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The worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut
The worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut
A call to a union triggers one of the most lopsided battles of the ongoing low-wage-worker revolt
By Greg Jaffe
Dec. 11, 2021
WINSTED, Conn. — The afternoon shift workers at Dollar General No. 18060 had listened with growing panic as an executive accused their store manager of stealing. They could hear the yelling and threats in the back office, a scene that had shaken all of them — especially Shellie Parsons.
In a life marked by poverty, addiction and physical abuse, Parsons, 37, had come to see her store — a beige prefabricated building on the outskirts of town — as her haven, a $15.75-an-hour pathway to a better life. She was desperately afraid of losing it.
And so, after a brief discussion with a few trusted co-workers, she headed to a nearby Stop & Shop grocery store where years earlier she recalled seeing a picket line, walked back to the deli counter and asked one of the butchers, whom she had never met, whether he had a phone number for someone at their union. She dialed from the parking lot.
“Why does it got to be me?” she recalled thinking as the phone rang. She feared that talking to a union organizer could get her fired, even as she worried that doing nothing would leave her and her colleagues vulnerable to the whims of upper management.
{snip}
Abha Bhattarai and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
Greg Jaffe
Follow https://twitter.com/GregJaffe
Greg Jaffe is a national reporter with The Washington Post who spent more than a decade covering the military. He’s the co-author of “The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army.”
A call to a union triggers one of the most lopsided battles of the ongoing low-wage-worker revolt
By Greg Jaffe
Dec. 11, 2021
WINSTED, Conn. — The afternoon shift workers at Dollar General No. 18060 had listened with growing panic as an executive accused their store manager of stealing. They could hear the yelling and threats in the back office, a scene that had shaken all of them — especially Shellie Parsons.
In a life marked by poverty, addiction and physical abuse, Parsons, 37, had come to see her store — a beige prefabricated building on the outskirts of town — as her haven, a $15.75-an-hour pathway to a better life. She was desperately afraid of losing it.
And so, after a brief discussion with a few trusted co-workers, she headed to a nearby Stop & Shop grocery store where years earlier she recalled seeing a picket line, walked back to the deli counter and asked one of the butchers, whom she had never met, whether he had a phone number for someone at their union. She dialed from the parking lot.
“Why does it got to be me?” she recalled thinking as the phone rang. She feared that talking to a union organizer could get her fired, even as she worried that doing nothing would leave her and her colleagues vulnerable to the whims of upper management.
{snip}
Abha Bhattarai and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
Greg Jaffe
Follow https://twitter.com/GregJaffe
Greg Jaffe is a national reporter with The Washington Post who spent more than a decade covering the military. He’s the co-author of “The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army.”
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