Awake Bushwick

Union Campaign Demands Fair Wages, Benefits
for Immigrant Retail Workers

Illegal wages, discrimination, harassment, violation of worker rights, and human rights abuses. These words describe the grim conditions for workers employed in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn, New York. Low wage jobs and abusive working conditions are all too prevalent in the retail stores along Knickerbocker Avenue, a bustling shopping strip in the immigrant neighborhood. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) of the UFCW and the community group, Make the Road by Walking, have partnered and launched a campaign to improve conditions for these workers.

The RWDSU UFCW and Make the Road by Walking exposed the injustice and abuse of worker rights and human rights in a joint report called “Street of Shame.” The report describes how employees in one shop “not only have to suffer minimum wage and overtime violations, but also confront sexual and physical abuse from the owner.” In other shops, workers put in 12-hour days, six days a week, and only earn between $320 and $330 a week.

Hundreds of retail workers, RWDSU members, consumers, students, community and religious organizations and politicians have marched to demand an end to poverty wages and abusive working conditions in the retail shops. Community pressure, demonstrations, and legal action has already prompted some employers on Knickerbocker Avenue to pay tens of thousands of dollars in back wages to immigrant workers. But permanent change is needed to bring justice to the hundreds of other workers still employed, as well as for the future of the community.