#I don’t know if it’s because we are predominantly paying by card for meals

[gatheryepens]

Things I’ve learnt whilst being in nyc

[mr-entj]

Any tips or useful resources for a rookie wanting to do more recreational travel in their future, especially to countries in Europe and SE Asia?

There are many different countries and unique cultures in Europe and Southeast Asia so I’m dumping generalized and random travel tips below.

Europe:

Use public transportation whenever possible because it’s safe, convenient, and affordable. Trying to get around the city in a taxi in their teeny tiny streets is usually more expensive and much slower. Also, don’t drive in Italy, it’s like the European automotive version of The Hunger Games.

Pack accordingly; that means clothes, medication, and travel accessories because everything is way more expensive in Europe if you forget something and need to buy it there.

If you buy anything, don’t forget to get a VAT refund before leaving. People miss out on a ton of money forgetting to do this.

TripAdvisor is your friend to look up reviews and recommendations of local spots, Yelp’s not big over there.

When ordering water in restaurants, specify that you want still water or you may get sparkling (carbonated) water instead. Water’s usually not free.

European food portions are 25-50% smaller than American portions, order accordingly with this knowledge to avoid leaving hungry. #Murica

Tipping in restaurants works differently depending on the country, it’s not the usual 18-25% that it is in America. 10% is a safe number but check local tipping etiquette.

Exercise volume control in public (and private) spaces. We’re usually louder than them overall without realizing it.

Whatever country you’re in, eat their bread. Their bread is magical.

Wearing Trump paraphernalia is a great conversation starter to make new friends

There’s a possibility you may arrive in Europe single but accidentally fall in love and marry a European on your way home. It happens from time to time. Just go with it.

Southeast (SE) Asia:

Singapore is the exception to these because it’s basically Asian Wakanda.

SE Asia is predominantly Muslim. Be aware and respectful of local culture when it comes to clothing and conduct.

Get all vaccines prior to going unless malaria and dengue fever are your idea of a good time. The CDC has a great resource for vaccines based on destination.

Pack medication for the following issues: diarrhea/upset stomach, headaches, and motion sickness. Activated charcoal pills are awesome for funky stomach issues. Pack mosquito repellent. Hand sanitizer is your best friend, use it all the time.

It’s hot in the winter and insanely hot in the summer. Be prepared to sweat like crazy and take 2-3 showers per day. Be a global citizen and wear deodorant. 

Bring cash prior to arrival because foreign exchange places are shady, expensive (conversion rates are bad and fees are high), or shady and expensive (as is the case in Asia). I typically bring $1,000 USD for every 1 week of travel per person but only keep $100 in my wallet when I go out into the city and leave the rest in my suitcase in the hotel locked, bolted, and hidden away.

Drink only bottled water, don’t drink from the tap. Tap water isn’t sanitary in SE Asia and anything that touches it or uses it as an ingredient will destroy your weak first world country stomach. This includes being careful when brushing your teeth. Order bottled water in restaurants.

Avoid street food, especially anything that’s uncooked (i.e. iced drinks, fresh fruit, shaved ice, cold desserts, etc.) because food safety isn’t strictly enforced in SE Asia. If you must eat street food, make sure it’s cooked thoroughly (i.e. fried foods).

Aside from that, try the local cuisine because it’s incredible. SE Asian exotic fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and flavors are unmatched. Try as much as you can while there. Eat everything.

If you have a friend/colleague/family member local to that country and who speaks the language, then have him/her buy all the tickets to attractions, museums, national parks, etc. Foreigners are often charged more money for these same tickets.

If you’re an adventurer who likes to go off the beaten path into more rural areas, then pack some toilet paper. Public restrooms there may not have normal flushing toilets, but instead holes in the grounds with a water hose or water bucket to wash your butt. You’re welcome.

If you go on a tour, the restaurants the tour group selects for meals are usually overpriced because they get kickbacks. Look around the area for better and cheaper alternatives.

General:

Most of my business travel tips apply to leisure travel.

Get all necessary visas before traveling. Don’t assume that an American passport will get you in everywhere (especially in Asia) or through certain countries in passing. We once got thrown out of the Czech Republic in ‘98 because of this oversight.

Bring a credit card without international fees because 1-5% fees add up quickly over the course of a trip. Before leaving, call the credit card company and let them know all travel dates so they don’t accidentally flag international transactions as suspicious (possible fraud) and freeze the card.

Activate an international data plan (ex: AT&T) while traveling overseas. Call and request this feature before you board the plane so it’s activated by landing. This will spare you the sticker shock of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in roaming fees.

Bring a universal travel adapter and a power bank (up to 20,000 mAh) to charge your phone while out and about. Your smartphone is your lifeline in a foreign country for communication, navigation, and sometimes payment. Make sure it’s always charged.

For hotels and accommodations, it’s better to pay a little bit more money and book something closer to the center of the city than to pay less but stay farther away. The traffic (time) and transportation costs (money) going to and from the city will add up to more than what you initially saved. This is especially true in SE Asia where traffic is insane. Airbnb is a great option.

Don’t bring your passport with you when out and about, it’s going to get lost, and then you’re going to spend an entire day at the consulate dealing with disgruntled government employees and trying to prove you’re not trying to illegally immigrate into your home country. Leave it locked in your suitcase.

[shirlleycoyle]

HelloFresh Workers Are Unionizing the Booming Meal-Kit Industry

Last year, HelloFresh, the popular food-kit delivery company that advertises technologically innovative and sustainable approaches to cooking, sold 278 million meals to Americans and doubled its U.S. revenue to $2.4 billion. But on HelloFresh's assembly lines, workers were unable to afford rent, suffered serious injuries, and were subjected to timers when they used the bathroom, according to workers interviewed by Motherboard. 

Now 1,300 HelloFresh workers—intent on improving dire circumstances—are unionizing two HelloFresh factory kitchens in Colorado and California.

On Tuesday, UNITE HERE, the national hospitality and service industry union, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking to authorize a vote by workers at the kitchen factory in Aurora, Colorado. HelloFresh workers at the Richmond, California, facility in the Bay Area are signing up for the union in droves, according to UNITE HERE. 

"We are struggling financially. There are a lot of people who don’t know how to meet income requirements to rent apartments."

If HelloFresh workers vote to unionize, they would be the first in the booming meal-kit industry, which includes Blue Apron, Sun Basket, and Martha & Marley Spoon, to do so. Founded in 2011 in Germany, HelloFresh is now the largest meal-kit company in the United States. The service—which includes user-friendly instruction cards for each meal—is marketed to white-collar professionals, in particular women, short on time for grocery shopping and planning recipes.

"We want to break the cycle that so many of us at HelloFresh are under," Mary Williams, a 26-year-old pack line worker at the Aurora site who earns $15 an hour, told Motherboard. "It's a cycle of low-paying work and having to work back-to-back jobs. We believe that having a union will really change things." 

Williams packs between 600 and 1,000 HelloFresh boxes a day, and says that in recent months, her assembly line, which is supposed to have seven workers, has been expected to meet the same quotas with only four workers, due to staffing difficulties. She feels discouraged from taking water breaks because the burden would fall on her coworkers to pick up the slack. When she uses the bathroom, which involves removing hairnets, jackets, and gloves, her supervisor sets a 10-minute timer. 

"Now that the economy is open and people are getting new jobs, we’re low staffed," said Mary. "We have four people on the line doing double the work."

Williams and her sister, Sarah—who both work on the assembly line stuffing cardboard insulation, ice packs, meat, and prepared food kits into boxes—lost their jobs in the hospitality industry during the pandemic and came to work at HelloFresh in November. But unable to afford rent on their HelloFresh income, they had to move out of a rented studio apartment and live with their parents. 

"We are struggling financially," said Mary. "There are a lot of people who are in similar situations who had to move in with parents during Covid and people who don’t know how to meet income requirements to rent apartments."

Multiple workers at both the Richmond and Aurora facilities have shared with UNITE HERE organizers that they are homeless and cannot afford rent with HelloFresh wages. 

"You’re drowning on these wages when you have a family. I have four kids and I support three of them," said Michael Simon, a heavy lifter on a carrot-processing machine at the Richmond facility. "I sacrifice buying new clothes and I can't fill up my gas tank all the way. It’s frustrating when you can’t take your kid to do simple stuff like go to Chuck E Cheese and Party City."

Lily Vasquez, who works on the “kitting line,” stuffing fresh produce and other ingredients into plastic bags, at the HelloFresh factory in Richmond, said she wants to unionize to increase her pay and address concerns about health and safety at the factory. She suffers chronic pain in her neck, back, and shoulders from repeating the same motions thousands of times.

"Lots of us are excited. We are sure a union is what we want and what we need to have the change we need to make," Vasquez said in Spanish. “I am worried for a lot of the people working at HelloFresh. A lot of us have injured hands and pain in our feet, but we work through the pain because we won’t get paid if we go home. We need this change immediately and I know we are going to achieve it."

HelloFresh workers in Aurora and Richmond say anti-union consultants have visited and held mandatory anti-union meetings in recent days. Workers say Kulture Consulting, an anti-union firm known for spreading right-wing conspiracy theories and fighting union drives at Coca-Cola and AT&T, was present in the Colorado facility earlier this summer. 

"On Monday, we went to one of these meetings, and the consultant that HelloFresh hired goes on to say unions are bad and manipulate and lie to you," said Sarah Williams.

In its 2021 code of ethics, HelloFresh touts its commitment to workers’ rights, sustainability, and universal access to healthy food. "We are aware of our responsibility and the importance of promoting human rights and the rights of workers throughout our operations," the company says. "We support the principles established under the International Bill of Human Rights as well as the International Labor Organization."

On June 16, an unmoored several-hundred-pound pallet full of plastic bins fell approximately 25 feet onto four quality-control workers in Aurora, trapping them and sending two seriously injured workers in ambulances to the hospital for treatment, according to a series of witness statements collected by UNITE HERE. 

Workers say this was the fourth time a pallet had fallen in four months because they weren't secured with brackets or rope.

"There was a meeting that was called after the accident to tell us to stop 'gossiping' about our concerns," said Mary Williams. 

A spokesperson from HelloFresh said it is inaccurate to report that a several-hundred-pound pallet caused the incident. "We took the incident very seriously, but the item that was involved was smaller," the spokesperson said. "Immediately following the incident, we partnered with OSHA and subsequently added enhanced safety measures."

Vasquez, a 48-year-old single mom, earns $18.50 an hour as a line lead after five years at HelloFresh, but says it’s not enough to support her son and mother in the Bay Area. 

"My brother is a big support; he helps me when I need something,'' Vasquez said. "But why should I be asking for help from my brother?"

Last year, at least 171 workers tested positive for COVID-19 at the HelloFresh facility in Richmond, making it the largest COVID-19 outbreak to date in Contra Costa County, according to public records obtained by UNITE HERE. When Vasquez and her son tested positive for COVID, she says she called management repeatedly to inform them but never got a response.   

"Lots of us are excited. We are sure a union is what we want and what we need to have the change we need to make.”

The majority of workers at the HelloFresh facilities in Colorado and California are people of color, according to UNITE HERE—many of them Latinx, African-American, and Pacific Islander. Workers in Aurora say supervisors and managers are predominantly white men. 

"HelloFresh workers came to us and we responded," D Taylor, the president of UNITE HERE, told Motherboard. "A German company has come to the United States and set up factories and made enormous profits—became the pandemic profiteer—and workers came to us because of health and safety issues. ​

"We want to organize workers in our industry who are being exploited and don’t have a say on the job. This is not the first or the last time," Taylor said. "We know that many companies that promote progressive ideas have a problem and will fight workers tooth and nail in order to keep a union out." 

HelloFresh Workers Are Unionizing the Booming Meal-Kit Industry syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/