Joliet, IL

Warehouse Workers for Justice and clergy members in Joliet, Illinois are organizing a consumer boycott of vacuum cleaner manufacturer Bissell. The boycott movement was prompted by the firing last November of 70 workers at Bissell’ warehouse near Joliet, after the workers filed charges over violations of workers’ rights at the facility, including violations of wage and hour laws, and began union organizing.

The boycott was announced at a press conference on Martin Luther King Day at Joliet’s Sacred Heart Church. Rev. Raymond Lescher, pastor at Sacred Heart, said, “We have to keep the pressure on and we have to stay focused.” Scott Marshall, a mass communications professor at University of St. Francis, said the boycott was needed because of Bissell’s mistreatment of workers. “It’s un-American to treat workers that way,” he said.

Betty Washington, first vice president for the Joliet chapter of the NAACP, said that Will County, which includes Joliet, “has become a place where warehouses come and use our citizens without paying them a living wage, and it adds to the poverty level here in Will County.”

There’s more information about the boycott and the ongoing struggle for justice for the Bissell warehouse workers at the website of Warehouse Workers for Justice. The site lists several workplace injustices that prompted workers to begin organizing, and have now led to the boycott:

• Discrimination against women including earning up to $2.50 per hour less than men doing the same job even with more time at the company.
• Targeting and discrimination of a pregnant woman to do the heaviest jobs in violation of her doctor’s restrictions.
• The use of unregistered temporary employment agencies, a violation of Illinois state law.
• Unfair pay, including pay cuts and paying some workers less than minimum wage, paying some workers dehumanizing wages as low as $2 per hour.
• Threats of retaliation from management for standing up for their rights and filing charges.

Bissell has tried to evade responsibility for employment abuses at its warehouse by hiding behind multiple layers of contracting. The warehouse is managed by worldwide shipping giant Maersk, and warehouse workers are employed through a subcontracting temp agency. The immediate employer of the 70 fired workers was an outfit called Roadlink, which is being investigated by the state for operating without a license.