They spoke on a panel about the right to organize. Faithful readers of Hermes will know that, though workers in the US are supposed to have the legal right to organize, employers break the law left and right and seldom get punished for it. The only things she spent money on were rent, gas, and food. And she couldn t make enough to support herself. The right to organize, she went on to say, is not the only right American workers are denied.
Some American workers can t even take bathroom breaks.
As Supervisors increasingly see bathroom breaks as a privilege, the rate of kidney problems in workers has risen. Ehrenreich ironically contrasted this reality with the conservative claim that sexual harassment laws limit workplace speech. The fight for workers rights, she said, should be a new civil rights movement. Then Katha Pollitt argued that unions must always have the greater social good in mind. For instance, they should not push for more prisons even if prisons mean some union jobs.