End Forced Overtime - Boycott Reynolds
PACTIV: A microcosm of a national trend
On June 14 of 2012, the Ain’t I a Woman?! Campaign launched a national boycott of Reynolds Group, the parent company of Pactiv. Over 150 working people, their friends, family, and members of the community gathered in front of the Pactiv Corporation plastics factory in Kearny, NJ, to denounce the company’s sweatshop practices, and to announce a national boycott against Reynolds. There to support the launch were many organizations from New Jersey and New York, including American Friends Service Workers Committee, Students Organizing Against Reynolds, United Steel Workers District 4, United Labor Agency of Bergen County AFL-CIO, Central Labor Council of Hudson County AFL-CIO, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers AFL-CIO, as well as many more in spirit. Together, we denounced Pactiv for retaliating against women workers standing up for their rights.
The Pactiv factory in Kearny, New Jersey produced thousands of plastic containers every week. The company had forced over a hundred workers, mostly Latina and Chinese women, to work long hours in sweltering conditions, with no time to even go to the bathroom. The temperature in the factory typically exceeded 100° F. The windows were closed. Some workers fainted from heat exhaustion. Workplace injuries began to pile up. The Pactiv factory was a sweatshop.
When the women began to speak out and organize for better conditions, Pactiv retaliated. Pactiv instituted speed ups at the factory, imposed new rules meant to weed out leaders and sympathizers, and eventually fired 40 of the most outspoken workers in the most active department. With the number of workers in their department cut by 60%, Pactiv forced the remaining workers to work brutally long hours to pick up the slack.
Pactiv and parent company Reynolds Group have been promoting such practices and spreading sweatshops throughout the country. They operate over 40 plants in North America alone! In Illinois, they boasted of crushing another unionized group of workers who tried to improve conditions. What was once considered a good job, at over $17 per hour, increasingly became a sweatshop job at the hands of Pactiv. Finally, the company shut down that factory and bought other factories elsewhere to continue exploiting more workers!
“We need to take this boycott nationwide,” said Ain’t I a Woman!? Campaign Representative Jennifer Wager, ”because mandatory overtime is affecting all of us. Many of my friends, my coworkers,and I are working longer and longer hours. We are doing the work of two or three people while so many people are unemployed. This is ridiculous!”
A student representative spoke for the new national network, Students Organizing Against Reynolds: “We are now facing worse and worse conditions – unpaid internships with longer and longer hours, unemployment, rising tuition, insurmountable debt. We need to boycott Reynolds because they are promoting this kind of sweatshop in America. We are joining working people from all over the country to say No to Sweatshops!”
The Pactiv factory in Kearny, New Jersey produced thousands of plastic containers every week.
100 Chinese and Latina women operated machines that molded the containers and then quickly packed the products into boxes. The temperature in the factory typically exceeded 100° F. The windows were closed. Some workers fainted from heat exhaustion. Workplace injuries began to pile up. The Pactiv factory was a sweatshop.
Pactiv is no outlier in today’s economy
Working people are increasingly under attack. The last ten years have been labeled as a “lost decade” for wage growth; meanwhile workers are more productive, working countless hours at a breakneck pace, but continue to see growing inequality between those at the top and those at the bottom.
Between 1979 – 2008, incomes declined by 28.8% after inflation, for low income families and by 13.2% for families in the middle
38% of professional men and 23% of middle income men work over 50 hours per week
93% of all income gains in 2010 went to the top 1%.
Many working parents have to choose between caring for their families and keeping their low-wage jobs.
94% of retail managers in one study said they preferred workers who could be available for all hours.
Starbucks makes overtime mandatory upwards of 80 hours a week for full time employees.
Walmart, the nation’s biggest private employer, forces employees to work all over the clock.
Two sides of the same coin: overwork and underwork
The Pactiv factory is a prime example of these simultaneous forces at work in today’s economy.
There is no shortage of work in this system, yet like the Pactiv workers, some grind out endless
days while others frantically try to put food on the table.Common Thread-Mandatory OT
Overtime is no longer a bonus for those who want to make a little more each paycheck. It is increasingly a requirement for hourly and salaried employees alike and has major consequences in the lives of working people. Less time with family, less time to sleep, and less time to contribute to society outside of work are all detrimental to our well-being. Academics, worker advocates, and journalists have documented how overtime endangers the safety of the public. They cite how fewer working hours can improve workers’ health and safety, spread employment, and even benefit employers. They advocate work-sharing and flextime arrangements but too often these solutions to long work hours still leave the control of workers’ time in the hands of employers, administrators, or government bureaucrats. Workers need control of our own time.We need to see ourselves not just as individuals or as “un-employed” or as “employees” – we need to see ourselves as more than just these categories that divide us.
Take back control–Take a Stand at Pactiv
The fight at Pactiv did not end when the boss chucked those “troublemakers” out of the factory. In fact, it was only the beginning. If Pactiv is an example of the increasingly cruel universal reality facing working people in this country, it can also be the harbinger of a changing trend.
Taking Fate Into Their Own Hands
For years, Wan Zhen Huang, Lili Cisneros and 70+ other packers, worked at the Kearny, NJ factory, making plastic containers for Pactiv Corporation, a subsidiary of Reynolds Group. The overwhelming majority of them were women. They slaved at the machines in sweltering conditions for twelve hour shifts. The containers were mostly shipped to Walmart and Costco.
Around June 2012, in the middle of summer, all the factory windows were closed with no ventilation nor water for the workers. One woman packer could not bear the over 100 degree temperature and fainted. Then, a group led by Mei E. Liang went to the Manager’s office and demanded something be done about the excessive heat. This was followed by a list of demands for improved working conditions signed by a large number of workers. Their demands were ignored by the Manager so the workers went ahead to organize to join the United Steel Workers Union.
In response, the Pactiv management, instead of addressing the alarming health and safety issues, they sent a squad of union-busting staff to the NJ factory from headquarters to crush the workers’ efforts.
Pactiv’s Dirty Tricks
Pactiv management used every play in the sweatshop-boss playbook. The company held constant meetings with the workers to convince them not to bring in the union. But more than that, they went after packers, mostly women, who came together against the sweatshop conditions. “My co-workers from the same team asked a lot of questions during these brainwashing meetings,” says Lin Shu Rong, a packers representative from Team B. She and her coworkers asked what the company would do for them if they agreed not to bring in the union. Little did they know that this was marking them as targets for retaliation by Pactiv. In an effort to placate some of the workers’ concerns, Pactiv fired the factory director, reduced the workload and promised wage increases. Pactiv also threatened the workers they would close the factory if they insisted on joining the Union, bribed some of the workers’ representatives by giving them huge wage increases, and isolated some of those who refused to go along. In this way, Pactiv was able to defeat the union in the election of 2010.
The Workers Persevere
But even with these minor concessions and underhanded tricks, Pactiv was not able to crush the workers’ organizing drive. Under new leadership, workers still continued to come together to speak out against injustice, even though they lost the election. Pactiv then pulled a bait and switch by increasing the workload by 200% and by instituting a web of rules to target those workers who were most vocal. As a result, outspoken workers were laid off or fired. Workers who came back from the bathroom late were given warnings. Mei E Liang, a worker representative who hurt her ankle on the job and reported her injury a day later, was punished. Wang Qin Fang, a packer, says that they even used expired and old warnings to prevent her from keeping her job: “In the meeting with Manager Wu, Wu said ‘you have warnings.’ He said it was because I often spoke out against the working conditions.” In spite of all the harassment and horrible conditions, the workers persevered and Pactiv was unable to stop their efforts.
Pactiv’s Attack Continues
On July 15, 2011, a few days before the workers could file the petition to hold a new union election, Pactiv laid off 60% of the packers and substituted some of them with temporary workers. Pactiv imposed so much mandatory overtime on the remaining packers that it was physically impossible to bear.
In November 2012, right after Super-storm Sandy, Pactiv used this devastating crisis to enrich themselves. Pactiv falsely claimed that storm damage forced them to close their Kearny plant. They used this excuse to fire most of the remaining packers and replace them with temporary workers. To top it off, they used this same excuse to cash in on $13 million in insurance money!
But the workers are not giving up! They are organizing together with other working people, students and many other supporters. Together with the AIW?! Campaign, Pactiv women workers launched a national boycott of Reynolds Group.
Join Us!
Pactiv workers are leading the charge and joining with other working people—service and office workers, students, mothers —who are fed up with the status quo. They are tired of the false promises of prosperity in exchange for forced overtime, workplace injuries and meager compensation. They are coming together despite language and cultural barriers, across trade or industry, and even across immigration status. We must unite as working people. Let’s start by holding Pactiv and parent company Reynolds accountable for promoting over-work in this country.
Reynolds Group & Graeme Hart: We Demand You End Your Sweatshop Practices!
We join the Pactiv workers to demand:
1. The right to take bathroom breaks.
2. The right to sick days and parental leave.
3. The right to speak out and organize without retaliation.
4. Reinstatement with back pay for those laid-off or fired.
5. The right to a 40-hour work week and no mandatory overtime.