00:00Hello friends. Today I am going to attempt to white night for Bernard.
00:06So I woke up this morning, unfortunately, with so many messages from people who were like,
00:14come collect your grandpa! And I was like, fuck, what occurred? Did he say that white
00:21people don't know what it's like to be poor again? No, apparently there's some drama within his
00:29union. They weren't being paid $15 an hour. So I went around the internet trying to collect
00:34things to see if this could be debunked, and I actually found something on Reddit, so take
00:40that with a grain of salt, from somebody who worked within the union and knows the actual
00:45nuances behind what happened. It's not just like, oh, Bernie refuses to pay his workers
00:53the correct wage. Most of the candidates don't even pay their campaign workers. Most of the
01:00candidates don't have unions for their campaign workers. This was just something that the workers
01:05were like, talking about amongst themselves. And Washington Post or whatever, all these
01:11outlets were like, so I heard some shit was going on? On May 8th, Bernie campaign and union
01:18came to an agreement that all field organizers will have an annual salary of $36,000 instead
01:24of an hourly salary. This salary was based on 5-day weekly work, 40 hours. On hourly-based
01:32salary, this would have been $17 an hour. In addition to that, it also provides full health insurance
01:41without a premium, mental health benefits, parental leave options, a gas card to use while
01:47on the job, and other options not traditionally available for low-level campaign staff. On
01:52May 17th, Bernie's campaign manager made a proposition to the union to change the 5-day agreement to
01:58a 6-day agreement with a hike of $42,000 annual salary. So that would be $16 an hour. The
02:05union
02:05rejected this proposal as the raise would have elevated field staff to a pay level responsible
02:11for paying more of their own healthcare costs. This is because Bernie's campaign pays all premiums
02:17for salaried employees, making $36,000 or less per year. On July 11th, only eight days before
02:25this Washington Post report, some field officers raised concern that even though the initial
02:30agreement was 40 hours a week, they are now working about 60 hours a week, and by 60 hours estimate,
02:35their annual pay of $36,000 will only be $13 an hour. The union is preparing a new proposal,
02:42not yet submitted, for a phase, and Washington Post got access to this. In the draft of that
02:47proposal, they are asking for $46,800 for field organizations and $62,400 for regional field
02:56directors. The draft also asked the campaign to cover 100% of the healthcare costs for employees,
03:02making $60,000 per year or less. There is no information that the campaign has ever rejected
03:07any union proposal for minimum wage, as the proposal is not even submitted. We look forward
03:13to continuing those discussions and obviously are disappointed that some individuals decided
03:17to damage the integrity of these efforts before they were concluded. As these discussions continue,
03:23we are limiting hours so no employee is receiving less than $15 an hour for any hours of work.
03:30So basically, in conclusion, the media leached onto this before it was even concluded, and nobody
03:37is going to be making less than $15 an hour. Now I may be wrong on some things, but I'm
03:41just adding
03:42more nuance to this whole drama. I give this smear a 9 out of 10, because it does hold some
03:48weight for once.
03:49But anyway, yeah, I hope this at least added more to the conversation. Bye.
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