Tom Woodruff, the director of Change to Win's Strategic Organizing Center and an Executive VP at SEIU, has a piece in the Huffington Post that paints a picture of just how hard the economic crisis has hit workers in California's Inland Empire, where unemployment is above 12 percent:

The area's fractured employment model has turned a recession into a depression. There are now tens of thousands of laid off warehouse workers with no unemployment, no safety net at all, just barely getting by.

As conditions worsen in the Inland Empire, the big retail companies that created the broken business model have not accepted responsibility for the damage they have done...This is typical of an industry that has not acknowledged responsibility for any part of its supply chain, from the workers in the factories in China and Southeast Asia to the temp warehouse workers in the Inland Empire to the retail staff working for the minimum wage.

Even when the economy recovers, there will still be no hope of achieving the American Dream for the warehouse workers unless the system is changed. It is time for Wal-mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, and Sears/Kmart to take responsibility for the workers who helped them become so profitable and to treat them with dignity and respect

The Employee Free Choice Act would help improve these dismal conditions and ensure California's workers have the freedom to form unions to rebuild our middle class. After all, why shouldn't these workers be able to share in the increasing wealth and prosperity created by their work?

Read Woodruff's entire article here.

Flickr photo courtesy of Mr. Wright, under Creative Commons license