Site Contents
No Kraftsmen at Kraftees
Comments RSS (info)(Don't know what RSS is?)
View comments
Post a comment
Print this article
Send this to a friend
Please take the time to rate this article below:
Score: 3.63 (8 ratings)
Rate:
Unskilled labor exploited at local textbook establishment.
While our attention has been focused on big name corporations like Wal-Mart as they victimize their own employees, a similar predator has crept up on our own campus—Kraftees. Employing a strategy similar to Wal-Mart’s, Kraftees has moved to Collegetown and attempted to drive local establishments such as the Cornell Store out of business by exploiting the cheap labor of the unskilled and the unmotivated, enabling Kraftees to undercut the Cornell Store’s prices.
After graduating from Cornell in December and finding myself without a single marketable skill, I joined the ranks of the working poor and sought employment wherever I could find it. In my desperation, I accepted a position at Kraftees. Despite my lack of skills or a decent work ethic, Kraftees was eager to hire me because of my Mexican ancestry and my willingness to work for wages so low that they barely cover my basic expenses at Ruloff’s and Campusfood.com.
Living hand to mouth, I have no job security. As a non-unionized laborer, I am subject to every whim of the management. I am paid only the market value of my skills. Despite my backbreaking labor over a cash register—sometimes for shifts more than five hours long—I do not even receive health benefits or any sick leave. Countless Sunday mornings I have awakened sprawled on the linoleum in the bathroom of my apartment, with a pounding headache, and yet had no choice but to report to work. Any attempt to unionize or even call in sick could jeopardize my single source of income which, although hardly a living wage, is my only means to put drinks on the table. While Wal-Mart is criticized for paying an average of only $3,500 per employee for health care, Kraftees spends an average of four and a half cents—the cost of a single Band-Aid. While doing manual labor in the hazardous working conditions of Kraftees, I pricked my finger on a tagging gun while attaching price tags to (foreign produced and affordably priced) t-shirts. Although bleeding profusely from the fingertip, I was given no time off, and paid no damages for pain and suffering. I was simply given a flesh colored Band-Aid. Band-Aids containing Neosporin or printed with Disney characters are not included in the health care package Kraftees offers its employees.
On days that I am forced to work shifts that can stretch up to five hours straight, I receive only a single meal paid for by Kraftees. While suffering from this malnourishment, I am allowed to view only a single episode of Family Feud each morning, before the Kraftees TV is cruelly shut off just as the following program, Divorce Court, begins. Because of the long hours I am forced to work merely for subsistence, I will never know whether LaShanteliqua really was arranging meetings with those men in the chat room, as her husband Terrel suspected.
It is heartbreaking enough that human beings are forced to work in conditions such as these, merely because they have no skills and act only as a drain on society. However, the harm caused by these practices extends far beyond the oppressed Kraftees employees to have a detrimental effect on the entire Cornell community as well. Diane Embrey ’07 reluctantly admits that she shops at Kraftees for her textbooks and school supplies. She shows off the iClicker she purchased there for only $31.25—far below the $34.00 charged by the Cornell Store—while admitting that she misses “the whole experience” of shopping at the Cornell Store. “It’s like you could go in there and see all these familiar faces,” Embrey explains. “Like you’re looking for textbooks and then, like, oh hey, didn’t we hook up at Theta Drug the other night?! But not gonna lie, Kraftees is cheaper. It’s just sad how it’s just in and out, so efficient and stuff there. Especially that, like, little Mexican cashier. She’s quick, you know?”
Sadly, these small-campus experiences are rapidly vanishing as more and more students turn to Kraftees for affordable textbooks. However, our bleeding hearts demand that we look beyond the price tag to the faces of the low class, the dumb, and the useless members of society, upon whose hard labor this efficient business is being run. If we only listen to our consciences and lay aside common sense, we can put an end to these sound business strategies and return to paying inflated prices for textbooks, while providing cushy benefits for overpaid workers.
Comments
Post a Comment