Labor fight roils Bernie Sanders campaign, as workers demand the $15 hourly pay....

[George II]

Full headline:

Labor fight roils Bernie Sanders campaign, as workers demand the $15 hourly pay the candidate has proposed for employees nationwide

By Sean Sullivan July 18 at 8:33 PM

Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.

Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.

Sanders has made standing up for workers a central theme of his presidential campaigns — this year marching with McDonald’s employees seeking higher wages, pressing Walmart shareholders to pay workers more and showing solidarity with university personnel on strike. The independent from Vermont has proudly touted his campaign as the first presidential effort to unionize its employees, and his defense of the working class has been a signature element of his brand of democratic socialism and a rallying cry for the populist movement he claims to lead.

Details about the negotiations between Shakir and the union representing Sanders’s campaign workers have not been publicly reported until now. A review of emails, instant messages and other documents obtained by The Post show that the conflict dates back to at least May and remains unresolved. The documents were provided to The Post on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the private talks.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/labor-fight-roils-bernie-sanders-campaign-as-workers-demand-the-15-hourly-pay-the-candidate-has-proposed-for-employees-nationwide/2019/07/18/3a6df9f4-a966-11e9-9214-246e594de5d5_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.620787d24e1c

[qazplm135]

1. I mean...

it's literally your signature issue...you have to know that folks are going to look at this and scream hypocrite.

This is a self-own.

[Blue_true]

21. An own goal.

They may pay a salary that would be better than $15 for a 40 hour workweek. But if his staff are working 60 or 80 or longer workweeks, the salary is inadequate and they are better off being paid by the hour.

Hmmmm, wonder what Nina Turner has to say about this? My guess is she is blasting away at the workers, calling then ingrates for questioning such a visionary leader.

[calguy]

51. Nina Turner is not a top tier political mind

She's probably collecting a big check while at the same time telling the underlings about sacrifices they must make to further their "cause".

[George II]

57. Nina Turner is being paid over $100,000 per year.

[Cha]

2. ".battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does

Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.

Well, what have we here?!

Thanks George

[Me.]

5. Hilarious Hoa

you and I quoted the same paragraph....

[Cha]

6. Like you say, Me..

You can't make this shite up!

Hoaaloha!

[DURHAM D]

12. ...

[Vegas Roller]

3. Oh wow

He doesn't pay the $15 minimum wage?


Holy hypocrisy batman!!

[Blue_true]

18. He may be paying an annual salary, but people are working 80 hour workweeks. nt

[George II]

20. Bottom line, they're not getting $15 per hour, and that's the issue between the campaign and union.

[Blue_true]

30. Yes. The salary should be for 40 hours, after forty hours overtime rules should kick in.

I am trained as an engineer. One reason why many companies pay engineers a salary with no overtime is that an engineer can work 18 hour days in cutting edge companies. The salary may seem big, but the hourly rate may be less than the state minimum. If the company is a startup or is growing rapidly and offers stock options, engineers can become well off, so a lot of engineers go for the trade off of long hours for a chance at riches.

Campaign are similar to startups, if the candidate becomes President, staffers get jobs from having been associated with the campaign, or they become campaign advisory professionals that can rake in big money advising campaigns all over the world using their early association with the now President. My guess is a lot of low level Bernie staffers sense the writing on the wall for his campaign and want to bank before they have no job. The other campaigns are staffing up and may not need them, and the eventual nominee won't need them for several months, if at all, so their time unemployed could be long.

[Me.]

4. What...Is This Real?

He's not paying them a decent wage?

"Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications."

Seriously, after all the hoopla about that union, he's stepping all over his people? This is truly the beginning of the end for him.

[Blue_true]

17. The ones that quit shoul shout how they were treated from the rooftops.

That may clear up the romantic notions some young people have about how well Bernie backs up what he says.

[Me.]

27. Gaslighting From The Left Side

[Me.]

39. All The Hoopla Here & Elsewhere

'Look, look at Bernie, he is encouraging his people to unionize' and now we find out it's a big sham.

[Blue_true]

42. I believe he meant well.

After the debacle from his 2016 campaign about how women were treated, he had to do something.

But what is happening now illustrates the issue that I have long had with Bernie. He does things a little from the seat of his pants and doesn't think through potential consequences. He chose to give his lower staff a fairly decent campaign salary, for a 40 hour campaign workweek. Also, he could have accounted for travel expenses like rental cars and lodging, but at too low a rate. He should have known from his 2016 campaign that staffers work well past 40 hours per week and have travel and lodging expenses in proportion to how long they are in the field. He can say that he did not know about the long hours and that may be true, but it illustrates the consistent image that Bernie is a captain steering a ship that he has no idea where the propulsion is coming from, or whether the propulsion is adequate for the conditions that he is sailing into.

[True Blue American]

33. Unions insist

On time and a half, double time for Sundays. My Son was lucky enough to have a Union for Engineers. One of the very few. Negotiated salaries, yes, but 40 hours. Bonuses,too.

[Blue_true]

44. Yes, engineers typically don't get paid overtime.

Your son is lucky, he is getting paid properly for the time he puts in. There are some cases where an engineer may trade off the overtime, like startups and fast growing technology companies where IPO stock or stock options may be part of the employment contract. But in mature companies, engineers should go for salary plus overtime.

[NYMinute]

7. Sanders will now fundraise off of this

Send me more money because I have to pay the $15/hr minimum wage.

Everything is a fundraising op for him.

[SergeStorms]

24. He'll split his donations...

with his unionized workers, like he's doing in solidarity with Representative Omar.

[Indykatie]

8. The $36,000 Annual Wage is More than $15.00 HR. Workers Shouldn't Be Required to Work 60 HR Weeks

How effective can these workers being putting in those kind of hours? The other problem for Sanders is that he's not pulling in the donations at the same level he did in 2016 when he could afford to pay his sleazy campaign managers millions of dollars.

[Me.]

9. No Kidding, Look At How Much Devine Pulled In

[George II]

11. Devine got $5.3 million. Revolution Messaging (Laura Moser's husband's company) got $28.7 million.

[Me.]

26. He Rec'd More Than That

“A percentage of every advertisement purchased was paid to Old Towne Media and Devine Mulvey Longabough for brokering the media contracts. The latter was run by Sanders’ senior strategist, Tad Devine, who also received a cut for deals brokered through Old Towne. Devine’s cut totaled at least $10 million by the end of May 2016, according to an investigative report by Slate—in addition to over $5 million paid to his firm. (This would be over half a million average donations to the Sanders campaign.)"

https://observer.com/2016/08/this-political-consultant-made-millions-off-of-sanders-campaign/

“Old Towne’s income from the Sanders campaign has not been disclosed, but the industry standard for ad buy commissions is 15 percent. Based on that formula, the firm could have made $12 million.”

https://vtdigger.org/2016/07/15/sanders-campaign-millions-go-to-mystery-firm/

[George II]

28. Yes, that's right. The commission on media buys has been estimated at $10-12 million, and then....

....he split that commission with someone else. Being an LLC, they're not required to reveal who he split it with.

[betsuni]

10. "And many of the ideas that I brought forth, $15 hour minimum wage. 'Hey, Bernie,

that's too extreme!' In a few days the U.S. House of Representatives is going to pass a $15 hour minimum wage."
Bernie Sanders 07/10/19

[True Blue American]

34. They just did, yesterday!

[Gothmog]

13. sanders' staff demand to be payed the $15-an-hour minimum wage he advocates: report

Link to tweet

[NastyRiffraff]

14. He "stands for workers"

Except his own. He trashed "millionaires and billionaires" in practically every speech until he became a millionaire. Now it's just billionaires he hates. He proudly was the first to sign the Unity Pledge, and was the first to break it.

See a pattern?

[sheshe2]

59. Give me a minute, let me think...

Got it!

[Blue_true]

15. Now that it's public, Bernie will capitulate and give his workers the money.

Then his admirers here on DU will do 100 OPs about how wonderful and forward-looking a leader he is.

[JI7]

23. and call on other Democrats to follow his lead and pledge to do the same

[ecstatic]

16. YGTBFKM....

Bernie, the founder of the $15/hr movement, doesn't pay his own staff $15?! Why is he asking other employers, who have far less millions at their disposal, to pay $15?

This should end his campaign. This is the most hypocritical action exposed to date.

[George II]

19. To think just a couple of months ago he was bragging that his campaign was the first....

....to unionize.

What he didn't mention is that the workers decided to unionize, not him, and they did it because of anxiety about a replay of his previous campaign that was riddled with sexual abuse and harassment, as well as gender pay inequality.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/30/bernie-sanders-campaign-harassment-1077014

Now he's not even going to pay his workers at the level of one of his keynote issues?

[Cha]

25. That's right! Who saw this coming?!

[SouthernProgressive]

22. It's an honor. Not a job. NT

[ehrnst]

53. Maybe they should consider writing a best selling book

if they want better than what they are being paid....

[SouthernProgressive]

54. It's that simple. NT

[dlk]

29. The Double Standard Affects Bernie's Credibility

If he doesn’t need to pay his staffers a minimum of $15/hr., why should any other employer pay $15/hr.? (Do as I say, not as I do...)

[Gothmog]

31. From my Twitter feed

Link to tweet

[George II]

32. Bazinga!

[Princetonian]

35. Sanders pays more than any other campaign

Link: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287205646#post13

Sanders pays more than any other campaign and the issue appears to be the calculation is not by the hour. It’s that instead of a 35 or 40 work week - they are calculating on 60 hours. Now they may work 60 hours and if that’s so, they probably should get an additional pay for the hours they are working. But as it calculates to $13/hour for 60 hours or $780 a week - if they worked 40 hours their breakdown would be a generous $19.50/hour.

When I was an Event Producer I was paid an annual salary and many many weeks put in more than a 40 hr work week. I was salaried and not hourly and earned nothing more. On an event, when I had hired staff, we paid an hourly wage and they earned whatever they worked for the two or three weeks they were on the project. They were hourly staff. There’s always been a difference in the workplace.

Since this is a unionized shop now my guess is they will negotiate something - possibly a regular work week of 40 hours - or perhaps they will reduce their wage to $15/hr and on weeks when they only work 30 hours they will get less and on some weeks when they work 60 hours they will get more.

Either way to me this is a no story like Bernie’s a millionaire to create some bad press. Since the other candidates staffs do not receive anything as generous as Sanders staff - it isn’t a fight I would think other candidates want to get into.


I can attest to the latter.

[TomCADem]

40. So, Bernie Calculated Pay Based on 60 Hour Workweek?

I guess maybe that will be his plan for American workers. Work more for the same rate of pay!

[Hav]

49. I think the wording is ambiguous

It's not the Sanders campaign that calculated with 60 hours. They had annual salaries with 40 hour work weeks in mind that would be around or above the 15$ hourly wage. Everything else would be stupid on their part. But reality doesn't reflect that anymore and those who are saying that the 15 per hour wage isn't met calculate with the real workload and not the 40 hours.

[Blue_true]

45. You made the claim that Bernie pays more. You posted a link, but when I went there, maybe

what you were pointing to got buried in the weeds. It is possible that the other campaigns only pay $12 per hour, but pay their staff time and a half for every hour over 40 hours. So if a staffer goes into the field for 8 hours then come back and phone bank for 4 hours that person gets paid $168 for that day and if he or she does that six days per week, get paid $1,008 for the week, versus a person on Bernie's staff who would only get $600 for the same number of hours, so the other campaign staffer comes out way ahead.

[sheshe2]

60. Ouch.

Good catch, Blue_true.

[Gothmog]

63. That is not true

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

36. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[ehrnst]

38. And a six day workweek....

According to the agreement made between Sanders campaign and the union, which began on May 2, field workers were to be paid $36,000 annually rather than by hours worked. However, on May 17, the Post states that Shakir recommended that field organizer pay be raised to $42,000 during a staff meeting. In the same meeting, he also suggested that the work-week be extended to six days a week the union's letter said.

According to the Post, the union rejected Shakir's plan, in part because of the healthcare costs that would fall to the campaign workers to pay.

This month, workers used Slack — an instant messaging service utilized by many companies and organizations, including the Sanders' campaign — to express distress at not being paid a "living wage."

"I am struggling financially to do my job, and in my state, we've already had 4 people quit in the past 4 weeks because of financial struggles," one worker told Shakir via the service, according to the Post.

https://www.newsweek.com/sanders-campaign-battles-staff-demanding-15-hourly-pay-which-candidate-says-should-federal-1450103

[sheshe2]

61. Hmmm.

Link to tweet

[ehrnst]

37. I guess his staff knew they would need to organize. (nt)

[Gothmog]

41. Sanders is unhappy

Link to tweet

[George II]

43. Yes, see my post here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=206385

If he negotiated the contract, why are there ongoing negotiations (last paragraph)....

So essentially he's calling his workers liars, and upset they went "outside of the process". Maybe they had to do that because they're not getting anywhere in those already completed negotiations that they're negotiating?

More from the article:

"We are disappointed that some individuals have decided to damage the integrity of these efforts. We are involved in negotiations. And some are individuals that have decided to damage the integrity of that process before they were concluded."

[Gothmog]

46. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[George II]

47. It's always someone else's fault, isn't it?

[Gothmog]

48. There seems to be a pattern here

[Gothmog]

50. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[ehrnst]

52. Senator Sanders has treated his staff differently than he wants other employees to be treated

for a while, it seems.

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/anger-management-sanders-fights-for-employees-except-his-own/Content?oid=2834657

[George II]

55. Things like that are the reason the workers saw the need to unionize - they wanted protection...

...from the abuse and harassment that workers were subjected to in the last campaign. Remember, that abuse was so bad that about two dozen women from the previous campaign met in Washington a few months ago to address the rampant abuse directed their way.

[lapucelle]

56. In the corporate world, it's not unusual for the millionaires in management

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2019, 01:04 PM - Edit history (1)

to extract maximum value per dollar spent on low level workers by offering salary (which often leads to substandard pay due to excessively long hours) rather than a hourly rate guarantee and overtime pay protection.

While it is entirely legal, it is also dubiously ethical, to say the least.

[marylandblue]

58. Well it's not ENTIRELY legal. There a federal standards for when an employee can be salaried.

Generally, professional and management employees are given assignments with limited direction and so can more or less set their own hours. If workers are told they MUST work a 60-hour week under close supervision, they should be paid by the hour. There's a lot of gray area between those two examples, which employers often take advantage of and workers complain about.

[ehrnst]

65. Well, if they can't get a living wage from the campaign

maybe they should consider writing a best selling book.

[Gothmog]

62. Yeah for Beto

Link to tweet

[George II]

64. Bazinga!

[Gothmog]

66. sanders is not paying $15 per hour

Link to tweet

[Hortensis]

67. Thanks! Biden pays his lower-level people MORE than minimum.

That's how decent and honorable employers behave.

Also, what's this about Mr. Class Warfare hiring and paying over $100K+ to just one of his attack dogs while underpaying employees lower in the hierarchy? And just how many of these "surrogates" does Sanders have, anyway?

Notably, Biden hasn't hired ANYONE to say things so vile that he can't say them himself.

[Gothmog]

69. Sanders is cutting hours

Link to tweet

[Hortensis]

70. Really? He doesn't expect to win so is cutting back reachout

to voters in preference to paying employees for what they've been doing all these months? Well, it could be a way to avoid spending money supporters donated to this campaign, hoarding for something else in future.

Whatever. Sanders will now pay employees the minimum wage he calls for. Scandal taken care of, even if the settlement isn't retroactive to cover all the months of underpaying.

All I can wonder is why they're still there at all, though. Their experiences from inside should have burst more than a bubble or two and now this slap at the value of their commitment to him and all those long, long workweeks they've been putting in. For him.

[Gothmog]

68. sanders is not happy

Link to tweet

?