One of the key aspects of work is that you get paid for it. It’s kind of a non-negotiable. Or else it would be called volunteering, and we’d get to leave whenever we wanted. But some employers don’t seem to understand this, or else don’t care that that’s the whole conceit. Plus, there are laws in place to help make sure that we’re being fairly compensated for our work. Employment law is there to have our backs when our employers let us down.

But more than that, we have our fellow workers. It’s a great thing if you can all be in it together, keeping the higher-ups accountable. That’s why unions work. There is power in numbers. But even if you don’t have a formal union, there are ways to band together as workers that shouldn’t go unnoticed. That’s what happened in this story, when an employer tried to pull a pretty insane stunt. But the workers realized what power they had if they came together, and made some actual change. Their employer wasn’t happy with the result, however.