Do you live in New York and love getting your nails did, but for real cheap, like $10.50? Sure, it's SUPER awesome that you can pay practically nothing for someone else to spend an hour scraping off your callouses and massaging your aching joints and painting your fingers all pretty, but on the other hand, according to
Early in my working career I worked in a silkscreen print shop. We printed everything from small decals to the great big (double- or triple-poster sized) banner advertisements that you see in the front windows of your supermarket. Those big sheets became my specialty in the shop; I was the big-sheet guy. As soon as any print job was finished we had to wash down the screen while keeping the stencil intact. Depending on the stencil material this meant using either acetone or mineral spirits (benzine). We dispensed the solvent using a pump sprayer and usually, but not always, wore thick vinyl gloves. Some of those screens were enormous and in the process of hosing them down with solvent and then scrubbing them off with rags we usually ended up getting pretty soaked. We didn't wear any special suits or anything, just old clothes that we supplied ourselves and changed out of when we left work at the end of the day. My wife used to joke that she could find ink stains on every part of my body. The stuff soaked right through our clothes and by the end of a typical day I would have gotten soaked to the skin in solvent at least a couple of times. For doing all of this I got paid minimum wage plus a few cents per hour. I stayed there for six months before moving on to something decidedly less toxic.
Oh, and yeah, I got pretty wasted on the fumes during my first week there, but after that I hardly noticed them.
A world in which workers with zero protections are getting paid practically nothing, or even literally nothing, or even literally negative dollars, or having to pay bosses to let them work sounds like Kochtopia.
The cool part also too is that New Yawk will now require the salons to be bonded: meaning that they can't just close down and stiff the workers on their wages and then magically reopen under a new name by another relative of the owner.
The other part that's not so cool is the practices of exposing workers to hazardous chemicals with no protective gear, paying shit wages, stiffing the employees on their wages, working three months for no wages, paying $100 fees to learn a new nail skill, and living in eight-to-a-room in apartments owned by the same owner are now part of the curriculum at several Southern business schools.
I am not sending my toenails to Texas to be prettified! For one thing, it will take considerably longer, as I hear the mail system will be disrupted for a while by the federal takeover.
Early in my working career I worked in a silkscreen print shop. We printed everything from small decals to the great big (double- or triple-poster sized) banner advertisements that you see in the front windows of your supermarket. Those big sheets became my specialty in the shop; I was the big-sheet guy. As soon as any print job was finished we had to wash down the screen while keeping the stencil intact. Depending on the stencil material this meant using either acetone or mineral spirits (benzine). We dispensed the solvent using a pump sprayer and usually, but not always, wore thick vinyl gloves. Some of those screens were enormous and in the process of hosing them down with solvent and then scrubbing them off with rags we usually ended up getting pretty soaked. We didn't wear any special suits or anything, just old clothes that we supplied ourselves and changed out of when we left work at the end of the day. My wife used to joke that she could find ink stains on every part of my body. The stuff soaked right through our clothes and by the end of a typical day I would have gotten soaked to the skin in solvent at least a couple of times. For doing all of this I got paid minimum wage plus a few cents per hour. I stayed there for six months before moving on to something decidedly less toxic.
Oh, and yeah, I got pretty wasted on the fumes during my first week there, but after that I hardly noticed them.
Next up from the NYT: An investigation into Peggy Noonan's treatment of her houseboy, Manuel.
The Wall Streeters will just cross the rive and get their nails done in Jersey.
When does Texas begin luring disgruntled salon owners? None of those annoying worker protection things there!
Negative wage jerb creators. Gosh, the real immigration policy.
Wow, who would've thunk that there was a little speck of actual liberalism left in Andrew Cuomo?
They have nail salons in Princeton?
A world in which workers with zero protections are getting paid practically nothing, or even literally nothing, or even literally negative dollars, or having to pay bosses to let them work sounds like Kochtopia.
It rears its head every once in a while, which makes us still kind of like him even while we don't.
Long Island is gonna be pissed.
You cannot imagine... the princesses of Nassau will be shrieking.
Even out here on the east end, there will be rumblings. These chicks think a $10 mani-pedi is their birthright.
He even got on board with De Blasio's Affordable Housing plan
http://gothamist.com/2015/0...
The cool part also too is that New Yawk will now require the salons to be bonded: meaning that they can't just close down and stiff the workers on their wages and then magically reopen under a new name by another relative of the owner.
The other part that's not so cool is the practices of exposing workers to hazardous chemicals with no protective gear, paying shit wages, stiffing the employees on their wages, working three months for no wages, paying $100 fees to learn a new nail skill, and living in eight-to-a-room in apartments owned by the same owner are now part of the curriculum at several Southern business schools.
Suddenly, Andrew Cuomo does the right thing, and shocks us all.
Obviously, the salon owners need to get cracking and put together a lobbying team to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
I am not sending my toenails to Texas to be prettified! For one thing, it will take considerably longer, as I hear the mail system will be disrupted for a while by the federal takeover.
You raise a good point... maybe this was inspired by First Live-In-Girlfriend Sandra's experiences...