Views in brief
Putting workers at risk for profits
ON SATURDAY morning, January 12, a McDonald's restaurant in the city of Holyoke, Mass., burned when oil spilled from a fryer and caught on fire. Fortunately there were no injuries, but there was serious damage to the restaurant.
The incident could have been prevented. The fryer had been badly damaged before by similar incidents. But the owner didn't want to buy a new fryer and just kept trying to fix the old fryer. The employee in charge of filtering the oil didn't immediately catch the problem in time as he was busy also working on the grill, because we were short of staff.
A worker quickly turned off the machine and emptied the fryer, but the fire spread to the exhaust pipe. He then tried several times to activate the emergency fire extinguisher, but it failed to work properly and the fire became more intense. As all attempts to put out the fire failed, he yelled for everyone to evacuate the building.
Workers in the restaurant had been afraid to work near the fryer for some time. There had been strange popping sounds, and it had caused smaller fires in the past. Regular professional maintenance on the fryer, including cleanup of the exhaust pipe, was overdue.
The restaurant makes about $3 million a year. The cause of the fire was the owner forcing workers to use a dangerously defective fryer, cutting costs on proper maintenance, not ensuring the fire extinguishers were working and forcing workers to work double jobs.
Situations like this are all too common in the low-wage fast-food industry.
Now, 30 workers, many of them parents who work 40 hours a week to pay their bills, have lost their jobs. All because the owner tried to save a few dollars by ignoring the basic safety and maintenance of the equipment and forcing the staff to do double the work, all for the sake of profits.
Anonymous, from the Internet
The King we don't hear about
IN RESPONSE to "The part of the dream they forgot": Thank you, Marlene Martin, for this enlightening take on King's most famous speech and how it has been weakened by today's media, and more importantly, our schools from where the next activists must come.
I was lucky enough to hear and see an original playing of the speech in its entirety, and it did exactly what Ms. Martin suggests: It reminded me that there was so much more to what Dr. King was trying to get across.
Wouldn't it be awesome if just a few elementary schools would also allow students to see the whole speech, and then encourage a question-and-answer session. Children are so much smarter than we give them credit for, and I bet they'd get it.
Julie Guthrie, Tennessee
Sending a message against rape
NEW YORK City pedestrians are experts at ignoring street distractions. On Saturday, January 12, however, members of the International Socialist Organization's Brooklyn branch managed to stop them in their tracks.
Galvanized by recent events in Steubenville, Ohio, and elsewhere, the Brooklyn branch held a tabling and Socialist Worker sale centered on the issue of sexual violence.
After discussing the paper and talking points, members brought the conversation to a lively street corner in downtown Brooklyn. Among the newspapers and other literature, pre-addressed postcards were available for people to fill out and send to both the mayor of Steubenville and the Steubenville High School administration. Stamped on the front of the postcards were the words, "I Stand Against Rape," in bold typeface.
Despite low temperatures, dozens of women, men and young people stopped to fill out the cards, with individuals adding their geographic location and messages of support and solidarity. One card proudly declared that its author stood against rape from Jamaica.
Several members were drawn into longer conversations with women who shared their own lived experiences with sexual violence. Many had already heard of the Steubenville rape case, and expressed frustration with the apparent cover-up and victim-blaming.
As conversations touched on the themes of impunity and power, branch members and pedestrians engaged in critical discussions about the underlying causes of unaccountability and why this such a pervasive issue, certainly not limited to a small city in eastern Ohio.
Lina Bartholomew, New York City
Low-wage and under-appreciated
IN RESPONSE to "Maximum lies about the minimum wage": I remodeled several Burger Kings. There is no way that raising the minimum wage would lead to massive layoffs.
The people are worked to death in those hellholes. These restaurants already work with the minimum amount of staff they could have to serve the amount of customers they have. I would also bet that the average worker in these places works a hell of a lot harder than the CEO.
Frank Valente, Rochester, N.Y.
