Home Depot Worker Wears 'America Was Never Great' Hat

Locutus

Locutus

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Photo Of Home Depot Employee Wearing "America Was Never Great" Hat Sparks Outrage http://gothamist.com/2016/05/19/america_was_never_great_hat.php …



STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An image of a Staten Island Home Depot worker wearing an anti-Trump hat went viral on the Internet Wednesday, leading to threats against her life.

Krystal Lake, 22, of St. George, was spotted wearing the controversial hat during her Sunday morning shift at Home Depot, located on Forest Avenue in Mariners Harbor.

The hat reads: "AMERICA WAS NEVER GREAT."

The phrasing, Lake said, was inspired by presidential candidate Donald Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again."

"The point of the hat was to say America needs changing and improvement," Lake told the Advance. "I don't think it's a positive message to say, "Let's look to the past.'"

Lake said she awoke Wednesday morning to a barrage of text messages, tweets and phone calls from friends and co-workers asking her if she had been checking her social media accounts.

"Everyone kept asking me if I was on Facebook or Twitter, which I hadn't been," she said, "and then I saw how many people were sharing [the picture] and that it was going viral.

"I was honestly shocked -- I didn't expect any of this to happen."

Lake, a lifelong Staten Islander and student at the College of Staten Island, said this was the first and only time she had worn the hat to work, and that she was not reprimanded by any manager for the decision to wear it.

When reached by the Advance on Wednesday afternoon, Home Depot spokesman Stephan Holmes said Lake's message on her hat does not reflect the opinions of Home Depot.

"We appreciate and understand the concerns of our loyal customers," he said. "In terms of the message, our associates are not permitted to wear items that reflect political statements.

"Unfortunately, no one on our management team saw her wearing the hat -- otherwise, they would have had her remove it immediately."


mo


Home Depot worker's 'America was never great' hat sparks social media rage | SILive.com
 
T

tay

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She's too young to remember the pre free trade eras.......
 
T

tay

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The rise of low-wage business models in the service sector has often been contrasted to business models of the past, when blue collar jobs in the manufacturing industry supported a large middle class in the United States.

Much attention has been given in recent years to low-wage work in the fast-food industry, big-box retail, and other service sector industries in the U.S.

Recent research by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), however, found that manufacturing production wages now rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the United States. In decades past, production workers employed in manufacturing earned wages significantly higher than the U.S. average, but by 2013 the typical manufacturing production worker made 7.7 percent below the median wage for all occupations. During the same time period productivity in the U.S. manufacturing sector increased at a rate one-third higher than in the private, non-farm economy overall. The median wage for production workers in the manufacturing industry in 2013 was $15.66, with 25 percent of these workers earning $11.91 or less. The NELP researchers also found that, since 1989, there has been a significant increase in hiring of frontline production workers through temporary staffing agencies, where the wages are often lower and the work more precarious.

When a day’s labor no longer affords the basic necessities, working Americans rely on public assistance programs funded by U.S. taxpayers to close the gap. Recent research by David Autor and colleagues has documented the impact of increased exposure to trade from low-wage countries on wages and use of safety net programs. In this research brief we estimate the public cost of low wages in frontline production jobs in the manufacturing industry by detailing state and federal expenditures on safety net programs for workers in this industry and their families. This brief is the latest in a series that explores the pressures placed on safety net programs by low-wage industries.

For this analysis we focus on jobs held by frontline manufacturing production workers, defined as non-supervisorial production workers who work at least 10 hours per week for at least 27 weeks per year either directly in the manufacturing industry, or in production occupations highly associated with manufacturing in staffing agencies. We analyze utilization rates and costs in the five largest means-tested public benefit programs for which data is available: Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and basic household income assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF).


Key Findings

Producing Poverty: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Production Jobs in Manufacturing | Center for Labor Research and Education

One in three U.S. manufacturing workers is on public aid, study shows | Berkeley News
 
B00Mer

B00Mer

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Well she may be Right, I mean when was America Great anyhow, and for who??

Was it great in the 50's with segregation, or maybe in the 1800's with Salvers and killing Indians.

I'm going to say America was great anytime before 1492.
 
TenPenny

TenPenny

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If Home Depot says that employees are not allowed to wear political statements at work, they'll have to check everyone closely every day.
 
R

Remington1

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This is stupid and I would have fired her ***. If I ever see an employee with "Canada was never Great" hat, I'm personally going to pay for their ticket to Zabbaleen, Rajasthan or Karachi; they can choose! live there for a few years. Enough stupidity, grow a ****ing brain.
 
lone wolf

lone wolf

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Remington1 said:
This is stupid and I would have fired her ***. If I ever see an employee with "Canada was never Great" hat, I'm personally going to pay for their ticket to Zabbaleen, Rajasthan or Karachi; they can choose! live there for a few years. Enough stupidity, grow a ****ing brain.
Click to expand...
Where have you seen the word Great in Canada's name? You might be able to pull off the act in Britain though ... or maybe Sudbury. Semantics, eh?
 
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