“Quiet, quiet!” exclaimed a smiling Ari Glazer, one organizer from the San Lucas Workers Center, as I and about 40 others, composed of day laborers, children, clergy, and community organizers, were spirited from a school bus and directed into a designer paper store called Paper Source surprising employees, management, and customers in order to draw attention to their abusive and illegal labor practices.

Three Paper Source workers were fired for speaking out against labor injustices inflicted upon them by management.

In the early afternoon on April 12th, outraged day laborers and their supporters converged on Paper Source at Franklin and Chicago Avenues effectively shutting down the business for an hour, while fired workers gave testimonials, demonstrators chanted, and children banged on drums.

“We ask for respect and dignity because we are human beings and hard workers,” said Guadalupe Ireta, one of the fired workers.

The San Lucas Workers Center was demanding that the fired workers be rehired, that Paper Source cease its business relationship with Ron’s Staffing immediately and that Paper Source change their temporary worker contracting to a code of conduct-compliant day labor agency as it said it would some time last fall.

Paper Source contracts with Ron’s Staffing in order to operate the warehouses where the materials for their over 20 stores are created and packaged. Ron’s, owned by Ron Michelon, (312-654-0181) has a notorious history of abusing day laborers. The agency, according to the Illinois Department of Labor, has violated Illinois labor laws over 6,000 times--accruing fines of over $100,000. Abuses have included short paychecks, illegal transportation charges, retaliation for organizing or speaking out, discrimination, arbitrary termination, failure to provide an opportunity for workers to go from temporary work to permanent job placement, and bullying by supervisors.

Last fall, the San Lucas Workers Center had approached Paper Source asking for it to sever its business relationship with Ron’s and sign on, instead, to a community regulated code of conduct-compliant staffing agency such as one recommended by the San Lucas Workers Center.

Paper Source agreed to the requests intending to become a more socially responsible business by taking labor abuse seriously. It agreed to switch its staffing from Ron’s to Viking Labor, a code-compliant agency.

About three months after this agreement was reached, it became known that Paper Source was dodging its commitment to worker justice; only 7 of 40 workers had changed to the new agency. To make matters worse, these workers were being relentlessly harassed by management--an obvious move to make them quit.

According to Glazer, workers were offered the choice to change to Viking Labor, but then were intimidated to stay with Ron’s.

The action, which not only got ample media attention, was effective and engaging. More than one potential customer was turned away after seeing the store filled with media and angry day laborers chanting slogans such as “Clean it up or shut it down!” and “Fire Ron’s!” Store managers stated that the owners of Paper Source, Sue Lindstrom (312-775-6915) and Jim York (312-775-6908), could not be reached by phone and were incommunicado.

The workers vowed to return until the owners met their demands. Although there was no negotiation that day, the procession was undaunted by management’s sudden inability to contact the store’s owners. Many of the workers expressed their happiness at the solidarity and diversity of those who attended. It remains to be seen if Paper Source will do its part to end the slave-like conditions that it so uncaringly entered into with staffing agencies like Ron’s. One thing is for sure: these workers are fired up and ready to win.

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