Warehouses have one of the highest fatality rates & twice the injury rate of any other industry—more than construction & coal mining.

“Volunteers” at @spdbooks almost exclusively perform warehouse labor—the most dangerous work in this industry—for free.

This is exploitation.

SPD doesn’t just use unpaid manual warehouse labor; they depend on it.

Note the # of volunteers vs. # of employees on SPD's tax documents.

Again, despite what SPD’s description suggests, volunteers are overwhelmingly placed in the warehouse.

https://www.open990.org/org/943042614/small-press-distribution-inc/

SPD’s systematic exploitation is known, facilitated, & justified by each and every person in a position of leadership.

They don’t try to hide this.

For instance, this is the first question always asked in their intern interview series:

https://smallpressdistribution.tumblr.com/tagged/THE-TRUTH-ABOUT-SPD-INTERVIEW

SPD “survives” by cycling through unpaid & underpaid workers.

It is not a coincidence that immediately after workers found out their wages had been stolen, managers Trisha Low & Jane Gregory, with the ED’s approval, started to onboard and cross-train interns.

In April, Trisha organized SPD’s GoFundMe. She was perfectly fine asking the public for $100,000 for payroll & publishers—without disclosing SPD’s labor violations, wage theft, retaliation, etc. On the contrary, Trisha stressed SPD’s ethical stance:
http://bit.ly/2KtIGnQ 

Trisha’s pitch expands on SPD’s mission statement of serving “underrepresented literary communities.” Sadly, SPD exploits the labor of “underrepresented writers, queer and of color, activists & artists” from those very communities. http://bit.ly/3oVLR6K 

In May, the ED promoted a patently false narrative of the workplace: “Staff reductions are really the worst for a small staff with intensely-held values around social justice and **fair labor practices** so hiring again will be a hard trigger to pull.” http://bit.ly/3h2boZz 

In a @KQED article that same month, Trisha Low all but dismissed the question of whether it was “Amazon-like” to operate during the pandemic.

Her justification?

SPD’s “obligation to publishers.”

http://bit.ly/3mqWdtM