EEOC Complaints and 80 hour work weeks The Grapes of Rathke

To back up My claims turns out I didn't even know that 4 ACORN employees have filed EEOC complaints against ACORN for unfair promotion of minority staff who are routinely passed over for white staff.

From the Wall Street Journal article "The Grapes of Rathke":


Still, Acorn is vulnerable to charges it doesn’t practice what it preaches. Its manual for minimum-wage campaigns says it intends “to push for as high a wage as possible.” But it doesn’t pay those wages. In 2004 Acorn won a $9.50 an hour minimum wage in Santa Fe, N.M., for example, but pays its organizers $25,000 a year for a required 54-hour week–$8.90 an hour. This year Acorn had workers in Missouri sign contracts saying they would be “working up to 80 hours over seven days of work.” Mr. Rathke says “We pay as much as we can. If people can get more elsewhere, we wish them well.”
Now you say nothing about the issue of how we staff of color have been discriminated against by ACORN in promotions yet:
Current and former Acorn employees say the problems in Kansas City and St. Louis are no accident. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” says Nate Toler, currently head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in Merced, Calif. In 2004 he worked on an Acorn voter drive in Missouri, and says Acorn statements aren’t to be taken at face value: “The internal motto is ‘We don’t care if it’s a lie, just so long as it stirs up the conversation.’”
Mr. Toler expects to be attacked as a disgruntled employee, and that “I may have my head chopped off for telling the truth.” Indeed, he has this year filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint alleging that Acorn has consistently promoted whites to management positions over equally qualified blacks. But his allegations are backed by three former Acorn employees who have filed similar EEOC complaints.
One of them, Sashanti Bryant of Detroit, Mich., was a community organizer for Acorn. She told me it has a problem paying employees on time and has almost no minorities in its upper echelons. Loretta Barton, until June of this year a lead Acorn organizer from Dayton, Ohio, and another EEOC complainant, told me that “all Acorn wanted from registration drives was results.”
Ms. Barton alleges that when she and her co-workers asked about forming a union they were slapped down: “We were told if you get a union, you won’t have a job.” There is some history here: In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Acorn to rehire and pay restitution to three employees it had illegally fired for trying to organize a union.
In response, Mr. Rathke says he is neutral on internal union-organizing efforts and that “when you’re dealing with thousands of employees a year you’ll have some who complain.” He also said the four complaints lodged with the EEOC had all been dismissed. When told that wasn’t the case, he said “there may be some loose ends to be tied up . . . I’m not going to impugn any of the people involved.”

Also backing up my claims of 80 hour weeks:

Still, Acorn is vulnerable to charges it doesn’t practice what it preaches. Its manual for minimum-wage campaigns says it intends “to push for as high a wage as possible.” But it doesn’t pay those wages. In 2004 Acorn won a $9.50 an hour minimum wage in Santa Fe, N.M., for example, but pays its organizers $25,000 a year for a required 54-hour week–$8.90 an hour. This year Acorn had workers in Missouri sign contracts saying they would be “working up to 80 hours over seven days of work.” Mr. Rathke says “We pay as much as we can. If people can get more elsewhere, we wish them well.”

You know Wade? Your doo doo is doo doo!