{"id":181565,"date":"2016-05-18T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/05\/18\/not-enough-bullets-38\/"},"modified":"2016-05-18T17:16:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T22:16:00","slug":"not-enough-bullets-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/05\/18\/not-enough-bullets-38\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Enough Bullets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the brave new world of f%$#ing over the American worker,  <a href=\"http:\/\/wonkette.com\/601906\/olive-garden-parent-company-darden-finds-exciting-new-way-to-screw-your-server\">we have the financial innovation (hold on to your wallets) of payroll cards<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Hey, remember our old friends, Darden Restaurants? They\u2019re the  dickbag parent company of Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and  (formerly) Red Lobster, who (allegedly knowingly) <a href=\"http:\/\/wonkette.com\/596973\/your-never-ending-olive-garden-shrimp-bowl-sauteed-in-never-ending-child-slave-tears\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">source from slave labor<\/a>  and who are legendary within the restaurant industry for screwing over  their workers. Yeah, turns out they have a fun new way of screwing their  employees out of their hard-earned money. The best part? It\u2019s (mostly)  perfectly legal.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The secret is a fun (not at all fun) method of  paying their employees called payroll cards. The way payroll cards work  is that instead of actual paychecks, employees are given what amounts to  a debit card they can use to access their pay. Some (assholes) have  argued that this is actually <i>good<\/i> for workers, because it means  they can access their money immediately. But a new report from  Restaurant Opportunities Centers United <a href=\"http:\/\/rocunited.org\/wp2015b\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/HighCostGettingPaid_Report_Web-2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sheds some light on the practice<\/a> and, well \u2026 Darden doesn\u2019t come out of it looking pretty. Among other things, the report found that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">23% of employees surveyed said they were never given instructions on how to use the cards<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">42% had trouble accessing their money using the cards<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">63% weren\u2019t told about the fees associated with the card when it was foisted on them<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">49% said they had no access to an ATM from which they could withdraw their money without a fee<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">24% reported fees at point of purchase \u2014 meaning they had to pay  fees when they tried to use the payroll card for a purchase, rather than  just a withdrawal<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Payroll cards are great for banks: they get to charge exorbitant  ATM fees to people whom they would otherwise have never been able to  gouge. They\u2019re just as great for the companies themselves, especially in  Darden\u2019s case: all told, the practice of using payroll cards saves the  company $5 million per year, according to the report. The only people  they\u2019re not great for are actual workers, who (as per usual) get hosed  in a big way.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Employers are required to offer an alternative, but a lot of them don&#8217;t, and those that do try to hide it from their workers.<\/p>\n<p>F%$# these folks, without lube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the brave new world of f%$#ing over the American worker, we have the financial innovation (hold on to your wallets) of payroll cards: Hey, remember our old friends, Darden Restaurants? They\u2019re the dickbag parent company of Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and (formerly) Red Lobster, who (allegedly knowingly) source from slave labor and who are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,975,969,1012],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-employment","category-evil","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}