Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
This morning I happened to see an article at The Consumerist about American Apparel. It’s a resignation letter from an employee sick of abusive treatment. Apparently, AA treats its employees well only when convenient. Allegedly, retail staff work 60-80 hours per week without overtime; the only people who are exempt from this sort of abuse are the ones sleeping with upper management. (Not surprisingly, the CEO has been sued for sexual harassment.) When asked for overtime, the company says maybe they can afford it as back pay in a few years, when they’re making more money.
BusinessWeek writes:
“It was a company built on lechery,” says a former stock person. “I thought it was a male contemporary perspective on feminism, but it turns out to be just a gimmick,” says another ex-employee. And another: “I made sure to stay away from the store when I knew [Charney] was coming into town. It’s not one person — he’s aiming for all women.”
Of course, I don’t know enough to be sure of the truth; but I thought Irregular Goods might want to check it out.
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June 14th, 2006 at 7:44 am
John, thanks for posting this.
I’ve read some news pieces on American Apparel over the past year or two. The letter’s over a year old, and it is my understanding that a fair number of these issues have been ironed out. There is apparently a great deal of sex talk in AA outlets, and every employee now signs a letter saying they’re aware of that. The sexual harassment suit is ongoing, and if Charney’s done some of the things that he’s accused of then to hell with him.
The “overtime” issue is new to me: it’s from an employee in Canada, and I don’t know what the labor laws are there. I know that here in the USA the labor laws are crystal clear that it’s prohibited, and I have a bit of a difficult time believing that such troubles wouldn’t be picked up by the media lickety-split (if there is such a link, please do share it).
The “overtime” issue is also clouded in the letter you link to by the fact that the employee was a manager. Was she salaried or did she earn a wage? Managers often earn a salary, and often work long hours. Do you know which was the case here?
There’s a good, long piece on American Apparel and Charney here in the New York Times that was written much more recently.
Don’t worry, John. We’re paying attention, and we care about this sort of thing, too — at least some of it. I don’t care much about a workplace in which people say “fuck” a lot. Sexual harassment bothers me more, and so does wage law violation. But the facts of the sexual harassment case are in dispute, and I haven’t seen any documentation of wage law violation (please share a source if you have such documentation), and there is documentation of a number of good practices American Apparel has in place. At this point the good things that American Apparel does still, in my estimation at least, outweigh the questionable.
June 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Glad to hear you’re aware of it; that’s all I was shooting for.
On the overtime question: the manager in the letter says she hasn’t gotten a raise since being hired, despite being promoted; she claims that it’s typical for someone at AA who gets a promotion to have a trial period, anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months, and not get paid more until after that. If so, it wouldn’t be surprising if she was still on an hourly wage.
OK. That NYT article does seem a lot more balanced.
June 14th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Excellent articles. American Apparel sounds like a terrible place to work. I would much rather work in a place that pays minimum wage and no health benefits (and have done so) than work in a place that takes your soul.
While looking for information on corporate culture I ran into an article comparing the corporate culture in the office of a feminist magazine with that in the office of a pornography magazine. The women who worked for the porn magazine took care to dress ultra business conservative, apparently to distance themselves from female employees who were “the product.” At the feminist magazine, employees dressed more often in ways that expressed sexuality.
I can’t think of one good reason I should have to listen to the F word in a work environnment. This is already the reason I loathe public transportation.
June 15th, 2006 at 8:29 am
You shouldn’t have to listen to the “F word” (work at it: say Fuck, Fuck, Fuck)? Why? Especially if there’s a workplace in which (now) it’s made very clear that the word will be heard?
August 7th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
How is this meant to engage in a substantive way, Jim?
How is this not meant to provoke and distract?
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