Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Why Harvard Won’t Settle; plus Struggles of Supermarket Workers / Start Making Sense

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Why Harvard Won’t Settle; plus Struggles of Supermarket Workers / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_03]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm John Weiner.
0:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Later in the hour, the struggles of supermarket workers and the likes and will explain, but first, Harvard versus Trump.
0:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Randall Kennedy has our analysis in a minute.
0:26
[SPEAKER_03]: At Harvard, commencement is over, but the school's legal battles with Trump continue.
0:32
[SPEAKER_03]: For an analysis of where we stand with Trump's campaign against the most prestigious private university, we turn to Randall Kennedy.
0:40
[SPEAKER_03]: He's professor at the Harvard Law School, a member of the DC bar and the Supreme Court bar.
0:45
[SPEAKER_03]: He's written many books most recently, say it loud on race, law, history, and culture.
0:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And as most popular book, at least according to Amazon, is this book on the inward, subtitled the strange career of a troublesome word.
1:01
[SPEAKER_03]: He's written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the American Prospect and the LRB.
1:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Randy Kennedy, welcome to the program.
1:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
1:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, one of the first things Trump did when he began his second term was to go after elite universities.
1:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's in part because universities are a key base for criticizing Trump and his agenda.
1:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump also went after law firms that had represented people who were suing him.
1:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He's been going after non-profits that fund activist group.
1:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's one part of a broad attempt to bring everybody into a, what should we call it, authoritarian system.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, the attack on the news media, the attack on labor unions, the attack on the civil service.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes on and on.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Any place where there is some hint of independent power, especially a hint of independent power that has not thrown down with the Trump regime, can expect to
2:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, return with us now to April 2025, Trump had pressured Columbia into submitting to his demands and then he turned to Harvard.
2:23
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a letter that called unharvered to provide for what the Trump administration called viewpoint diversity, to audit the student body, faculty,
2:37
[SPEAKER_03]: What they called viewpoint diversity in require the each department would have to be individually viewpoint diverse other Directives included requiring that Harvard report foreign students to federal authorities if they violated conduct codes That Harvard conduct plagiarism reviews of current and future faculty members and that eternal red missions data showing race and test scores
3:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's start with viewpoint diversity.
3:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump's demands were that Harvard's departments lacked what the administration called, what the Trump administration called, a critical mass, and needed to correct this by hiring more conservative professors.
3:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, it is true that Harvard is mostly liberal, that there aren't very many Republicans or Trump supporters on the Harvard faculty.
3:30
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think about that?
3:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that a problem that needs to be solved?
3:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's assume for the sake of argument that there are various problems at Harvard University.
3:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are, I mean, as at any university, as in any human institution, there are going to be problems.
3:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's assume that there are problems.
3:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's assume for the sake of discussion,
3:56
[SPEAKER_02]: that at Harvard University there are, you know, vanishingly few Trump supporters.
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's assume that to be the case.
4:05
[SPEAKER_02]: The question is, does the government of the United States get to dictate who teaches or what is taught at Harvard University, even if you think?
4:18
[SPEAKER_02]: that the teachers at Harvard University are ignorant, that they teach badly, that the curriculum is distorted in this way or that.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's assume that that's true for a moment.
4:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Question, does the government of the United States get to step in and dictate who teaches and what is taught?
4:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Nancy is no.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: The government does not get to dictate.
4:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's number one, and that's the first point that we really need to make clear.
4:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Second, on the question of these deficiencies, apart from the question of viewpoint diversity, I think we need to focus very carefully on the primary claim that the administration used to attack Harvard and that it is using to attack other universities.
5:17
[SPEAKER_02]: The primary claim is that Harvard is a den,
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: of uninhibited out of control anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism that involves harassment, anti-Semitism that involves violence against Jewish students and against Israelis.
5:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That claim has been made, it's been made by Republicans and Congress.
5:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It has even been picked up by Democrats.
5:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been widely alleged that that is so, it is not so.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not so.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: This is vilification.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It is vilification that has unfortunately attained traction.
6:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So much so that in many very respectable, reputable newspapers, it is now a quote, fact in quote that Harvard had a big antisemitism problem.
6:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I would argue that it did not.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Was, is there anti-Semitism in Harvard?
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there's anti-Semitism in Harvard.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Just like there's anti-Semitism, it probably any major university.
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking about a university that has over 20,000 students.
6:38
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking about a university that employs thousands of professors, thousands of staff.
6:45
[SPEAKER_02]: In the United States of America, at an institution that larger, are there going to be instances of anti-Semitism?
6:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But the portrayal that the Trump administration has set forth this idea that there's a rampant widespread institutionalized anti-Semitism that is tolerated by Harvard University, that is false, and we need to say that too.
7:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Trump made these demands of Harvard.
7:17
[SPEAKER_03]: On April 14th, you and everybody else at Harvard got an email from the president, Alan Darber.
7:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us about that email.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember that email well, it was April 14th, 2025, and in the afternoon, I clearly recall being at my computer didn't know that the email was coming.
7:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I saw that there was an email from the president and I've got to tell you my heart jumped into my throat.
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: because I was very afraid at that moment that we were gonna get an email saying that the leadership had agreed to capitulate that's what I thought the email was gonna say.
8:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I opened up the email and saw that the email was the leadership saying, no, we refused to go along with this ultimatum, I shouted, I absolutely shouted.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very happy with that decision.
8:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very proud of that decision.
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I simply hope that the university leadership will stick by that decision.
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And then Trump responded to Harvard's refusal by freezing $2.2 billion in research funding.
8:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump's position is that the university quote does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars, close quote.
8:47
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you say to that?
8:48
[SPEAKER_02]: In a few days later, the Harvard leadership saying, we're suing.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to court about this.
8:57
[SPEAKER_03]: what was the state of mind of the Harvard faculty, the Harvard students, and alumni at this point?
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Two things.
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, I think it's important to emphasize that the federal government put Harvard University under tremendous pressure.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: by freezing these funds, using those over $2 billion.
9:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, that's real money.
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: They did it immediately.
9:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, there were researchers who, you know, they need this money.
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing important work.
9:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was putting a lot of pressure on Harvard, but it didn't just in there.
9:35
[SPEAKER_02]: After Harvard said, you know, we're gonna sue
9:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the Trump administration raised the antee even more remember, the Trump administration said, OK, we're going to make it so that you cannot any longer host foreign students.
9:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You need certain certifications to do that.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to revoke the certification.
9:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Harvard was under tremendous pressure.
10:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And the upshot of it was that various parts of the Harvard
10:09
[SPEAKER_02]: indicated to the president and the others that they welcomed, they welcomed the leadership's resistance to the Trump administration.
10:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, most of the Harvard community rallied around the president.
10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: New organizations were formed, including Crimson Courage, Crimson Courage, an alumni group that urged the University to resist to not settle, to continue the litigation, defending academic freedom and independence and freedom of speech.
10:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was very important.
10:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I said that I remember very clearly April 14th,
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I also remember very clearly the commencement that year.
11:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I very often, I always try to make it to the Harvard Law School commencement every year, but I often skip the university commencement in the morning.
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not in 2025.
11:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to go and I think there were a lot of people like me.
11:22
[SPEAKER_02]: wanted to go why because they wanted to be there and when the president was introduced, people jumped to their feet, applauded and hollered to show our sense of solidarity.
11:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Crimson courage is doing that too.
11:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's very important.
11:43
[SPEAKER_02]: One reason I think it's important is because we have to be clear here.
11:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to be clear-eyed and realistic.
11:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Not everybody on Harvard's campus is rallying around the president of the university.
11:56
[SPEAKER_02]: There are people who actually welcome the Trump incursion.
12:02
[SPEAKER_02]: There are people who think that Harvard had it coming.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's very important for folks who favor the resistance to let their voices be heard and to tell the administration, hey, you know, we're paying attention, we're watching, we like what you're doing.
12:26
[SPEAKER_02]: We were watching because there is a struggle not only outside of the university, but there's also a struggle inside the university.
12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to talk about the struggle in the courts.
12:39
[SPEAKER_03]: How would you say Harvard is doing in court?
12:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Harvard thus far has done well.
12:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It has won at the federal district court level in the two big lawsuits.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So lawsuit number one was the suit to unfreeze the money that was frozen.
12:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So far, Harvard's doing well on that.
13:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You mean Harvard is actually getting the money, not just the decision.
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They're getting the money, too.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, they are, they, they won, they won in court, and then, and most of the money was unfrozen, they're getting the money.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But, but it is still on appeal.
13:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not over yet.
13:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The same is true with respect to the issue of basically preventing Harvard from enrolling foreign students.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: litigation takes a long time.
13:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Harvard is doing well.
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It is one thus far.
13:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not one completely, however.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The cases are still pending.
13:39
[SPEAKER_02]: These cases have to go up to higher courts.
13:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Litigation is always uncertain.
13:47
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't really know what the outcome is ultimately going to be.
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a second point about litigation.
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Litigation is expensive.
13:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Harvard University is a wealthy institution.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Because of its wealth, it is able to fight the Trump administration, like it has been fighting.
14:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know for sure how much money the Harvard has expanded in this litigation thus far.
14:18
[SPEAKER_03]: The Harvard Crimson estimated the cost was over $100 million just through June 30th, 2025,
14:29
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not counting the last year of litigation.
14:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, a lot of institutions simply could not afford to, you know, foot that sort of bill.
14:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, the litigation is still ongoing.
14:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Furthermore, again, let's just think about this.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: even if Harvard prevails fully.
14:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that Harvard wins from here on out.
14:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It wins in the pilot litigation.
15:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Are we then gonna say that, well, you know, Harvard has no harm.
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Harvard has suffered harm.
15:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Attorney's fees, as Harvard getting that back, no.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What about the losses in terms of research?
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: that has already happened.
15:20
[SPEAKER_02]: There are people who have had to shut down laboratories that might have given us new treatments for disease.
15:33
[SPEAKER_02]: These laboratories have been shut down.
15:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Some have been reopened, but there's a lot of knowledge.
15:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It's some point maybe we'll be able to reclaim that knowledge.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But litigation is slow, it's expensive.
15:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Whenever the government makes impressions on individuals or institutions, they lose.
15:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all a matter of just how much do they lose.
15:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's one other possibility here, a settlement.
16:02
[SPEAKER_03]: The newspapers once in a while report that settlement talks are still continuing.
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: There was talk of a $500 million settlement that Harvard would refuse to pay to Trump, but they would spend on funding on vocational education.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think of the chances that Harvard will settle this eventually, to avoid endless litigation?
16:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope that Harvard does not settle.
16:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it possible?
16:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's possible.
16:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I would view that as still an outstanding danger.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I know and respect the leaders of Harvard, I think that they are trying to do their best.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we need to be a little bit careful about over moralizing.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, after all, you know, people buy their groceries, people pay their rent, people pay their mortgages with the funds that they get from their employment in Harvard.
17:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So these people who were leading the institution have to take a lot of different things into account, I understand that.
17:09
[SPEAKER_02]: but I certainly hope that they will not capitulate and frankly now, I think that they will not.
17:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that they will not in part because of organizations like Crimson Courage, I think that the leaders of Harvard recognize that morale counts.
17:30
[SPEAKER_02]: morale count what will we say about Harvard University 10 years or now, 20 years or now, 30 years or now.
17:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that a Harvard University holds the line and actually interrupts the Trump suppression.
17:49
[SPEAKER_02]: not only will it have done something wonderful for higher education, but it will have done something for all of the free civil institutions in American life.
18:02
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a fight not only with higher education, this is a fight for democracy.
18:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you talked about authoritarianism, you are not exaggerating what we are facing is an authoritarian incursion on institutions throughout American life.
18:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And Harvard University at this moment has an opportunity to interrupt that.
18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that the leaders know that, and frankly, I think that they're gonna hold out.
18:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I pray that they do.
18:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Harvard's fight is a fight for democracy.
18:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Randall Kennedy teaches at the Harvard Law School.
18:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Randy, thanks for talking with us today.
18:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much.
19:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The supermarket is an essential part of our lives in a familiar one, but it turns out there's a lot we don't know about the people who work there in the work they do.
19:08
[SPEAKER_03]: For that, we turn to Anne Larson.
19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: She writes for the nation, and her work has also appeared in Jacobin, the New Republic, and the LA Times.
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: She's a fellow with the economic hardship reporting project, and her new book, about working at a supermarket, has the wonderful title, Clean Up on IEL V.
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: we reached your today in Salt Lake City.
19:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And last time, welcome to the program.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me, John.
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pleasure to be here.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you have a PhD in English from the City University of New York, but your new book is about working at a supermarket in Utah.
19:43
[SPEAKER_03]: What happened?
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me try to make this as,
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Brief as I can, although I do have to say, I think a lot of people with PhDs will relate to this story.
19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things of my book is my incredible poor timing in terms of the trajectory of my life.
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I got my degree in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was living in New York at the time, and I was unable to find academic work, that job market kind of cratered at that moment.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I could have a job market in the humanities, had been good for several decades, I'll say that, but after a thousand eight really crumbled.
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wasn't able to find work, I spent a lot of time gigging, teaching part-time, did some tempting things like that.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I got involved in some organizing, and I co-founded a group called The Deck Collective.
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: nonprofit that was working on lobbying the government for student loan relief for borrowers who had attended these scam for profit colleges.
20:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We have talked about them here on this podcast.
20:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure you have.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was involved in that for a few years.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But the funding for that organization kind of became harder to come by.
20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up around 2020, finding myself unemployed.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what happened was the pandemic started around that time.
20:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, a more poor timing on my part.
21:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I moved back to my home state of Utah to try to regroup to make a new start to figure out what was next for me.
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But with the lockdowns and the pandemic, I needed work, I didn't have an income, I didn't have the insurance, any of that.
21:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But supermarkets were very, they were hiring, they were doing robust business at these start of a pandemic.
21:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought, I'm just going to apply for a job at the store near my house, it'll give me some income as I make my way through the pandemic, figure out what's next, and I'll regroup from there.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: 13 months later, I left that job and what I had seen and experienced was so enlightening and troubling that I want to direct a book about it.
21:44
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be started you as a supervisor rather than a checkout clerk.
21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: You say it was intimidating to be a supervisor.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I was very intimidated.
21:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The work was extremely hard for me to learn how to do the job.
21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Cachering is skilled labor, like all labor.
22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Learning how to run the register.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: One of, I have a whole chapter in my book, devoted to the mistakes that I made, and learning how to run the register.
22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've got to develop these technical skills while you're
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... cashiers have a lot of uh... communication skills that they need to develop talking to customers product knowledge knowing where things are in the store a lot of multitasking doing all of this at once uh... it really did take me quite a long time to just become proficient in the job i i didn't expect cashiering to be easy i didn't go in thinking oh this is not going to be a problem but it was even harder than i anticipated
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And let me emphasize you started this job during the pandemic when millions of people didn't go to work at all.
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And but there were some essential workers.
22:46
[SPEAKER_03]: We call them which included people like you, the supermarket workers.
22:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It must have been scary to face lots of strangers every day when the COVID virus was killing thousands of people.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It was scary, especially at the beginning.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know at that point how bad was this going to get?
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we all going to die?
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I will admit it was frightening.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There were protections in the store.
23:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a mask mandate.
23:11
[SPEAKER_01]: People will remember the aisles.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They had the decals on the floor so you could only go one direction down the aisles.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's not really possible to socially distance in a supermarket, but they did have a hand washing station at the front of the store so we could wash their hands.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that happened to during that time is I think the general public realized the importance and essential work that supermarket employees do along with nurses and doctors and healthcare workers and some other meat packers factory workers.
23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Here were supermarket workers going and punching in while a lot of white collar laptop employees just went home and worked from home and there was a few months during the pandemic when some grocery workers at large chains earned a bonus and it was called hero pay.
23:56
[SPEAKER_01]: This is sort of this amazing moment.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to write this book is to, I don't want us to forget that.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wants to forget as a society that we recognize for a brief moment how essential and skilled these workers are.
24:08
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things you learned at the beginning was front end jobs are the worst, you say.
24:15
[SPEAKER_03]: What does that mean and why is that?
24:18
[SPEAKER_01]: the department's called the front end where you check out.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the supermarket, hierarchy, those jobs are have the lowest status.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And also often the lowest pay.
24:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are just cashier jobs or just proportionally held by women, we understandable, given the lowest status of the job.
24:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the reasons cashier jobs are so low paid is because it's associated with femininity,
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's connected to the customer idea of customer service.
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Kesheers work with customers all day long.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's considered a feminine occupation.
24:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be caring, you have to be kind, you have to be attentive.
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the things that explains the low wages.
24:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Workers that stock shelves that work in the back, that manage departments that don't interact with customers, have a higher status in the store because they don't have to take care of customers the way they Kesheers do.
25:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But really, the biggest problem for supermarket workers is the low wages, making enough money to live on, you say you earned $15.80, which was more than the people on the check stands, how do people live on those level of wages?
25:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Even in Salt Lake City, which is a lot cheaper than where I live, Los Angeles.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The wages are abysmal.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The living conditions that we expect the people that sell our food to live in should absolutely shock the conscience.
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I worked with many people who were starving, who couldn't afford food.
25:45
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a study a few years ago.
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It looked at surveyed workers in the second largest grocery chain in the nation, Kruger, and three quarters
25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: of those workers had been food and what they called food and secure in the past.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So we need to really sit with this as a society that we have a retail food system where the people who sell food cannot afford to buy it.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I worked with many people that couldn't afford lunch.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We absolutely have to raise wages of retail workers the way to do that is through unionization.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I really want shoppers to understand is that when you walk into a store to buy your dinner, you are being served by people who might not be able to afford to eat that day.
26:26
[SPEAKER_03]: In the second biggest problem, goes under the name of scheduling.
26:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us why scheduling is such a huge issue for supermarket workers.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Supermarkets are famous for what's called just-in-time scheduling.
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They only schedule workers when they're absolutely needed.
26:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So you will get your schedule a couple of weeks in advance if you're lucky.
26:47
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you mean you're scheduled, don't you work nine to five or something like that?
26:52
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You can work days, nights, the mid-shift, whatever the store wants you to do, one week I would be working nights and be closing the store and the next day I'd come in and open the store.
27:06
[SPEAKER_01]: The worst schedule that you can get, which is very common in the supermarket, is called a Clopen.
27:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is when you close the store down at night, but then you're scheduled to open the next morning.
27:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll get to bed.
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be good a couple hours of sleep and after a roll out of bed before dawn, the next day so you can open the store.
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So these cloapons were very, very common across the retail industry and in my store.
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is just one example of how you show up when you are told to show up and you really don't have any authority over your schedule.
27:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about the time clocking in punching in.
27:38
[SPEAKER_03]: What if you arrive early?
27:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What if you arrive late?
27:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot punch in early.
27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: The time clock at a supermarket is biometric clock, so you put your fingerprint on a scanner to punch in.
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is programmed to not allow you to punch in more than,
27:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in my store it was five minutes early, because that raises the labor costs of the store.
28:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so workers at my store would line up at the clock, say we ought to get there at two o'clock, people would be starting lining up at a quarter to two, waiting for the clock to take over and to let them punch in.
28:10
[SPEAKER_01]: These biometric systems have a long history.
28:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They were first introduced by a company called Identimation.
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That company is now called G4S.
28:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a security firm.
28:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It has ties to the private prison industry.
28:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And it also since 2003, G4S has provided security for immigration and customs enforcement.
28:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
28:36
[SPEAKER_01]: There are these links, right?
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Between policing, immigration enforcement, and workplace time keeping that really are revealing in terms of how big employers like this view their staff and how they try to control their movements through the store.
28:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So you said you can't punch in early.
28:51
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens if you arrive late?
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You can clock in maybe 5-10 minutes late, they'll allow you to do that if it's in my store if it was past 15 minutes late, you cannot clock in and you have to go to a manager and explain yourself.
29:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I was late, I'm sorry, you know, whatever happened to cause me to be late and they have to manually punch you in.
29:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a disciplining mechanism because you know, there were 100 people or more working in my store.
29:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Managers don't always know when somebody's late, but you can't punch in, you have to go talk to your supervisor and they can, they can recommend you for being late.
29:20
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the stories in your book that I didn't know anything about was the sweep buzzer.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us about the sweep buzzer.
29:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so supermarkets have a sweep system where, because imagine you walk into a store, your customer, you don't want to see dirty floors.
29:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to see them clean and shiny.
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So every half hour in my store, the sweep buzzer would go off.
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And that wasn't a alarm on the front end that alerted us that it was time to sweep the floor.
29:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So as a supervisor, my job was to assign a worker to take these big industrial sized rooms with a really long handle and a wide brush.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: and push it through the store, and there's a device that you hold in your hand.
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're pushing with one hand, and you're holding this digital device in the other, and you go around the store and there are these digital tags.
30:08
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in a supermarket, you might have seen them, digital tags on the shelves that have a number, and you have to go around the store and tap the digital tag with the device, and that logs the sweep into the system.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So it makes sure that management and the corporate office can tell,
30:26
[SPEAKER_03]: How many tags have to be tapped when you swim?
30:29
[SPEAKER_01]: About 36, I think, in my store all around, it was one of the least desired jobs in the store.
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever the sweep buzzer would go off on the front end, people would run and hide and try to avoid
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: being asked to sleep.
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a supervisor, you have to think, look, I just asked this person to sleep last hour.
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to try to find somebody different this time.
30:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to consider, is this person older?
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they have a bad back?
30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You really start to evaluate employees based on their physical capabilities because you need people who can do that physical labor.
30:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's the case of Felix.
31:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Felix had a system which you as a supervisor found out about.
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of my colleagues names was Felix, and he was a college student, and he was a a musical theater major, which I think was relevant to this story.
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But one night, he, the sweep buzzer went off, and I gave him, like, okay, he was about 21 years old.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I see him guy, here you go, here's the sweep buzzer, here's the, here's the broom, go ahead and do the sweep.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I looked up a few minutes later and I see him in one of the aisles, well, he was already like a third of the way through the store and I'm thinking, how did he get there so fast?
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I realized he wasn't carrying the broom.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He was simply walking through the store, tapping the device on the digital tags through the aisles.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, he was faking the sweep.
31:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But I got a call from a manager who had seen him faking the sweep.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: She calls me and she reprimanded me for being a bad supervisor.
31:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about the customers, what was your training about customers?
32:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Customer service was the number one part of the job.
32:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say that we did not receive a lot of training except that we were supposed to be very subservient and very an end smile.
32:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a few rules, all cashiers at my store, as well as most supermarkets that in this country have to stand up behind the checkstand.
32:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I was told the reason that we could not sit during our shifts was that a standing kishira looks more eager to serve.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: This would be news to cashiers in Europe and other places that do sit down on the job because they have union rights.
32:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And not all customers are nice.
32:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Not all customers are nice.
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Most are, I have to say, but they're the few that were rude and abusive can really ruin your day, your week, your month.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: One customer almost got me fired because he assumed I was responsible for stealing money from a gift card that he had, and he was trying to use to the self-check out machine.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I described that scene in the book.
33:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Then there's one other kind of customer that you had to deal with, you describe a woman who would come into the store, get a cup of soup at the soup bar, eat the soup while walking around pushing her cart and then would abandon her cart and head for the door.
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
33:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about that.
33:18
[SPEAKER_01]: when you work at a supermarket as you see a lot of shoplifting.
33:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The most common kind of shoplifting was someone coming into the store and eating food right off the shelf and then leaving.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: In this case, security guards are roaming the store and they are very aware of these different tactics.
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were watching her and they were aware of what she was doing when she put down the cup and tried to walk away.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They confronted her and assumed security guards said, you know,
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what you did and if you come in here again, you're going to be punished for this behavior, kind of giving her a warning.
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: These low-wage employees often hungry themselves are in the position of having to punish, manage the behavior of other hungry people that come into the store looking for food.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was the case of that, the security guard told me about this incident and he said, it sucks that people have to steal to eat but we can't allow theft.
34:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So and you're the supervisor.
34:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So what what did you do at this point has a supervisor I learned to live with the level of Enforcement against shoplifting that was it happened in the store.
34:26
[SPEAKER_01]: This was during COVID too.
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of people were
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe even more desperate than normal, and there was your stoplifting every day.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: In one incident, I'll give you another story, and one incident, this was late at night, a security guard called, he was watching the sales floor, and he said to me, there's somebody putting food in their coat, and they're coming towards the front, and can you please let me know when they get there.
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: because in a supermarket right the front end is the exit.
34:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So everybody who's stealing has to go through that door.
34:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So we, cashiers are kind of the police force of the sewer, if you will.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So this man, he did come through.
35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw him, I recognized him and he had a bulge under his coat.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I responded to the security guards call.
35:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, this, he's here, he's up at the front.
35:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Demand raced to the front to try to walk out, and the security guard came through the door and cut him off and tackled him.
35:20
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a scuffle.
35:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The security guard had a taser.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't used often in my store, but sometimes, and the scuffle, the thief was trying to get up and run away.
35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The security guard tased him, so he sort of seized up.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: and then collapsed.
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm watching this violent scene with my colleagues and other customers in the store, the store kind of somebody hit the pause button while we were watching this.
35:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They security guard called the police who came and arrested the man.
35:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I now feel guilty that I have participated in the violent capture of a man.
35:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It turned out he had donuts and milk on his coat.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he was trying to steal.
36:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So for the workers, there's no vacations, no paid vacations, no paid time off, but there are employee appreciation programs.
36:16
[SPEAKER_03]: My favorites there that you describe where there was one program where a mindfulness expert was brought in to teach meditation to the
36:26
[SPEAKER_03]: cash years and another day the Humane Society brought two therapy dogs and there is always the cash year of the month who gets it turns out gets a $10 gift card.
36:40
[SPEAKER_03]: How did these programs go over?
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: retail workers need unions, they need collective bargaining, they need to join forces with other people in their situation.
36:48
[SPEAKER_01]: When you win employee of the month, you are being recognized as an individual.
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So it really does kind of undermine any sense of collective that we're all in this together.
37:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And most people don't win anything.
37:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't win employee of the month, right?
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So that makes people feel a little bad.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not being recognized.
37:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not being acknowledged.
37:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So it actually has some pretty nefarious effects as well.
37:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You said the solution to the wage problem and the scheduling problem is organizing unions.
37:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And where I live in Los Angeles, there are strong unions for the big chains.
37:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And the grocery strikes that have happened
37:30
[SPEAKER_03]: huge memorable events.
37:33
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the UFCW Nighted Food and Commercial Workers.
37:37
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a threatened strike a year ago, June 2025.
37:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I looked up the history of this.
37:43
[SPEAKER_03]: 45,000 workers voted to authorize
37:48
[SPEAKER_03]: an unfair labor practice strike and it would have affected a hundred thousand grocery workers.
37:54
[SPEAKER_03]: But would have been the largest grocery strike in modern history and the threat worked.
37:58
[SPEAKER_03]: The big grocery chains did sign a new contract in July 2025.
38:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me just tell you what's in the contract.
38:06
[SPEAKER_03]: covered most LA grocery workers, not Costco or Walmart, but the big, the big chains.
38:12
[SPEAKER_03]: For checkout clerks, the top hourly rate increased from $26 to $30.45 in 2027.
38:24
[SPEAKER_03]: but the union said that biggest issue was staffing more than money and they didn't win a lot on staffing even though it was the number one priority the campaign what they won was a deal that gave the union a formal role in evaluating safe and inefficient staffing levels.
38:45
[SPEAKER_03]: They also got a new supplemental pension plan, expanded healthcare benefits, faster eligibility for new hires, protections against subcontracting, and part-time employees were guaranteed 28 hours a week.
39:02
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you can get with a union.
39:04
[SPEAKER_03]: How does that compare with what you had in Salt Lake City?
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we had none of that.
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like Christmas and my birthday altogether.
39:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you say 26 dollars an hour?
39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's unfathomable going up to 30 in 27.
39:19
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what a union can do and that's why we need them to be in every store.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem here.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the main problems is we have this.
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: what's called these right to work states.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the right wing phrase, right?
39:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is I think last time I checked it was about half the states in the country are subject to these right to work laws that make union organizing extremely difficult their legal barriers as we need to get get rid of right to work states and we need to empower workers to organize in my store.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had been an activist and organizer with a debt collective.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that collective, joining forces with our fellow workers was the way to solve these problems and to improve our conditions, but I was afraid.
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I was afraid given the legal barriers and given the difficulties, I was afraid to even raise the issue with my colleagues because I didn't want to get anyone fired.
40:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that it's illegal to fire workers for talking about unionizing, but I didn't trust my employer not to just fire people and answer questions about that later.
40:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's difficult.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what the answer is, but the main thing is getting rid of these right to work laws.
40:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And Larsen, her book is Clean Up on IL-5, essential work, poverty wages in the view from behind the supermarket register.
40:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Can read an excerpt at themation.com.
40:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And thanks for talking with us today.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much.
40:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a pleasure.
40:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Start making sense.
40:47
[SPEAKER_03]: A podcast from the Nation Magazine is recorded at our upstairs studio in Los Angeles.
40:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minski is our producer.
40:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Richie the Ambrose is executive producer, Boskarsun Kara is president of the nation, Katrina Van Nouvelle is editor and publisher of the nation.
41:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Our theme music is Barcelona Afrobeat, licensed by Creative Commons.
41:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You can find out more about Start Making Sense at thenation.com and subscribe to Start Making Sense on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
41:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm John Weiner, thanks for listening.