Just my personal opinion, I am sold on Kucinich's vision of a new America. Everything he had to say while he was here in the Tampa Bay area made so much sense. The mainstream press has been told not to report about him. The corporations are afraid of him because he speaks the truth!. Voters in Florida still have a choice for a Democratic Candidate!!! That is why Kucinich says he is here, to let people know that.
I had a marvelous time and got to shake the man's hand and followed him around like a groupie on Wednesday, March 3rd during his sojourn through the Tampa Bay area. I must say that his supporters are a lively and exuberant bunch and will talk to anyone who will listen about their belief in what this man can do for our country.
Kucinich first appeared at the refabbed Royalty Theatre in downtown Clearwater. Openers were John McKutcheon, a folksinger, and Tim Reynolds from the Dave Matthews Band who got the audience energized. Both of these guys have lent their support to Kucinich and have hit the campaign trail with him. Hard to believe that this was the same theatre where I used to go to see the Midnight Movies like Reefer Madness and Fantasia (many years ago, of course)!!! The theatre had a very celestial atmosphere, the motifs, paintings and sconces were all angels, lots of gold and mirrors...very fitting for the man with the celestial vision and a personal friend of Shirley MacLaine. This man walks the walk, has won peace awards, accomplishes great things with the environment and is one of the few vegans making policies in the halls of DC. He did an electrifying talk at this venue with a short question and answer session. He knew the issues and had the numbers, the facts and the answers to every issue that the audience brought up.
The press conference took place right out in front of the theatre after 1PM. The main point that Kucinich reiterated was that he was in Florida to let Florida voters know that they had a choice at the polls on Tuesday, March 9th, voting day for the Florida Primary. Kucinich had to literally tell the CBS affiliate that he was making a major point, because the reporter was walking away before Kucinich could finish his statement. His focus with Florida voters is Health Care, Jobs and the War.
Later in the evening, I went to USF where he did a talk there and a great question and answer forum with the students, faculty members and Kucinich supporters. He spoke to great applause for almost every point and then John McKutcheon sang a song...then it was on to Skipper's Smokehouse, an outdoor venue for some more great music. I sat three people away from him as he held court, young and old, dressed up and dressed down, old hippies, young hippies, reserved and bikers, short hair and dread locks, people wanted him to sign their Tshirts, have their picture taken with him, shake his hand and encourage him. I sat with some friends and Kucinich supporters about three people away from Kucinich. The funniest thing was when the band did a Bob Dylan type song, complete with flipping the white posters (that a young girl was holding) all about George Bush and oil and money...Kucinich was cracking up. He did not stay long but really seemed to be having fun. There were a few more appearances by John McKutcheon and Tim Reynolds. Kucinich spoke for a short time on stage and then made a hasty exit right after 10PM.
A real truism, and something that Kucinich said while on stage was that being there listening to the music, transported us, that remember Viet Nam to another time and another place and that all this has happened before. We as young people back then, changed the course of the nation, and we had the power to do it again! It is NOT impossible!!! What a rallying cry! What a message of hope!
I am amazed regarding the media blackout of him and his appearances here in the area. I rushed home after the fun time at Skipper’s Smokehouse, just in time to watch the 11PM news and I flipped the channels back and forth. The channels covered Kerry and Edwards, but I did not see a word about Kucinich. If anything was aired about Kucinich’s appearance, it was so brief I missed it!
I really hope that some of you get a chance to see him in the next few days...check his site for his itinerary on Monday and Tuesday, March 8th and Primary Day, the 9th. Monday he will be in the Sarasota area and Tuesday in Tampa Bay with venues to be announced (at the time of this writing).
DO NOT LET THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TELL YOU WHO TO VOTE FOR! Let Florida know whom you support. Check out Kucinich’s site, read through the issues. Go and see him speak while he is here-—he is one of the best orators I have ever seen. This is a man that can do this again in 4 years, so maybe it is not his time yet! BUT there is always next time. I feel that I saw a man making history! He has my vote NOW!
http://www.kucinich.us/(The picture on the site is of Kucinich speaking at the Royalty Theatre on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004)
Temporary agencies are taking advantage of a soft labor market and in addition to asking for a credit check for certain positions, requiring employees that sign up to sign a minimum wage waiver. This waiver exploits the worker. The worker agrees that if they quit without notice or are fired for any cause, that their pay is reduced to minimum wage. This is a scam that benefits the temporary agency and the company that it contracts with.
"Customer Caring Collections. Audit Systems Inc. See for yourself what makes ASI different."
The above is what this company's website says. Frankly, I did not find them caring or concerned at all about their employees. The permanent employees were treated with respect. The staffing agency's employees were treated like scum from the street.
My complaint regarding them is a simple one. I was sent out on a job by a local staffing agency for a collections position without an interview with the employer and without a forwarding of my resume. I was told that the staffing agency is the sole employer for this company that I was sent to and that no interview or resume was necessary as long as Corestaff had interviewed and screened me. The staffing agency had potential employees sign a waiver that if they are fired or quit the job without notice, they only get minimum wages of $5.50 per hour.
To protect yourself from this scam happening to you, do not ever sign this minimum wage waiver! This is happening with more and more staffing agencies and companies. It is a way to scale down on cost and is unjust and unfair to the employee, especially since we live in a "right to work" state, where we as employees, can be fired for absolutely no cause whatsoever!
The woman that trained my colleagues and I did not want to train us to begin with and said so. And also said that any money collected by the trainees, she gets to keep. The entire time I was working for this company, I was reporting this trainer's actions and comments to the staffing agency recruiter at Corestaff, at her request. The whole time I was working, I was encouraged to stay by Corestaff, thinking and being led to believe that no matter what happened, I would have a job and be able to resolve any differences with this woman, with a Corestaff representative intervening as a mediator. So, in short, Corestaff was SUPPOSED to have backed me up. But they didn't! I also alerted this trainer's boss to the problem that I was having with her and nothing satisfactory was done. Well live and learn!
The trainer at ASI systematically fires the employees that she does not like and in turn keeps the monies that they collect. And by doing this, the company and the staffing agency are only obligated to pay minimum wage when the job was supposed to be $10 an hour. The day before I was fired, the trainer had stolen my timecard from the rack so it would appear that I was late coming back from break. Then I was fired for being rude to a customer, when it was a floor trainer (C), who the trainer's boss had set me up with, who took the call at my desk and was rude to to the customer. I asked to hear the call on tape and management refused to allow that. I have tried to deal with the local staffing agency office and their corporate office in Texas, and then they were telling me that I was being fired for midconduct, when no misconduct occurred. The agent from the local Corestaff office said that I was screaming and cussing when I came down the stairs and disrupted the business going on in several other offices. When my legal representative called the said companies and spoke to their management, they did not know what she was talking about. This mistruth was to cover the a$$ of the local staffing agency's office, of course.
Alerting both companies to the experience that I had did not do anything and neither company wanted to come to an acceptable resolution of the problem, including my full pay of $10 an hour that I deserved as I had made money for the company. I feel that the job was misrepresented and the two companies were working together.
I am not the only one that this happened to. Please contact me directly for the details. If this has happened to you with these two companies, we are interested in meeting with you in person to discuss the details. No doubt, there will probably be more employees treated in this way as these two companies keep a revolving door going with new employees, working them for a few days and/or harassing them until they quit or firing them. This sounds like a way to get cheap labor to me and that this is some kind of scam between the two companies. To add insult to injury, when the final check was mailed to me, both companies had shorted me over 3 hours worth of my pay for the week. (Corestaff had the original timecard, as I had given it to them! I also maintain a copy!)
The following statement was from another co-worker with a similar experience at the came company:
I was hired by Corestaff to begin assignment in 7/03 at Audit Systems, Inc. for the purpose of collections. Upon arrival the trainer SW basically told us she had no time for us and that we would sink or swim. SW continually had personal phone calls including a person that she promised to hire on Monday so that she was distracted and interrupted during training. We were told that we would be on the phones the next day. She was particularly verbally abusive to myself and KwikOwl and said that we had no prior experience in this field. She berated KwikOwl, telling her she's never done collections, she just wanted people to be nice to her. SW stated that she did not make any money training people and that she was weeding out the new people. She would make whatever commission from their Promises to Pay. On Tuesday she took the phone from my desk and although two people had told her the other phone was broken she put in on my desk to replace the working phone. I could not transfer any calls to any other agent and this became a problem. The woman in front of my desk said, "You make real enemies by not transferring calls." The release button did not work so I had to hang up, disconnecting the call. SW then became infuriated saying that I did not know my job. She is confused, distracted and I believe she is in the wrong position. I have done my job to the best of my ability and should not be brought down in pay for other's shotcomings. I will proceed with this with the Labor Board. Respectfully, XX
This was a horrible experience and has clouded my impression of the corporate staffing agencies and their mistreatment of employees who are desperate to be working in this economic downturn and within a volatile economy.
See also:
http://www.corestaff.com
