Video of A-DP protest at Standard Plating, a metal-plating shop in West Springfield that is notorious among Labor Ready temp workers as a 'fabrica de mala fama' and a bad place to work. Running almost entirely on Labor Ready temps, workers receive little or no safety training or equipment, and are charged for necessary safety equipment. The workplace is full of caustic and acid chemicals, and yet workers receive a thin pair of cotton gloves to do the work.
During this protest, Standard Plating owner Brian Nahorniak attacks the cameraperson (6:10) as West Springfield police look on.
The Anti-Displacement Project (A-DP) runs an aggressive campaign organizing day-labor workers in Springfield, Massachusetts, fighting back against the vicious cycle of day-labor and under-employment.
Temporary agencies are in the business of selling cheap, human labor at the lowest possible cost to its customers. But selling labor cheap comes with huge human costs: Temporary workers are getting systematically ripped-off, exploited, and abused. It's modern day slavery and it's illegal.
Temp agencies exploit workers in western Massachusetts and around the nation. Workers get caught in a cycle of temporary jobs, unemployment, and homelessness. Temp agencies feed off these most desperate workers and deliberately pay workers the lowest possible wage, charge illegal fees for check cashing and transportation, and skimp on safety equipment and training.
When workers in Springfield and Holyoke formed the A-DP Worker Organizing Committee and brought their demands to temp agency management, many were subsequently blacklisted and fired. The Worker Organizing Committee and A-DP have produced a plan to end this cycle of dead-end jobs and chronic underemployment.
They are fighting to end the abuses at local temp agencies, and to create a community-based, non-profit, worker-run Workers' Center as an alternative to for-profit hiring halls that treat workers as commodities. The Workers' Center goal will be to pay as much money into workers' pockets as possible, provide real opportunities towards permanent jobs for our community's most vulnerable workforce, and treat workers with the dignity and respect that is due every worker and human being.
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