The fitness company Crunch announced last week that it was
opening facilities in Riverside and Upland. The Upland gym is being put in on Mountain Avenue just north of the 10 freeway in the Staples shopping center, and construction is already underway.
However, according to Louis Ontiveros, the company hired to install the dryall was not paying its workers the area's prevailing wage. Although he acknowledged that the contractor was non-union, he also stated that the unionization of workers was not at issue. The concern, he declared, was that workers were being underpaid, and that it is important to stand up to this sort of abuses.
Just a block away, labor defenders have leafletted outside of and called for single-day boycotts of the Fresh & Easy, a British grocery import that, despite making promises that it would respect its US workers the same way it does in Britain, has been reluctant to acknowledge unionization efforts.
Upland bills itself as "the city of gracious living" and is unaccustomed to workers' and other popular struggles occurring within its boundaries. However, in these revolutionary times, with the 99% learning to fight back, even respectable Upland is enjoying a taste of class warfare.
