For 11 years Patricia worked for Lorig Associates, a major Seattle property development/management company. For most of that time she was one of only two African-American employees in the company, the other being a maintenance worker.  For a decade she was passed over for promotion and denied anything but the most menial positions. Once when she’d filled in for a normally higher-paid job for five months, she was denied the job and then asked to train the inexperienced white worker who was hired to take the job permanently while Patricia was sent back to the front desk.

After years of pushing, Lorig finally yielded and moved her to a higher-paid admin-assistant job, calling it a “trial run”. They gave her zero training for the job and tried to drive her out with harassment, even making a fuss when she got up to use the bathroom. Soon they called her in and asked, “So, are you going to quit, or are you going back to the front desk with a pay cut?” She said neither, and they fired her.

Since then she’s been out of work for over a year, taking care of a sick relative. Now she has joined with the Solidarity Network and is fighting back. Our demand is that the company provide her with back pay compensation for a year’s worth of income since her unjust firing.

Lorig executives did not respond to our initial request (here’s a video of the delegation that delivered it), so we are now launching an escalating campaign of actions asking potential renters, condo-buyers, and property management customers not to support discrimination, and not to do business with Lorig.

Recently a visiting Jimmy John’s executive walked by Jason, a hardworking bicycle deliverer, and didn’t like the way he smelled. He noticed a whiff of last night’s beer and cigarettes, which Jason had been sweating out through hours of hard pedaling. With barely a word, just for that, he casually had Jason fired.

The truth is it’s not Jason that stinks, it’s this kind of arrogant, heavy-handed corporate management which casually throws a worker out of his job on a whim. Thursday June 25th, a group of around 20 friends and supporters joined Jason for a visit to Jimmy John’s downtown sandwich shop to politely deliver a message: management should correct this injustice, either by reinstating Jason, or if they can’t do that, then by providing him with a modest severance pay.

Management has refused. We have now started an ongoing series of lunch-time pickets at Seattle-area Jimmy John’s sandwich shops, all seven of which are under the same franchise owners. Our message is simple: “Support Jason–Don’t Eat Here!”.

Our pickets–three so far, at two locations–have been cutting their usual lunchtime rush of customers down to a tiny trickle. Many customers leave promising not to eat at Jimmy John’s in the future. Our next step is to picket more of their busiest locations, and to bring our message to delivery customers.

Saturday morning, May 30 2009, eleven people and three cameras joined ex-U-Haul worker Marrico for a visit to managers inside two south Seattle U-Haul locations.

Marrico’s General Manager at U-Haul was an abusive boss, with a habit of yelling at workers and firing them with little or no justification. In his case she claimed, without showing evidence and contrary to his own memory, that he – a good worker of two years standing – had forgotten to put away some padding that a customer had used.

Marrico has decided to fight back, with the support of others in the Solidarity Network. This first action was to deliver his very modest demand that the company erase his firing and instead accept his resignation; that they acknowledge this in writing; and that when future potential employers ask them for a reference check, they report nothing but that he was a good worker who resigned voluntarily.

Update: Having been personally assured by the regional manager that U-Haul does not give out any details about their past employees, Marrico has decided he is satisfied and ready to put this behind him. Those of you who came out to support him, he says he really appreciates it and he’ll be there for you in the future.

Tuesday, April 7, we had to take this fight to the next level, with the first of what will be an ongoing series of strategically-timed pickets at the University district Pita Pit. The franchise owners are now admitting that no taxes were ever paid on behalf of ex-employee John, who now needs to file as an “independent contractor” and pay the taxes himself. That’s fine, says John, but what about the chunk of his pay that they always withheld from him “for taxes”?

So far the owners have still not resolved this, although they’ve had plenty of time to do so. Now we are bringing the issue to the attention of potential Pita Pit patrons, with a simple message: “DON’T EAT HERE!”