Only half of my headline for this post is true. Guess which half.
In a move that comes as a shock to no one, the people tasked with shoving a free copy of amNew York in your face every morning have sued The Tribune Company for paying them less than minimum wage. The New York Sun had more on the story a few weeks ago:
[Lawyer Daniel] Kirschenbaum said the promoters are paid a flat rate of $20 a day, regardless of the number of hours they work.
The promoters work as many as four hours a day, meaning that they are often paid below the New York State minimum wage of $7.15 an hour, Mr. Kirschenbaum said. “The facts of it are so simple that it’s almost sad that this is what’s happening,” Mr. Kirschenbaum said.
Simple math would tell you that those workers handing out papers for four hours a day are getting a measly $5 an hour. Reality would make you question whether anyone handing out amNew York really stands there handing out papers for a whopping four hours each day. I never see these folks after 9:30 or 10 a.m. across the city. Are you telling me they start work at 5:30 or 6 a.m. to pass out crappy papers to people who don’t really want them?
Now, when it comes to the free New York papers, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m something of an elitist. It seems to me that a lot of commuters rely on Metro and amNew York as their primary news sources in the morning. While these papers serve something of a purpose — advertising revenue for their parent companies chief among those — they don’t do a good job of covering the news as Chris has tirelessly documented.
But my personal feelings and skepticism aside, The Tribune Company should pay these people minimum wage. It’s the least they could do while contributing to a marked rise in the number of track fires and clogged drains due to the growing volume of free papers that mysteriously end as as litter on the tracks.
2 comments
Well… as a person who almost worked as one of those new age paperboys to suplement my income, I have to say that while you don’t see them after (or before) a certain time period, you are expected to get you papers and assignment rather early in the morning.
So starting at 5:30 and ending at around 10:00am was possible.
I don’t remember what the pay was. I decided not to do it because I was so tired from working at my other job that I really won’t be able to take it.
I do wonder what the details of this case is. While I don’t remember what the pay was, it certainly was more than 20 dollars a day.
Shame on amNew York. Not only is it immoral — it’s terrible too (it’s the freebie singled out by Chris at the East Village Idiot).