Vol. 74/No. 4 February 1, 2010
Enclosed are blood money checks from myself and Steve Warshell, wrote Sarah Katz, a food production worker from Houston. We received two different bonuses from the bosses. First is a small gain sharing bonus, given monthly for hitting targets in reported injuries, productivity, and quality. The second is a $100 bonus given to all workers with a letter titled, Special One-Time High Performance Award. The letter said the company had high profits in 2009. According to a coworker, the last raise was several years ago, and was only eight cents per hour.
Jon Teitelbaum from Raleigh, North Carolina, sent in a check for $800. Enclosed is the bonus money, the blood money I received at year end, he wrote. Our wages at Hewlett Packard were cut by 5 percent this year. Several thousand workersmostly new hireshad their wages cut by an average of 20 percent by downgrading their job description. Another several thousand were laid off.
DOUG NELSON