The Work Release: April

This month, we spotlight what it’s like to work a labor pool job while on probation, and share how we’re organizing for change. Don’t miss our co-director Katherine “Kat” Passley’s feature at the end of the newsletter. In These Times recognized her visionary leadership by naming her one of their inaugural Labor Organizers of the Year, selected by labor veterans Sheri Davis, Jennifer Epps, Nelson Lichtenstein, Victor Narro, and Jane Slaughter.

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On the Clock and On Probation

WRITTEN by Davonte “Tae” Gibbs, Beyond the Bars member

My name is Davontae Gibbs. I was born and raised in Little Haiti, Liberty City area in Miami, Florida. I had a rough life growing up. I didn’t get to be a kid. Everything hit me at an early age. I was pumping gas, selling candy, selling school supplies to bring money back to my family. Like the other kids around me, I wanted to make something of myself. I was a dream chaser, a goal chaser. Ambition was everything.

I got shot in the shoulder and didn’t graduate from high school because of that. That led me deeper into the streets. I ended up going to jail. I got out on house arrest and wasn’t allowed to leave the house except for work. I wanted a 9 to 5 job and applied to a lot of places, but they looked past me because I was facing a felony charge. Employers doubted me and wouldn’t give me the time or training to prove myself. Eventually, my family almost kicked me out because I couldn’t pay my part.

So I started going to labor pools. I went through Labor for Hire and HireQuest Direct. I would go there at 3 or 4 am, and a lot of the time, I would get passed over. When I did get sent out on a ticket, we weren’t treated like regular workers. We were treated like slaves, like something employers could use up and toss overboard. I never had an employment contract and wouldn’t know how much I was going to make until the job was done. Sometimes they’d pay under the table, in cash.

The agencies sent me all over: to North Miami, Wynwood, Downtown, and Miramar. Mostly construction cleanup and demolition, or warehouse jobs. Loading trucks, moving pallets, sweeping job sites. We were given a broom and a shovel. If we needed anything else to keep ourselves safe, like steel-toed boots, safety goggles, or a vest, we had to buy it ourselves. There was no training, not even on dangerous equipment like jackhammers.

Construction and warehouse jobs paid $60 to $70 a day. If we worked at the port, it might be $80 to $100. But all those places were far, and you’d have to pay $50 just to get there and back. After those deductions, you might go home with $30 to $40 in your pocket. What does that show your kids? Your wife? Your mom? I felt like I was losing. I couldn’t move forward. I was stuck.

On top of that, labor pools didn’t always pay us on time. We were supposed to get paid the same day, but sometimes it took two or three. That made me late on rent, and my landlord started talking about evicting me. I was close to being homeless.

Being on probation meant walking a tightrope. I had to pay $25 a week in fees, and when the labor pool didn’t pay me on time, I couldn’t pay, and my officer said he’d violate me. I had to negotiate just to stay free. Probation will violate you for anything, even coming home late from working overtime. They’d show up at my job unannounced, sitting in their car in the parking lot, watching me work.

All of this is why I joined Beyond the Bars. I had to step out of my comfort zone, because staying quiet was just another kind of cage. Changing things starts with using your voice as a weapon, not for violence, but for truth. For justice. For the people coming behind us.

We have to come together, build a team, and stand on something. Nobody is going to hand us dignity. We have to take it for ourselves.

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Tae fights for dignity as a member of our Temp Worker Organizing Committee, one of the ways we're building new forms of worker power under Kat’s leadership. This month, Kat was named one of In These Times’ inaugural Labor Organizers of the Year. Don’t miss her feature and companion piece below!

From Permanent Precarity to Permanent Power

WRITTEN by Katherine Passley, Co-Director

In Florida, the carceral system coerces workers with records into low-wage, precarious jobs by tying their freedom to employment. Background checks bar them from stable work, leaving only the jobs others avoid, quit, or fight to change. At the same time, probation agreements make employment and the payment of court fines and fees a condition of release. Workers with records are destabilized by an economic system that withholds continuity, protections and dignity by design.

Many find work through temp agencies that place them in industrial worksites, construction zones, warehouses and manufacturing facilities. These agencies offer employers cheap, on-demand labor, the power to reassign or discard workers at will, and minimal legal liability. Workers are sent to unfamiliar sites under supervisors they barely know, with no promise of returning the next day. There’s no continuity, no shared identity and no protection. The point is to keep workers too isolated to organize, too replaceable to resist.

At Beyond the Bars, we’re changing that. We’re building peer-led political education programs that inoculate workers against the Right’s attacks and the Left’s broken promises. We’re challenging probation systems that extend punishment into the workplace through mandatory employment requirements, restrictions on work hours and locations, and burdensome fines and fees, all of which can lead to reincarceration if workers are unable to comply.

And we’re taking on the corporate forces that profit from permanent precarity—and the government systems that protect them. Just last month, we stalled SB 1672/HB 6033, a bill backed by corporate giant Pacesetter Personnel Services and pushed by one of Florida’s most powerful lobbyists, Ron Book. The bill would have stripped nearly 1 million temp workers of the few protections they have, like drinking water and a place to sit during the sweltering summer months. But through direct, worker-led organizing, we made legislators feel the heat they thought they could avoid.

Our model blends distributed organizing (where member committees drive decision-making and action) with worker-to-worker organizing that trains temp worker-leaders to spark fights wherever they land. We are generating brush fires that force temp agencies, client companies, and public officials to reckon with the power of organized resistance.

Our leadership development process moves step by step. It begins with participatory research: engaging temp workers, temp agency administrative staff and reentry service providers to map where exploitation concentrates—like agencies clustered near jails, warehouses with high injury rates and job sites with constant turnover. We trace who profits, from subcontractors to brand-name corporations, and identify where fights can ignite: on the job, in probation offices, or through policy campaigns targeting corporate abuse. From there, we train workers to lead direct actions and political education, organize meetings and mobilizations, run campaigns, and ultimately become Strategic Team Leaders who guide new organizers and grow the base.

Our leadership development is intensive because no other institution—not schools, employers or prisons—invests in the leadership potential of workers with records. We see what others refuse to see: the talent, vision and discipline of the criminalized working class. We go beyond individual skill-building to cultivate the capacity for collective struggle.

We know we can’t stop at site fights. Winning a wage theft claim or a fan for an overheated workspace is important, but it doesn’t challenge the broader legal and economic structures that make exploitation possible in the first place.

In the short term, we are developing stronger worker organizing in our region by launching as many workplace fights as possible led by temp workers with records who are ready to challenge exploitation directly.

In the medium term, we are building a permanent base of workers with records who stay organized and politically active even after they leave temp work.

In the long term, we are pushing for greater union density across hyper-exploitative industries.

We’re seeing signs of hope. Even in one of the most repressive labor environments in the country, more unions in Florida are showing interest in organizing low-wage industries. We stand in solidarity with these efforts, always with the leadership of workers with records at the center.

As co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, I can tell you that we are not a service program offering charity or one-off relief. We are developing organizers and fighters with the skills, discipline and collective power to confront and change the conditions of exploitation and criminalization.

Because mass incarceration didn’t just destroy families. It disorganized the working class.

Because Florida’s economy didn’t just “neglect” workers with records. It built its labor supply on their permanent precarity.

At Beyond the Bars, we are organizing workers who were pushed out, locked up and discarded, and we are building their power to lead.

We know the barriers because we live them.

We know the fight because we are in it every day.

And we know that when workers with records organize,

We don’t just survive.

We win.