What kind of low-life bottom-feeders came up with this brilliant idea? I guess getting away with using these cards for government benefits just emboldened the bankers to push them for the working poor.
Can they get away with it? In this case, no, they can’t. Fortunately, Pennsylvania requires that workers be paid by cash or check. But I’m sure even as we speak that ALEC is working hard to pass a law in every state to allow employers to siphon off even more cash from the working poor:
All Natalie Gunshannon wanted was to be paid a fair wage for her work, she said.
Gunshannon, 27, of Dallas Township, worked at McDonald’s Restaurant on the Dallas Highway from April 24 to May 15. When she received her first paycheck, enclosed was a Chase Bank debit card with instructions on how to use it and the fees attached.
Her future earnings would be deposited into the debit card account and she could access her money from there. Gunshannon never signed the card and when she returned to work she asked her supervisor if she could be paid by check or by direct deposit. She was told the card was the only option.
Gunshannon, a single mother of one daughter, quit her job at McDonald’s and went to see an attorney, Mike Cefalo of West Pittston. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in Luzerne County Court by Cefalo on behalf of Gunshannon and other employees, seeking damages, fees and costs.
The suit seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages and asks for punitive, compensatory and liquidated damages, plus legal fees and litigation costs against the company for its “ill-gotten gains contrary to justice, equity, good conscience and Pennsylvania law.”
Gunshannon said she didn’t sign the card and chose to not enroll in the payroll system offered because she felt the fees would be exorbitant and actually drop her earnings below minimum wage.
She was to be paid about $7.44 per hour – her paystub didn’t list her hourly rate. Minimum wage is $7.25.
According to the complaint filed, the JP Morgan Chase payroll card lists several fees, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 per balance inquiry, 75 cents per online bill payment and $15 for lost/stolen card.
Gunshannon said she had taken her concerns to the main office of the franchise holder – Albert and Carol Mueller, trading as McDonald’s, in Clarks Summit. She was told that the card was the only option, she said.
What next? Oh, pay to work, perhaps.
This practice is very common in the fast food industry. Let’s all just throw in the towel and get the “sign of the beast” tattooed on our foreheads straight away.
Anybody remember the Tennessee Ernie Ford song “Sixteen Tons” from the mid-1950s? A verse would end “St. Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store…”
That’s how they would pay migrant workers and coal miners once upon a time. In “scrip”, and they made sure the only place they could spend it was the company store, where the prices greatly exceeded the value of the “scrip”. That way, people would wind up indebted, and have to keep working to pay off their debt, which kept piling up.
Same racket being perpetrated on our students.
Same racket being perpetrated on a lot of the rest of us – sell us cheap junk that breaks frequently, create a culture where you just have to have that junk for status’ sake, and keep us going round and round, too.
This is going to be the wave of the future unless some group seriously challenges corporate power(****). Getting paid in scrip and getting sent to the electronic version of the “company store” to make sure you’re head over heels in debt.
(****) – I’m not thinking that Barry Oblahblah will be challenging corporations anytime soon.
The Supreme Court has this already covered. There will be an arbitration provision in her employment agreement and the arbitrators will be drawn from a Chamber panel.