church's meal program are there because they're making a poverty wage working day labor. The don't need missing wages on top of that." SLWC worker-leaders then presented Harvey Cole with six very reasonable demands, including moving 50 workers to regular work, providing names and badge numbers of all off-duty police working security, cleaning up refunds owed workers for 2001 illegal fees, refraining from making a check-cashing deal with the liquor store that adjoins the new Elite, and permitting San Lucas access to dispatch as the community’s watchdog. The most important demand was zero tolerance on unpaid wages and a copy of the work ticket giving proof of hours worked to workers. The work ticket proposal is actually a legal requirement, part of the Chicago Day Labor Ordinance. Elite has a history of violating and resisting regulatory laws; it took Attorney General Lisa Madigan in the fall of 2003 to order Elite to refund workers money for fees that the Illinois Department of Labor had determined were illegal in a San Lucas-prompted audit in 2001! Harvey Cole made a show of not paying attention to worker testimonies; commenting on the room temperature several times to show his “cool” disregard. His response to the recommendations was to recite official company policy, as though he had missed the repeated testimonies of their ineffectiveness. He punctuated his defiance with two boldfaced lies---one that Elite fixes payroll problems within 24 hours and the other that he had help spearhead the DL ordinance. San Lucas has much experience with Harvey Cole. Two years ago San Lucas spearheaded the fight to win the Chicago day labor ordinance, in which the Cole-headed association of day labor agencies was soundly beaten. Beyond that fight, San Lucas Workers Center has formally met with Elite management four times in the past three years with only temporary and individual solutions to structural problems. This meeting followed the past pattern of sweet talk, something Cole excels at, with no action. Harvey Cole’s smooth manner has many client companies believing he is a fair and personable businessman. Cole cares deeply about his business relationships. What was clear from his demeanor on April 28th is that he cares little for both the internal practices of his staff and his relationship to workers and the community. He was unwilling to agree to the most basic demand - paying workers for hours worked. Based on past experience San Lucas predicted the meeting would go as it did. For that reason, we regarded this event as a last chance for Elite. Before the meeting we pledged that if Elite continued its defiant attitude toward reforming illegal practices, San Lucas would broaden the fight against this “business as usual”. According to long-time Logan Square resident, Sandra Morales: “Harvey is not here to help people, he’s here to exploit them.” What was clear from the meeting is that the community has come a long way in both its awareness of abuses, and its commitment to change. People are ready for a fight. Epilogue: On May 5th, exactly one week after the Community Meeting, Elite staff faced a near-insurrection of workers at its North/Kedzie dispatch by dozens of workers furious over delayed and missing money on the Wednesday payday. Maybe Harvey Cole can’t hear the outrage at his Westtown corporate headquarters or at his North Shore home. |
