VRWC War on Employees: "Working Families Flexibility Act."

[boutons_deux]

esp War on the Working Poor


In screwed news... Republicans want to eliminate your overtime pay.

A new $20,000 ad campaign targets working women, telling them to support the deceptively named "Working Families Flexibility Act." Originally a Paul Ryan brain child, this legislation would remove the requirement to pay someone time-and-a-half when they work over 40 hours per week, in exchange for so-called "compensatory time off." The major catch – when and how that time off can be used would be determined by your employer. The ad campaign will be featured on more than 100 websites that are typically frequented by woman, and the ads focus on the bogus benefit of not having "to choose between work and family." The fact is, employers can already offer flex-time scheduling, and many already do. A worker shouldn't have to give up a federally protected employment right to get that benefit. This ad campaign – and the legislation it's supporting – is a complete sham.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16118-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-republicans-want-to-eliminate-your-overtime-pay-and-more


There Goes the GOP Again, Trying to Pretend They Like Working Moms

Hourly workers are currently entitled to overtime pay: they must receive 1.5 times their regular hourly rate for any time they work over 40 hours in a week. A federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act (http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/statutes/FairLaborStandAct.pdf), guarantees that right.
Employers have two legal ways to control wage costs, both of which protect employees. One is to spread work around, so fewer people have to work overtime and people working less than full-time get the chance to work 40 hours a week.

The other is to hire more people so the employer doesn’t have to make any employees work more than 40 hours in a week.

That was part of the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act: it creates an incentive for employers to hire more workers, which reduces unemployment, and it creates a disincentive to prevent forcing employees to work too many hours.

Let’s talk dollars and cents. Say I make $10 an hour working for Company, and last week my supervisor required me to work 50 hours. That means Company owes me $15 for each of the extra 10 hours I worked last week: 150 bucks. Nice.
You work for Cheapo Co. across the road. You also worked 50 hours last week at your $10 an hour job. Cheapo doesn’t want to pay 150 bucks, and the Republicans are on their side, what with Cheapo being a job creator and all.

The Republicans have created a proposal to change the Fair Labor Standards Act so that Cheapo doesn’t have to pay you. It’s called the “Working Families Flexibility Act” (WFFA, H.R. 1406 in Congress), and it would give employers the choice of compensating employees for overtime either with overtime pay or with comp time.

They are branding WFFA as a gift to working moms, rolling out an ad campaign on mommy blogs (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/30/1943461/gop-targets-women-with-ads-for-bill-that-would-weaken-overtime-pay/) promising them more choice in setting their schedule and more freedom to change it for unexpected emergencies, like a child’s sudden illness. Mommies, the Republicans are saying, if you have more time, you can manage that work/life balance problem we keep hearing about.

If only it were that easy. First let’s follow the money: comp time means you don’t get your 150 bucks overtime pay. Instead you get 10 free hours – unpaid. If you didn’t have that comp time, you would work those ten hours at $10 per hour and earn $100 – on top of the $150 you would get for the overtime. Add it up and you can see that by requiring overtime pay instead of comp time, the current law nets you $250. The Republicans would let Cheapo keep your $250 in its own pocket.

Also, because the comp time is not overtime and therefore is worth only $100, it compensates you less than the overtime pay, which would be $150.

The problems with WFFA go beyond money. It says that a worker gets overtime pay unless she and the boss agree on comp time instead. Do you think the managers at Cheapo, who don’t want to compensate that worker at all, will look kindly (http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=39009) on her if they ask her to take comp time and she refuses and insists on overtime pay? I think that she is so out of there. Bye-bye, job.

In reality, scuzzy employers like Cheapo will have the power to force comp time on workers who really need the overtime pay. They will feel free to force those workers to take the comp time when it is convenient for the company; the rosy picture the Republicans paint of a comp time bank that employees can dip into for doctor appointments or any other time they need it is likely to be the unusual arrangement, not the norm.

If I sound overly harsh on employers, it is because I spent years as a lawyer suing them for stealing people’s pay. They just wouldn’t pay for overtime. They would monkey with the hours records and then say that people didn’t work any overtime. They would retaliate against employees who complained, often by firing them.

If Congress really wants to help Mary out with some family flexibility, they should make it up to her alone whether she wants comp time, make it up to her when she takes it, and hire thousands more people in the Department of Labor to make sure the Cheapos out there obey those parts of the law. Otherwise, the WFFA, or H.R. 1406, is a gift to scuzzy employers and one more kick in the teeth for the working class.

http://www.care2.com/causes/there-goes-the-gop-again-trying-to-pretend-they-like-working-moms.html


( How to Intimidate, Screw Harder, Deeper ) Working Families Flexibility Act

[boutons_deux]

Pennsylvania Legislator Introduces Bill That Would Block Paid Sick Days (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/10/24/2828431/pennsylvania-paid-sick-days-preemption/)

On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Rep. Seth Grove (R) introduced a bill in the state House (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/billinfo.cfm?syear=2013&sind=0&body=H&type=B&bn=1807) that would block cities and local governments in the state (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20130&cosponId=13331) from implementing paid sick days bills or other forms of paid leave that aren’t already guaranteed at the state level.

“Preemption laws limit the rights and voices of voters and local lawmakers. In cities and counties, we know how to determine what’s best for our local communities and work places.” She also noted that “voters statewide are mobilizing in opposition to this proposal.”

A similar bill to Pennsylvania’s was introduced in North Carolina (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/20/2491931/north-carolina-may-throw-a-wrench-into-paid-sick-leave/) in August, and in June Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a statewide ban (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/17/2165671/rick-scott-paid-sick-leave/) that was backed by big business. These laws have been introduced in at least 14 different state legislatures (http://familyvaluesatwork.org/blog/paid-sick-days/how-corporate-giants-try-to-suppress-democracy), not including Pennsylvania, and enacted in eight: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

The bills have been fueled by the efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a coalition of big business interests and conservative legislators,

Opponents of paid sick days often claim that they will be an unbearable cost on businesses, but the evidence suggest otherwise. Job growth has been stronger under Seattle’s law (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/18/2640401/seattle-paid-sick-days/) and business growth has also remained strong. San Francisco’s has also spurred job growth (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/14/1596881/paid-sick-leave-no-job-loss/) and enjoys strong business support (http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/San-Fran-PSD). Washington DC’s (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/20/2187761/dc-paid-sick-leave/) and Connecticut’s (http://www.epi.org/publication/pm177/) have come at little cost. On the other hand, the average employer loses $225 per employee each year (http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/PSD_FactSheet_BustingMyths_080926.pdf?docID=4181) due to the lost productivity of sick workers who don’t have access to paid leave. The laws are also effective at curbing outbreaks (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/23/2825981/workers-come-sick/) such as the flu.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/10/24/2828431/pennsylvania-paid-sick-days-preemption/

[boutons_deux]

Note that extremely profitable Boeing just extorted concessions from the machinists' union (aka "screwing the middle class"), and from state of WA for many $Bs in tax breaks through 2040.

"the legislature in Washington state agreed to give Boeing $8.7 billion in tax breaks through 2040 (http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022245449_westneat13xml.html)"


http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1465028/original.jpg


The Corporate-American War on Human-American Employees continues and will worsen.

Corporations continue to bitch-slap govts into submission for $Bs in tax breaks and subsidies, continue to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to finance the society they depend on.

and here's what Boeing was extorting from states bidding for the 777x factory:

"Among Boeing’s demands, according to confidential documents leaked to the press:


• “Site at no cost, or very low cost, to project.”

• “Facilities at no cost, or significantly reduced cost.”

• “Infrastructure improvements provided by the location.”

• Public subsidies for “procuring equipment/tooling” and in “recruiting, evaluating and training” employees

• “Entire applicable tax structure including corporate income tax, franchise tax, property tax, sales/use tax, business license/gross receipts tax and excise taxes to be significantly reduced.”


In other words, hard-pressed taxpayers are being asked to provide a free site, build a free factory, finance all infrastructure for the plant, train workers for the plant, buy equipment for the plant and pretty much surrender all tax revenue that the plant might generate. This, to benefit a company that projects a profit of $6.7 billion in 2013 and whose stock price has soared 77 percent in the past year."

http://www.nationalmemo.com/new-study-10-10-minimum-wage-could-lift-millions-out-of-poverty/

[boutons_deux]

Corporations lead taxpayers to the shearing


Here's a business practice likely to keep booming in 2014: corporate extortion.

We don't mean extortion of corporations, as is practiced by Somali pirates or entrepreneurial Russians. We mean extortion by corporations.

In this field the victims are taxpayers, and what makes it a beautiful business is that the taxpayers think they're getting a great deal, even as they're led to the shearing. And a lucrative shearing it is, for business: By the estimate of the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, state and local tax incentives funnel $50 billion in tax revenue into corporate coffers (http://bit.ly/1ixCsxe) every year. On a national basis, ITEP says, this is worse than a zero-sum game: The incentives are "much more likely to reshuffle investment between geographic areas than … to spur genuinely new economic activity."

The trendsetter for the coming year may turn out to be Boeing. The aerospace company has been dangling the prospect of a big airliner production facility in front of several states, including California, since mid-November. That's when union machinists in Everett, Wash., rejected its demands for big concessions on pension and healthcare benefits. The process started only days after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed the biggest state tax break in history (http://bit.ly/1iAHMQm) into law — a package that will give Boeing up to $8.7 billion in benefits through 2040.

Boeing's shopping the production program to other states goaded the International Assn. of Machinists to schedule a second vote Friday. As this column went to press the results were unavailable. The company said it would keep much of the production of its new 777X airliner in Everett if the contract passes, though some work may go to other locations anyway.

"What I've heard is that we're still in the running," Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) told me. Lowenthal, who says he's spoken with Boeing executives, says that would be true even if the machinists approved the new contract.

So the competition may continue in some form, whatever the outcome of the union vote. The company's specifications for an alternative site are exacting. Its "desired incentives," according to a Seattle Times report (http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2022401328_boeing777xrfpxml.html) on the confidential list, include a plant "at no cost, or very low cost," to the company; infrastructure improvements such as rail and highway access at the expense of the bidder; and "significantly reduced" income, property, excise and sales taxes.

But Boeing is also looking for a workforce of high quality and productivity, which usually results from good educational systems, which in turn have to be paid for with, you know, income, property, excise and sales taxes. It is also seeking to cut its pension contributions to employees.

In other words, this global manufacturer wants all the good things that come from excellent physical and educational infrastructures, but wants someone else to pay. By the way, the company also wants to pay low wages. Who wouldn't want to live in Boeing's nirvana? Great infrastructure, an educated workforce — and all at minimal cost.

It's proper to observe that Boeing is a veteran at such scheming. Back in 2001 it held a nationwide auction for the right to host its corporate headquarters, which it had decided to relocate from Seattle. The company said its rationale was to shed its image as a maker of commercial airliners, which it built in Washington state, and reposition itself as a diversified aerospace company. A laudable goal, no doubt, but does anybody really believe that its ultimate choice of Chicago had nothing to do with the $60 million in tax breaks and other giveaways to be parceled out over 20 years by the state of Illinois?

Despite the discrepancy between what Boeing wants and what it will pay for, state and local governments have fallen all over themselves crafting incentive packages to lure it from Washington state. Missouri, which is hoping that Boeing will expand the St. Louis facilities it acquired by taking over McDonnell Douglas in 1997, is offering as much as $1.74 billion, not counting whatever breaks the company can extract from local jurisdictions in the area.

California has assembled its own package in the name of keeping Boeing in Long Beach, another former McDonnell Douglas location where production of the C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet will be wrapping up next year. The 777X project could last until 2020.

So far, California's offer is being kept a secret between Gov. Jerry Brown's office and Boeing. "Our office has not shared the proposal," Brook Taylor, a spokesman for the governor's business development staff, told me by email. Well, not shared it with the taxpayers who would be fronting the bennies. That's one way of avoiding the embarrassment of public skepticism, as when Missouri's largest newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, labeled that state's process "legalized bribery." (http://bit.ly/1a4w10e) But if you're preparing to give away the farm, as Brown could be (for all we know), shouldn't you let the farmers in on the news first?

Lowenthal, for his part, urges the governor and Legislature to devise a strong package to attract a program he says would be "an amazing coup for Southern California." What's the limit? He won't say. "You don't give up your values or do something stupid, but you have to see what it will take."

The last year has brought encouraging signs that some states and municipalities are fed up with being held up. Cupertino, Calif., for example, pared back its 1997-vintage sales tax rebate to Apple in November, even as Apple was presenting plans for a huge new headquarters complex in the Silicon Valley community.

The original deal, crafted when the company was flirting with bankruptcy, required Cupertino to rebate 50% of the sales taxes it collected on Apple-related purchases. Now that Apple is one of the world's most successful consumer companies, the new deal rebates only 35%. As my colleague Chris O'Brien reported in November, (http://lat.ms/1dsbaEA) the new deal could be worth nearly $2 million a year to Cupertino at the outset and much more as the headquarters expansion unfurls.

Illinois, which rolled out that cherry-red carpet for Boeing more than a decade ago, refused to do the same last month for the commodity firm Archer Daniels Midland, which was hoping to obtain as much as $30 million in payroll tax incentives to move its world headquarters to Chicago from Decatur, Ill.

The deal ran into resistance from Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic legislators, who became sensitive to the spectacle of handing out millions in corporate welfare while demanding pension cutbacks from public employees. "I find it very difficult (http://bit.ly/1lDv2pn) to support tax giveaways for corporate CEOs and millionaire shareholders," said state House Speaker Michael Madigan, "while middle-class families and taxpayers face an increasing number of burdens."

The state also turned down incentives for Office Depot, which merged last year with Illinois-based OfficeMax. The merged office supply company will move its corporate headquarters to Florida, the home of the pre-merger Office Depot. But Archer Daniels Midland will go through with its relocation to Chicago, albeit at a smaller scale than it originally planned.

That's a signal that tax abatements and other incentives often play a smaller role in corporate siting decisions than the companies let on — though they're not above squeezing cities and states for everything they can get. The most recent survey of corporate relocation consultants (http://www.siteselection.com/issues/2014/jan/ss-survey.cfm) by Site Selection magazine identified the availability of a "skilled" and "qualified" workforce as the most important factor, followed by transportation infrastructure and proximity to clients and markets.

Incentives ranked further down the list. The consultants said that "incentives should never be the major driver of a location decision, although they can play a decisive role later in a project to tip the scales between locations that otherwise fulfill all requirements," the magazine reported.

Still, politicians' faith in the magic of industrial incentives is hard to shake. A perfect example is the film incentive, which has gotten etched into the tax code of dozens of states despite consistent evidence that the giveaways to movie and television producers cost more than they deliver in terms of economic development.

In California, where the Legislature is under pressure to expand the state's film incentive program as much as fourfold from its current budget of $100 million a year, no objective study has shown that the program produces more revenue than it spends. The only study to make that claim, by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., was financed by the incentive-hungry Motion Picture Assn. of America. (Cannily, the LAEDC's study didn't disclose the MPAA's role. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/20/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110720.))

Even worse, as my colleague Richard Verrier recently reported, the film incentives have become the grist of a nationwide trade in tax breaks (http://lat.ms/1gt1ieC) worth as much as $1.5 billion a year.

A Hollywood producer snags a few million in credits to shoot a picture in Georgia, Pennsylvania or Illinois, say, then sells them to a middleman who hawks them in turn to Kohl's, or Macy's, or Bank of America, or the power plant company Exelon.

The studio gets its money more quickly than if it had to wait for a tax refund. The buyers cut their state tax bills as much as 15%. The middleman makes a profit.
Everybody wins, its seems — except for taxpayers, who get hosed.

Such is the natural harvest of a system that hands out tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and other benefits to business just for the asking. You get to the point where no smart businessman will make a move without expecting a payoff. As long as politicians aren't smart enough to turn them away, why should they expect anything different?

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-78768447/

[boutons_deux]

The "Skills Gap" Is a Convenient Myth

Haven't seen too many "Help Wanted" signs lately? You haven't been looking hard enough. At factories across the country, thousands of good jobs are going begging.
If that doesn’t sound quite right to you, take it up with the National Association of Manufacturers. NAM and other industry groups insist at least 600,000 factory positions remain open (http://www.nam.org/~/media/AF4039988F9241C09218152A709CD06D.ashx).

These vacancies are supposed to be the result of a “skills gap”—a shortage of workers with the right stuff for today’s high-tech factories. The gap looms large in high-level discussions of what ails the American economy—and it drives much public policy.

“America wants a country that builds things,” says Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/10/04/manufacturing-day-highlights-the-skills-gap-faced-by-american-business), industry’s leading skills gap spokesman (and board chair of the NAM), “but we have a problem. We don’t have the people we need.”

Politicians of both parties echo this refrain. “Businesses cannot find workers with the right skills,” says Democratic Senator Dick Durbin (http://www.durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=0e570e89-0e2a-434a-b9b4-1621b0c0ba46), and Republican Senator Rob Portman agrees (http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/columns?ID=337938a7-d81d-4151-9056-4e81e9da6a44): “Let’s close the skills gap and get Americans working again.”

President Obama, too, maintains (http://www.ler.illinois.edu/labor/images/LEP%20Briefing%20Paper-%20Skills%20Gap_%20Dickson%20Manzo%20Bruno.pdf) that America’s manufacturers “cannot find enough workers with the proper skills.”

Such bipartisan agreement is reflected in budget priorities. Retraining is a touchstone for the Obama White House (http://www.propublica.org/article/rare-agreement-obama-romney-ryan-endorse-retraining-for-jobless-but-are-the), and since the president took office more than 18 billion federal dollars (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304708604577502622351827932) have gone to job training programs. Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin recently committed $8.5 million to training (http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-gop-legislators-to-focus-on-job-training-in-fall-session-b99105665z1-225136912.html).

Although unemployment remains high, the political focus has shifted away from creating new jobs. Instead it’s on retooling our education system to align with the skilled positions said to be already out there.

Just one hitch: there’s little evidence a “skills gap” exists.

WHY ARE WAGES STAGNANT?

A host of academic studies (http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/skillsgap_2013-2.pdf) have debunked the notion (http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0113/PennGaz0113_feature2.pdf)—but you don’t need a Ph.D. to figure it out. You just need to recognize the law of supply and demand.

“It’s hard not to break out laughing,” one economist noted (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html?ref=magazine&_r=3&) recently. “If there’s a skills shortage, there has to be rises in wages [for skilled workers]. It’s basic economics.”

Yet wages in manufacturing—even for skilled workers—are stagnant at best (http://progressive.org/skills-gap-myth).

Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the Wharton School of Business, hears frequent complaints from manufacturers claiming they can’t find enough machinists. “Yet,” Cappelli notes (https://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=28388), “the pay for those positions has dropped 20 percent in real terms over the past 20 years, while skill requirements for many of those jobs have indeed risen.”
Studies from Illinois (http://www.ler.illinois.edu/labor/images/LEP%20Briefing%20Paper-%20Skills%20Gap_%20Dickson%20Manzo%20Bruno.pdf) and Wisconsin (http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/skillsgap_2013-2.pdf) on welding jobs—where employers often cite shortages of available workers—demonstrate that welders’ wages, as well, have decreased over the past decade, and there are thousands more unemployed welders looking for work than there are projected openings.

When skilled slots do go unfilled, it’s because employers seek high-value workers at discount rates.

“We’ve probably all seen the TV shows where new homebuyers go out to look for a new house,” Cappelli says (https://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=28388), “and they always are shocked to discover they cannot get what they wanted at the price they want to pay. The real estate agent never concludes the problem is a housing shortage. The buyers have to learn either to pay more or expect less. Is that happening with employers? It does not appear to be.”

When pressed, one manufacturing CEO acknowledged (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html?ref=magazine&_r=1&) that for him, the “skills gap” meant an inability to find enough highly qualified applicants, with no “union-type experience,” willing to start at $10 an hour.

“That’s not a skills mismatch or even a labor shortage problem in any meaningful sense,” (http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/skillsgap_2013-2.pdf) Marc Levine, professor of history and economic development at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, makes clear. “That’s an effort to secure cheap and docile labor.”

“National data on wages, hours, the ‘job gap’ (the ratio of job seekers to available openings), and the skills requirements of projected job openings reveal no evidence of a skills mismatch in national labor markets,” Levine says (http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/skillsgap_2013-2.pdf).

JOBS GAP

In fact, the real deficit we face is a jobs gap. There are still many more unemployed Americans, across every sector of our economy, than there are positions to put them in (http://www.epi.org/publication/unemployed-workers-outnumber-job-openings). “Unemployment is high,” one analyst notes (http://www.epi.org/publication/workers-dont-lack-skills-lack-work), “not because workers lack the right education or skills, but because employers have not seen demand for their goods and services pick up enough to need to significantly ramp up hiring.

“It is not the right workers we are lacking, it is work.”

“Training doesn’t create jobs,” (http://www.propublica.org/article/rare-agreement-obama-romney-ryan-endorse-retraining-for-jobless-but-are-the) says Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “Jobs create training. And people get that backwards all the time.”

Economist Paul Krugman states bluntly (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html) that claims of a skills gap provide cover for those “powerful forces [that] are ideologically opposed to the whole idea of government action on a sufficient scale to jump-start the economy.”

UNTOLD STORIES

Cat CEO Oberhelman castigates the country’s “failing” schools (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-09/business/ct-biz-0810-cat-ceo-20120809_1_skilled-workforce-basic-education-education-system) for not turning out fully employable products—and faults Americans (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/10/04/manufacturing-day-highlights-the-skills-gap-faced-by-american-business) for not pursuing the rewarding careers he says are available in today’s factories.

Stories like this one (http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/laborers-vote-with-their-feet-when-firms-offer-no-security-0m391vm-134942378.html), from a Wisconsin professor, don’t make it into Oberhelman’s script:


Take my former student, John. He did everything we ask young workers to do, earning two journeyman cards while working and attending Milwaukee Area Technical College full-time.

John left Briggs when it began moving jobs to low-wage states and Mexico. But his new employer, Rockwell, began outsourcing to nonunion, low-wage plants even before it eliminated all hourly workers last year.

So John started over again at Harley-Davidson. But, a year and a half ago, Harley laid John off.


CEOs like Oberhelman create the hype about a skills gap and then use it to duck responsibility for the joblessness they are responsible for.

The blame and the costs are offloaded onto workers, obliged to bankroll their own training, or onto taxpayers, as public schools and community colleges scramble to make their graduates more employable.

MIND THE OTHER GAP

It’s hypocritical, to put it mildly, for employers to bemoan the shortage of skilled labor while they lay off workers (including skilled ones) and pay less to those they retain. But their whining deflects attention from record profits and lavish executive compensation. . (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/caterpillars-doug-oberhelman-manufacturings-mouthpiece#p1Oberhelman)

A recent example comes courtesy of Boeing. CEO Jim McNerney has said (http://www.conference-board.org/pdf_free/annualessay2008.pdf) the U.S. faces an acute “competitive gap” brought on by “insufficient numbers of capable workers.”
Nonetheless, Boeing recently threatened its highly skilled (and unionized) workforce in Everett, Washington, that the company would move its new 777X plane out of state if workers didn’t take concessions. They gave in. (http://labornotes.org/2014/01/boeing-machinists-narrowly-approve-end-pensions)

“Capable” workers were not Boeing’s goal. Cheap and compliant ones are what the company was after. Reflect for a moment about which sort of people you prefer to build the airplanes you travel in.

So, while the fictional skills gap provides a distraction useful to CEOs and politicians, workers (and taxpayers) should keep focused on what matters most: our ever-rising level of income inequality (http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday).

That’s the gap that needs minding.

Who Foots the Bill?

While employers bemoan a skills gap, they’re not putting up their own money to close it. Just the opposite. Manufacturers provide far less on-the-job training than they once did. (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/story/2012-08-09/job-training/56922438/1)
Apprenticeships—which oblige employers to assume the lion’s share of training costs—have fallen 40 percent (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/business/where-factory-apprenticeship-is-latest-model-from-germany.html) since 2008. The decline of America’s machine-tool industry, for instance, can be attributed to the collapse of the apprenticeship system (http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/apprenticeship_report2.pdf).

There’s just one time when companies do eagerly foot the bill for job training: when it serves to undermine the position of union labor.

Last summer, anticipating a possible strike, Caterpillar placed 25 of its non-union employees into the welding program at a Milwaukee community college. Protests by the Steelworkers, who represent workers at Cat’s South Milwaukee plant, were brushed off.

Just before contract negotiations began, Cat laid off some 300 Milwaukee workers (http://www.jsonline.com/business/caterpillar-to-lay-off-up-to-300-employees-in-south-milwaukee-5v9bg5r-200464291.html)—including skilled welders.

Cat’s hardball tactics resulted in a six-year agreement with frozen pay and way lower wages for new hires.

NO UAW NEED APPLY

Employers have also used state-funded training programs to ensure that workers with the wrong kind of experience—that is, a union background—are kept out of their plants.

In Georgia, taxpayer dollars were used to build a training center for the plant where the Kia Optima is built. Instruction there is provided through the state’s Quick Start program, designed to “meet the demand for skilled manufacturing workers.”

Jobseekers at the non-union Kia plant are required to go through the center’s “pre-employment process,” and nearly all of Kia’s more than 3,000 employees were trained in robotics, welding, and electronics. (http://www.industryweek.com/quick-start)

In the process, though, workers already skilled in exactly those areas—members of the United Auto Workers—were evidently weeded out.

When Kia began production in 2010, not one of its employees (http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/laid-off_uaw_workers_galled_th.html) came from among the pool of thousands of experienced auto workers, all UAW members, who’d lost their jobs when Georgia’s GM and Ford plants closed a few years earlier.

A group of UAW members sued to obtain records on the state’s involvement in Kia’s hiring practices, but their request was rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court (http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/24077631/article-Ga--court-rules-for-gov--Kia-in-open-records-case-over-hiring).

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21611-skills-gap-a-convenient-myth

[boutons_deux]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/75931/large/household-income-monthly-median-since-2000_(1).gif?1396380074


http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/75932/large/household-income_4-1-14__2.gif?1396380241

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/01/1288929/-Chart-s-of-the-Day-Median-income?detail=email

[boutons_deux]

United Parcel Service Fires 250 Drivers for Staging 90-Minute Protest (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/03/1289406/-United-Parcel-Service-Fires-250-Workers-for-Protesting-Firing-of-One)


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/03/1289406/-United-Parcel-Service-Fires-250-Workers-for-Protesting-Firing-of-One?detail=email

[boutons_deux]

Here's another way the VRWC is warring on employees, cutting/stealing pension, blaming workers, unions for the pension under funding, while cities, states give huge tax expenditures to corps.

Rahm Emanuel cuts public pensions, diverts money to benefit campaign donors (http://pando.com/2014/04/04/revealed-rahm-emanuel-cuts-public-pensions-diverts-money-to-benefit-campaign-donors/)

If you’ve read the financial news out of Chicago the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard that the city faces a major pension shortfall, supposedly because police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public workers are selfishly bleeding the city dry.

You’ve also probably heard that the only way investment banker-turned-mayor (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04emanuel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) Rahm Emanuel can deal with the seemingly dire situation is to slash his public workers’ retirement benefits and to jack up property taxes on those who aren’t politically connected enough to have secured themselves special exemptions.

This same story, portraying public employees as the primary cause of budget crises, is being told across the country. Yet, in many cases, we’re only being told half the tale. We aren’t told that the pension shortfalls in many US states and cities were created because those same states and cities did not make their required pension contributions over many years.

And perhaps even more shockingly, we aren’t being told that, while states and cities pretend they have no money to deal with public sector pensions, many are paying giant taxpayer subsidies to corporations — often far larger (http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/11/18/public-pensions-david-sirota-editorials-debates/3634033/) than the pension shortfalls.

http://pando.com/2014/04/04/revealed-rahm-emanuel-cuts-public-pensions-diverts-money-to-benefit-campaign-donors/

[boutons_deux]

Evidence of GOP Interference in VW Election Is Now Overwhelming


I cried there is no justice
As they led me out the door
And the judge said, "this isn't a court of justice, son
This is a court of law."
Billy Bragg, "Rotting on Demand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiSXGjVriUE)"

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Last week's disclosure by respected Tennessee journalist Phil Williams concerning Republican dirty tricks in the Chattanooga union election demonstrates beyond any doubt that the GOP committed grand theft at Volkswagen.

1. Shortly before the election, senior Tennessee lawmakers threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives if workers voted for the United Auto Workers union (UAW).

2. Confidential documents show that Gov. Haslam offered Volkswagen nearly $300 million in subsidies, but only if the union election were concluded "to the satisfaction" of his administration.

3. Neither Haslam nor his staffers have been able to explain the revelations. Haslam previously denied a connection between the subsidies and the election result, but when questioned by Williams, he responded, "We've been really clear all along that we had an interest in the outcome of that vote." He apparently does not understand that the purpose of federal labor law is to protect the choice of workers, not GOP politicians. After continued inquiries, a spokesperson for the governor explained that, "the state of

Tennessee has incentivized unionized companies before." So Haslam's best excuse for interfering with the election is that this is not his first offense?

4. Republicans' statements on the election were in direct conflict with their actions behind the scenes. While Republicans tried to blackmail the company and colluded with anti-union extremists, Haslam warned Volkswagen management that it was essential that workers be allowed to vote "without undue influence," and stated that a fair vote was essential to the "acceptance of any result by the employees and the community." But thanks to the GOP's litany of dirty tricks - which gets longer with each new revelation - the Chattanooga vote was anything but fair.

5. Sen. Corker (R-Tenn.) twice told workers he had been given assurances that Volkswagen would expand production at Chattanooga if they voted against the union. The company immediately disowned his comments. Never before has a US senator misused his position to interfere in a union election at a private company in this way.

6. Out-of-state organizations with links to Grover Norquist and others ran an unprecedented campaign of interference. After the election, Grover's chief strategist, who spent a year in Chattanooga, boasted of having created "strife" in the community.

7. Tennessee's GOP establishment intervened in a disgraceful manner. Last week, the Republican Party chair (who had compared unionization to an "infestation" of "Ichneumon wasp larvae") tweeted in response to the NAACP's support for the union: "Those allies tell the tale."

8. One AstroTurf Tennessee organization, Southern Momentum Inc., claimed to represent ordinary Volkswagen workers, but raised significant funds from anti-union businesses and hired the leading "union avoidance" firm Projections, Inc. to produce anti-UAW videos.

9. The confidential documents demonstrate, astoundingly, that Corker's chief-of-staff was working with union avoidance professionals and members of Haslam's cabinet around anti-UAW messaging.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23007-evidence-of-gop-interference-in-vw-election-is-now-overwhelming

Repugs, defending your to right-to-work-for-less and get fired on the employer's whim.

[boutons_deux]

Former Buffalo Bills Cheerleaders Sue NFL Team Over Pay

Five former Buffalo Bills cheerleaders on Tuesday sued the team over a pay system they say had them working hundreds of hours for free at games and at mandatory public appearances at which they were subjected to groping and sexual comments, and one said they had to take a jiggle test so their boss could see how firm their bodies were.

The state Supreme Court lawsuit is the third filed this year against a National Football League team by cheerleaders. The Oakland Raiders and Cincinnati Bengals also have pending wage battles.

The case against the Bills says its cheerleaders, the Buffalo Jills, are wrongly classified as independent contractors and are subjected to policies that violate the state's $8 per hour minimum wage law and other workplace rules. Two members of the Jills squad held a news conference Tuesday with their attorney, Frank Dolce.

"We are Bills fans," Dolce said. "We definitely want our organization and other organizations in the NFL to respect the rights of these cheerleaders."

The Bills' cheerleaders aren't paid for games or practices and have to make 20-35 appearances, most of which are unpaid, at community and charity events each season, the lawsuit said. On top of that, they have to pay $650 for their uniforms and are not reimbursed for travel or other expenses, the cheerleaders said.

The time and expense, as well as rules governing their personal lives, far exceeded what they signed on for, the women said.

The civil action, which seeks unspecified back pay and legal fees, names Stejon Productions Corp., which assumed management of the Jills in 2011, along with former manager Citadel Communications Co. and the Buffalo Bills.

Stejon President Stephanie Mateczun said she could not comment on the claims. Buffalo Bills spokesman Scott Berchtold said the team's policy is not to discuss pending litigation. A Citadel spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The cheerleaders are identified only by their first names and last initials in the lawsuit, which cites a provision that allows plaintiffs to remain anonymous "where identification poses a risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm."

Their complaint describes "demeaning and degrading treatment," including being required to wear bikinis at various events such as an annual golf tournament at which cheerleaders were "auctioned off like prizes" and subjected to "degrading sexual comments and inappropriate touching."

Mateczun, the cheerleaders said, controlled everything from their hair and nail polish color to what they could post on Facebook.

"Everything from standing in front of us with a clipboard having us do a jiggle test to see what parts of our body were jiggling," cheerleader Alyssa U. said, "and if that was something that she saw, you were getting benched."

Alyssa U. estimated she was paid a total of $420 during the 2012-13 football season. Another cheerleader, Maria P., said she received $105.

The cheerleaders and their attorney said they hope their legal action leads to policy changes within the Bills' organization that ensure future cheerleaders are paid and treated better.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/buffalo-bills-cheerleader_n_5195463.html

[boutons_deux]

Most Common U.S. Jobs Paying Employees Less In 2013 Than In 1999


A new Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/05/charts-millions-of-u-s-jobs-pay-less-now-than-they-did-in-1999/?tid=rssfeed) report reveals how the value of full-time work in the United States has declined – a trend that has ramifications for Americans and the overall economy.
Using employment data from 1999 and 2013, the Post’s Pam Tobey demonstrates how the nation’s 10 most common jobs – 9 of which also constituted the top 10 jobs in 1999 – now offer pay significantly reduced from 14 years ago.
Despite higher numbers of employees in 9 of the top 10 occupational fields, as exhibited in the below chart, workers were paid significantly less in 2013 than in 1999.

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Employment-Charts.jpg


http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/chart-reduced-pay.jpg



http://www.nationalmemo.com/common-u-s-jobs-paying-employees-less-2013-1999/

[boutons_deux]

University Presidents Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank While the People Who Work for Them Are on Food Stamps

Is economic inequality growing in American higher education?

A report just issued by the Institute for Policy Studies―The One Percent at State U (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/one_percent_universities)―indicates that it is. Surveying public universities, the report finds that the 25 highest-paid presidents increased their income by a third between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2012, bringing their average total compensation to nearly a million dollars each. Also, the number of these chief executives earning over a million dollars in 2012 more than doubled over the previous year. In 2013 (http://chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/146519/#id=table), the best-paid among them was E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University, who raked in $6,057,615 from this employment.

The lucrative nature of these positions appears to have had little to do with the intellectual distinction of the universities.

For example, in 2013 (http://chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/146519/#id=table) the second most lavishly-rewarded public university president (paid $1,636,274) headed up Texas A&M University at College Station and the eighth (paid $1,072,121) headed up the University of South Alabama, two institutions that are not usually considered the acme of intellectual achievement.

By contrast, the presidents of some of the nation’s most respected public universities―the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California-Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst―received total annual compensation that ranged from $400,664 and $467,699.

Nor is it at all clear that the top income recipients at universities merit their extraordinary compensation. Graham Spanier (http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/12/pf/college/university-president-pay/), the highest-paid public university president in 2012 (Penn State, $2.9 million), was fired from his post for his apparent role in the cover-up of sexual abuse of children by his university’s assistant football coach. E. Gordon Gee, the highest-paid public university president in 2013, resigned his position amid a trustee uproar over his disparaging remarks (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/gordon-gee-catholic-response-remarks-ohio-state_n_3681868.html) about Catholics.

Meanwhile, as the incomes of the 25 best-paid public university presidents soared, the livelihoods of their faculty deteriorated.

This deterioration resulted largely from the fact that tenured and tenure-track faculty were replaced with adjuncts (part-time instructors, paid by the course) and contingents (temporary faculty).

Median pay for adjuncts in the United States is reportedly $2,700 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/education/gap-in-university-faculty-pay-continues-to-grow-report-finds.html?_r=1&) per course, forcing them to cobble together enough courses or jobs to ensure their survival. Many have incomes below the official poverty level and receive food stamps (http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/). As for contingents, they face low pay, few if any benefits, and no job security.

In recent years―as the income of the 25 best-paid public university presidents grew dramatically―their hiring (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/one_percent_universities) of adjunct and contingent faculty far outstripped their hiring of regular faculty at their institutions. Consequently, although tenure and tenure-line faculty at these 25 universities outnumbered contingent and part-time faculty prior to the fall of 2009, the situation was reversed by the fall of 2011.

Of course, this change in the working conditions and economic circumstances of college and university faculty is not unusual. In 1969, tenured and tenure-track faculty comprised 78 percent (http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforce) of all instructional staff in higher education. Today that situation has been turned on its head, and the American Association of University Professors estimates that 76 percent (http://diverseeducation.com/article/52422/) of college and university instructors are contingents, adjuncts, and graduate students. Consequently, most college and university teachers are now in an economically marginal status. The plight of the faculty is particularly remarkable at the 25 public universities with the highest-paid presidents, where its growing marginality occurred in the context of soaring incomes for the top administrators.

And the inequality may be even greater at private universities, where a great many more presidents have outlandish incomes. According to the data provided by the Chronicle of Higher Education, there were fourteen times as many private (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/us/pay-for-us-college-presidents-continues-to-grow.html?_r=0) as public (http://chronicle.com/article/What-Public-College-Presidents/131912/) university presidents receiving more than a million dollars each in 2011 (the latest year for which statistics seem to be available).

Consequently, the enrichment of top administrators, coupled with the shift to adjunct and contingent faculty, means that economic inequality is thriving on private campuses, as well.

Students comprise another university constituency that is faring poorly. The rapidly-rising tuition at public and private institutions has sent student debt climbing to unprecedented levels. In 2012, students owed a staggering $1.2 trillion (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/one_percent_universities), an amount that surpassed Americans’ credit card debt. Indeed, it is estimated that, in 2013, 71 percent of college seniors who graduated had student loan debt, with an average of $29,400 per borrower.

Meanwhile, university spending on scholarships lagged far behind spending on non-academic administration, such as executive administration, general university administration, legal and fiscal operations, public relations, and development. Between fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2012, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities reduced spending on scholarships by 55 percent while increasing spending on non-academic administration by 44 percent.

Looked at in the framework of individual campuses (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/one_percent_universities), it is a disturbing picture.

From fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, Ohio State paid its president a total of $5.9 million. Student debt soared, rising 46 percent from summer 2006 to summer 2011. From fall 2005 to fall 2011, the number of adjunct and contingent faculty increased 62 percent―nearly three times faster than the national average.

In fiscal 2012, Penn State awarded $2.9 million in salary and severance pay to its disgraced president. From fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2012, it provided another $4.8 million in executive compensation, while student debt grew by 49 percent.

From fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, the University of Michigan paid its top executive more than $2.6 million. The number of its adjunct and contingent faculty grew by 1,777, or 64 percent, between fall 2005 and fall 2011, and by the summer of 2012 student debt was well above the national average.

Overall, then, higher education seems to be following the general pattern of modern American life―one that favors the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

http://hnn.us/article/155740

So the academic 1% is the same as the non-academic 1%:

I got mine, and I'm getting more all the time, while I fuck my employees and my consumers whom I load up with debt (subsidize my buddies the financial sector).

[boutons_deux]

Povety behind the Genius Desk

Genius deal? Apple's staff paid less than Coles' checkout workers

Tech giant Apple has struck a new pay deal with retail staff that locks in starting rates lower than supermarket checkout workers and probable pay cuts in real terms every year for the next four years.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/genius-deal-apples-staff-paid-less-than-coles-checkout-workers-20140606-39nvc.html#ixzz345DwbqcC

[boutons_deux]

Grocery workers in California see wages shrink


A new look at California's $98 billion grocery industry shows it is a microcosm of the state's wealth inequality gap.



While a private-equity firm is buying Safeway for $9 billion, 1 in 3 grocery workers is on some form of public assistance.

While grocery chains are cash machines for investors, nearly 1 in 5 workers has cut back on meals because he or she couldn't afford to buy food.

Those are some of the results from one of the largest surveys of California's 383,900-member grocery workforce, scheduled to be released Monday. Conducted by the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley and UC Davis Professor Chris Benner, the study, based on interviews with 925 grocery workers statewide, shows how much has changed in an industry that long promised stable, middle-class jobs.

These days, the 124-page report found, "workers who sell food in California are almost twice as likely as the general population to not be able to afford to eat the food they sell." This new generation of low-wage grocery workers uses $662 million worth of public assistance benefits annually, according to the report.

"A generation ago, these were entry-level jobs where you could work your way up," said Jim Araby, executive director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council in Oakland, which has 160,000 members in California and commissioned the study. "But these days, people's ability to do that is shrinking."

Now, Araby said, he is seeing more grocery workers like Joanna Lopez. She is a 26-year-old single mother of two who has worked for three years at Walmart, which has roughly 3 percent of California's grocery business.

Food stamps

Though the Hayward resident has worked in the grocery section for a year, she receives food stamps. At least once a month, she goes to a food bank because she can't cover expenses with her wages of $9.20 an hour.

"I try not to cut back on food for my kids," Lopez said. "If I have to, I let the phone get cut off. Or I don't put gas in my car."

Sometimes, to save gas money, she asks her dad, a retired truck driver, or her mom, who works in a nearby sugar warehouse, for a ride to work. Lopez couldn't survive if she didn't live with her parents, who care for her children while she works. She said her children's father is not in the picture.

With the help of a federal education grant, she is taking animation classes at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She said she dreams of someday "working at Pixar or Disney."
Perhaps in an earlier era, Lopez could have envisioned a lifelong career path in the grocery business. But now, because of increasing competition from big-box stores like Target and Walmart and nonunion ethnic markets like El Super, wages have fallen and the average worker remains at his current job for 1 3/4 years, according to the study.

From 2000 to 2012, the study found that the median wage at a union grocery store decreased from $19.38 to $15.17 an hour. Roughly 1 in 4 of California's grocery workers belongs to a union.

Often, union leader Araby said, during contract negotiations, retailers will point to market pressure from big-box stores, which can sell food at lower prices because they don't pay as well. But Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley and a primary author of the report, said that pressure is overblown.

Walmart and Target have just slivers of California's grocery market, "but other companies look at that (low-cost) model and use it as an excuse in bargaining to drive down wages," Jayaraman said.

http://m.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Grocery-workers-in-California-see-wages-shrink-5536515.php

Capital is fucking labor, harder and deeper. No end in sight.

[boutons_deux]

a 1-year non-compete clause for a hair dresser? :lol Employers screw employees harder and deep, no end in sight.

Noncompete Clauses Increasingly Pop Up in Array of Jobs

Noncompete clauses are now appearing in far-ranging fields beyond the worlds of technology, sales and corporations with tightly held secrets, where the curbs have traditionally been used. From event planners to chefs to investment fund managers to yoga instructors, employees are increasingly required to sign agreements that prohibit them from working for a company’s rivals.

There are plenty of other examples of these restrictions popping up in new job categories: One Massachusetts man whose job largely involved spraying pesticides on lawns had to sign a two-year noncompete agreement. A textbook editor was required to sign a six-month pact.

(http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002927455/2014/06/09/business/noncompete-clauses-increasingly-pop-up-in-array-of-jobs.html)A Boston University graduate was asked to sign a one-year noncompete pledge for an entry-level social media job at a marketing firm, while a college junior who took a summer internship at an electronics firm agreed to a yearlong ban.

“There has been a definite, significant rise in the use of noncompetes, and not only for high tech, not only for high-skilled knowledge positions,” said Orly Lobel, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, who wrote a recent book on noncompetes. “Talent Wants to be Free.” “They’ve become pervasive and standard in many service industries,” Ms. Lobel added.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/noncompete-clauses-increasingly-pop-up-in-array-of-jobs.html

Employers are too proud of their shit, being over-protective, restricting ex-employees, BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE POWER and NOBODY EVER WITHHOLDS EXERCISING POWER.

[boutons_deux]

Tipped Into Poverty

When Senate Republicans recently blocked a vote to raise the federal minimum wage, they snubbed the estimated 27.8 million people who would earn more if the measure became law. The hardest hit are the roughly 3.3 million Americans who work for tips, nearly three out of four of whom are women. Workers in predominantly tipped jobs — including restaurant servers, bartenders, hairstylists — are twice as likely as other workers to live below the poverty line. They need a raise, and Congress should give it to them.

The current minimum wage for such workers, $2.13 an hour, has not been raised since 1991 — testament to the power of the restaurant industry. For nearly 30 years after the minimum wage was first instituted, in 1938, restaurant owners were exempt, and waiters and waitresses had to live on tips alone. Now, an employer of tipped workers is in compliance with the law as long as $2.13 plus tips equals at least $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage for other workers. The Democratic proposal rejected by Republicans called for the tipped wage to rise gradually so that by 2020 it would equal 70 percent of the proposed new minimum of $10.10 an hour, adjusted annually for inflation.

The puniness of the tipped wage is not the only problem. One of the most prevalent wage violations found by the Department of Labor is the failure by employers to adequately “top up” wages when tips do not work out to at least $7.25 an hour.

Violations also include failing to pay the full minimum wage when tipped workers spend considerable time on cleaning, cooking or other nontipped work, as well as requiring servers to share their tips with other employees who do not typically receive tips.

From 2010 to 2012, the Labor Department found wage and hour violations in nearly all of its 9,000 investigations of full-service restaurants, including, but not limited to, tip violations.

One large case (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/business/sports-bar-chain-to-pay-6-8-million-for-violating-wage-laws.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults&mabReward=relbias&) recently brought by the department for tip violations against Chickie’s & Pete’s, a chain of sports bars based in Philadelphia, was settled in February with the chain agreeing to pay servers and bartenders $6.8 million in back pay and damages.

Low wages plus wage theft equals poverty. At the very least, the tipped minimum wage needs to be raised. Ideally, lawmakers would abolish the separate minimum wage for tipped workers in favor of one robust minimum for all workers, as seven states already have done.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/opinion/tipped-into-poverty.html?from=opinion

Repugs never met a Human-American they wouldn't fuck over to enrich Corporate-Americans

All y'all red neck Repug voters tell again all the fucking wonderful stuff Repug hase done for America! :lol

[boutons_deux]

How The U.S.’s Zero Weeks Of Paid Family Leave Compares To The Rest Of The World (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/30/3465922/paid-family-leave/)


http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/maternity_leave_2014.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/paternity_leave_2014.jpg

In the U.S., just 12 percent (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2013/12/12/81037/the-family-act-facts-and-frequently-asked-questions/) of workers have access to paid family leave through their employers. Worse, less than half of all workers are covered by unpaid leave, giving them few options when they have a new child. A quarter (http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p70-128.pdf) of women either quit their jobs or are let go when a new child arrives, and of those who get only partial pay or nothing at all, a third (http://www.dol.gov/asp/evaluation/fmla/FMLATechnicalReport.pdf) borrow money and/or dip into savings while 15 percent go on public assistance.

Some Americans are slightly more lucky than others: three states (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/02/3110281/rhode-island-paid-family-leave-effect/), California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, have implemented paid family leave programs. ( no RED states )

Evidence from the first two states shows that they haven’t hurt employers.

About 90 percent of California businesses (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/paid-family-leave-1-2011.pdf) say that it either had a positive impact or none on profitability, employee performance, and productivity, while it helped reduce turnover, saving them an estimated $89 million (http://americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2013/12/12/81036/the-economic-benefits-of-family-and-medical-leave-insurance/) each year.

The majority of New Jersey businesses (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/20/3451378/new-jersey-paid-family-leave-business/) surveyed also said that it hasn’t hurt their finances and some saw a benefit.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/30/3465922/paid-family-leave/

=====================

U.S. Child Care Seriously Lags Behind that of Europe

While working parents in the United States struggle to find and afford private child care of even mediocre quality, parents in most European countries easily find publicly funded programs offering good-to-excellent care.

The authors also point out that “while most parents believe (or want to believe) that their children receive quality care, standardized ratings find most of the care mediocre and much of it seriously inadequate…. Recent research [also] suggests that the quality of care for young children is poor or fair in well over half of child care settings. This low quality of care, in concert with a model of intensive mothering, means that many anxious mothers privately hunt for high-quality substitutes while trying to ensure they are not really being replaced.”


European countries provide thought-provoking alternative models of child care.

For example, focusing on differences between the systems available in France and Denmark, the authors find that French child care is intended primarily as early education and is open to all children, regardless of socioeconomic status. Almost 100 percent of French three-, four-, and five-year-olds are enrolled in the full-day, free écoles maternelles; all are part of the same national system, with the same curriculum, staffed by teachers paid good wages by the same national ministry. Denmark’s child care system, on the other hand, offers a “nonschool model,” and is intended to aid working parents, not educate children.

The cost of the French child care is not cheap. However, in France, child care costs are considered to be a social responsibility and are publicly funded, while in the U.S., parents themselves pay for these services. As Clawson and Gerstel remind us, not caring for our children is in the long term, and probably even in the short term, even more expensive.

http://www2.asanet.org/media/childcare.html

no federal family leave, and no taxpayer funded day care are just two more ways America, esp the right-wing, screws itself.

My guess is that bills for either or both would never get out of committee in the House, and would be 100% blocked by Repugs.

[TDMVPDPOY]

becareful what u wish for

down here has seen women who take maternity leave have their jobs secured when they come back, but most of the time they either get retrench

when u continue to increase leave entitlements, expect employers not to hire that gender group

plus the new idiot in town is giving working moms on 150k a year, are entitled to 75k maternity leave payments...lol employers dont like this shit, payin 75k to someone to stay at home

[boutons_deux]

Congress’ August Recess Is America’s Only Required Vacation (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/02/3467032/congress-august-vacation/)

Congress managed to adjourn (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/us/politics/congress-set-to-make-exit-but-few-cheer.html) on Friday night, sending all members home for a legislatively required recess for the entire month of August after becoming a close contender for the least productive Congress ever, with lots of unfinished business on the table.

The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 requires that the House and Senate take a break (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress-cant-work-in-august--its-against-the-law-were-not-joking/2014/07/22/7216265a-11dc-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html)“not later than July 31 of each year,” or in an odd-numbered year “that Friday in August which occurs at least thirty days before the first Monday in September (Labor Day) of such year to the second day after Labor Day.” Congress can stay if the country is in a state of war, but that hasn’t happened since 1941. The law was passed after Congressional sessions had stretched so long that in 1963, the session began in January and ended in December with just a three-day weekend as a break in the whole time.

Lawmakers can come back early if both houses agree to it. And of course many of them hold town halls and other political or campaign events and meetings while they’re home. But they also get another break in December and often get nearly 250 days off (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/12/02/3009951/congress-vacation/) from work in the nation’s capitol each year.

The American worker, on the other hand, could very well get no days off from work in a year.

We are the only advanced country in the world (http://www.cepr.net/documents/no-vacation-update-2014-04.pdf) that doesn’t guarantee that workers get some paid vacation time. There is no law, as there is for Congress, making sure they can take a break.

The European Union, on the other hand, requires 20 paid vacation days, and many countries go further, such as the mandated 30 days in France, 28 in the United Kingdom, and 25 in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Even our northerly neighbors Canada require 10.
Many American employers offer vacation time anyway, but the number is shrinking, not growing.

More than 80 percent of workers got paid vacation days two decades ago, but just 77 percent (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/05/2577101/fewer-americans-paid-vacation-days-20-years-ago/) do today.

Those who are getting the benefit get more days than before, 20 compared to 15.

But most people don’t even use all of their time off (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/03/3422725/vacation-unused/), with the average employee taking only half of it. Many say they feel like they can’t be disconnected from work.

And the increase in vacation days is counteracted by a decline in the number of paid holidays, which dropped from ten to eight.

Indeed, the United States doesn’t guarantee paid holidays either, unlike 13 other developed countries. That means, for example, that companies like Walmart, Gap, and Target were completely in their rights when they opened on Thanksgiving Day (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/26/2995071/shopping-guide-thanksgiving/) last year and made workers come in to work.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/02/3467032/congress-august-vacation/

In the 70s, I used to hear the justification in Europe that Americans worked so hard with little time off but they were richer than the Europeans. :lol

Now household income is down for 35 years, while job insecurity, and full-time job scarcity are way up, but American workers can still be FORCED to work 52 weeks a year.

Most are so scared to taking time off, they don't even take allowed vacation time.

iow, the fucked up American work environment, culture says "You live to work (for us corps), and you don't work to live (we corps don't give you anytime to live).

[boutons_deux]

Another industry that needs employees but won't pay enough to attract them, decreases pay in face of fewer applicants.

The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More.

Swift had plenty of customers wanting to ship goods. But in a time of elevated unemployment, it somehow couldn’t find enough drivers to take those goods from Point A to Point B. How is that possible? The reasons for that conundrum tell us a great deal about what has been ailing American workers and why a full-throated economic recovery has been so slow in coming.

The American Trucking Associations (http://www.truckline.com/) has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.

Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say “There is a shortage of skilled workers” than “We aren’t paying our workers enough,” even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.

every industry has its special challenges, and the trucker shortage — and falling inflation-adjusted wages over the last decade — are part of a bigger story.

The reasons are the subject of endless debate, and you can pick the one you prefer to emphasize: technological change, globalization or a decline of union power. But wages of workers without advanced skills have been under downward pressure in the United States and across the developed world over the last generation. The deep recession and slow recovery have only made the trend more pronounced.

That has led to a mind-set in which executives sometimes think of line workers as merely resources to be tapped at the lowest price. Companies have been able to keep wages low: It’s hard to demand a raise when your colleagues are being laid off or there is a long line of job seekers. Some corporations may have come to view this as a natural state of affairs.

By now, wage income is as low a percentage of gross domestic product as it has been since 1947, while corporate profits are at postwar highs. These are two sides of the same coin. Money that once accrued to workers now goes to shareholders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-industry-needs-more-drivers-it-should-try-paying-more.html?ref=business&_r=0

same old story, the US economy prefers, favors capital (investor returns) over labor.

[boutons_deux]

Wage Theft is a Much Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft—But Workers Remain Mostly Unprotected

Wage theft—employers’ failure to pay workers money they are legally entitled to—affects far more people than more well-known and feared forms of theft such as bank robberies, convenience store robberies, street and highway robberies, and gas station robberies. Employers steal billions of dollars from their employees each year by working them off the clock (http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-wage-theft-survey-fast-food-20140331,0,4674874.story#ixzz2xdfna48O), by failing to pay the minimum wage (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20140325minimumwageandwomenreportfinal.pdf), or by cheating them ofovertime pay (http://www.epi.org/publication/updating-overtime-rules-important-step-giving/) they have a right to receive. Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been the victims (http://www.unprotectedworkers.org/index.php/broken_laws/index) of wage theft.

http://s2.epi.org/files/2014/snapshot-wage-theft-09-18-2014.png.608


http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/

[boutons_deux]

Work Is Eating Up Americans’ Nights And Weekends (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/09/3565355/americans-work-nights-weekends/)

Americans don’t just put in more hours at work each week than residents of many developed countries. We’re also putting in more hours on our supposed free time (http://www.nber.org/papers/w20449).

A new paper from Daniel S. Hamermesh and Elena Stancanelli finds that the average American puts in 41 hours at work each week, compared to 38.4 in the United Kingdom, 36.9 in Germany, 35.7 in France, 34.6 in Spain, and just 32.7 in the Netherlands. And more of us are working even longer: while half of Americans work 35-44 hours a week, about 8 percent work 55-64 hours and nearly 4 percent work 65 or more hours. Nearly double the share of Americans are working 45 or more hours than in Germany, and it’s more than double compared to France, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Even worse, more than a quarter of Americans do some work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. That’s far higher than the share of people working during those late hours in any of the other five countries. Just one in every fourteen French and Dutch workers does the same. Nearly a third of Americans work on the weekend, also higher than all the other countries.

Those who work longer are also more likely to work at odd hours: an American who works 55-64 hours a week is twice as likely to be working on nights and weekends than someone putting in 35-44 hours.

And it doesn’t appear that Americans are working on their free time because they want to. The researchers note that immigrants and the less educated are more likely to work on weekends, which “suggest[s] the undesirability of work at such times.” Similar trends are true for working at night.

We may think that our standard workweek is nine to five, five days a week, adding up to 40 hours, but in reality surveys find it’s more like 47 hours (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/02/3477937/workweek/).

While advanced countries have all been reducing work hours since the 1970s, other countries have made far more progress (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/us-workers-losing-ground-in-leisure-time-too.html): Americans reduced their yearly hours by 112 since then, while the French have dropped 491 hours, the Dutch 425, and Canadians 215.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/09/3565355/americans-work-nights-weekends/

[DarrinS]

How many of these private echo chamber threads are you maintaining?

:downspin:

:lol

[boutons_deux]

How many of these private echo chamber threads are you maintaining?

:downspin:

:lol

don't worry, swine, my pearls are ignored.

[boutons_deux]

don't worry, swine, my pearls are ignored.

and of course, you have not comment on the thread topic.

[DarrinS]

and of course, you have not comment on the thread topic.


Why don't you consolidate all of these into "VRWC War on Everything a.k.a. (Repug Gun Fellatin Madness is the Central Issue of Our Time)"?

[boutons_deux]

Why don't you consolidate all of these into "VRWC War on Everything a.k.a. (Repug Gun Felatin Madness is the Central Issue of Our Time)"?

and of course, you have no comment on the thread topic.

[TeyshaBlue]

Why don't you consolidate all of these into "VRWC War on Everything a.k.a. (Repug Gun Fellatin Madness is the Central Issue of Our Time)"?
No shit. Or his own forum where he can spam away while nobody reads the threads. :lmao

[TeyshaBlue]

don't worry, swine, my pearls are ignored.

Delusional, except for the ignored part.:lmao

[boutons_deux]

stalker TB :lol SERIOUSLY butthurt by all The Great Boutons' bitch slappings.

and of course, no comment on the thread topic.

[TeyshaBlue]

:lol boutons
:lol thinkprogress
:lol delusions of stalking
:lol spam ignored by anyone with an IQ
:lol thinkprogress

[boutons_deux]

:lol boutons
:lol thinkprogress
:lol delusions of stalking
:lol spam ignored by anyone with an IQ
:lol thinkprogress

and of course, no comment on the thread topic.

no delusions, 99% of your posts are dickless, futile attempts to trash The Great Boutons

[DarrinS]

No shit. Or his own forum where he can spam away while nobody reads the threads. :lmao

It's seems to be turning into that anyway.

[TeyshaBlue]

and of course, no comment on the thread topic.

no delusions, 99% of your posts are dickless, futile attempts to trash The Great Boutons



You cut and paste 1000 moonbat blogs and think youve accomplished ANYTHING. :lmao
Here's my comment. Your moonbat op eds make Faux look like geniuses. They are so breathlessly vapid that nobody bothers to wade thru them....hell...you dont read half of them.:lmao:lmao
:lol delusional
:lol boutons

[boutons_deux]

TB :lol dickless as ever.

[boutons_deux]

Wisconsin’s Gov. Walker based ‘living wage’ ruling on restaurant industry study

Under pressure to raise the state's minimum wage, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker confidently declared that there was no need. Low-wage workers had filed a complaint charging that the state's minimum wage -- $7.25 -- did not constitute a "living wage" as mandated by state law. But the Republican governor's administration, after examining the issue, announced on Oct. 6 that it found "no reasonable cause" for the workers' complaint.

That official government finding, according to documents reviewed by the International Business Times :lol, was largely based on information provided by the state's restaurant industry -- which represents major low-wage employers including fast-food companies.

The Raise Wisconsin campaign, which is pushing for a higher minimum wage, requested all documents on which the state based the "living wage" ruling. And the only economic analysis that the administration released in response was one from the Wisconsin Restaurant Association :lol -- a group that lobbies (https://www.wirestaurant.org/info/alerts/140224_lobbyday.php) against minimum wage increases, and whose website (https://wirestaurant.org/info/index.php) says it is includes low-wage employers such as "fast food Walk" and "corporate chain restaurants."

The restaurant association's study (https://www.scribd.com/doc/244303523/Study-from-Wisconsin-Restaurant-Association) argued that a minimum wage increase would harm the state. It did not actually address whether workers can survive on the $7.25 minimum wage.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/wisconsins-gov-walker-based-living-wage-ruling-on-restaurant-industry-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

Walker is a puppet of the Kock Bros.

[boutons_deux]

Millions Of Workers Will Get A Raise On New Years Day (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/12/31/3607346/new-years-minimum-wage/)


http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/minwage-2015-638x597.jpg

. Currently, 15 states have automatic increases built into their minimum wages, unlike the federal law.

The January 1 raises range from a 12-cent boost in Florida, :lol whose minimum wage will increase to $8.05, to a $1.25 increase in South Dakota, bringing its wage to $8.50. :lol

The increases in the New Year will mean that in 2015, the majority of states — 29 and Washington, DC — will have minimum wages set above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. They will also mean that 60 percent of all American workers will live in a state with a higher minimum wage.

Another half million workers will get a raise later in 2015, when legislation passed in Delaware and Minnesota to raise their wages goes into effect.

The states that raised their wages on January 1 of 2014 had experienced faster job growth (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/03/3456393/minimum-wage-state-increase-employment/) than those that didn’t as of midyear.

Washington has had the highest minimum wage for 15 years and has seen steady, above-average (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/05/3362681/evidence-minimum-wage-jobs/) job growth.

Overall, economists who studied state-level wage increases over two decades didn’t find any evidence (http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/labor/news/2014/02/18/84257/evidence-shows-increasing-the-minimum-wage-is-no-threat-to-employment/) that they impacted jobs.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/12/31/3607346/new-years-minimum-wage/

those wages STILL SUCK

Raise FEDERAL minimum to $15/hour over 3 years.

Obama must raise the OT qualification to all workers below $70K/year.

[boutons_deux]

The Typical Millennial Is $2,000 Poorer Than His Parents at This Age


The past is another country. In 1980, the typical young worker in Detroit or Flint, Michigan, earned more than his counterpart in San Francisco or San Jose. The states with the highest median income were Michigan, Wyoming, and Alaska. Nearly 80 percent of the Boomer generation, which at the time was between 18 and 35, was white, compared to 57 percent today.

Three decades later, in 2013, the picture of young people—yes, Millennials—is a violently shaken kaleidoscope, and not all the pieces are falling into a better place. Michigan's median income for under-35 workers has fallen by 26 percent, more than any state. In fact, beyond the east coast, earnings for young workers fell in every state but Hawaii and South Dakota.

How Young Adult Earnings Compared to 1980
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/01/Screen_Shot_2015_01_30_at_12.38.00_PM/1b5331121.pngCensus (http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/c-span/2015/20150130_cspan_youngadults.pdf)The median income of young adults today is $2,000 less today than their parents in 1980, adjusted for inflation. The earnings drop has been particularly steep in the rust belt and across the northwest.

Although these figures paint a lugubrious picture of young workers today, it's nonetheless true that Boston, San Jose, Washington, San Francisco, and New York's metro areas have all seen double-digit real income growth since 1980. The coasts (and, more recently, energy-rich states like Texas) have largely thrived.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/young-adults-poorer-less-employed-and-more-diverse-than-their-parents/385029/

so the East and Left Coasts have thrived along with carbon-state Texas, while the fly-over Repug red states have gotten poorer, shittier.

God/guns/gays/abortion voters have really gotten screwed.

[boutons_deux]

Chart of the Day: Wages Are Down For Almost Everyone

http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_wages_2007_2014.jpg


EPI's Elise Gould provides us with wage data for 2014 today, and the results aren't pretty: (http://www.epi.org/publication/stagnant-wages-in-2014/)


Every group has seen a cumulative drop in wages since 2007 except for the top 5 percent (red line).
Every group saw a drop in wages in 2014 except for the bottom 10 percent (dark blue line).


Why did wages of the poor rebound a bit last year? Because 19 states raised their minimum wages:

A state-by-state comparison of trends in the 10th percentile suggests that these minimum-wage increases account for the nationwide 10th percentile increase.

Between 2013 and 2014, the 10th percentile wage in states with minimum-wage increases grew by an average of 1.6 percent, while it barely rose (a 0.3 percent increase) in states without a minimum-wage increase.


http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/02/chart-day-wages-are-down-almost-everyone

[boutons_deux]

Inarguable evidence of why the Repugs/VRWC/1% relentlessly War On Unions

How Unions Help Redistribute Wealth Throughout US Society

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive thinktank, published (http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-rise-of-the-top-10-percents-share-of-income/) a chart earlier this week showing a striking correlation between the decline of union membership and the upsurge of income inequality.


http://s4.epi.org/files/charts/screenshots/78227.png


While a variety of factors affect wealth inequality and union membership, it’s hard not to notice that the two graphs are nearly mirror images of each other: As union membership increases, the share of wealth by the richest 10 percent of Americans decreases; as membership goes down, the wealthy’s share goes up.

According to the chart, based on studies by Colin Gordon and an updated analysis of tax data by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the percent of public and private sector workers in unions continues to fall, reaching its lowest rate since 1936 at 11.1 percent last year. At the same time, the share of income going to the top 10 percent of wage earners reached an all-time high of 47.8 percent in 2012.
As membership increased after 1936 during the Great Depression, peaking at 33.4 percent in 1945 and staying about the same until 1960, the top 10 percent’s share of wealth fell. At a height of 46.3 percent in 1932, the share of wealth held by the richest tenth fell to 31.5 percent by 1944, remaining stable till about 1980. As union membership steadily declined after 1980, the wealthiest Americans saw their share of riches surge.

Gordon explained (http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-rise-of-the-top-10-percents-share-of-income/) the importance of unions in other realms beyond higher wages for their members: “Unions at midcentury also exerted considerable political clout, sustaining other political and economic choices (minimum wage, job-based health benefits, Social Security, high marginal tax rates, etc.) that dampened inequality.”

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29192-this-chart-shows-how-unions-help-redistribute-wealth-throughout-us-society

[boutons_deux]

Even After Walmart Got Busted in Court for Stealing Workers' Wages, It's Trying Not to Pay Up

Walmart employees have over $187 in damages they can collect from a successful wage theft lawsuit, but the company is arguing that each victim should get their own lawyer.

At the end of the 2014, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed lower court rulings which dictated Walmart was required to pay $151 million in unpaid wages and damages. This sum is supposed to go to an estimated 186,000 employees who worked for the company from 1998-2006. Including attorney fees, the total actually reaches over $187 million.

The ruling stems from a 2002 class action lawsuit that was filed against the retail giant in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiffs claimed that Walmart made them work through 33 million allotted rest breaks because management was under pressure to cut down labor costs. According to the lawsuit, managers received lucrative bonuses if certain profits were reached. Forcing workers to skip their breaks would, no doubt, increase their chances of obtaining the bonuses.

http://www.alternet.org/walmart-wage-theft-victims-after-lawsuit-victory-get-your-own-lawyers?akid=12959.187590.ec49ke&rd=1&src=newsletter1034143&t=13

[boutons_deux]

Kockenstein at work on the VRWC War on Employees, Repugs are the main warriors everywhere.

Could Wisconsin's Scott Walker now abolish the weekend?

Legislators have introduced a bill to abolish employees' legal right to at least one day off per week (http://www.thenation.com/article/201817/these-republicans-want-take-away-your-weekend?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow).

State law currently allows factory or retail employees to work seven days or more in a row for a limited period, but they and their employer have to jointly petition the Department of Workforce Development for a waiver. These petitions apparently number a couple of hundred a year. The new proposal would allow workers to "voluntarily choose" to work without a day of rest. The state agency wouldn't have a say.

It can't be a secret what "voluntarily" really means in this context. As Marquette University law professor Paul Secunda told the Nation, the measure "completely ignores the power dynamic (http://www.thenation.com/article/201817/these-republicans-want-take-away-your-weekend?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow) in the workplace, where workers often have a proverbial gun to the head." Workers will know that if the boss demands it, they'll be volunteering or else.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-is-scott-walker-about-to-abolish-20150320-column.html

[boutons_deux]

Kock Bros war in Kockistan

Weeks After Rushing Right-To-Work, Wisconsin Republicans Prepare Their Next Attack On Labor (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/06/3643175/weeks-rushing-right-work-wisconsin-republicans-prepare-next-attack-labor/)
Fresh off a rushed approval a controversial “right to work” law (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/24/3626213/right-to-work-hearing/) that makes it harder for unions to bargain for better pay and conditions, Republicans in Wisconsin now say (http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/rep-hutton-odds-of-repealing-prevailing-wage-in-wisconsin-better/article_349648bb-ab81-575d-ac93-9c4b3bc83455.html) they have a “better than 50 percent” chance of scrapping state laws (http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/repeal-of-wisconsin-s-prevailing-wage-could-be-inserted-into/article_ee77cd1e-cbbb-5258-98f4-f83e1437895a.html) that ensure construction workers a living wage.
Rep. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) plans to tack his bill to repeal the state’s nearly century-old “prevailing wage” law for construction workers on local and state projects onto the massive state budget (http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/02/04/3618996/walker-budget-officials/) that must pass some time in the next few months. Currently, the law requires contractors bidding for state and local projects to pay workers the average wage in their county for their craft (http://dwd.wisconsin.gov/pwsrv/PwsrvList.asp) — so a welder in Green Bay will always get the same wage no matter if he or she is local or brought in from another state or country.
Dan Butkiewicz, the president of Milwaukee Building Trades Council, told ThinkProgress he’s worried that could soon change.

“This is really an attack on the middle class worker,” he said. “If you allow people to come in and undercut wages, you put our local contractors at a disadvantage. Unemployment will go up. People will have less to spend on homes, so less will come in in property taxes. The whole economy will suffer because the less you make, the less you spend.”
Though unemployment has dropped in Wisconsin over the past few years, the state hastrailed behind most others (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/03/scott-walker-wisconsin-job_n_6999932.html) in job creation, falling behind the rest of the Midwest since Governor Scott Walker took office in 2010.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/06/3643175/weeks-rushing-right-work-wisconsin-republicans-prepare-next-attack-labor/

"free market" means free to screw employees.

[boutons_deux]

Scurrilous Corporate Thieves Are Stealing Workers’ Comp

But now comes a cabal of about two-dozen corporate chieftains pushing a vicious new campaign of physical violence against workers. The infamous anti-labor bully, Walmart, is among the leaders, but so are such prestigious chains as Macy’s and Nordstrom, along with Lowe’s, Kohl’s, and Safeway. Their goal is to gut our nation’s workers’ compensation program, freeing corporate giants to injure or even kill employees in the workplace without having to cover all (or, in many cases, any) of the lost wages, medical care, or burial expenses of those harmed.

Why pay for insuring employees when it’s much cheaper just to buy state legislators who are willing to privatize workers’ comp? This lets corporations write their own rules of compensation to slash benefits, cut safety costs — and earn thieving CEOs bigger bonuses.

But who, you might ask, would help these corporate crooks in their callous and calculating scheme to rob workers of their hard-earned benefits? Why, that would be the work of ARAWC — the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation.

Mother Jones magazine reports that ARAWC is a front group funded by these hugely profitable retail chains and corporate behemoths that want to weasel out of compensating employees who suffer injuries at work. By law, corporations in nearly every state must carry workers’ comp insurance, but the ARAWC lobbying combine is pressuring legislators to allow the giants to opt out of the state benefit plans and instead substitute their own, highly restrictive set of benefits.

the CEO of ARAWC also happens to be the head of “risk management” at the mingiest of workplaces: Walmart.

And that’s what this opt-out scam amounts to — corporate profiteers hoping they can manage to escape paying for risking the lives of America’s workforce. Yes, this shifty move is a scurrilous crime, but it’s a crime that pays richly for those at the top. And the money can fill the hole in their souls where their honor used to be.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/scurrilous-corporate-thieves-are-stealing-workers-comp/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=MM_frequency_six&utm_campaign=Morning%20Memo%20-%202015-04-15

btw, 15+ employees went to work today and were killed on the job, happens 200 workdays/year.

[boutons_deux]

Hotel Industry Spins Wage Hikes as Extreme While CEOs Rake in Millions

Hotels are making a killing.

Occupancy rates are exceeding pre-recession highs (http://www.statista.com/statistics/200161/us-annual-accomodation-and-lodging-occupancy-rate/), and are expected to reach record levels (https://www.reit.com/news/reit-magazine/march-april-2015/tight-supply-sending-hotel-occupancy-rates-record-levels) in 2016. Profits per room are up over 11 percent this April compared to April 2014 and the average daily rate for a room is almost 13 percent higher (http://www.htrends.com/trends-detail-sid-83027.html) than it was a year ago. Executive salaries have skyrocketed.

But the little-known trade association representing this robust $163 billion (https://www.ahla.com/content.aspx?id=36332) industry is a major force fighting behind the scenes on Capitol Hill and in statehouses and courtrooms across the country to keep workers' wages low.

On Wednesday, April 15, the same day that hundreds of thousands of working people in over 200 cities are expected to participate in the largest-ever mobilization of underpaid workers, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Hotel_and_Lodging_Association) (AHLA) which represents the 1.8 million-employee U.S. lodging industry will join forces with the National Restaurant Association (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Restaurant_Association) to ask Congress

to block a federal minimum wage increase,

shrink the number of workers eligible for employer-provided health care insurance, and

challenge the National Labor Relations Board ruling protecting the rights of franchise workers.

Strategy to Undercut Wages Discussed at ALEC

The lawsuit is part of a coordinated legislative, legal and PR strategy detailed by an AHLA lobbyist at a recent conference.

At the 2014 joint meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (http://www.alecexposed.com/) (ALEC) and its local offshoot, American City County Exchange (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_City_County_Exchange) (ACCE), AHLA Senior Executive Brian Crawford compared the industry's battle against local wage laws to a game of Whack-a-Mole: “We’re trying to beat them down when they pop up.”

In San Diego, Crawford reported, AHLA bankrolled a front group, the San Diego Small Business Association (https://www.facebook.com/SDBizCoalition). The group used alarmist claims and outright lies (http://www.raiseupsandiego.org/dontsignit_takeyoursignatureback) to gather enough signatures to postpone a minimum wage increase and earned sick days bill unanimously approved by the city council, and put the question on the 2016 ballot. More than one local petitioner for the group was caught on tape (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sM6DCg740k&index=1&list=PLAPIecaqjQKqoM7RFsrx33tTE1xS-76Cc) lying that the petition was actually in support of a minimum wage hike. Meanwhile contributions to the association from actual San Diego small businesses were “few and far between (http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/nov/06/stringers-hotel-restaurant-pacs-killed-wage-boost/),” as the San Diego Reader put it.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30219-hotel-industry-spins-wage-hikes-as-extreme-while-ceos-rake-in-millions

[boutons_deux]

Behind VRWC/BigCorp strategy of EVERYBODY HATES UNIONS, EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE "RIGHT TO WORK" (for less), the real objective is to screw employees while enriching capitalists.

'Right to Work' Debunked: Economists Find Anti-Worker Laws Lead to Lower Wages

Workers in Right to Work states earn an average of $1,558 less per year than their counterparts in states without anti-labor laws

"It's abundantly clear that Right to Work laws are negatively correlated with workers' wages."

"At their core, RTW laws seek to hamstring unions’ ability to help employees bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits, and working conditions," explain Gould and Kimball in their introduction.

"Given that unionization raises wages both for individual union members as well as for nonunion workers in unionized sectors, it is not surprising that research shows that both union and nonunion workers in RTW states have lower wages and fewer benefits, on average, than comparable workers in other states."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/22/right-work-debunked-economists-find-anti-worker-laws-lead-lower-wages

[boutons_deux]

Two 0.01%er Repug governors getting their asses kicked for lying and for illegal screwing of employees

Chris Christie's signature law called unconstitutional in court ... by Christie administration (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/07/1383126/-Chris-Christie-s-signature-law-called-unconstitutional-in-court-by-Christie-administration)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration is in court arguing that Christie should be able toviolate the public employee pension law (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/chris-christie-state-pension-reform-new-jersey-courts-117704.html) he pushed for and signed in his first term in office. According to the law, "members of the public-pension systems shall have a contractual right to the annual required contribution amount."

That shouldn't have been groundbreaking, but it would have been—had Christie followed it—since the previous nine governors, Democrats included, had shorted the state's contribution to the pension fund even as workers put in their share every year.

Christie's signature pension law required workers to pay still more toward pensions and eliminated cost of living adjustments, but the claim was that in exchange for that, the state would start making its full contribution. Instead, it didn't take long for Christie to start shorting the pension fund.


In court on Wednesday, New Jersey Assistant Attorney General Jean Reilly argued that use of the word “contractual” didn’t guarantee a binding contract because the New Jersey state constitution didn’t allow that. In response, Justice Barry T. Albin asked why, if the Christie administration believed the state constitution prevented such contractual obligations, it signed into law a bill containing them.“The language is not aspirational,” Albin said. “The language is saying this is a contract.”

But Justice Jaynee LaVecchia suggested to attorney Steve Weissman, who represented public employees, that the state needs to maintain enough flexibility to adjust to changing financial circumstances. “You are still arguing for this law to require every legislature for I don’t know how long to put a certain specified amount … in the budget for every single year,” she said.


Meanwhile, the pension's Wall Street fees have ballooned (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/26/1324777/-Christie-funnels-public-pension-money-to-Wall-Street-while-pushing-cuts-on-workers) on Christie's watch, with New Jersey paying nearly $1 billion in fees to financial management firms even as the performance of the state's pension investments have lagged badly. That's something else Christie isn't going to talk about as he argues that he should be able to break his law and his promises.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/07/1383126/-Chris-Christie-s-signature-law-called-unconstitutional-in-court-by-Christie-administration?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29#

So the judge says the state needs to be able to screw state employees ... "changing financial circumstances", but I'm sure if an employee had "changing financial circumstances" that destroyed his ability to pay his mortgage, that judge wouldn't grant the employee any "flexibility" :lol

[boutons_deux]

Illinois Supreme Court Rejects Lawmakers’ Pension Overhaul

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday rejected changes that legislators made to fix a deeply troubled public pension system, leaving the state where it had started — with a significant budget crisis, a vastly underfunded pension program and no plan in sight.

All seven members of the state’s highest court found that a pension overhaul lawmakers had agreed to almost a year and a half ago violated the Illinois Constitution.

The changes would have curtailed future cost-of-living adjustments for workers, raised the age of retirement for some and put a cap on pensions for those with the highest salaries. But under the state Constitution, benefits promised as part of a pension system for public workers “shall not be diminished or impaired.”

“Crisis is not an excuse to abandon the rule of law,” Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier wrote in an opinion (http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2015/118585.pdf). “It is a summons to defend it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/us/illinois-supreme-court-rejects-lawmakers-pension-overhaul.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

Bosses Are Turning Poverty-Wage Workers Into ‘Managers’—and Barring Them From Overtime in the Process (http://www.thenation.com/blog/207521/bosses-are-turning-poverty-wage-workers-managers-and-barring-them-overtime-process)

If you’re one of the millions working in retail, some days you might work late at the register or do the store opening in hopes of clocking a little overtime pay. And you might hope to eventually rise to a higher-ranked managerial position. But did you know that promotion might just mean a smaller paycheck for the same job?

Welcome to the promotion from hell: Federal law (http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/lawsprog.htm) says time-and-a-half is for ordinary laborers, and management is exempt from overtime provisions. So congratulations, as a shop “manager,” you no longer qualify for overtime—but still end up doing basically the same work for less.

Generally, federal labor law requires elevated wages for hours worked over the standard 40-hour week. But in the precarious low-wage economy, advocates say employers are hyper-exploiting the system to skirt fair labor laws, and overtime is fast becoming a relic of the past (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/overtime-pay-obama-congress-112954.html#.VVm8JflViko).

The Obama administration is now seeking to modernize overtime, directing the Labor Department (http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/presmemo.htm) to revamp federal regulations. These set a baseline for state overtime laws (http://www.shrm.org/legalissues/stateandlocalresources/stateandlocalstatutesandregulations/documents/overtimelaws.pdf) (which may or may not offer more generous benefits (https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/76.3/76_3_Dorris.pdf)). Reforms might bring long-overdue upgrades to income thresholds and professional exemptions (https://www.nelp.org/news-releases/on-the-advancement-of-the-new-federal-overtime-rules/) in order to cover more of the workforce.

Currently, according to a report by National Employment Law Project (NELP) (https://www.nelp.org/publication/the-case-for-reforming-federal-overtime-rules-stories-from-americas-middle-class/), the Fair Labor Standards Act exempts “white collar” supervisors or managers from overtime, and effectively allows bosses to exempt even poverty-wage workers.

To qualify for the “white-collar exemption,” a worker must earn at least $455 a week (the level below which overtime always applies) and have a fancy title like “executive” or “administrative.” But this “white collar” income threshold amounts to a poverty-level annual income today; back in the 1970s, in contrast some two-thirds of workers qualified for overtime. Additionally, NELP reports, “current regulations afford too much leeway for employers to misclassify employees who are not truly managers in any meaningful sense of the word or who do not exercise independent discretion.”

NELP recommends 1) raising the weekly overtime income threshold to at least $984 and as high as $1,327 ($69,004 yearly) and 2) limiting exemptions to workers who “truly exercise independent judgment in performing the job.”

For example, the senior shelf stocker at Big Box store may be required to spend a few weeks a year training new hires. Then her boss “promotes” her by slapping on a new middle-manager name tag that automatically disqualifies her from time-and-a-half. Meanwhile her daily schedule and general duties at the store remain unchanged. So the “white collar” exemption, originally intended for affluent professionals, invites the dubious recasting of front-line workers as “managers” by essentially swapping uniforms without expanding authority or compensation.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207521/bosses-are-turning-poverty-wage-workers-managers-and-barring-them-overtime-process

Repugs already screwed 100Ks of worker out of OT 10 years ago, got them re-classified as supervisory staff, and still you ST cretins and dumb red staters vote for Repugs.

[boutons_deux]

How Employers Get Out of Paying Their Workers

http://priceonomics.com/how-employers-get-out-of-paying-their-workers/

[boutons_deux]

One-Time Bonuses and Perks Muscle Out Pay Raises for Workers

Yacht-sized bonuses for Wall Street big shots and employee-of-the-month plaques for supermarket standouts are nothing new, but companies’ continued efforts to keep costs down have pushed employers to increasingly turn to one-off bonuses and nonmonetary rewards at the expense of annual pay raises.

“There is a quiet revolution in compensation,” said Ken Abosch, a partner at Aon Hewitt, a global human resources company. “There are not many things in the world of compensation that are all that radical, but this is a drastic shift.”

According to Aon Hewitt’s annual survey on salaried employees’ compensation, the share of payroll budgets devoted to straight salary increases sank to a low of 1.8 percent in the depths of the recession. It dropped to 4.3 percent in 2001, from a high of 10 percent in 1981. It has rebounded modestly since the recession, but still only rose 2.9 percent in 2014, the survey of 1,064 organizations found. (These figures are not adjusted for inflation.)

(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/business/one-time-bonuses-and-perks-muscle-out-pay-raises-for-workers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0#story-continues-2)
Aon Hewitt did not even start tracking short-term rewards and bonuses — known as variable compensation — until 1988, when they accounted for an average of 3.9 percent of payrolls. Ten years later, that share had more than doubled to 8 percent. Last year, it hit a record 12.7 percent.

Of course, companies have long rewarded top executives and rainmakers with bountiful bonuses — and that continues to be true — but compensation experts say the prevalence and types of one-time rewards and perks have spread further down the ranks than ever before. Although pay-for-performance rewards for top achievers and signing bonuses to attract talent account for most of the one-shots, they also include companywide amenities and targeted perks, like lunches out with the boss or Visa gift cards.

“It affects the C.E.O. all the way down to the guy who sweeps the factory floor,”

Over the past 12 months, real average hourly earnings have increased by just 2.2 percent. Since 1979, most of the gains in pay have gone to those at the top of the salary pyramid while, except for brief periods in the 1980s and late 1990s, those in the middle and at the bottom have been losing ground.

There are several developments that help account for wage stagnation. The economy’s globalized and technological nature, which has placed more bargaining power in the hands of employers, and long periods of relatively high unemployment — compounded by waves of layoffs and excessive numbers of discouraged and underemployed workers, leaving some employees fearful to ask for more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/business/one-time-bonuses-and-perks-muscle-out-pay-raises-for-workers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0


The American Dream! You have to be asleep to believe it.

[boutons_deux]

Millionaire McDoh franchisee and vampire-squid banking system fucking low-wage employees.
(http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/06/03/3665647/mcdonalds-payroll-cards-lawsuit-chase-refunds/)

McDonald’s Worker Lawsuit In Pennsylvania Prompts Wall Street Titan To Volunteer Refunds (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/06/03/3665647/mcdonalds-payroll-cards-lawsuit-chase-refunds/)

Paying employees through prepaid debit cards that incur fees when workers try to withdraw their cash is illegal in Pennsylvania, a judge ruled Tuesday (http://www.law360.com/employment/articles/662641?nl_pk=3c2b82d2-3619-4df9-b4be-cf36d50db153&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=employment). The lawsuit targeting a McDonald’s franchisee in the eastern-central part of the state has already prompted a powerful Wall Street bank to voluntarily give money back, a lawyer for the plaintiffs told ThinkProgress on Wednesday.

The case began in 2013 after a woman named Natalie Gunshannon sued (http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15178/mcdonalds_franchise_sued_over_payroll_debit_cards) a couple who own and operate multiple McDonald’s franchises in the state. The owners, Carol and Albert Mueller, had been using payroll debit cards provided by JP Morgan Chase rather than traditional paychecks or direct deposit payroll systems. After Gunshannon filed suit, the couple began offering direct deposit and traditional checks as alternatives to the payroll cards, which had previously been workers’ only option.

Gunshannon and other workers faced a $1.50 charge every time they used an ATM to access their wages, and a $5 charge for withdrawing the money over the counter at a cash register. Where a worker who misplaced a standard paycheck would be able to get a replacement check, the JP Morgan Chase prepaid cards charged a $15 replacement fee if lost or stolen. Paying bills online with the card meant spending an additional 75 cents on bank fees, and merely checking the balance of a card triggered a $1 fee.

The Muellers’ hourly workers were charged such fees nearly 47,000 separate times from the fall of 2010 to the summer of 2014, according to an expert witness in the case (http://www.steveharveylaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Expert-Opinion-Draft-and-SGH-CV-August-2014.pdf). That works out to roughly 20 separate fees per person in the class over a 45-month period.

Store managers, meanwhile, were offered direct deposit forms to receive their pay without facing the card fees.

When Gunshannon’s claim gained class action status earlier this year, all 2,380 hourly workers at the Muellers’ chain were able to join the case. Each of those workers would be entitled to a $500 damages payment plus the reimbursement of all the fees they were charged by the payroll cards, should the Muellers’ appeal of Tuesday’s ruling ultimately fail. In that case, the couple would have to pay out roughly $1.2 million in damages, unless they are able to strike a settlement with the workers’ attorneys.

Because the class action decision raised the stakes so significantly, that May ruling was in some ways a bigger deal than Tuesday’s finding that the Muellers had broken the law. The class status ruling in May certainly got Chase’s attention, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Cefalo told ThinkProgress.

“Our lawfirm became bombarded with telephone calls. All of the class members were getting a form letter from Chase saying, we have decided to refund you all of the fees you have paid Chase,” Cefalo said. “We were shocked.” The voluntary payments from Chase ranged from as little as a penny to as high as $148, the attorney said. A call to the bank’s press office about the payments was not immediately returned.

The checks do little to shield the Muellers from the potentially backbreaking damages payments mandates by Pennsylvania’s Wage Payment and Collection Law. And while the money is nice, Cefalo said, it doesn’t erase what the McDonald’s franchisees and Chase did to his clients.

“Say I come up to you and I have an armed robbery, and then I say ‘I’m sorry, here’s your money back.’ I still committed a robbery,” he said. “You still paid ‘em the wrong way.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/06/03/3665647/mcdonalds-payroll-cards-lawsuit-chase-refunds/

[boutons_deux]

Feast for investors sells workers short

As US companies spend billions repurchasing shares, employees and economy may pay the price

Ordemann and his team were laid off, along with 100 others in Boxborough, part of a sweeping cut of 6,000 employees that hit 8 percent of Cisco’s overall workforce.
“Cisco was so easily willing to let us go; it just seemed mad to me,” Ordemann said in an interview, as he recalled the “dead quiet” reaction to the layoffs.

This was not, however, the case of a company cutting back because it was struggling to make a profit. To the contrary, Cisco’s chief executive officer, John T. Chambers, this month called the California-based company a “cash and profit machine.” Cisco has a cash stockpile of $53 billion,

The Boxborough workers learned that at the same time they were being laid off the company was continuing to spend billions of dollars to buy back its own stock, a move designed to reduce the number of shares on the open market and perhaps boost its relatively stagnant share price.

This stock buyback boom, while obscure to much of the public, has become one of the most pervasive and divisive practices in corporate America. It affects jobs, investment, and the health of the economy, all in the search for higher share prices. It is also a major driver of the widening economic divide in this country, which could make it a prominent issue in the 2016 presidential election.

It boils down to a basic question being asked more and more these days, and not only by workers in Boxborough: Why are so many companies spending record sums of money buying back their shares instead of reinvesting more of their profits in their business and their workers?

Buybacks are booming because US companies have earned record profits and are hoarding a vast amount of cash. The companies use buybacks to share some of that wealth with their executives and shareholders. Many CEOs were given record compensation, and shareholders may have benefited from higher stock prices.
But most stock is owned by the nation’s wealthiest 10 percent; about half of Americans don’t own a single share, directly or indirectly (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294). (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294)

And buybacks can squeeze the economy in another way: Dollars not reinvested by a company in expanding their business can also mean fewer jobs in construction and other fields.

“The reason [companies] buy back their stock with cash is because they don’t have productive ways to invest the money,” said Peter Morici, a University of Maryland business professor who has written about buybacks. Boosting the share price through buybacks enables “individuals to reinvest in the economy more productively.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/05/30/companies-pour-billions-into-buying-back-stock-but-workers-and-economy-may-paying-high-price/8vi1toy4kZBr59ykKYzdNL/story.html (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/05/30/companies-pour-billions-into-buying-back-stock-but-workers-and-economy-may-paying-high-price/8vi1toy4kZBr59ykKYzdNL/story.html)

echos of HP saying they needed more profitability, so the fucked 20K people out of their jobs.

Capitalism is for capitalists, everybody else gets fucked

[boutons_deux]

To Keep Good Workers, Some Employers Are Trapping Them

In olden days, the way you kept good workers was to pay them more. That’s no longer the case in many jobs. Companies have been using “noncompete” agreements to stop these workers from seeking better compensation at rival companies.

Originally designed to stop tech whizzes from taking company secrets to higher bidders, these noncompete agreements are being forced on workers loading boxes at warehouses or assembling sandwiches so that they can’t go to the warehouse or sandwich shop down the block.

Such agreements have been challenged at Jimmy John’s sandwich franchise and Subway, among others. According toThe Huffington Post, the Jimmy John’s contract forbids an employee to work at any company making more than 10 percent of revenues “from selling submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches” within 3 miles of a Jimmy John’s (anywhere in the country) for two years.

The practice is outrageous, and a new bill before Congress would bar noncompete contracts for jobs paying less than $15 an hour. Introduced by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the legislation is aptly named the MOVE Act, which stands for the Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerable Employees Act.

The need for such protections is truly a sign of these times. It reflects the increasingly skewed balance of power favoring top dogs over their delivery truck drivers.
Hotshot execs keep telling us that their companies have to pay them a zillion dollars an hour to attract rare talent such as theirs. You know, the supply and demand thing.

When brilliant execs themselves are in short supply, you have to pay more for them.

But somehow, respect for the labor market’s law of supply and demand fades the lower down the corporate ladder you go. So here you have guys making $15 an hour and doing a good enough job that a company across town might pay them $17 an hour to do the same thing, but they can’t go.

Rather than give them a raise, employers wave these agreements workers had to sign as a condition of being hired. Lower-skilled workers rarely challenge them, although they can. (The employer has to demonstrate that the workers could expose privileged information to its competitors.)

Some companies are paying off former employers to get higher-skilled workers out of noncompete agreements. California has virtually banned all types of them.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/to-keep-good-workers-some-employers-are-trapping-them/

[boutons_deux]

The Low-Wage Quagmire

According to basic economic theory, the wallets and purses of low-wage workers in Santa Barbara and Goleta should be expanding. An unemployment rate of just 4 percent should be driving up wages as employers compete for the best workers. But a new study conducted by UC Santa Barbara scholars reveals something quite different: stagnant wages, pervasive wage theft and many people working while sick because they lack health insurance or sick leave.

The survey exposes the plight of the working poor — especially undocumented immigrants — and demonstrates a need for further study, noted Nelson Lichtenstein, MacArthur Foundation Professor in History at UCSB and director of the campus’s Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. “Wages should be higher, right? They are not,” Lichtenstein said. “What’s that all about? We need to investigate that more closely. That’s inexplicable in a theoretical sense.”

The initial idea behind the survey, according to Lichtenstein, was to gather information and explore the basis for a minimum wage referendum in the City of Santa Barbara, where the minimum wage is $9 per hour. Other researchers contributing to study are Eileen Boris, the Hull Professor in the Department of Feminist Studies, and Alice O’Connor, professor of history.

The study is based on a survey of 124 low-wage workers, slightly more than two-thirds of whom are Hispanic. The high proportion of Hispanics reflects their prevalence among the South Coast’s working poor, Lichtenstein explained. “We did want to focus on low-wage workers,” he said. “We’re not claiming that this survey represents everyone in the county, or even every low-wage worker. The point we’re making is that if you’re undocumented, then everything is worse — wage theft, lack of sick leave, lack of health care, et cetera.”

Although the sampling size was limited, the results largely mirror those of the UCSB Economic Forecast Project’s report, which was released May 21 and 22. “It turns out this thing was pretty accurate, and I’ll tell you why. It accords very closely with the statistics put out by the Economic Forecast,” Lichtenstein said.

One unexpected result of the survey was how much low-wage employees work while sick — and the deep resentment it generates. More than half of those surveyed reported working while sick in the past year. The most common reasons given: being unable to afford a day off and the fear of being fired. Non-citizens worked an average of 14 days while sick, while citizens worked 10. Agriculture and food service workers had it worst: They worked between 22 and 25 days while sick.

http://scienceblog.com/78887/lowwage-quagmire/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28Science Blog.com%29#m5X7Sir5YB07hudY.97

[boutons_deux]

What? Can America be thinking about catching up to more civilized industrial countries?

New Momentum on Paid Leave, in Business and Politics

Oregon this month became the fourth state to pass a bill requiring that companies give workers paid sick days to care for themselves or family members.

Chipotle said this month that it would begin offering hourly workers paid sick and vacation days, joining McDonald’s, Microsoft and other companies that have recently given paid leave to more workers.

And in a speech meant to preview her presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/13/us/elections/hillary-clinton.html?inline=nyt-per) put paid leave at the center of her platform. No one, she said, should have “to choose between keeping a paycheck and caring for a new baby or a sick relative.”

Long a pet Democratic cause that seemed hopelessly far-fetched, paid leave suddenly seems less so. With pay for most workers still growing sluggishly — as it has been for most of the last 15 years — political leaders are searching for policies that can lift middle-class living standards. Companies, for their part, are becoming more aggressive in trying to retain workers as the unemployment rate has fallen below 6 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/upshot/a-federal-policy-on-paid-leave-suddenly-seems-plausible.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

[boutons_deux]

The campaign to weaken worker protections

Who's to blame for thousands of work-related deaths and illnesses each year? Business, Congress, the White House and federal agencie


America’s flimsy workplace health and safety protections are no accident.

Problems that contribute to the daily toll (http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Job-Safety/Death-on-the-Job-Report) of illnesses, injuries and deaths — from outdated chemical-exposure standards (https://www.osha.gov/dsg/annotated-pels/index.html) to tiny fines (https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=TESTIMONIES&p_id=1122) for major violations — come after decades of concerted efforts to delay fixes and weaken the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s authority.

It’s jammed the gears of the regulatory system to the point that they hardly turn. OSHA issued seven health standards in the last two decades — one of which was revoked by Congress — compared with six in 1978 alone.

As a result, most of the agency’s exposure limits are more than 40 years old.

And tens of thousands of chemicals (http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/tscainventory/basic.html), including some that the federal government has known for years are hazards, have no limits at all.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Business interests, lawmakers, federal agencies and the White House have all played a role.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+publici_rss+%28The+Center+for +Public+Integrity+Latest+Stories%29

[boutons_deux]

Obama's EXEC waging war on the VRWC/Repug War on Employees

White House to make more workers eligible for overtime

Millions more U.S. workers will be eligible for overtime pay under a draft rule to be announced by the federal government as early as Tuesday, Bloomberg News said on Monday, citing an Obama administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Department of Labor would raise the minimum salary for exempting employees who work more than 40 hours a week from the requirement to be paid overtime to $970 a week, or about $50,440 a year, in 2016, Bloomberg said.

Many employees now earning as little as $455 a week, or $23,660 a year, are ineligible for overtime because they are classified as managers.

The increase in the salary limit would make overtime available to 15 million more workers, Bloomberg said, citing an estimate by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research body partly funded by unions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/29/us-usa-obama-overtime-idUSKCN0P92Z720150629?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews


Obama/Dems doing the exact opposite of the Repugs screwing people out of earnings. Thanks, Repugs!

Longer Hours, Less Pay – Labor Department’s new rules could strip overtime protection from millions of workers

In all, 1.4 million low-level, salaried supervisors will lose their overtime rights, along with 548,000 hourly supervisors, who could be switched to being paid on a salary basis and thus denied overtime protection.

More than 900,000 employees without a graduate degree or even a college degree will be designated “professional employees” and lose the right to overtime pay, even if their pay and status fall far below that of degreed employees. As many as 2.3 million team leaders with no supervisory authority will be exempted as “administrative employees” even if they are line or production employees.

http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp152/

Tell us again how the Dems and Repugs are identical! :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

Awesome. Now workers depending on overtime can watch it vanish as companies restrategize their wage methodologies to eliminate the extra payroll impact. Overtime? Nah. Pay reductions? Gotta pay for the one's that do pop over the threshold. That's gonna be great!

[TeyshaBlue]

and lofuckingl EPI.

[TeyshaBlue]

Makes way more sense to just pay/legislate a living wage and be done with it instead of byzantine bureacratic creations.

[boutons_deux]

TB :lol did you bitch when the Repugs screwed several 100K workers out $Ms by killing their overtime, not just govt workers but ALL workers?

FLSA is an ancient law, not Obama's law, that hadn't been touched for decades except for Repgus screwing employees in 2004. Did you whine and bitch in 2004?

"Now workers depending on overtime" TB :lol the affect workers aren't getting OT now, so how do they depend on it? :lol Your FUD and predictions about this are in the same bullshit about Ms of companies screwing workers down to 29 hours to avoid ACA benefits. Overall and on average, that just didn't happen. iow, RIGHT WINGERS WERE AND ARE WRONG AGAIN

[TeyshaBlue]

Makes way more sense to just pay/legislate a living wage and be done with it instead of byzantine bureacratic creations.

Fucking moonbat....cant stop your nonsensical babbling long enough to read. :rolleyes

[boutons_deux]

Fucking moonbat....cant stop your nonsensical babbling long enough to read. :rolleyes

Obama doesn't have the votes in legislature, fucking asshole, so he does what he can, "I have a pen and phone", by raising minimum wage to Fed govt contractors, giving govt employees wages hikes, qualifying more them for overtime.

YOUR Repug buddies would screw employees even more, like they did in FSLA 2004.

[TeyshaBlue]

Workers are getting overtime now dumbass...it didnt just dissappear. Hell, my wife gets, and counts on at least 5 - 10 hrs/wk. She's not alone. They can kiss it goodbye.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419545/mandatory-overtime-price-fixing-workers

[TeyshaBlue]

:cry Obama doesnt have votes!:cry

Fucking moonbat. :rolleyes

[boutons_deux]

Workers are getting overtime now dumbass...it didnt just dissappear. Hell, my wife gets, and counts on at least 5 - 10 hrs/wk. She's not alone. They can kiss it goodbye.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419545/mandatory-overtime-price-fixing-workers

your anecdote is useless, GFY

bogus "supervisors" don't get OT, thanks to Repugs in 2004.

[boutons_deux]

:cry Obama doesnt have votes!:cry

Fucking moonbat. :rolleyes

fucking asshole, Repugs control Congress. GFY

[TeyshaBlue]

your anecdote is useless, GFY

bogus "supervisors" don't get OT, thanks to Repugs in 2004.

Its not an ancedote, simpleton. It's a fact.

[TeyshaBlue]

:cry :cry

[boutons_deux]

some workers get OT, sure, duh, GFY

Ms of workers have been DENIED OT by the Repugs since 2004, by Repugs bogusly promoting them to "supervisors"


https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4TE-od7zLleEtvPkdJpGO7ORaoY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3835494/overtime-threshold-infograph.0.png

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/30/8868899/obama-overtime-minimum-wage

[TeyshaBlue]

And now, workers getting overtime can get theirs cut. Im sure they will be greatful.


Some likely will.

[boutons_deux]

And now, workers getting overtime can get theirs cut. Im sure they will be greatful.


Some likely will.

nearly all the propaganda predictions by you rightwingnuts about the destruction of USA, job losses, etc from ACA were not only wrong, but the OPPOSITE happened.

Someone now working 45 - 55 hours week for $XXX will maybe now be working only 40 hours/week, for the same $XXX, because the exploitative employer refuses to pay OT. Same $, but more time to have a life (or get a second job).

People getting paid OT now, what changes?

Obama REVERSING a huge aspect the Repugs' WAR ON EMPLOYEES.

Real Household income has been effectively stagnant for since St Ronnie was elected. It's WAY PAST TIME for households to pocket some the growth in vastly increased wealth and GDP.

This is another case of govt protecting Human-Americans from Corporate-Americans, because, with the VRWC/Corporate-Americans destroying unions, Human-Americans are divided, isolated, powerless.

[TeyshaBlue]

Someone now working 45 - 55 hours week for $XXX will maybe now be working only 40 hours/week, for the same $XXX, because the exploitative employer refuses to pay OT. Same $, but more time to have a life (or get a second job)

:lmao:lmao

[boutons_deux]

“I think America is out of hand”: The shocking numbers that reveal just how burnt out American workers are

Productivity has exploded in the American workforce in recent years, but at a terrible cost

The American worker is overworked, underpaid, and suffering from severe burnout.

This sentiment isn’t populist rhetoric, there are numbers to back it up. A new study (http://go.staplesadvantage.com/workplaceindex)from Staples Advantage and WorkPlaceTrends — an HR-focused research firm — polled over 2,500 workers and reached troubling results. According to the data, 53 percent of American workers report feeling burned out at work.

With current working conditions, it’s easy to see why. A 2012 study (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/9646349/Smartphones-and-tablets-add-two-hours-to-the-working-day.html) concluded smartphones and tablets enable employers to further colonize a worker’s time to the tune of two extra hours a day since they can be reached at all hours. In 2014, Gallupestimated (http://www.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx) the typical American workweek was 47 hours, not 40; the American worker was toiling for almost a full extra day. Of the workers this recent study polled, more than half worked a day longer than eight hours.

“This isn’t the workplace of 10 years ago,” Dan Schawbel, founder ofWorkPlaceTrends (http://workplacetrends.com/), co-author of the study, and author of the New York Times bestselling book Promote Yourself, told Salon. “There’s a lot of pressure. And it’s competitive in the sense that anyone in the world could take your job for less money, so you have to work harder.”

And work harder Americans have. Some work so hard it kills them, like a Bank of America intern (http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/goldman_sachs_reduces_intern_day_to_17_hours_after _death_of_bank_of_america_corp_intern/)who passed away after working 72 hours straight. Because of this occupational devotion (or occupational desperation), productivity has exploded by over 400 percent since 1950 (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/).Yet wages haven’t budged (http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21615589-throughout-rich-world-wages-are-stuck-big-freeze) — at least not for most Americans. The richest 1 percent, however, have seen their average income surge by over 240 percent (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts).

Yet, bizarrely, the study reports a vast majority of workers at 86 percent still claim to feel happy and motivated.

“My thought is that workers have accepted the new reality of the workplace,” Schawbel said. “A lot of them are just happy to have a job in general…Many workers are just trying to keep their job, and then excel at their job, because it’s not like people are getting paid to work the way they were ten years ago, so you have to play catch up.”

But, according to the study, Americans don’t seem concerned about this as perhaps they should be. When Canadian workers were asked about work-life balance, 56 percent cited it as a top concern when looking for work as opposed to only 46 percent of Americans.

The upshot of this trend is anemic, and perhaps even nonexistent, personal lives. AsSalon reported earlier this year (http://www.salon.com/2015/02/04/americas_free_time_problem_why_nearly_half_of_u_s_ workers_dont_get_enough_of_it/), many Americans feel they don’t get enough free time due to their constantly lengthening workdays. Is it any wonder America ranks 25th in work-life balance and dead last among major nations in time devoted to leisure and personal care (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/)?

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/i_think_america_is_out_of_hand_the_shocking_number s_that_reveal_just_how_burnt_out_american_workers_ are/


Americans are so fucked over by "work", they're so desperate to hang on, that they don't want to admit they are fucked over.

VRWC/BigCorp War on Employees is a total, unstoppable victory.

Live to work (in a shitty) job while losing real income, not work to live. GAMEOVER

And VRWC wants to privatize (steal) social security and raise retirement to age 70.


http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/i_think_america_is_out_of_hand_the_shocking_number s_that_reveal_just_how_burnt_out_american_workers_ are/

[boutons_deux]

Wages shrink for state's middle-income workers

California's job market is among the fastest-growing in the nation, and the state's unemployment rate is at one of its the lowest levels in seven years.

But the state's middle-income earners continued to see their wages decline in 2014, according to new research — evidence that a crucial segment of the workforce is still falling behind.

Typically you've seen the middle class as the key to economic mobility, a way to climb the economic ladder. They are feeling a very specific pinch right now.

Wages for the typical worker in California — those who earn $19.18 an hour, or about $39,800 a year — are still 1.8% lower than they were in 2011, when the state's unemployment rate hovered around 11.5%. The current unemployment rate is 6.4%

The research from the California Budget & Policy Center also shows that median earners in California are making substantially less than they were before the Great Recession in 2006, after adjusting for inflation.

"Typically you've seen the middle class as the key to economic mobility, a way to climb the economic ladder," said Luke Reidenbach, a policy analyst at the nonprofit Sacramento research group, which wrote the report. "They are feeling a very specific pinch right now."

Wage erosion for middle-income earners is particularly challenging as housing costs in California have continued to rise, he said. Unlike lower-income workers, those in the middle tend to have less access to subsidized housing programs, he said.

Workers at all income levels except those earning in the top 10% suffered wage declines from 2006, when the economy peaked, through 2011. But since then, workers in both the upper- and lower-income brackets have had their wages increase, while those in the middle have seen continued declines.

Since that peak, wage declines for median earners in California have also been more severe than the U.S. overall. Since 2006, median wages in California have fallen 6.2% — more than the triple the decline of 1.9% across the nation.

Moreover, the gap between wages of the typical worker and those earning in the top 10% have consistently grown since 1979, according to the group's analysis of U.S. Census data.

"These diverging fortunes have led to a widening gulf between higher-wage workers and everyone else," the report concludes.

Reidenbach said the recent gains for lower-wage workers could mean that middle-income earners are next in line.

"The way that recoveries tend to work is that low-wage workers are hired first, because they're cheaper," he said. "The hope is that as the economy continues to improve, mid-wage workers will see raises as well."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wage-stagnation-20150702-story.html

[boutons_deux]

American workers are getting sick, and CPI wants you to understand why

CPI began publishing findings of an 18-monthinvestigation (http://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/unequal-risk) on work-related disease in America. The multi-part exposé, complete with methodology (http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17563/methodology-unequal-risk-investigation), catalogues the toxic substances that many Americans come into contact with in the workplace—and the weak federal regulations that fail to police them. Workers from construction sites to grocery stores to semiconductor manufacturing plants often touch or inhale chemicals that hold the potential, advocates say, to irreparably damage or end lives.

The conclusions are jarring in and of themselves. But what makes them even more frightening is the knowledge that such conditions exist—indeed, they’re often legal—in one of the most advanced countries in the world.
CPI and several other news organizations have renewed their focus on workplace issues in recent years, an about-face after the decades-long decline of the more-traditional, union-focused “labor” beat. The reversal (http://www.cjr.org/analysis/when_longtime_labor_reporter_steven.php) came in wake of the financial crisis, when stagnant wages and income inequality took center stage in the American political arena. Much of the coverage, from mainstream media to left-wing outlets, centers on such economic concerns. But CPI has focused its efforts on a different—though no less important—aspect of labor coverage. It targets the intersection of workers’ rights and public health, and it consistently connects in a big way.

CPI’s lead piece (http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers) on Monday outlined how a shoddy federal regulatory regime allows various toxic substances to pollute American workplaces, despite far stricter guidelines for protecting the general public from chemical exposure. Inhaled or otherwise touched by workers, these substances lead to an estimated 50,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of illnesses, and tens of billions of dollars in medical expenses and lost productivity each year—what the piece’s headline terms a “slow-motion tragedy for American workers.”

The blight of disease contracted on the job isn’t confined to factory workers. It consumes hairdressers, grocery store meat-wrappers, scientists and people in a variety of other professions. Many are stricken by middle age.

The panoply of illnesses, from nerve damage (https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/1bromopropane_hazard_alert.html) to dementia (http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v6/n7/full/nrneurol.2010.80.html) to virulentcancers (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447593/), takes a profound toll on workers and their families. Careers are lost, finances shredded, marriages tested. In some cases, workers opt for macabre, last-ditch procedures to try to save their lives…

Federal regulators are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem,which didn’t materialize by chance (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections). Congress has exacerbated the situation by refusing to fortify the weak 1970 law specifying what [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] can do. Trade groups have challenged health standards in court while workers lose their lives. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is a vortex that sucks in proposed agency rules and doesn’t spit them out for months — or years.


The potential injustice isn’t merely that workers toil amid substances known for their toxicity: lead, silica, and hexavalent chromium, to name a few. It’s that such conditions are typically legal. Efforts to tighten such regulations have been hamstrung by Congress or the White House, CPI reported in an analytical sidebar (http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections) Monday, and public agencies tasked with enforcing them lack the resources to do so effectively. The current head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, meanwhile, freely acknowledged to CPI that the body’s rules are “weak and out of date, or simply non-existent.”

http://www.cjr.org/images-body/Labor%20health.jpg

http://www.cjr.org/b-roll/cpi_american_workers_toxins.php

BigChem profits trump lives of Human-Americans.

[boutons_deux]

did somebody say "fuck OSHA"?

OSHA says open-flame heater caused gas rig fire that killed three Oklahoma workers

COALGATE, Okla. (AP) — Federal officials say an open-flame heater on the floor of an oil rig likely sparked a December fire that killed three and injured two in Coalgate.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration says this wasn’t the first time the company that owns the rig was cited for using a heater on an oil rig floor, the McAlester News-Capital reports (http://bit.ly/1Bo15aO).

Records indicate that the company, Dan D Drilling, was cited in June 2013 for allowing the use of an open-flame heater on one of its rigs. Dan D Drilling received 10 OSHA violations and faces penalties.

The company’s been placed on OSHA’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program. “which concentrates resources on inspecting employers who have demonstrated indifference to their OSH Act obligations …”

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2015/06/17/osha-says-open-flame-heater-caused-gas-rig-fire-that-killed-three-oklahoma-workers/#31363101=0

[boutons_deux]

Rising Economic Insecurity Tied to Decades-Long Trend in Employment Practices

Even before the founding of the company in 2009, the United States economy was rapidly becoming an Uber economy writ large, with tens of millions of Americans involved in some form of freelancing, contracting, temping or outsourcing.

The decades-long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the latest issue (http://www.democracyjournal.org/37/shared-security-shared-growth.php) of Democracy Journal, is a “transformation that promises new efficiencies and greater flexibility for ‘employers’ and ‘employees’ alike, but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class America was built.”

Along with other changes, like declining unionization and advancing globalization,, the increasingly arm’s-length nature of employment helps explain why incomes have stagnated and why most Americans remain deeply anxious about their economic prospects six years after the Great Recession ended.

Last year, 23 percent of Americans told Gallup (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1720/work-work-place.aspx) they worried that their working hours would be cut back, up from percentages in the low-to-mid teens in the years leading up to the recession. Twenty-four percent said they worried that their wages would be reduced, up from the mid-to-high teens before the recession.

Even if the economy continues to improve, the lingering malaise will almost certainly be the central issue in next year’s presidential election.

the tidal wave sweeping through the American economy has already reshaped the political landscape — from the rise of an anti-Wall Street movement on the left to the Tea Party (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) on the right — and is sowing frustration among a large mass of voters.

“Whether America will be America or not hinges on whether we have a downward spiral around wages,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. “People know things are changing. They don’t feel like anyone has a handle on it. There’s a yearning for a political vision that addresses that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

The Fed (belongs to the banksters) seems happy with the "economy as solid" and will raise rates (kills jobs), but GAF about Human-Americans, just like the Fed bailed out the banksters, but not Americans.

[boutons_deux]

Pay Is Stagnant for Vast Majority, Even When You Include Benefits

A newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics research paper (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/compensation-inequality-evidence-from-the-national-compensation-survey.htm) by Kristen Monaco and Brooks Pierce provides important new data analysis of wage and compensation trends over the 2007–2014 period, updating earlier analyses by Pierce. This study draws on data from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), an employer survey that provides detailed information on wage and benefits.

there's a graph!

http://www.epi.org/publication/pay-is-stagnant-for-vast-majority-even-when-you-include-benefits/

[boutons_deux]

America Leads Developed World In Treating Working Moms Like Crap


America is very harsh on working mothers.

Women make up nearly 50 percent (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/29/breadwinner-moms/) of America’s workforce and 40 percent of household breadwinners, yet they have few of the protections mothers in other rich countries enjoy. America is the only country (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/03/-sp-america-only-developed-country-paid-maternity-leave) in the developed world that doesn’t offer guaranteed paid paternity or maternity leave to workers. Only 12 percent of U.S. workers reportedly have such coverage, but it is usually a benefit provided through employer insurance.

At least seven in 10 mothers with children younger than 18 were in the workforce in 2012, according (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/09/5-questions-and-answers-about-american-moms-today/) to the Pew Research Center. Yet, America is quite hostile toward its working mothers. Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of momsrising.org (https://www.momsrising.org/), says part of the problem is that most policymakers can’t relate to the issues moms face.

More than 80 percent (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/05/the-new-congress-is-80-percent-white-80-percent-male-and-92-percent-christian/) of the 114th Congress is male, a figure Rowe-Finkbeiner says explains why lawmakers don’t see childcare access as an urgent issue.

another issue: employers discriminate against mothers. One studyfound (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/511799) that moms pursuing six-figure jobs could be offered salaries that are $11,000 less than female applicants who don't have children; that figure jumps to $13,000 less when compared to childless male applicants. Men don’t face such discrimination. In every state, working fathers earn more than (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/03/working-dads-make-more-money-than-working-moms-in-every-state/) working women.

Men’s salaries increased by more than 6 percent when they had children, but women saw their salaries drop by 4 percent for each child they had

Illinois is reportedly running out of money for childcare subsidies because the state legislature underfunded (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/money-for-illinois-child-care-subsidies-is-running-dry/article_1f014bda-da01-53f6-a175-e9d1a3195efa.html) the budget by $300 million last year.

In North Carolina, thousands of low-income families lost (http://abc11.com/society/thousands-of-families-lose-child-care-subsidies-under-new-state-budget/345549/) childcare subsidies under the state’s new eligibility requirements last year.

Parents in Alabama face cuts (http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/politics/southunionstreet/2015/06/17/child-care-program-threatened-state-budget-woes/28894257/) to their state-supported childcare subsidies.

http://www.alternet.org/america-leads-developed-world-treating-working-moms-crap

[boutons_deux]

5 Ways Conservatives Make Workers Poorer, Sicker, And More Dependent On Government

Here are five ways workers punish themselves by voting Republican:

1. Working longer.

More than 85 percent of American men and 66.5 percent of women work more than 40 hours a week (http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/the-state-of-the-40-hour-workweek/). In exchange, we’re the only industrialized country on Earth that does not require paid maternity or sick leave. (http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/21/Obama-addresses-sick-and-family-leave-policies.html) We also have less vacation time (http://bigthink.com/praxis/why-do-americans-have-less-vacation-than-anyone-else) than any first-world nation.

Needless to say, conservatives widely oppose all of these policies. Every Republican in the Senate running for presidentvoted against paid sick leave this year (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-26/every-republican-running-for-president-votes-against-paid-family-leave).

“Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers,” according to the International Labour Organization (http://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/).

But Jeb Bush is right—many of us would still like to work longer and can’t. But not because we need more work—we have plenty of that— but we need the economic freedom conservative policies deny us.

2. Working to death.

The retirement age for Social Security is already 67 for anyone born in 1960 or after (http://www.socialsecurity.gov/planners/retire/agereduction.html). Jeb Bush would like to make that 68 or 70 (http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/243556-bush-retirement-age-should-be-68-or-70). He’d also like to privatize it and “phase out” traditional Medicare (http://www.nationalmemo.com/jeb-bush-keeps-clarifying-he-wants-to-replace-medicare/), presumably to phase in Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan, which is opposed by everyone, including most Republicans.

Bush’s argument is solvency or saving these retirement guarantees. What he’s really saying is that he would never consider the much less painful and viable options: asking the rich to pay payroll taxes the same way the middle class does, and negotiating drug prices for Medicare the way we do for Medicaid and the Veterans Administration (http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2015/07/23/u-s-could-save-up-to-16b-if-medicare-part-d-negotiated-prices-paper/).

Bush and most Republicans make the argument that “people are living longer!”

“This sounds plausible until you look at exactly who is living longer,” The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman explains. “The rise in life expectancy, it turns out, is overwhelmingly a story about affluent, well-educated Americans. Those with lower incomes (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/workingpapers/wp108.html) and less education have, at best, seen hardly any rise in life expectancy at age 65; in fact, those with less education have seen their life expectancy decline.”

So the workers who are voting Republican are again most victimized by GOP policies.

3. Working for less.

If facts could change minds, this graph would be all workers would need to see (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/union-membership-middle-class-income_n_3948543.html)to never vote Republican again.

It’s almost impossible to directly connect the fall of middle-class incomes and the decline of labor unions, but the correlations are astounding. And wherever unions are busted or hindered by GOP policies, wages fall (http://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/).

Jeb Bush has said he doesn’t even think there should be a minimum wage and opposes President Obama’s revised rule that would force employers to pay millions of workers for the overtime they are already doing. And they pursue these policiesdespite evidence showing their arguments against higher mandatory wages (http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-why-conservatives-reject-reality-about-wage-increases) have been repeatedly disproved.

4. Working less safely.

The Occupation Safety and Health Administration was created under President Nixon and has radically transformed the safety of U.S. workplaces.

“In the past four decades, the number of deaths due to workplace accidents fell from 13,800 in 1970 to 5,657 in 2007,”David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz wrote (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rosner/osha-at-forty_b_804195.html). “The total incidence rate of private sector occupational injuries and illnesses plummeted from 10.9 per 100 workers in 1972 to 3.9 in 2008.” Some of this has to do with the decline of industrialized occupations in America. Most of it has to do with OSHA.

Still, in 2013, nearly 13 Americans died on the job (http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Job-Safety/Death-on-the-Job-Report) each day.

So what does the GOP want to do? Gut OSHA (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/21/173909/osha-gop-revolutionary/), starve funding for regulators to police corporations (http://www.propublica.org/article/what-went-wrong-in-west-texas-and-where-were-the-regulators), or just completely roll back regulations that prevent little inconveniences like factories exploding.

5. Working for food stamps and Medicaid.

What do you call people who work 40 hours a week and are still on food stamps and Medicaid?

Republicans call them “takers,” even though it’s corporations that are really doing the taking (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/whos-dependent-food-stamps).

“You’ve got this giant industry of free riders,” billionaire and anti-inequality activist Nick Hanauer said (http://www.eclectablog.com/2015/06/5-reasons-billionaires-should-hate-runaway-wealth-inequality.html) on Barry Ritholtz’sMasters of Business podcast (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/06/mib-nick-hanauer/). “McDonald’s pays their workers poverty wages and not one of the people in McDonald’s can buy the products [of the companies I start]. All of my employees can afford to go to McDonald’s every day, right, but not vice versa. All of my employees pay taxes.

All of the McDonald’s employees, they don’t pay taxes. In fact, they need public services like food stamps and Medicaid that my employees pay . And none of this makes any sense.”

It only makes sense if you want to keep wages unethically low and don’t actually care about the personal responsibility you preach. It makes sense if you think the people who should pay the costs of your extraordinary gains are the workers you exploit and the taxpayers you gouge.

It actually makes a lot of sense. What [I]doesn’t make sense is that the votes of the people being exploited make this possible.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-ways-conservatives-make-workers-poorer-sicker-and-more-dependent-on-government/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=MM_frequency_six&utm_campaign=Morning%20Memo%20-%202015-07-27&utm_content=C#

[boutons_deux]

Why Are Americans Overworking Themselves to Death?

The reality is, Americans don’t just work more than they have in the past, they work more than most of the industrialized world. It’s not exactly breaking news that we spend more hours at the office — or on the assembly line or behind the coffee counter — than our European peers. A 2004 study (http://www.nber.org/papers/w10316) from the National Bureau of Economic Research found Americans work “50 percent more than do the Germans, French, and Italians.”

More recent data (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS) from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that in 2014, Americans outworked several expected other countries, among them Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Austria, all countries that (coincidentally, I’m so sure) rank higher than us on the most recent World Happiness survey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2013_ranking_.282010-12_surveys.29).

The most surprising discovery of the poll, though, is that we have surpassed Japan, long stereotyped by Americans as a society far more workaholic than our own, in annual hours worked by a tally of 1789 to 1729. That means we’re now collectively putting in more work hours each year than the country where necessity led to the invention of the term karōshi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi) (“death from overwork").

Yet Japan, at the very least, demands a legal minimum of 10 paid vacation days (though many employers provide more) along with 14 weeks (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/22/maternity-leaves-around-the-world_n_1536120.html) of maternity leave. (The country has also undertaken a more aggressive effort (http://www.ibtimes.com/japan-population-problem-government-adopts-paternity-leave-nursery-school-measures-1854084) to get new fathers to take advantage of paid paternity leave.) France famously goes even further (http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/CEPR_Vacation_Days_OECD.JPG), offering 30 days of vacation and 16 weeks of parental leave, while Scandinavian countries and Australia and New Zealand top even the French.

Then there’s the United States, where workers have no legal guarantee to any amount of vacation at all — or sick days, for that matter, despite a report (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/15/more-than-a-third-of-american-workers-dont-get-sick-leave-and-theyre-making-the-rest-of-us-ill/)finding all those sick people at work ultimately cost the country $160 billion in lost productivity each year. The U.S. has the distinction of being the world’s only industrialized, not to mention rich, nation with no national legislation demanding employers offer maternity leave. And paternity leave? That’s not even part of the national discussion.

Without any legal right to vacation, sick days or maternity leave, nearly a quarter of Americans work jobs that offer no paid time off, per a 2013 study (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/no-vacation-update-2013-05.pdf) from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The study found that part-time workers are “far less likely to have paid vacations (35 percent) than are full-timers (91 percent).”

http://www.alternet.org/gender/americans-are-addicted-overworking-themselves-and-its-hitting-one-part-society-especially?akid=13372.187590.rXguru&rd=1&src=newsletter1040700&t=2

[boutons_deux]

Inside the AMAZON HELLHOLE for Employees

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace


The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.


They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported.

To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles (http://www.amazon.jobs/principles), 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.

At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.”

The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)

Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

“Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

changes that the rest of the work world is now experiencing: data that allows individual performance to be measured continuously, come-and-go relationships between employers and employees, and global competition in which empires rise and fall overnight. Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving.

“Organizations are turning up the dial, pushing their teams to do more for less money, either to keep up with the competition or just stay ahead of the executioner’s blade,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


Sounds very much like soul-destroying brutality of Scientology, of extreme religious indoctrination, with nearly all workers undercompensated and having a diminished, fucked up personal life, if any.

Bezos is the chief priest and whipper, sounds very much like a brilliant sicko, a "peculiar" idiot savant.

But since the ONLY value America really worships is financial $ucce$$, Bezos and his slave-whipping mgmt team gets a pass.

[boutons_deux]

Low-Wage Colorado Workers Win Wage Theft Case

Between 40 and 50 low-wage workers at a grocery store in the Denver suburb of Aurora will collect a total of $305,000 in back wages and penalties, thanks to a U.S. District Court ruling July 31 affirming the employees were underpaid.

The decision is based on often under-utilized federal and state “wage theft” laws, which allow employees and employers to sue businesses that effectively steal money from employees by not, for example, paying required minimum or overtime wages.

In the Aurora case, one employee at the Carniceria y Verduleria Guadalajara approached the group Towards Justice, which works to defend “the economic stability of working families (http://www.towardsjustice.org/en/),” and claimed to have been habitually underpaid. The grocery store did not realize it was breaking any laws, and did not appear to have malicious intent, worker advocates said.

After an investigation confirming this allegation, Towards Justice represented the employee and others at the store in a class action lawsuit.

“It’s really courageous for an employee to vindicate not only their rights but the rights of their colleagues,” Towards Justice Executive Director Nina DiSalvo told RH Reality Check. “Wage theft disproportionately affects immigrant workers, who are less likely to complain because they are unsure what their rights are in a foreign country. All workers, regardless of immigration status, are protected by wage laws.”

Studies show that wage theft is common, and most incidents often go unchallenged by employees.

The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute reported last year that in Colorado (http://www.coloradofiscal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wage-Nonpayment-in-Colorado-Final-1.pdf) alone, $750 million in “wage nonpayment” is withheld from workers annually with only a “small fraction” being reported. This translates to $25 million to $47 million in lost taxes for Colorado, the study estimates.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/08/20/low-wage-colorado-workers-win-wage-theft-case/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rhrealitycheck+%28RH+Reality+ Check%29

[boutons_deux]

Appeals Court Reinstates Wage Rules for Home Care Workers


A federal appeals court on Friday revived Obama administration regulations that guarantee overtime and minimum wage protection to nearly 2 million home health care workers.

The ruling was a victory for worker advocacy groups and labor unions that have long sought higher wages for domestic workers who help the elderly and disabled with everyday tasks such as bathing or taking medicine.

It also was a win for the White House, which proposed the rules four years ago as part of an effort to go around an unwilling Congress in a bid to help low-wage workers through executive action.

A federal judge had scrapped the Labor Department rules earlier this year after finding that the agency had overstepped its authority. Since 1974, federal law has exempted home care workers hired through third-party staffing agencies from wage and overtime requirements.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Labor Department has the power to interpret the law to change that exemption.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Sri Srinivasan cited a "dramatic transformation" of the home care industry over the past four decades as a valid reason for the change. While most caregivers used to be directly employed by individual households, the vast majority of workers now work for staffing companies that service hundreds or thousands of customers, Srinivasan said.

He also noted a massive shift to providing care for the elderly in their own homes rather than in nursing homes, which requires workers to offer more advanced medical care and assistance to clients than the mere "companionship" services envisioned in 1974.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/08/21/us/politics/ap-us-home-health-care-wages-.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

Big Brother is watching: Why the workplace of 2016 could echo Orwell’s 1984

Wearable health trackers

Activity-tracking devices made by companies like Fitbit, Jawbone and Misfit are increasingly popular gadget purchases, but they’re also making their way into the workplace: research firm Gartner estimates that 10,000 companies offered activity-trackers to staff in 2014. Their motivation is being questioned, however: will your boss have access to the data from these devices? (Imagine your annual review including criticism of your sofa-loafing nature at weekends). And will they share it with advertisers or insurance companies?

Monitoring your night-time habits

Personal sleep monitoring – sometimes using standalone devices or sometimes built in to fitness-trackers like Fitbit – sounds like a good idea, but would you want your employer to know how much shut-eye you’re getting? Meanwhile, a flurry of reports in 2013 called attention to the prospect of daily testing of employees’ alcohol levels, with fingerprint-scanning device AlcoSense TruTouch taking just 10 seconds to return a reading. “The benefits of testing all staff, every day are immense and the change in workforce behaviour is immediate,” explains the company on its website (http://www.alcosense.co.uk/alcosense-trutouch.html). Anyone for a mineral water?

Work/life balance

Some of the best things about workplace technology come outside your workplace: faster, more reliable broadband; powerful smartphones and tablets; better video and text chatting software all enable us to be more flexible in our working patterns. But one of the worst things about workplace technology also comes outside the workplace, because all this flexibility often erodes your work/life balance. It might be your boss’s fault – emails in the evening, expecting an immediate response, or conference calls on public holidays – but just as often it might be your own: checking emails in bed and treating the train home as an extension of your office hours.

Augmented reality

The Google Glass (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/31/google-glass-wearable-computer-businesses)augmented-reality specs were essentially a toy for tech people with too much money to burn (“glassholes” as they were labelled). Google has gone back to the drawing board with that product but the one area where experts agree AR glasses are likely to catch on is in the workplace. From warehouse workers to plumbers and electricians, people will be able to access data and services with a flick of their eyes. The risks? Information overload: emails and notifications in your face throughout the day. And also the questions around recording video and audio, whether in terms of your boss demanding your first-person footage of a task, or simply the danger of an entire workforce becoming walking CCTV cameras.

Anonymous feedback tools

One of the elements of Amazon’s working culture (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html)picked out by the New York Times was its “secret feedback” system, used anonymously by employees to praise – or criticise – one another to bosses. Amazon claims most of the comments are positive but workers interviewed for the report said it could also be used to gang up on colleagues through coordinated campaigns of negative feedback. As this kind of “collaborative anytime feedback” technology spreads to other companies, moaning about colleagues in the pub could be replaced by anonymous complaints that feed directly into their performance reviews – and its anonymous nature may hamper their ability to defend themselves.

Driving-monitoring apps

Tracking drivers remotely is well established in industries like logistics but the emergence of smartphone driving-monitoring apps may expand the idea to anyone who drives a company car. Insurance companies including Aviva and Admiral have launched apps for drivers that score their driving safety based on cornering, braking and acceleration, and then offer the best ones a discount on their insurance. Employees will be aware of GPS technology being used to track their location to eliminate dilly-dallying, but data on their driving safety – especially in a device/car that’s used at weekends – adds a new layer.

Sociometric badges

That badge hanging from your neck to get in to your workplace? What if it also recorded your daily interactions? This is the idea behind sociometric badges, which capture “face-to-face interactions” of the wearer, as well as speech and body movement, then serve all this data up for analysis by employers. It might provide data on how well (or poorly) a salesperson is doing – “improving the employee-customer interaction” as one firm selling the technology puts it. The implications for workplace gossip, or even simply judging someone more on their social interactions than other aspects of their work, are complex.

Happiness analytics

Some sociometric badges are going further. Earlier this year, Hitachi unveiled a new badge – slogan: “ Human Big Data” (http://www.hitachi-hightech.com/global/products/ind_solutions/ict/big_data/index.html/)– which aims to measure your happiness. How? A mysterious algorithm based on your physical activity, from how quickly you walk to how often you nod. Hitachi says this data will be aggregated to provide an overall happiness score for a workplace, rather than used for bosses to grill individual staff about why they’re not happy enough. Mood-tracking is a hot area for tech development, from smart-rings measuring your sweat to wristbands monitoring your heart. Some, like headworn devices Melomind and Thync, even claim to change your mood via electrodes stimulating the brain. The science remains under debate, but the vision of your boss trying to make you wear a de-stress helmet is… a bit stressful.

Facial recognition technology

Privacy concerns around facial recognition tend to focus on two areas: its use by police and the government in the monitoring of citizens, and the worry that if Facebook is working on it (which it is), it must be up to no good. Employers don’t get mentioned often, but perhaps they should. Think about established fears of companies Googling potential employees or mining their Facebook and Twitter profiles, and then extend those into using software to scan for their faces in photos across the web – from drunken nights out to public protests.

Security drones

In 2015, consumer drones – as opposed to military ones – remain a plaything, with regulators still drawing up rules on how they can and can’t be used for commercial purposes. One of the uses being mooted is for building security: drones capable of zipping around buildings, filming any intruders. Concerns here don’t just include the risk of a drone falling out of the sky on to an employee’s head but the question of whether these drones will also film staff, and what will happen to the footage.

Corporate security

Most of these changes in the workplace will create huge amounts of data on employees, from personal activity and email archives to photographs and footage of them going about their business. Which begs the question: are the companies storing this technology able to do that securely, in an era when data breaches are increasingly common. If Ashley Madison, Sony Pictures and Carphone Warehouse fell victim to hackers, what makes you sure your company won’t? In an era of increased data collection within the workplace, what your employer plans to do with it may be the least of your worries.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/big-brother-is-watching-why-the-workplace-of-2016-could-echo-orwells-1984/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

With employers having won the War on Employees and operating in a "sellers' job market" for years and as far as we can see, will employers force employees to wear monitoring devices as conditions of employment, as if you were a monitored capital piece of closely equipment, like a truck with GPS?

[boutons_deux]

a victory for workers. Thanks, Obama!

Home Healthcare Workers Haven’t Qualified for Minimum Wage for 80 Years. Now They Do.

It took about 40 years after the passage of federal wage standards for the government to decide that domestic workers deserved a minimum wage. And it’s taking nearly another 40 years for home healthcare workers—the subset of the industry specializing in elder and disability care—to gain the same protections.

The Obama administration has amended federal wage and hour regulations to close a longstanding exemption for these aides. And after a legal tussle with home healthcare employers, last week, an appeals-court judge struck down a lower-court ruling blocking the reforms (http://news.yahoo.com/appeals-court-upholds-minimum-wage-home-care-workers-150042417%E2%80%94finance.html), paving the way forextending minimum wage and overtime protections (http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/08/21/appeals-court-reinstates-wage-rules-for-home-care-workers) for some of the poorest workers caring for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.


The new rules, first issued in 2013 (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/08/21/3693967/appeals-court-home-care-minimum-wage/), target the workers employed by home healthcare agencies, who were excluded in the 1970s amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on the basis that their services were akin to “elder sitting” (read: not a “real” profession).

In reality, the industry today has evolved into a major component of the healthcare infrastructure, tending to a range of physical and social needs including feeding, bathing, managing clients’ medication, and providing rehabilitation and recreational activity.

Many of the responsibilities of the job require ongoing professional training, along with extreme hours (being on-call around the clock for intensive medical needs), and considerable manual labor (lifting fragile clients).

http://www.thenation.com/article/home-healthcare-workers-havent-qualified-for-minimum-wage-for-80-years-now-they-do/

[boutons_deux]

The NLRB just acted to give some of the most disadvantaged workers in America more bargaining power.

This new National Labor Relations Board decision (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/business/labor-board-says-franchise-workers-can-bargain-with-parent-company.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news) looks important and potentially very positive for low-wage workers facing a huge bargaining-power deficit with their employers.

The Board’s decision held that workers hired by a contractor–Leadpoint in this case–were jointly employed by both the contractor and the contracting company, Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI). From the NLRB (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-decision-browning-ferris-industries):

…the Board found that BFI was a joint employer with Leadpoint, the company that supplied employees to BFI to perform various work functions for BFI, including cleaning and sorting of recycled products. In finding that BFI was a joint employer with Leadpoint, the Board relied on indirect and direct control that BFI possessed over essential terms and conditions of employment of the employees supplied by Leadpoint as well as BFI’s reserved authority to control such terms and conditions.


The reason this is such a big deal is that, as the NYT recognizes (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/business/labor-board-says-franchise-workers-can-bargain-with-parent-company.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news), “…the ruling could apply well beyond companies that rely on contractors and staffing agencies, extending to companies with large numbers of franchisees.” Like Mickey D’s, e.g.

Now, there are a lot of potential slips between the cup and the lips on this one. First, the board’s ruling has to survive legal challenges. If it does, then there’s got to be a union to organize these workers. Given the fact that by definition, they’re scattered around among franchise shops and subcontractors’ payrolls, that will be a challenge.
But in the name of fighting economic inequality and rebalancing bargaining power, it is one well worth undertaking.

There’s another point here, one which I fear is underappreciated: the members of the NLRB are appointed by the president. And so it really matters who the president is, in ways we don’t always think about.

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-nlrb-just-acted-to-give-some-of-the-most-disadvantaged-workers-in-america-more-bargaining-power/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JaredBernstein+%28Jared+Berns tein%29

[boutons_deux]

Kock Bros/ALEC synthetic Kockenstein monster

Scott Walker's latest attack on unions is straight out of Alec's playbook

In a speech on Thursday at the alma mater of his hero Ronald Reagan, Eureka College in Illinois, he pledged to destroy the political activities of federal employee unions by blocking their political funding.

Vowing to “wreak havoc on Washington” – his new campaign mantra – Walker said that on his first day in the White House he would force the unions to disclose how much of their dues they were spending on political activities.

He would also put an end to the federal government practice of holding back a portion of union dues from workers’ paychecks for that purpose.

An interesting though largely overlooked feature of Walker’s bid for survival is that it is not new at all. In fact, the idea of hitting public unions by cutting off their political funding has been promoted by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council, Alec, since at least 1998 (http://alecexposed.org/w/images/b/b8/Paycheck_Protection_Act_Exposed.pdf).

In that year, Alec released the Paycheck Protection Act as a model bill that it began disseminating among Republican-controlled state legislatures.





In subsequent years, it has pushed similar legislation under slightly different titles – Public Employee Paycheck Protection Act, Public Employer Payroll Deduction Policy Act – in each case seeking to push back the political influence of public unions by cutting off their supplies of political cash.

Brendan Fischer of the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors Alec, said the legislation was billed as protecting workers’ freedom.

“But really it is about defunding unions and tilting the playing field in favour of corporate interests like Koch Industries, the energy empire of the Koch brothers who are among Alec’s biggest funders,” he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/10/scott-walker-unions-alec-political-activities

[boutons_deux]

Corporations are putting a $535 billion squeeze on workers' share of the pie (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/11/1420414/-Corporations-are-putting-a-535-billion-squeeze-on-workers-share-of-the-pie)



http://images.dailykos.com/images/163826/large/labor_share_of_corporate_income.png?1441988367

The wage squeeze is not in workers' imaginations. (http://www.epi.org/publication/the-decline-in-labors-share-of-corporate-income-since-2000-means-535-billion-less-for-workers/) The Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens explains:


Between 2000 and the second quarter of 2015, the share of income generated by corporations that went to workers’ wages (instead of going to capital incomes like profits) declined from 82.3 percent to 75.5 percent, as the figure shows. This 6.8 percentage-point decline in labor’s share of corporate income might not seem like a lot, but if labor’s share had not fallen this much, employees in the corporate sector would have $535 billion more in their paychecks today. If this amount was spread over the entire labor force (not just corporate sector employees) this would translate into a $3,770 raise for each worker.

And by the way, American corporations were doing just fine back when they weren't squeezing quite so hard.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/11/1420414/-Corporations-are-putting-a-535-billion-squeeze-on-workers-share-of-the-pie?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

BigCorp fucks employees unstoppably.

[boutons_deux]

A fundamental plank of the Repugs/VRWC/1%'s War on Employees so they pocket salaries that used to go to employees, esp union employees, is their war on Unions.

Study: Unions and upward mobility go hand in hand (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/09/1419807/-Study-Unions-and-upward-mobility-go-hand-in-hand)

http://images.dailykos.com/images/163437/large/union_membership_and_economic_mobility.jpg?1441818 036

The evidence that upward mobility is out of reach (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/04/1304369/-Another-study-blows-up-the-myth-of-upward-mobility) for most low-income kids in America,particularly in certain areas (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/22/1225669/-What-are-your-chances-at-upward-mobility-Depends-where-you-live), keeps building. Over the past 40 years, research by Raj Chetty and coauthors suggests, declining racial segregation and high school dropout rates—factors that should have increased mobility—were in competition with rising income inequality and single motherhood—factors that work against mobility. But a new study adds in another factor that is correlated with kids from low-income families moving up: unions.According to the study by Richard Freeman, Eunice Han, David Madland, and Brendan V. Duke of Harvard, Wellesley, and the Center for American Progress, unions are linked in a few ways with improved outcomes for kids (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2015/09/09/120558/bargaining-for-the-american-dream/):




Areas with higher union membership demonstrate more mobility for low-income children. Using Chetty and others’ data, we* find that low-income children rise higher in the income rankings when they grow up in areas with high-union membership. [...] This relationship between unions and the mobility of low-income children is at least as strong as the relationship between mobility and high school dropout rates—a factor that is generally recognized as one of the most important correlates of economic mobility. Indeed, union density is one of the strongest predictors of an area’s mobility. Furthermore, unions remain a significant predictor of economic mobility even after one controls for several variables including race, types of industries, inequality, and more.
Areas with higher union membership have more mobility as measured by all children’s incomes. We also measure the geographic relationship between union membership and another measure of mobility: the income of all children who grew up in an area after controlling for their parents’ incomes. According to our findings, a 10 percentage point increase in union density is associated with a 4.5 percent increase in the income of an area’s children. [...]
Children who grow up in union households have better outcomes. Using a different dataset, we match parents and children to compare the outcomes of children who grew up in otherwise similar union and nonunion households. The findings show that children growing up in union households tend to have better outcomes than children who grew up in nonunion households, especially when the parents are low skilled. For example, children of non-college-educated fathers earn 28 percent more if their father was in a labor union. This analysis helps provide evidence suggesting a link between unions and economic mobility.




The study only shows correlation, not causation, so other factors that are associated with unions may be the ultimate cause, but the correlation sure is interesting, isn't it? Particularly since Republicans keep telling us how bad unions are for everyone. Even if unions aren't causing higher mobility (and they may be; we just can't tell from the available data), they sure aren't getting in the way. That fits with research finding that declining union membership contributes to rising income inequality (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003649/-Declining-union-membership-contributes-to-rising-income-inequality-study-finds).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/09/1419807/-Study-Unions-and-upward-mobility-go-hand-in-hand?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

[boutons_deux]

Declining union membership contributes to rising income inequality, study finds (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003649/-Declining-union-membership-contributes-to-rising-income-inequality-study-finds)


http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/2563/unionincome-graph-1.jpg

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003649/-Declining-union-membership-contributes-to-rising-income-inequality-study-finds

[boutons_deux]

Kock Bros Kockenstein monster and protege blatantly exposing the VRWC/BigCorp War on Employees

Scott Walker to AnnoScott Walker to Announce Proposal to Curb Union Power Nationallyunce Proposal to Curb Union Power Nationally



At event in Las Vegas late Monday, two-term governor will propose eliminating unions for federal government employees, making all workplaces right-to-work unless individual states vote otherwise, and eliminating National Labor Relations Board that oversees labor practices, according to his campaign
Also will call for end of Davis-Bacon Act, federal law that requires government contractors to pay workers the local prevailing wage, a perennial target for elimination by the business community
Proposal would also allow employers to provide employees with the option of using overtime for time off from work, instead of extra pay
Proposes (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-10/scott-walker-would-ban-union-paycheck-deductions-for-federal-workers) requiring federal employee unions to disclose and certify the portion of dues used for political activity and prohibit withholding for that amount
Expected to say he would work with Congress, or use executive power, to make the changes if elected president
“Our plan will eliminate the big government unions entirely and put the American people back in charge of their government,” Walker is expected to say, according to excerpts of his speech provided in advance. “Federal employees should work for the taxpayers -- not the other way around.”
“Any economic plan that does not bring our federal labor laws into the 21st Century is incomplete,” Walker is expected to say. “To grow the economy at a higher rate, requires a comprehensive approach and reform of the labor unions is a key part of the plan.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-14/scott-walker-to-announce-proposal-to-curb-union-power-nationally

[101A]

Corporations are putting a $535 billion squeeze on workers' share of the pie (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/11/1420414/-Corporations-are-putting-a-535-billion-squeeze-on-workers-share-of-the-pie)



http://images.dailykos.com/images/163826/large/labor_share_of_corporate_income.png?1441988367

The wage squeeze is not in workers' imaginations. (http://www.epi.org/publication/the-decline-in-labors-share-of-corporate-income-since-2000-means-535-billion-less-for-workers/) The Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens explains:


Between 2000 and the second quarter of 2015, the share of income generated by corporations that went to workers’ wages (instead of going to capital incomes like profits) declined from 82.3 percent to 75.5 percent, as the figure shows. This 6.8 percentage-point decline in labor’s share of corporate income might not seem like a lot, but if labor’s share had not fallen this much, employees in the corporate sector would have $535 billion more in their paychecks today. If this amount was spread over the entire labor force (not just corporate sector employees) this would translate into a $3,770 raise for each worker.

And by the way, American corporations were doing just fine back when they weren't squeezing quite so hard.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/11/1420414/-Corporations-are-putting-a-535-billion-squeeze-on-workers-share-of-the-pie?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

BigCorp fucks employees unstoppably.




Seems to peak as each new administration comes in...then declines throughout....regardless of party.

[101A]

Of course, when it "looks" best is during recessions....the LESS a corporation makes, the bigger percentage of the pie salaries are taking. Without overlaying other data, chart is kind of useless.

[boutons_deux]

Of course, when it "looks" best is during recessions....the LESS a corporation makes, the bigger percentage of the pie salaries are taking. Without overlaying other data, chart is kind of useless.

BigCorp has been suppressing salaries for 35+ years, concomitant with busting unions. Real household income has been essentially stagnant, while exec compensation and stock buybacks (to inflate execs' stock-based pay) have skyrocketed. More the the exec and investors always mean less for employees. Apparently, you have been hypnotized into believing BigCorp bullshit and passively accepting being screwed so carefully you don't even feel it. Check your asshole.

[boutons_deux]

Why So Many Americans Defend the Failed Capitalist Experiment


Capitalism has worked for big business and for the people with stocks and estates. But for the past 35 years our economic system, stripped of sensible regulations, has poisoned the nation with deadly inequality and driven much of middle America to an ever-widening (http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/09/new-evidence-half-america-broke) lower class.

Yet for much of the nation the delusion persists, against all common sense, that deregulated free-market capitalism works, that it equates to true Americanism, and that people have only themselves to blame for their failure to thrive in this expanding world of wealth. The reasons for this delusion are not hard to determine.

1. The Rich are Easy to Understand: Capitalism Justifies Selfishness

Studies have consistently shown (http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/evidence-that-the-meritocracy-is-made-up-of-poor-people/18656-evidence-that-the-meritocracy-is-made-up-of-poor-people) that increased wealth causes people to turn inward, to believe more in their own "superior" (http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/13/why-the-wealthy-favor-harsh-punishment-for-criminals-and-errant-schoolchildren/) traits, and to care less (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/social-class-as-culture.html) about the feelings (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion) and needs of others. This anti-social (http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/) attitude blends well with the Ayn-Randish "greed is good" message of unregulated capitalism.

Other studies have determined that money pushes people further to the right (http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf), making them less egalitarian (http://www.voxeu.org/article/money-makes-people-right-wing-and-inegalitarian), less willing to provide broad educational opportunities (http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf) to all members of society, and certainly part of the reason that our investment in public infrastructure as a component of GDP dropped by 60 percent (https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2012/03/pdf/middle_class_infrastructure.pdf) from 1968 to 2011.

2. The Would-Be Rich: Dollar Signs Dance in Their Heads

Capitalism allows profit-seekers to view students as sources of revenue, and to drain money from the public school system. Jeb Bush (http://excelined.org/news/remarks-of-jeb-bush-to-excellence-in-action-2009-a-national-summit-on-education-reform/) likened schools to milk cartons in a supermarket aisle: "I wish our schools could be more like milk...You can get whole milk, low fat milk or skim milk...chocolate, strawberry or vanilla...milk alternatives, like soy milk, almond milk and rice milk...Who would have ever thought you could improve upon milk? Yet, freedom, innovation and competition found a way."

Bush's milk alternative is the charter school business. David Brain (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-big-business-of-charter-schools/2012/08/16/bdadfeca-e7ff-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_blog.html), head of the tellingly named Entertainment Properties, called it "a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set in rough measure annually."

But the money didn't start rolling in until the public school system began to be starved. The U.S. Department of Education (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014022.pdf) reported that $197 billion is needed to repair the nation's K-12 public school buildings. The public system is going broke, deprived of tax dollars that go to charters. State budgets are providing less per-pupil funding (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4011) for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did six years ago - in many cases far less.

And the results of the capitalist school experiment? Still coming in, although evidence (http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-that-charter-schools-are-failing/) is quickly accumulating (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/02/the_great_charter_school_rip_off_finally_the_truth _catches_up_to_education_reform_phonies/) that many charter school systems are mired in fraud and secrecy, and shaping up as a prime example of the folly of treating human beings like products to be bought and sold.

3. The Rest of Us: The Media Keeps Telling Us that Capitalism is the Only Way to Live

The mainstream media's unwillingness to state the truth about inequality has led people to vastly underestimate (http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf) the wealth gap in our country, guessing that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth, when in reality they own much less than 1% of the wealth. Out of every dollar, they own a third of a penny.

Conservative writers overwhelm us with their capitalist-loving mantras:


Income inequality is simply not a significant problem. (The Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/04/28/what-the-right-should-learn-about-inequality/))
Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful... (The Washington Post's George Will (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-income-inequality-benefits-everybody/2015/03/25/1122ee02-d255-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html), quoting John Tamny)
Capitalism has worked very well (Bill Gates (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/bill-gates/8073946/Bill-Gates-If-you-dont-like-geeks-youre-in-trouble..html))
A free market system...ensures a fair, democratic process (Sarah Palin (http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Sarah_Palin_Budget_+_Economy.htm))
Let the market do its job (Chicago Tribune (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-26/news/ct-edit-mortgage-20110426_1_housing-market-home-prices-interest-rates))

Many of them believe that the state of America is reflected in the stock market. But the richest 10% own (http://www.nber.org/papers/w20733) over 90 percent of the stocks and mutual funds. No problem for the Koch Foundation (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/koch-brothers-commercial_n_3581017.html). They comfort us with the knowledge that If you earn over $34,000 a year, you are one of the wealthiest one percent in the world.

4. Anyone Above the Lowest Class: It's Empowering to Look Down on Someone

Members of the sinking middle class in our pathologically unequal society may well find it convenient to blame people in lower economic classes, who are unlikely to fight back. Guidance for such condescension comes from libertarian write Charles Murray, who apparently doesn't understand the family stress caused by the lack of educational and employment opportunities. He accuses the poor (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/charles-murray) of having a "genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line." And, he adds (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html), "Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms."

This inspires people like Paul Ryan (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/paul-ryan-welfare-reform_n_1368277.html) and Scott Walker (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-03/scott-walker-safety-net-has-become-a-hammock-), both of whom compared the safety net to a "hammock," and John Boehner (http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/26438-a-conservative-disdain-for-the-unemployed), who explained the thinking of poor people: "I really don't have to work...I think I'd rather just sit around."

The critics of struggling Americans should be reminded that the cost of the entire Safety Net (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258) is only about ONE-SIXTH of the $2.2 trillion in tax avoidance (http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/01/07/tax-avoidance-rise-its-twice-amount-social-security-and-medicare) that primarily benefits the rich.

A good American capitalist like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/lindsey-graham-taxes-really-american-mitt-romney_n_1662939.html) would say, "It's really American to avoid paying taxes, legally...It's a game we play."

It's a game for the people looking down on a troubled nation.


http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/14/why-so-many-americans-defend-failed-capitalist-experiment

[boutons_deux]

Halliburton to pay employees $18.3M in back wages


http://thehill.com/regulation/254490-halliburton-to-pay-employees-183m-in-back-wages

[boutons_deux]

she's dreaming, but nice try

BigCorp will never pay women the same as men, and Repugs block anything that would hurt BigCorp, investors' incomes.

USA is a Euro-white man society.

A Republican Senator Just Offered A Serious Idea For Combating The Gender Wage Gap

After years of Republicans standing in lockstep against a Democratic bill aimed at closing the gender wage gap, a Republican senator just introduced a bill that looks nearly identical to it.

On Tuesday, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) introduced (http://www.ayotte.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2199) the Gender Advancement in Pay (GAP) Act, a bill aimed at gender wage discrimination. While the full details of the bill aren’t yet available, some of the main provisions have been made public: It would tell the country’s employers that they must give men and women equal pay for equal work, while also stipulating that they can still give out merit pay; it would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees for discussing pay or deciding not to disclose their salary histories; and it would create civil penalties for employers who discriminate in pay based on gender.

“Men and women should be paid based on their experience and qualifications — regardless of their gender — but unfortunately, incidents of gender-based pay discrimination still exist,” Ayotte said in a press release. “The GAP Act strengthens our equal pay laws and gives employees the knowledge and tools they need to combat wage inequality.”

The bill’s elements look nearly identical to those in the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure backed by a number of Democrats in the House and Senate but unanimously (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/15/3567740/republicans-paycheck-fairness-act/) blocked (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/09/3424853/senate-republicans-paycheck-fairness-act/) by Republicansmultiple (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/05/495106/senate-blocks-paycheck-fairness/) times (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/11/17/130872/paycheck-fairness-act-fail/). “It has some of the key provisions that the Paycheck Fairness Act has that are pretty important to addressing the pay gap,” said Jessica Milli, a senior research associate at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/09/23/3704663/equal-pay-kelly-ayotte/

Ayotte will be primaried by the VRWC next election to be replaced by a male Repug.

[boutons_deux]

1%ers, VRWC spreading FUD about SS going broke, in order to steal $100Bs via privatization?

Here's what privatized retirement security can look like

The Plot to Make Retired Coal Miners Broke


There was plenty in the complex deal to benefit bankers, lawyers, executives and hedge fund managers. Patriot Coal Corp. was bankrupt, but its mines would be auctioned to pay off mounting debts while financial engineering would generate enough cash to cover the cost of theproceedings.

When the plan was filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in Richmond, Virginia, last week, however, one group didn’t come out so well: 208 retired miners, wives, and widows in southern Indiana who have no direct connection to Patriot Coal. Millions of dollars earmarked for their health care as they age would effectively be diverted instead to legal fees and other bills from the bankruptcy.

The Squaw Creek miners thought little of it when, in 2007, Peabody passed what remained of its Alcoa venture—some environmental reclamation work at the mine—to an offshoot called Heritage Coal, a subsidiary of a new entity Peabody created called Patriot Coal. The health-care obligation for the retirees was assumed by Alcoa, which paid Patriot to administer the benefits.

The United Mine Workers of America estimates this has been costing Alcoa about $2 million per year to cover the 208 miners, wives and widows.

But here’s where the financial engineering got complicated and ultimately threatened those benefits: Peabody also transferred to Patriot 13 percent of its coal reserves, and about 40 percent of its health-care liabilities—the obligations for 8,400 former Peabody workers. A year later, Patriot was loaded up with even more costs when it acquired Magnum Coal, a subsidiary of the country’s second-largest mining company, Arch Coal. This left Patriot with responsibility for another 2,300 retirees, and, by 2012, total liabilities of $1.37 billion.

“We were assured as miners we would have lifetime health-care benefits… [we] depend entirely on this.”



It looked as if Patriot had been set up to fail (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112449/peabody-energys-disappearing-health-benefits), and in 2013 it in fact did, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Patriot emerged from bankruptcy later that year after getting an investment stake from a New York hedge fund called Knighthead Capital Management. Patriot also reached a deal with the mine workers union to have it take over responsibility for the health care of those nearly 11,000 retirees, with a promise of about $310 million from Patriot to help cover the cost.

Still, the deal wasn’t enough to keep Patriot healthy. With the industry contracting even further amid competition from natural gas, tougher environmental regulations and declining coals reserves in Appalachia, Patriot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yet again earlier this year. This time, its assets are being auctioned off.

Back in Indiana, there was no reason for the retired Squaw Creek miners to think their benefits were at risk from the Patriot bankruptcy, since they were being paid by Alcoa, a thriving company with $24 billion in annual revenue. But last week, Patriot’s lawyers, from the firm Kirkland & Ellis, made two filings (PDF (http://reorg-research.com/pdf/867516.pdf)) (PDF (http://reorg-research.com/pdf/867515.pdf)) at the bankruptcy court in Richmond that caught the union and the retired miners by surprise.

Patriot is not putting the $22 million toward the Squaw Creek health-care benefits. According to the court filings, only $4 million will go toward that purpose—$1 million for the benefits of former salaried managers at the mine, and $3 million for the rank-and-file miners.

The rest of the money from Alcoa—$18 million—is going to cover the costs of the bankruptcy. This includes the fees for Kirkland & Ellis, which has at least four attorneys from New York and Chicago on the case, and the Washington, D.C., restructuring advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal.

The agreement with Alcoa, one filing states (http://reorg-research.com/pdf/867515.pdf), “allows the Debtors [that is, Patriot] to obtain cash in the amount of $22,000,000, which will be critical for funding the Debtors’ costs associated with emerging from chapter 11.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/01/the-plot-to-make-retired-coal-miners-broke.html

Lawyers gotta put food on their families, too.

[boutons_deux]

BigCorp/VRWC/Repug/red states' America is becoming a shittier, scarier place

Inside Corporate America’s Campaign to Ditch Workers’ Comp

One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules. What does it mean for injured workers?

STANDING BEFORE A GIANT MAP in his Dallas office, Bill Minick doesn’t seem like anyone’s idea of a bomb thrower.

But backed by some of the biggest names in corporate America, this mild-mannered son of an evangelist is plotting a revolution in how companies take care of injured workers.

Let them opt out of state workers’ compensation laws — and write their own rules.

ProPublica and NPR obtained the injury benefit plans (https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/workcomp-company)of nearly 120 companies who have opted out in Texas or Oklahoma — many of them written by Minick’s firm — to conduct the first independent analysis of how these plans compare to state workers’ comp.

The investigation found the plans almost universally have lower benefits, more restrictions and virtually no independent oversight.

Minick’s handiwork that allows Costco (https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2449007-costco-injury-benefit-plan-texas.html) to pay only $15,000 to workers who lose a finger while its rival Walmart (https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2455723-walmart-injury-benefit-plan-texas.html) pays $25,000.

Unlike traditional workers’ comp, which guarantees lifetime medical care, the Texas plans cut off treatment after about two years. They don’t pay compensation for most permanent disabilities and strictly limit payouts for deaths and catastrophic injuries.

The list of what the plans don’t cover runs for pages.

They typically won’t pay for wheelchair vans, exposure to asbestos, silica dust or mold, assaults unless the employee is defending “an employer’s business or property,” chiropractors or any more than 75 home health care visits. Costco (https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2449007-costco-injury-benefit-plan-texas.html) won’t cover external hearing aids costing more than $600. The cheapest external hearing aid Costco sells? $900 (http://www.costco.com/hearing-aid-styles.html).

The plans in both Texas and Oklahoma give employers almost complete control over the medical and legal process after workers get injured. Employers pick the doctors and can have workers examined — and reexamined — as often as they want. And they can settle claims at any time. Workers must accept whatever is offered or lose all benefits. If they wish to appeal, they can — to a committee set up by their employers.

Yet Minick’s push has united an unlikely set of allies — unions, trial lawyers and insurance companies. They say his idea isn’t progress, but a return to the Industrial Age before workers’ comp, when workers and their families had to sue their employers or bear the costs of on-the-job injuries themselves.

“That’s the system we had in place 100 years ago,” said Trey Gillespie, senior workers’ comp director for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. “This is not an innovative concept.”

...

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-corporate-americas-plan-to-ditch-workers-comp

Less costs for employers, more for the pockets of mgmt and their investors.

America is becoming nastier and nastier, more brutal, more punitive, every year. "America is a CHRISTIAN country!" :lol

[boutons_deux]

Papa John's stores to pay $500,000 wage theft settlement (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/17/1433855/-Papa-John-s-stores-to-pay-500-000-wage-theft-settlement)

"Once again, we’ve found Papa John’s franchises in New York that are ripping off their workers and violating critical state and federal laws,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. "Once again, I call on Papa John’s and other fast food companies to step up and stop the widespread lawlessness plaguing your businesses and harming the workers who make and deliver your food."

In July, the attorney general's office arrested Abdul Jamil Khokhar, owner of nine Papa John's stores in New York, accusing him of breaking minimum wage and overtime laws. According to his plea agreement, Khokhar could serve up to 60 days in jail. In another case, the attorney general's office secured a judgment of nearly $3 million against two other Papa John's franchisees.

In 2013, a report from Fast Food Forward found 84 percent (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/16/1209546/-New-York-City-fast-food-restaurants-find-a-lot-of-ways-to-steal-from-their-workers) of New York City fast food workers reporting that they'd been victims of wage theft. Fully 100 percent of fast food delivery workers said the same. Schneiderman's efforts to crack down have also led to settlements at franchises of other chains, including Domino's (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/27/1287845/-New-York-Domino-s-workers-to-get-448-000-wage-theft-settlement) and McDonald's (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/19/1285910/-New-York-McDonald-s-workers-to-get-500-000-wage-theft-settlement).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/17/1433855/-Papa-John-s-stores-to-pay-500-000-wage-theft-settlement?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

[boutons_deux]

Perspectives on the “Sharing/Gig Economy”

According to Steven Hill’s Raw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers (St. Martin’s Press), the US workforce is undergoing an alarming transformation. Increasing numbers of workers are being turned into contractors, freelancers, temps and “just-in-time” part-timers. Add to that the steamroller of automation and robots obsolescing millions of jobs, and the jobs picture starts looking grim.

Now an insidious mash-up of Silicon Valley technology and Wall Street greed has produced the latest economic fraud: the so-called “sharing economy,” with companies like Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit providing ever-smaller jobs (“micro-gigs”) and wages, while the companies profit handsomely in the “share the crumbs” economy.

Lawrence Mishel, EPI President, will discuss this research, showing that neither automation nor the gig economy are the main threats to good quality jobs and robust wage growth. The hype about automation and gig work is not just their impact but how extensive they really are. These are trends to be monitored, says Mishel, but

the main challenges are the ones that have emerged over the last three decades to suppress wage growth:

weak labor standards,

excessive unemployment,

globalization and

weakened collective bargaining.

http://www.epi.org/event/perspectives-on-the-sharing-economy/?utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=8d3d817944-Event_stream_reminders_10_28_201510_28_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-8d3d817944-58185037

The VRWC has fucked America and Americans, and there's no stopping it.

[boutons_deux]

disruptor-in-chief Musk exploits prison labor

Elon Musk’s solar company used panels made by cheap prison labor for a big taxpayer-subsidized project

For a huge solar-panel project launched in 2012 at two university campuses in Oregon, it relied on a vendor that used cheap prison labor to produce the panels, under a “buy American/buy local” banner. The story is a good reminder that we need to watch the renewables industry closely to make sure it doesn’t throw human rights and labor ethics out the window in its push toward a clean energy economy.

For SolarCity, the contract also looked like a win. Under a lucrative state program, the Oregon Department of Energy doled out $11.8 million in tax credits (http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/department_of_justice_launches.html) for the $27 million project. (SolarCity would not confirm the amount of the tax breaks despite repeated requests.) Those generous tax incentives — part of the Business Energy Tax Credit program, which ended in 2014 — came with an imperative (http://www.oregon.gov/transparency/Pages/TaxExpenditures.aspx) for “job creation and retention requirements.”

For its part, SolarCity did install panels that were produced by Oregon workers. But those workers were behind bars at Sheridan Federal Prison — and instead of benefiting from a program that was supposed to pump up the regional economy, they were paid less than a dollar an hour for their labor.

http://grist.org/business-technology/elon-musks-solar-company-used-cheap-prison-labor-for-a-big-taxpayer-subsidized-project/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-horizon

[boutons_deux]

Predispute arbitration deny employees’ rights

Q: “I work for a tech company in San Francisco, I am being unfairly harassed and discriminated against because of my disability.

I was reading my handbook and it says that if I want to seek legal action for a violation of my fair employment rights,

I have to go to arbitration,

waive my right to a jury trial,

pay for half of the costs and that

I can only recover my lost wages but not any pain and suffering or punitive damages.

Yet they “reserve the right” to sue me in court for any claim that I have interfered with their IP rights.

Is this true, can they take away my rights like this?”

A: Janet, compulsory predispute arbitration provisions in employment applications are horrible things and are becoming ever more prevalent. Arbitration is a private adjudication of disputes, most often decided by one “neutral” arbitrator without the benefit of a judge, jury or even a factual record of the proceedings.

These arbitration agreements are presented to employees as a precondition to employment: Sign it or no job.

Most people sign them without reading or understanding what rights they are giving up. You probably signed one.

Employers like arbitration because arbitrations are private and closed to the public providing secrecy for the employer. Additionally, arbitrations statistically result in lower overall average damage awards than a public trial in front of an unbiased judge and jury of one’s peers.

I am OK with arbitration agreements wherein two parties can voluntarily determine if they want their dispute submitted to arbitration after they know the nature of the dispute and what is at stake. Then a reasoned decision can be made.

Compulsory predispute arbitration takes away important constitutional rights before one even knows the nature of the dispute. When it comes to employment discrimination claims or significant injury claims, in 90 percent of the cases, I advise my clients that a jury of one’s peers is far superior to arbitration.

A jury hears one case whereas an arbitrator hears many. While it may sound like arbitrators would then have more experience, the dangers outweigh the benefits. For example, an arbitrator wants to get repeat business — that’s how they make their living. They want large corporations to use their services again. A jury doesn’t ever expect to be involved in deciding another action involving the same parties. So arbitrators are, consciously or unconsciously, biased and desirous of being in the favor of repeat players which are the companies, not the employees.

An arbitration agreement is a form of contract. California Code of Civil Procedure Section 1281 states: “A written agreement to submit to arbitration an existing controversy or a controversy thereafter arising is valid, enforceable and irrevocable, save upon such grounds as exist for the revocation of any contract.” For a contract to be enforceable it must meet many tests including a test of fairness. Contracts which are between parties of unequal bargaining power, which are presented as “take it or leave it” may be so onerous that they become contracts of adhesion.

Generally speaking, contracts of adhesion are those that do not fall within the reasonable expectations of the weaker or “adhering” party. A contract, even if consistent with the reasonable expectations of the parties, may be also denied enforcement if it is unduly oppressive or“unconscionable.” Unconscionability may best be defined as unbearably unfair.

The courts have held that claims of employment discrimination may be compelled to arbitration if there is an enforceable arbitration agreement.

To be enforceable, the agreement must:

1) clearly indicate that you are waiving your right to a jury trial;

2) be mutual: they can’t force you to arbitrate your claims while reserving the right to sue you for claims that they may have;

3) not limit your right to obtain discovery of documents or facts including deposing witnesses;

4) not place financial burdens on you, such as paying the arbitrator, which you would not face in a State Court action; and

5) provide the same kind of relief from an arbitrator as you would in court — including damages for pain and suffering and punitive damages if applicable.

Your limited statement of facts leads me to believe that your arbitration agreement may be an unenforceable, unconscionable, contract of adhesion.

Have a good trial lawyer review the agreement.

In the revolutionary war people fought and died for the 7th Amendment right to a jury trial.

Don’t give up your constitutional rights without a fight!

http://www.sfexaminer.com/dolan-predispute-arbitration-deny-employees-rights/

And you people want us to "trust" the good faith of your adored, predatory BigCorp? :lol

[boutons_deux]

Employer Political Coercion: A Growing Threat

http://prospect.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/shutterstock_152737355.jpg?itok=BUHXCZ6V

A common piece of advice for new hires is to avoid talking about politics, sex, and religion in the workplace. But it may be increasingly difficult for workers to keep their politics to themselves. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, employers now have broad legal rights to campaign for political candidates inside their firms as well as in the public arena. And thanks to new technology, they have the means to track their employees’ political opinions and activities.

Managers and supervisors can now legally require their workers to participate in politics as a condition of employment. For instance, in most states, managers have the legal right to mandate worker attendance at a political rally for a favored candidate—and fire or punish workers who decline to participate. Consider the following examples from recent years of employers engaging their workers in politics:



An Ohio coal-mining firm invited Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for a rally at its plant. The firm’s management told miners that they would be required to attend the rally, and that they would not be paid for their participation.
Executives at Cintas, a provider of uniforms and other workplace supplies, and Georgia-Pacific, a major paper-product manufacturer, sent letters to their respective workforces expressing clear partisan stances during the 2012 election. Executives at Georgia-Pacific, which is owned by Charles and David Koch, distributed a flyer and a letter indicating which candidates the firm endorsed in races ranging from the presidency to state government. The letters warned that workers might “suffer the consequences” if the company’s favored candidates were not elected.
A renewable energy company whose executives I interviewed reported that it encouraged its workers to contact their members of Congress in an effort to renew a federal tax credit for wind energy, warning its workers of the decline in sales of their products if the credit were to expire.
In the wake of a number of highly publicized episodes of racial violence, Starbucks executives launched a campaign for their baristas to start conversations with their patrons about race relations in America. Baristas would write the words “Race Together” on customers’ coffee cups. Staff were also encouraged to visit a company website with essays and videos about race relations. In an earlier 2013 effort, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz encouraged the store’s patrons to sign a petition to end a government shutdown, and baristas wrote the words “Come Together” on coffee cups.


Beyond these vignettes, there is evidence that employer efforts to recruit workers into politics—what I call employer mobilization—are common in the American labor force. A recent survey I commissioned indicates that perhaps one in four employees, or about 29 million to 39 million Americans, have been contacted by their managers about voting, political candidates, or public policies and political issues. By comparison, about 100 million Americans reported being contacted by a political party about the 2012 election and about 45 million Americans reported contact from a group other than a party about candidates in that election. Among employers I also surveyed, about half (46 percent) reported engaging their workers in politics.

Employer mobilization is important to understand because it offers companies an opportunity to shape public policy using a resource already at their disposal—their workforce. Top corporate managers responding to my survey of firms ranked employer mobilization as a highly effective means of influencing government. Debates over corporate lobbying and the power of business in politics thus ought to consider employer mobilization just as much as they focus on campaign contributions and other standard corporate political strategies.

Coercive forms of political recruitment in the workplace pose a serious threat to workers’ freedom of expression.

http://prospect.org/article/employer-political-coercion-growing-threat

[boutons_deux]

red states, slave states pre-empting on-call drivers from being employees

Lawmakers in five states push bills stopping ride-share drivers from being treated as employees

ate legislators in Ohio and Florida are moving ahead with regulations governing Uber and other ride services that would designate all drivers as independent contractors, bolstering a critical but much-disputed aspect of Uber’s business model.

The states would join North Carolina, Arkansas, and Indiana in requiring the contractor designation as part of new laws governing so-called transportation network companies, a Reuters review of state legislation showed.

In Ohio, state Rep. Bob Hackett said Uber, Lyft, the taxi industry and other parties were involved in drafting the bill.
At one point, Uber sent five representatives to a meeting with members of the insurance industry to negotiate language in the bill,

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/lawmakers-in-five-states-push-bills-stopping-ride-share-drivers-from-being-treated-as-employees/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

Just another example of pro-business Repugs screwing labor.

[boutons_deux]

The arbitration epidemic

Mandatory arbitration deprives workers and consumers of their rights

Conclusion

In the past three decades, the Supreme Court has engineered a massive shift in the civil justice system that is having dire consequences for consumers and employees.

The Court has enabled large corporations to force customers and employees into arbitration to adjudicate practically all types of alleged violations, including violations of laws to prevent consumer fraud, unsafe products, employment discrimination, nonpayment of wages, and countless other state and federal laws designed to protect citizens against corporate wrongdoing.

By delegating dispute resolution to arbitration, the Court now permits corporations to write the rules that will govern their relationships with their workers and customers and design the procedures used to interpret and apply those rules when disputes arise.

Moreover, the Court permits corporations to couple mandatory arbitration with a ban on class actions, thereby preventing consumers or employees from joining together to challenge systemic corporate wrongdoing.

As one judge opined, these trends give corporations a “get out of jail free” card for all potential transgressions.

These trends are undermining decades of progress in consumer and labor rights.

http://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/

Once the VRWC, starting in the mid 1970s, got their political, pro-business/anti-American hatchet men into SCOTUS, employees, consumers got more and more screwed.

[boutons_deux]

Tyson Foods’ Secret Recipe for Carving Up Workers’ Comp

Over the past 25 years, the giant meatpacking company has taken a lead in pushing for changes in workers’ comp in state after state — often to the detriment of workers.

About five years ago, one of the nation’s largest corporations, Tyson Foods, drew a bullseye on the official who oversaw Iowa’s system for compensating injured workers.

As workers’ compensation commissioner, Chris Godfrey acted as chief judge of the courts that decided workplace injury disputes. He had annoyed Tyson with a string of rulings that, in the company’s view, expanded what employers had to cover, putting a dent in its bottom line.

So when Republican Terry Branstad ran for governor in 2010, vowing to make Iowa more business-friendly, Tyson hosted an event for him at its headquarters and arranged another meeting for him to hear from large companies who were frustrated with the workers’ comp commission.

Within weeks of his victory, Branstad demanded Godfrey’s resignation. When Godfrey refused, the new governor did the harshest thing in his power: He cut Godfrey’s salary by more than 30 percent.

Amid the fallout, Tyson drafted and hand-delivered 14 pages of talking points (https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2644850-Tyson-Foods-Talking-Points-for-Gov-Terry-Branstad.html) criticizing Godfrey to help Branstad defend his decision.
Godfrey quickly grasped just how much sway Tyson and other big companies can have over workers’ comp. “It’s just chilling that someone would go to that level to try to influence the system,” said Godfrey, who is now the chief judge of the federal employees’ workers’ comp appeals board.

Tyson’s tactics, pieced together from depositions and documents in a lawsuit Godfrey filed — many of which have never been released — are far from unique to the Hawkeye State. Over the past 25 years, as the Arkansas company grew to be one of the world’s largest meatpackers, Tyson has taken a lead in reshaping workers’ comp, often to the detriment of workers, \\a ProPublica investigation has found.

Tyson’s story also tells a broader one about American politics: How time after time, one determined company, facing a challenge to its profits, can bend government and the law to its will.

Using its economic leverage — combined with time-honored wining-and-dining and behind-the-scenes arm-twisting — Tyson has helped steer legislative changes through several states in the South and Midwest.

https://www.propublica.org/article/tyson-foods-secret-recipe-for-carving-up-workers-comp

BigCorp corrupts politicians, primarily Repug whores, to screw employees for profit.

[boutons_deux]

Proposed House and Senate Bills Would Roll Back Worker Protections

The proposed riders include defunding enforcement of the "three-fourths guarantee," which ensures workers are paid for at least three-fourths of the hours in their contracts. This provision is designed to keep employers from over-recruiting workers and then benching them when hours become scarce.

"We were promised that there would be plenty of work," says one worker in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsy3mJikWQE)by migrant worker advocacy group Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM). "We traveled to the U.S. with the dream of having greater financial stability, ... but in the end we were not given as many hours as we had been promised." H-2B workers often go into debt to recruiters to secure American jobs. Once in the U.S., they are not allowed to work for anyone but the employer who sponsors their visa, even if that employer can't or won't give them full-time work. Then they may not be able to pay back their debts, much less bring money home.

Naomi Tsu, a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, emphasized the connection between debt and exploitation on the job. "You'd have these low-wage workers who are bearing hundreds or thousands of dollars in costs and I'm pretty concerned about how vulnerable that leaves the worker once she arrives," she said, citing labor abuses like a human trafficking case (http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17657/guestworkers_new_orleans) involving H-2B workers earlier this year. "She's got to keep working for the same employer no matter how bad things are because it's either that or else go home to the debt."

Another rider would change the way H-2B workers' wages are determined so that employers could use "private wage surveys" to determine the wage the workers should be paid. This methodology, invalidated by a federal court, leads to wages significantly below those provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While rolling back worker protections, the riders would dramatically expand the visa program. That could inflame concerns about guestworkers' competing with U.S. workers for jobs—especially if new wage rules mean employers can pay guestworkers less. As of now, H-2B visas are capped at 66,000 a year, with a few exceptions. But one rider would exempt from that cap those who had worked in the U.S. in the past three years—potentially expanding the program to over 200,000 guestworkers a year.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found in 2011 (http://www.epi.org/blog/h-2b-guestworker-program-american-wages/) that "the H-2B program puts downward pressure on American wages." It also found (http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18122/h2b_visas_opposition) high unemployment and stagnating wages in top H-2B occupations. The program is supposed to be used for domestic labor shortages, but these statistics suggest employers are using it to bypass normal labor market pressures. Concern about American workers has united some on the Right with those on the Left concerned about migrant workers—conservative outlet Breitbart, for instance, has reported disapprovingly on the H-2B program and efforts to expand it.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34024-proposed-house-and-senate-bills-would-roll-back-worker-protections

[boutons_deux]

Tyson Foods' Secret Recipe for Carving Up Workers' Comp

About five years ago, one of the nation's largest corporations, Tyson Foods, drew a bullseye on the official who oversaw Iowa's system for compensating injured workers.

As workers' compensation commissioner, Chris Godfrey acted as chief judge of the courts that decided workplace injury disputes. He had annoyed Tyson with a string of rulings that, in the company's view, expanded what employers had to cover, putting a dent in its bottom line.

So when Republican Terry Branstad ran for governor in 2010, vowing to make Iowa more business-friendly, Tyson hosted an event for him at its headquarters and arranged another meeting for him to hear from large companies who were frustrated with the workers' comp commission.

Within weeks of his victory, Branstad demanded Godfrey's resignation. When Godfrey refused, the new governor did the harshest thing in his power: He cut Godfrey's salary by more than 30 percent.

Amid the fallout, Tyson drafted and hand-delivered 14 pages of talking points (https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2644850-Tyson-Foods-Talking-Points-for-Gov-Terry-Branstad.html) criticizing Godfrey to help Branstad defend his decision.

Tyson's tactics, pieced together from depositions and documents in a lawsuit Godfrey filed — many of which have never been released — are far from unique to the Hawkeye State. Over the past 25 years, as the Arkansas company grew to be one of the world's largest meatpackers, Tyson has taken a lead in reshaping workers' comp, often to the detriment of workers, a ProPublica investigation has found.

Tyson's story also tells a broader one about American politics: How time after time, one determined company, facing a challenge to its profits, can bend government and the law to its will.

Using its economic leverage — combined with time-honored wining-and-dining and behind-the-scenes arm-twisting — Tyson has helped steer legislative changes through several states in the South and Midwest. It has urged officials, often successfully, to remove or appoint workers' comp judges. And the company's lawyers have crafted novel legal arguments for limiting the rights and benefits of injured workers.

"It's Almost Like They Wrote the Law"

As Tyson and other companies have assumed more control over workers' comp, injured workers say they've faced the consequences.
Billy Shawn Walkup was working at a Tyson bacon factory in Vernon, Texas, in 2011 when he slipped walking down wet stairs and hurt his back.

About two weeks later, Walkup said, a Tyson employee handed him a form waiving his right to sue. If he didn't sign it, the employee said, his medical care would end and he'd have to go back to full duty within two months.

"When I have a wife and a 4-year-old son at home — at the time, he was 2 — what am I supposed to do?" Walkup said recently. "I didn't know what was fixin' to happen. I was scared. I was afraid of losing my job."

Walkup signed the waiver, and the doctor sent him back to work with restrictions. But struggling with pain from the injury, Walkup missed too many days and was fired a few months later.

Tyson continued paying Walkup's medical care for another year under itsbenefit plan. But after a spine surgeon, whom Tyson approved, determined that Walkup had multiple disc protrusions in his back and numbness in his legs that caused him to occasionally collapse, Tyson sent him for an independent medical exam.

That orthopedic surgeon was 77 years old and had previously been disciplined by the Texas Medical Board for failing to document a physical examination. According to his report, the doctor spent 35 minutes examining Walkup and reviewing his extensive medical records before concluding that he'd merely suffered a strain. No further medical care was necessary, said the doctor, who didn't return calls for comment.

Tyson terminated Walkup's benefits.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34100-tyson-foods-secret-recipe-for-carving-up-workers-comp

[boutons_deux]

Penn. Company To Pay Up For Making Workers Clock Out On Bathroom Breaks

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Pennsylvania company that publishes business newsletters will pay about $1.75 million to thousands of employees who had to clock out while going on short breaks, including for the bathroom.

The company had argued that it wasn't required to pay employees for short breaks.

The bill includes back pay and damages to 6,000 employees at offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio between 2009 and 2013.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/american-future-systems-philadelphia?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

Government TYRANNY and OVERREACH!

[boutons_deux]

Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

An Oregon medical center’s plan to increase efficiency by outsourcing
doctors drove a group of its hospitalists to fight back by banding together.

Dr. Alexander’s method is at the center of an emotional debate in medicine, in which the imperative to increase efficiency in a high-cost health care system is often at odds with the deference traditionally accorded to doctors.

It’s a debate that came home to Sacred Heart in the spring of 2014, when the administration announced it would seek bids to outsource its 36 hospitalists, the hospital doctors who supervise patients’ care, to a management company that would become their employer.

The outsourcing of hospitalists became relatively common in the last decade, driven by a combination of factors. There is the obvious hunger for efficiency gains. But there is also growing pressure on hospitals to measure quality and keep people healthy after they are discharged. This can be a complicated data collection and management challenge that many hospitals, especially smaller ones, are not set up for and that some outsourcing companies excel in.

“They assure you of relief of some headaches,” said Dr. John Nelson, a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine. He compared outsourcing doctor groups to a management company to hiring a lawn service. “You’re relieved of having to get the mower out. You’re not necessarily assured that you’re happier with your yard.” In recent years, according to the society, 25 to 30 percent of hospitalists have worked for multistate management companies, which also employ doctors in other disciplines, like anesthesiology and emergency medicine.

Outsourced hospitalists tend to make as much or more money than those that hospitals employ directly, typically in excess of $200,000 a year. But the catch is that their compensation is often tied more directly to the number of patients they see in a day — which the hospitalists at Sacred Heart worried could be as many as 18 or 20, versus the 15 that they and many other hospitalists contend should be the maximum. (Mark Hamm, executive vice president of EmCare, a physician services firm based in Dallas that has no connection to Sacred Heart, said the hospitalists employed by many staffing companies typically see 15 to 18 patients a day, though he said that was true of those who were directly employed by hospitals as well.)

It was the idea that they could end up seeing more patients that prompted outrage among the hospitalists at Sacred Heart, which has two facilities in the area, with a total of nearly 450 beds. “We’re doctors, we’re professionals,” Dr. Alexander said. “Giving me a bonus for seeing two more patients — I’m not sure I should be doing that. It’s not safe.” (A hospital representative said patient safety was “inviolate.”)

Some Sacred Heart hospitalists left for other jobs, and the rest formed a union, one of the first of its kind in the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize-to-resist-the-medical-machine.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Capital vs Labor. Capital is fucking winning.

[boutons_deux]

we are going to be Uber'ed (fucked)

Your job is about to get 'taskified'

The global digital assembly line has arrived. Its workers labor at computer keyboards, performing the behind-the-scenes tasks that make the Internet appear intelligent and functional. They assign labels like “family” or “theme park” to photos, check that Web URLs work, verify addresses on Yelp (http://www.latimes.com/topic/business/technology-industry/yelp-ORCRP0017654-topic.html), review social media posts flagged as “adult.”Corporations, from the smallest start-ups to the largest firms, can now “taskify” everything from scheduling meetings and debugging websites, to finding sales leads and managing fulltime employees' HR files. Instead of hiring help, firms just post their needs to the Web.

This online piecework, or “crowdwork,” represents a radical shift in how we define employment itself.

The individuals performing this work are of course not traditional employees, but neither are they freelancers. They are, instead, “users” or “customers” of Web-based platforms that deliver pre-priced tasks like so many DIY kits ready for assembly. Transactions are bound not by employee-employer relationships but by “user agreements” and Terms of Service that resemble software licenses more than any employment contract.

Researchers at Oxford University's Martin Programme on Technology and Employment estimate that nearly 30% of jobs in the U.S. could be organized like this within 20 years. Forget the rise of robots and the distant threat of automation.

The immediate issue is the Uber-izing of human labor, fragmenting of jobs into outsourced tasks and dismantling of wages into micropayments.

Then it happened to him. An email from Amazon's Customer Service Team offered no explanation beyond: “I am sorry but your Amazon Mechanical Turk account was closed due to a violation of our Participation Agreement and cannot be reopened. Any funds that were remaining on the account are forfeited, and we will not be able to provide any additional insight or action."

Khan's experience should be a warning to us all. Crowdwork may seem like a small eddy of employment, contained to those who work on computer code and Web development. But it looms like a tsunami of change for anyone whose routine work — filing forms, drafting standardized reports, coordinating events — can be broken into bits and farmed out online.

We must recognize that crowdwork sites are not just technologies that deliver convenient services. They are sites of employment that encompass the globe. Yet there are no clear rules for how this new form of employment should operate. As Team Genius' case demonstrates, the right to be paid for one's labor is no longer guaranteed. Centuries of global labor activism, from child labor laws to workplace safety guidelines, are left vulnerable.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0110-digital-turk-work-20160110-story.html

Capital vs Labor: labor is being fucked back a couple 100 years, screwed by the VRWC/BigCorp strategy.

[boutons_deux]

asshole Christians wanting "free stuff" (advantage of union power without paying for it)

U.S. Supreme Court set to hear challenge to public sector unions

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-unions-idUSKCN0UO0HR20160110

Who is financing the plaintiffs?

[boutons_deux]

The Right-to-Work Movement's Attack on Women Workers

Before they were able to collectively bargain, some Vermont home-care workers were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Some were earning a "day rate" of $2 to $3 per hour - even though they worked for an entire day. According to Sheppard, once the union bargained its first contract with the state in 2014, hourly wages increased to $10.80, and the day rate minimum pay became $160 for a full day's work. These benefits were achieved for all Vermont home-care workers - not just those who identify as members of Vermont Homecare United.

"I knew home-care workers who had been working three jobs and still couldn't make ends meet," Sheppard told Truthout. "This collective bargaining contract helped so many home-care providers in Vermont."

But soon after this 2014 contract was secured, the right-to-work movement (http://www.nrtw.org/) - a movement that seeks to disempower collective bargaining and labor unions generally - won a US Supreme Court case that, based on a First Amendment argument, undercuts home-care workers' collective bargaining activity. Home-care work is a field dominated by women and rife with low wages (http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03/Giving-Caregivers-A-Raise.pdf). The right-to-work movement may now succeed in undercutting collective bargaining across a range of sectors that are dominated by women if the Supreme Court again rules in favor of its First Amendment argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA).

Feminist legal theorists have long argued (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/feminist_jurisprudence) that there are gendered implications of laws and policies that may seem "neutral" or rooted in constitutional doctrine. Indeed, the First Amendment argument touted by the right-to-work movement is a thin veil, underneath which lies a serious gender problem. Effectively, this argument is an attack on women's economic security.

On January 11, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments (http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/14-915_e2p3.pdf) in Friedrichs v. CTA, which could weaken collective bargaining for a range of public sector employees, including police officers, firefighters and nurses, in addition to teachers. The named plaintiff in the case is Rebecca Friedrichs, a third grade teacher in Anaheim, California. Friedrichs has been a teacher for nearly 30 years.

Represented by the Center for Individual Rights (https://www.cir-usa.org/cases/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-et-al/), Friedrichs and approximately 10 other plaintiffs are arguing that being required to pay agency fees, or "fair share" fees, to the CTA to help pay for the CTA's work in bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions are in violation of their First Amendment right to free speech because she is not a member of the union and does not support its collective bargaining activities.


Per Abood, Friedrichs and all teachers can also opt out (http://onlabor.org/2015/11/06/california-ag-files-brief-in-friedrichs/#more-5891) of supporting any lobbying activity the CTA may engage in, so her money is not supporting political speech. As Justice Stephen Breyer said during oral arguments, negotiating for wages, hours and working conditions is "pretty far removed from the heart of the First Amendment."
Breyer's comment notwithstanding, early analyses (http://edsource.org/2016/supreme-court-signals-its-ready-to-hand-cta-public-unions-big-setback/93186) of the oral arguments indicate that the court will side with Friedrichs, upending the longstanding precedent set byAbood v. Detroit Board of Education (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1976/75-1153).

If the court does side with Friedrichs, many workers may choose to stop paying agency fees, thus gutting many public sector unions of a longstanding source of revenue that supports collective bargaining activity - which could negatively impact the many women who hold positions covered by collective bargaining agreements.

"Petitioners in Friedrichs are arguing that every time a union bargains, that is an inherently political act," said Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel of the National Women's Law Center. "That is a really naked attempt to strip ability for public sector workers to bargain for very basic protections like better wages and health benefits."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34428-the-right-to-work-movement-s-attack-on-women-workers

The decades-long VRWC/BigCorp/Repug strategy of screwing Human-Americans is the greatest danger to Americans.

[boutons_deux]

Federal Workplace Law Fails To Protect Employees Left Out Of Workers' Comp


The mannequin fell 12 feet from the highest shelf. Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and loud sound.
He now has to post notes on the front door and refrigerator of his apartment, reminding him to take medications and keep appointments. He carries a letter from his doctor in case he's stopped by police, which says he may appear drunk due to a head injury.


"I'm next to poverty," Schiller says. "I sit in a dark room. I watch TV like an old 80- or 90-year old person."

Schiller, 54, is among 1.5 million workers in Texas and Oklahoma who don't have state-regulated workers' compensation to turn to when they're injured on the job. Millions more may join them as more states consider giving employers the right to opt out of state workers' comp systems.

As NPR (http://www.npr.org/2015/10/14/448544926/texas-oklahoma-permit-companies-to-dump-worker-compensation-plans) and ProPublica (https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-corporate-americas-plan-to-ditch-workers-comp) have reported, many employers prefer this opt-out alternative to workers' comp, because the state systems, employers claim, result in expensive and long-lasting benefits, costly litigation, and delays in treatment of injured workers.

When employers opt out, they avoid state regulation and write their own workplace injury plans, which make it easier to deny and cut benefits, control medical care and limit appeals of their decisions.

But don't worry, employers contend, injured workers are still protected by a federal law – the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (http://www.dol.gov/general/topic/health-plans/erisa), or ERISA. The 1974 law initially applied to pension plans but has evolved to include health care and other workplace benefits.

"ERISA ... says the benefits must be administered in the best interests of employees," says Dallas lawyer Bill Minick, who leads the movement in Texas and Oklahoma to get employers to opt out of state workers' comp and shift to federal authority.

Minick and his company PartnerSource dominate a cottage industry, writing and supporting opt-out workplace injury plans, and lobbying for opt-out legislation in other states. ERISA is key to their sales pitch.

But ERISA didn't do much for Schiller and NPR found the law doesn't provide the protections promised by opt-out promoters.

"I was getting no help and no doctors would answer me," Schiller says. "And they kept on sending me out the door instead of sending me to a hospital. They'd tell me point blank 'we're here to observe you, not treat you.'"

Macy's did not respond to NPR's multiple requests for comment about Schiller's case.

Legal documents, including witness statements, medical records, depositions and internal e-mails, show Macy's was skeptical of Schiller's injury from the very beginning. The company sent Schiller to doctors who concluded he was psychosomatic. One said he was faking.

In legal filings, Macy'sclaimed the accident never happened and implied it was staged. The company cut off all benefits for medical care and lost pay.

"Why would anybody set that up and put themselves through freaking hell?" Schiller asks. Unable to work and cut-off from benefits, he lost his pickup and house.

"I had made $80,000 a year at times and I'm going to give that up to be on Social Security and food stamps?" Schiller says. "Who would want the life that I've got now."

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/21/460257932/federal-workplace-law-fails-to-protect-employees-left-out-of-workers-compensatio

TX and OK, red/slave states protecting companies while fucking employees.

[boutons_deux]

Employee Wellness Programs Use Carrots and, Increasingly, Sticks

It may be an offer employees simply can no longer refuse.

Workers increasingly are being told by their companies to undergo health screenings and enroll in wellness programs, as a way to curb insurance costs. Many employees now face stiff financial penalties — often in the form of higher premiums — if they do not have their cholesterol (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/cholesterol/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier) checked or join programs to lose weight or better manage diabetes (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/diabetes/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier).

And a ruling late last month (http://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20FDCO%2020160104718/EQUAL%20EMPLOYMENT%20OPPORTUNITY%20COMMISSION%20v. %20FLAMBEAU,%20INC.) by a federal judge in Wisconsin is likely to further embolden companies to prod workers to join these programs, despite growing concerns over employee privacy and health management.

While most large employers offer wellness programs, companies and workers alike may find the rules difficult to navigate. The Affordable Care Act allows employers to impose hefty penalties on individuals who do not participate. Nearly half of the large employers offering screenings and wellness programs use some sort of financial incentive to persuade employees to comply,

employers could screen employees for health risks when offering health insurance (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).

Both courts ruled that companies administering health plans could be exempt from provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act that prohibit employers from forcing workers to provide health information. The courts pointed to a safe harbor provision within the act as a reason to allow some employers to demand the data.

In another case, the E.E.O.C. tried to get an injunction to stop Honeywell International (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/honeywell_international_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org) from fining its workers up to $4,000 for not agreeing to biometric testing, according to legal filings.

Orion Energy Systems. The E.E.O.C. contends that the company stopped contributing to an employee’s insurance coverage when she refused to submit to a screening, and later fired her. The case is still pending.

Under the Affordable Care Act, businesses can use financial incentives of up to 30 percent of the yearly cost of coverage, which could easily amount to several thousand dollars.

If the higher courts go along with the idea that companies can demand this information as a condition of enrolling in their health plans, the debate over what is voluntary will be moot, because workers will not be able to afford to say no. “The whole conversation is over,” she said. “You can do anything you want.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/business/employee-wellness-programs-use-carrots-and-increasingly-sticks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

govt + authoritarian BigCorp fuck over employees, over and over and over, but govt + BigCorp refuse to put the two biggest killers on the controlled substances schedule, tobacco and alcohol.

BigCorp dictating employees' personal health is more evidence why a no-profit govt insurance/public option would get employers out of providing group plans and out of employees most personal lives.

But of course, 0.1%er/establishment right-wing Hillary says it's too hard to change, to make progress, so let BigCorp keep fucking us over, looting America, so vote Hillary, not Bernie.

[boutons_deux]

Not Going to Take it Anymore – Doctors in the Pacific Northwest Unionize (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/not-going-to-take-it-anymore-doctors-in-the-pacific-northwest-unionize.html)

Yves here. This development is very important. Nurses’ unions are effective and well respected. Doctors’ unions should be even more so, particularly since their big grievance is corporatized medicine requiring them to spend less time with patients and reducing their autonomy. As this post explains, they are at odds with management because management cares only about profit while they prioritize the quality of care. And the managers are all MBAs, so it is not as if the effort to routinize care is driven by people who in theory might have ideas about how to achieve better medical outcomes.


By Roy Poses (https://biomed.brown.edu/facultydirectory/profile.php?id=1100924958), MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University, and the President of FIRM – the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine. Cross posted from the Health Care Renewal (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2016/01/not-going-to-take-it-anymore-doctors-in.html) website

We have posted about the plight of the corporate physician (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/corporate%20physician). In the US, home of the most commercialized health care system among developed countries, physicians increasingly practice as employees of large organizations, usually hospitals and hospital systems, sometimes for-profit. The leaders of such systems meanwhile are now often generic managers (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/generic%20managers), people trained as managers without specific training or experience in medicine or health care, and “managerialists (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/managerialism)” who apply generic management theory and dogma to medicine and health care just as it might be applied to building widgets or selling soap.

We have also frequently posted about what we have called generic management (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/generic%20managers), the manager’s coup d’etat (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/managers%27%20coup%20d%27etat), andmission-hostile management. (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/mission-hostile%20management)

Managerialism wraps these concepts up into a single package. The idea is that all organizations, including health care organizations, ought to be run people with generic management training and background, not necessarily by people with specific backgrounds or training in the organizations’ areas of operation. Thus, for example, hospitals ought to be run by MBAs, not doctors, nurses, or public health experts

Furthermore, all organizations ought to be run according to the same basic principles of business management. These principles in turn ought to be based on current neoliberal dogma (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/neoliberalism), with the prime directive that short-term revenue is the primary goal.

Now there are a few signs that the physicians are getting fed up with having to answer to generic management and managerialism.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/not-going-to-take-it-anymore-doctors-in-the-pacific-northwest-unionize.html

Something like 50% or more of docs and nurses say they wouldn't choose their profession again.

The capitalists have definitely won their war on labor. People are pissed off, discouraged, living The American Dream (c)

[boutons_deux]

This summer, the Department of Labor (DOL) is expected to implement a new overtime rule, which would raise the overtime salary threshold from $23,660 to $50,440, strengthening the right of 13.5 million additional workers to receive overtime pay and the right to earn a fair living.

Unfortunately, our opponents in Congress are eager to steal this victory from workers by running out the clock on one of President Obama’s signature economic achievements.

The Congressional Review Act dictates that all “major” rules are delayed for 60 legislative days after they are submitted to Congress and are subject to a “fast track” process for repeal.

That process has to end before President Obama leaves office to guarantee a veto of any Congressional resolution of disapproval.

If the DOL does not act soon, Congress will reverse this critical protection for millions of workers.

... from an email.

$50K is way too low. Should be $75+, but the rule is not any of Hillary's "incremental" bullshit.

Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Overtime

http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/nprm2015/

[boutons_deux]

Caught in the Corporate Feeding Frenzy

These Texas steelworkers are fighting back against the global elites racing them to the bottom.

The “human resources” departments of huge corporations are known for issuing helpful bulletins to employees, such as this old joke: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Beatings of workers these days take the form of s

lashing wages and benefits,

offshoring jobs,

busting unions, and

generally disparaging and disrespecting the people who produce their products. It’s a heck of a way to run a business.

Consider the hellacious greed of Glencore, the 10th largest corporation in the world. Never heard of it? That’s no surprise — it doesn’t put its name on much. But it’s one of several mega-corporations in the new global economy that snarf up brand names and suck out profits.
Glencore, a $233-billion, Swiss commodities conglomerate, gobbled up the Sherwin Alumina metals company in 2007, buying it from the Alcoa aluminum corporation (which, in 2001, swallowed the aluminum producer Reynolds).

Caught in this frenzy of corporate feasting are 450 Sherwin Alumina steelworkers (http://www.kristv.com/story/31319750/locked-out-sherwin-alumina-employees-not-giving-up) in Gregory, Texas.

https://goo.gl/maps/1Hu8yFtiLnz

They’re top-quality producers of aluminum. In 2014, however, the highly profitable Swiss conglomerate rewarded their productivity by demanding deep cuts in their pay and benefits.

When the members of the Steelworkers union rejected this insulting proposal, Glencore’s henchmen locked the 450 workers out of the plant, hoping to break their morale and bully them into accepting the raw deal.

But this ploy only intensified the workers’ resolve to reject such gross unfairness. They turned their picket line into a symbolic stand against global corporate elites who’ve adopted anti-worker thuggishness as a normal business practice and a core corporate value.

Now Sherwin Alumina has filed for bankruptcy, but these workers aren’t letting them off the hook: Their union secured a place at the table (http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/articles/2016/usw-appointed-to-sherwin-creditors-committee) among the company’s creditors. The gutsy steelworkers in Gregory, Texas aren’t only standing up for themselves — but also for you, me, and workaday people everywhere.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/20/caught-corporate-feeding-frenzy

yawn, capitalists screwing labor, the eternal story.

[boutons_deux]

Why North Carolina’s New Anti-LGBT Law is a Trojan Horse

It’s not just bathrooms. Lawmakers also took away the right to sue under state law for all kinds of employment discrimination.

an even more expansive change made by the law — one that could affect all workers in North Carolina, not just those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of theWorkers’ Rights Project (http://www.ncjustice.org/?q=workers-rights) at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”

Conservative-leaning groups have trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law (http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/ByArticle/Chapter_143/Article_49A.html) that says:

“[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.”

forces workers seeking redress for discrimination into the federal system, where access is more difficult, the rules are much more complicated, and businesses often have significant advantages. Time, in particular, is on employers’ side: Under federal law, fired workers have just 180 days to file a claim, versus three years in state court. In the past, workers who missed the federal deadline — not uncommon for someone in emotional and economic crisis — could sue under state law instead, said Raleigh attorney Eric Doggett. Now, he predicted, many will discover they’re “hosed.”

The law’s impact could be “extraordinarily far-reaching,”

that eliminating the right to sue was “a technical correction” that brings “clarity to a confusing area of workplace law” and takes North Carolina’s anti-discrimination statute “back to its original intent.” He said most employment discrimination cases don’t have merit and don’t belong in the “mosh pit” of state court.

the lawsuit provision was “incidental” to the larger effort to revamp North Carolina’s law on public accommodations and rein in local governments. “The overall function of the law is to restore the status quo before the City of Charlotte exceeded its legal authority,”

“We expect to see a flurry of summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss wrongful discharge claims based on this amendment.” Shea, partner in a firm that represents employers, called the change a“bomb.” (http://www.employmentandlaborinsider.com/discrimination/n-c-bathroom-bill-has-a-bomb-for-wrongful-discharge-plaintiffs/)

HB2 as part of a pattern of Republican-sponsored measures that have eroded voting and other rights (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/08/19/one-party-system-what-total-republican-control-of-a-state-really-means/) for low-income people of color in recent years. “It’s a continuation of … a wide assortment of things that appear to be rolling back the clock of North Carolina so that it matches the sordid history of 40 to 50 years ago,” he said.

a burgeoning trend in which conservatives are exploiting a backlash against gay marriage and transgender rights to push legislation with broad ramifications. In Georgia, the governor vetoed a bill (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/georgia-governor-vetoes-religious-exemptions-bill-37976763) allowing faith-based organizations the ability to refuse to rent property, provide education or charitable services, or do any hiring that violates their religious beliefs. In Mississippi, a bill that passed the legislature last week would permit discrimination against anyone who has nonmarital sex (http://www.salon.com/2016/04/01/mississippi_vs_everyone_states_pushing_obscene_law _thats_not_only_anti_lgbt_it_could_also_force_wome n_to_wear_makeup/).

HB2 “is more evidence that the forces behind this backlash have a larger agenda than simply attacking marriage rights for same-sex couples,” said Katherine Franke, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law (http://web.law.columbia.edu/gender-sexuality). “They also seek to unravel protections against race discrimination in public accommodations and other contexts.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-north-carolinas-new-anti-lgbt-law-is-a-trojan-horse?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1459810205

Once a slave state, always a slave state. Heavily gerrymandered, heavily voter suppressed, and with vote-counting fraud if needed, NC and other slave states, and red states, are Kock Bros dream states, pro-business, while fucking employees, poor, non-Euro-whites, patients, etc, etc.

Thanks, Repugs!

[boutons_deux]

Nashville Voted To Give Poor People, Locals New Construction Jobs. But the State GOP Blocked It.

Last summer, with the backing of regional labor leaders and community groups, the city of Nashville approved an ordinance requiring large, municipally funded construction projects to devote 10 percent of their hiring to low-income residents. The ballot initiative, which also stipulated that 40 percent of such hires should reside in Nashville’s Davidson County, came amid an historic surge in building projects in the city’s downtown area.

Last year, the New York Times reported that (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/realestate/commercial/nashvilles-skyline-being-rebuilt-by-building-boom.html) more than $2 billion worth of construction projects that developers have initiated in the city are poised to reshape Nashville’s skyline. The local hire ordinance, known as Amendment 3, sought to make sure that the city’s poorest residents saw some benefit portions of the city’s building boom by leveraging the Nashville’s government’s contracts with private businesses in an attempt to reduce local poverty, which stands at nearly 20 percent for adults and at roughly 30 percent for children in the Nashville area.

Yet within weeks of the ordinance passing into law, Republicans in the state legislature introduced a bill to roll back Nashville’s new law and prevent other cities in the state from implementing anything like it.

In September, a Republican representative also requested that the state’s Republican attorney general (http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/10/01/tennessee-ag-metros-local-hire-amendment-invalid/73178616/) issue an opinion on whether the city law was legal in the first place. After the attorney general’s office asserted that the local-hire rule indeed violated a state law that governs licensing, the bill to invalidate Nashville’s new law moved steadily through the legislature.

“Another issue that has been brought in opposition to my bill, which would nullify the charter amendment, is that we are overturning the will of the voters of Nashville,” said Republican state senator Jack Johnson, who sponsored the bill to preempt Nashville’s local hire law, according to the Tennessean (http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/02/bill-nullifying-nashville-local-hire-rule-advances/79726318/). “In fact we are.”

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19009/republican_prohibition_on_nashville_municipal_loca l_hires

[boutons_deux]

This week in the war on workers: House GOP budget attacks working people. Again. (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/2/1508559/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers-House-GOP-budget-attacks-working-people-Again)

taking a look at where their priorities are—and what Republicans would be doing if they controlled all of government. The plan: (http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/house-gop-budget-gets-62-percent-of-budget-cuts-from-low-and-moderate-income)

… would cut programs for low- and moderate-income people by about $3.7 trillion over the next decade.

In 2026, it would cut such programs overall by 42 percent — causing tens of millions of people to lose health coverage and millions to lose basic food or other support.

In addition, the plan would secure 62 percent of its budget cuts from low-income programs even though they account for just 28 percent of total non-defense program spending (and just 24 percent of total program spending, including defense).

While cutting supports and services severely for Americans of lesser means, the budget would secure no deficit reduction at all from the more than $1 trillion a year in tax credits, deductions, and other preferences, collectively known as “tax expenditures” — which disproportionately benefit high-income households ...


That’s $2.9 trillion in healthcare cuts by repealing Obamacare’s subsidies and Medicaid expansion, more than $150 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, cuts to Pell Grants and the Child Tax Credit … all while letting the wealthy continue to reap tax benefits.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/02/1508559/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers-House-GOP-budget-attacks-working-people-Again?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

Pres Bernie would veto.

Pres Hillary would probably go along with it most of it, sooner or later, "incrementally" screwing the 99% because she gotta be "realistic", neo-liberally managing the decline of USA.

[boutons_deux]

"About 40,000 Verizon workers are on strike because Verizon

continues to keep wages down,

shipping jobs overseas,

slashing retiree health care,

freezing pensions, and

cutting the number of full-time workers –

even though it’s raking in over $1.5 billion a month in profits.

Instead of investing those profits in high-speed internet, it’s spending $35 billion to buy Yahoo and billions more in stock buybacks, and paying its top executives astronomical sums (over the past five years alone, CEO Lowell McAdam has raked in $89.6 billion).

It’s also among the nation’s biggest lobbyists and campaign contributors.

Verizon is exhibit #1 for what’s wrong with the U.S. economy. Verizon's striking workers deserve your support."

Robert Reich/Facebook.

[boutons_deux]

Overtime Pay: A Lifeline for the Overworked American

THIS summer the Department of Labor is expected to introduce new rules to restore overtime pay to millions of Americans — rules that require no congressional approval. From the fearful protests coming from Republican leadership, you’d think the sky was falling. “This mandate on employers will hurt the lowest paid American workers the most, by reducing their opportunities for a promotion or a better job,” said Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

In fact, far from the right’s end-of-the-world, Chicken-Little economics, restoring time-and-a-half overtime pay would return to American workers a protection they long had, one that made them more secure and productive.

Half a century ago, overtime pay was the norm, with more than 60 percent of salaried employees qualifying. These are largely the sorts of office- and service-sector workers who never enjoyed the protection of union membership.

But over the last 40 years the threshold has been allowed to steadily erode, so that only about 8 percent qualify today.

If you feel as if you’re working longer hours for less money than your parents did, it’s probably because you are.

Today, if you’re salaried and earn more than $23,600 dollars a year, you don’t automatically qualify for overtime: That means every extra hour you work, you work free.

Under the new proposed rules, everyone earning a salary of $50,440 a year or less would be eligible to collect time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, it would give 13.5 million more workers a new or stronger right to overtime pay — substantially increasing both middle-class incomes and employment. It’s not as high as the $69,000 threshold it would take to return to 1975 levels, after adjusting for inflation, but it’s a courageous step in the right direction. It’s like a minimum wage hike for the middle class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/opinion/overtime-pay-a-lifeline-for-the-overworked-american.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

Florida’s Rick Scott picks a curious fight with California

Usually, Republican governors are content to oppose minimum-wage increases in their own state, but this week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) talked up his opposition to a wage hike in a state he has nothing to do with. The NBC affiliate in Miami reported (http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Florida-Gov-Rick-Scott-Wants-to-Lure-Jobs-From-California-376464981.html):

Scott on Wednesday announced he’s going on a trade mission to California to try to woo businesses away from the Golden State. The Republican governor visited several states last year run by Democrats where he denounced their taxes and business climate.

In his release, Scott contended companies would want to leave California because of a “crippling” increase in the minimum wage. Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month signed into law a measure that will lift the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/floridas-rick-scott-picks-curious-fight-california?cid=sm_fb_maddow

"Come to Florida! Florida employers screw their low-wage employees all the time, steal their wages, rape them, pocket their withholdings, fire them for getting sick or pregnant, and I, Rick Scott, guarantee you I won't enforce any labor laws"

[boutons_deux]

GE Considers Scrapping the Annual Raise

GE executives are reviewing whether annual updates to compensation are the best response to the achievements and needs of employees.

“We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions,” Janice Semper, GE’s head of executive development, said in an e-mailed response to questions. She said it will involve “being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, acknowledging that employees and managers are already thinking beyond annual compensation in this space.” :lol

When GE considers something like that, “other companies will do it too,”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-06/ge-studies-scrapping-annual-raise-in-nod-to-shifting-priorities

(young) employees, paying down college debt, starting families, trying to buy homes want LESS money? :lol

What BigCorp BULL FUCKING SHIT. Less money for labor means more money for capitalists.

[boutons_deux]

Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

American corporations are under new scrutiny from federal lawmakers after well-publicized episodes in which the companies laid off American workers and gave the jobs to foreigners on temporary visas.

But while corporate executives have been outspoken in defending their labor practices before Congress and the public, the American workers who lost jobs to global outsourcing companies have been largely silent.

Until recently. Now some of the workers who were displaced are starting to speak out, despite severance agreements prohibiting them from criticizing their former employers.

Marco Peña was among about 150 technology workers who were laid off in April by Abbott Laboratories (http://www.nytimes.com/topic/company/abbott-laboratories?inline=nyt-org), a global health care conglomerate with headquarters here. They handed in their badges and computer passwords, and turned over their work to a company based in India. But Mr. Peña, who had worked at Abbott for 12 years, said he had decided not to sign the agreement that was given to all departing employees, which included a nondisparagement clause.

Mr. Peña said his choice cost him at least $10,000 in severance pay. But on an April evening after he walked out of Abbott’s tree-lined campus here for the last time, he spent a few hours in a local bar at a gathering organized by technology worker advocates, speaking his mind about a job he had loved and lost.

“I just didn’t feel right about signing,” Mr. Peña said. “The clauses were pretty blanket. I felt like they were eroding my rights.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/us/laid-off-americans-required-to-zip-lips-on-way-out-grow-bolder.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

The Workers Who Feed Members Of Congress Will Share $1 Million In Back Pay After Years Of Abuse

Two companies that run food service at the U.S. Capitol will pay a million dollars in back wages to almost 700 workers who they cheated out of their pay, the Department of Labor announced Tuesday.

The men and women who serve Congress its food clawed their way into Washington’s conscience over the past couple of years with a series of strikes and walkouts as part of a campaign for higher wages and union rights. The strikes at the Capitol and in other federal buildings in the Washington, D.C. area helped persuade President Obama to issue three executive orders mandating higher wages and stronger workplace protections for workers hired by federal contractors.

A handful of workers became the face of the union-backed Good Jobs Nation campaign with wrenching stories about earning too little to survive (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/05/us-senate-worker-shouldnt-have-dance-strip-clubs) in D.C. or to keep their families together (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/11/13/3591853/capitol-visitors-center-strike/). But the penalties handed down Tuesday suggest the federal contractor taxpayers pay to staff cafeterias on Capitol Hill were not just paying too little to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living. They were outright breaking the law.

The companies routinely failed to pay overtime and misclassified many workers so that they could pay them lower hourly wages than their actual work duties should have earned according to the federal contract for cafeteria service,

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/07/27/3802278/senate-cafeteria-workers-wage-theft/

... but "corporate shield' protects managers from fines or jail.

[boutons_deux]

https://scontent-dft4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/13731939_1096965870358416_6936470678385480724_o.pn g.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9

[boutons_deux]

a deeply blue state, natch

Illegal in Massachusetts: Asking Your Salary in a Job Interview

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/business/dealbook/wage-gap-massachusetts-law-salary-history.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

[boutons_deux]

Even Dems wage War on Employees

Schrader bill would gut the Department of Labor’s new overtimehttp://www.epi.org/publication/schrader-bill-would-gut-the-department-of-labors-new-overtime-rule/

https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030071


Not clear which donor(s) pay KS to try to fuck over low-end employess. Home Depot is clearly one.

[boutons_deux]

Famous Restaurant Chain Busted in Elaborate Scam to Rip Off Workers

Darden Restaurants (https://www.darden.com/restaurants/our-brands), which also owns Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, the Capital Grille, and the Yard House, doesn’t pay its workers with cash or checks like other restaurants. Instead, Darden pays its employees with payroll debit cards.

While the debit cards cost the employer $2.75 less per pay period, the workers bear the brunt of the cost,

paying as much as $1.75 in fees to withdraw money from an out-of-network ATM,

$0.75 just to check the card’s balance,

$0.99 to use the card to pay a utility bill, and

an additional $0.50 if the debit card is declined at a cash register.

Given that tipped workers only earn a paltry $2.13 an hour (https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm), the fees associated with prepaid debit cards can eat up a large portion of a Darden worker’s hard-earned money.

Prepaid debit cards are becoming an increasingly popular method of payment for employers. According to a 2015 study from the Restaurant Opportunties Center United (ROC United),

7.4 million American workers (http://rocunited.org/wp2015b/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/HighCostGettingPaid_Report_Web-2.pdf) are paid with prepaid debit cards, and as many as 12.2 million Americans will be paid with prepaid debit cards by 2019.

Darden Restaurants saves an estimated $5 million per year by paying employees with debit cards instead of checks.

ROC United’s study, which surveyed roughly 200 employees from all Darden brands except for Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, uncovered several alarming statistics:



23 percent of Darden employees reported not receiving any instructions from management on how to use the debit cards.
76 percent of employees reported losing out on wages due to ATM fees.
24 percent of employees reported having to pay fees on the cards at points of purchase.
63 percent of Darden employees told ROC United they weren’t told about the fees associated with the cards.
42 percent of workers reported problems accessing their money using the cards.
49 percent of Darden workers reported they didn’t have access to an ATM within the card’s network, having to pay a fee just to withdraw their wages.
54 percent of employees who used the debit cards to pay for gasoline reported large authorization holds on their cards.
26 percent of Darden employees told ROC United they weren’t able to choose an alternative form of payment.


In addition to Darden, the restaurant chain’s banking partners issuing the cards also receive a huge windfall as a result of the exploitation of the roughly 70,000 workers paid with debit cards.

ThinkProgress reported that Darden’s financial partners earn about $1.75 per card (https://thinkprogress.org/how-a-giant-restaurant-conglomerate-teamed-up-with-banks-to-stiff-its-workers-3bc3ccdc7348#.z03w8w3k7), meaning they bring in an extra $1.5 million each year.

http://usuncut.com/class-war/darden-restaurants-ripping-off-workers/

BigCorp in complicity with BigBank to fuck poverty-wage employees.

BigBank: "We'll save you $Ms, we will make $Ms, and together we will fuck over your poverty-wage employees".

[boutons_deux]

Worker Hours Are More Unpredictable Than Ever

After the recession, hourly workers have a harder time.

What a job looks like has changed for many people since the recession. In general, things are looking up: Both unemployment and jobless claims are falling (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-11/report-new-jobs-in-u-dot-s-dot-offer-lower-wages-than-before-recession). But a good chunk of job creation has come at the highest (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/americans-with-more-education-have-taken-almost-every-job-created-in-the-recovery) and lowest (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-06/the-job-market-s-missing-middle) ends of the spectrum, a trend that has only recently started (http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-dudley-idUSN9N19M017) to change with gains for middle-wage earners.

Many people who lost well-paying jobs have found work, but for less money (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/the-u-s-recovery-is-7-and-it-s-finally-starting-to-feel-good), doing hourly retail and food services jobs.
These new hourly workers not only make less money, but they have much less predictable schedules than hourly workers had before the recession, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.

"The jobs replacing the ones that were lost after the recession ended were a lot of low-wage hourly jobs with really variable schedules," said Ryan Finnigan, an assistant professor at U.C. Davis and one of the researchers who worked on the study.

Workers in these new economy jobs might work 38 hours one week and 15 the next. "Even though unemployment has sunk down, the quality of the jobs that replaced the ones that were lost were not quite the same," Finnigan added

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/workhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/worker-hours-are-more-unpredictable-than-everer-hours-are-more-unpredictable-than-ever

So for Ms of Americans, life has gotten much shittier, less secure, and inevitable poverty after 65.

[boutons_deux]

In a Major Reversal, Labor Board Says Graduate Student Workers at Private Colleges Can Unionize

Reversing a landmark ruling from the George W. Bush era ( of course! :lol ) , the National Labor Relations Board ruled today that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities have the right to form labor unions.

"This is a historic moment," said Julie Kushner, director of the northeast chapter of the United Auto Workers, which challenged the Bush-era NLRB ruling on behalf of graduate-student workers at Columbia University.

"There are tens of thousands of workers at private universities across the United States that will reap the benefits of unionization."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/nlrb-grad-students-right-organize-union

[CosmicCowboy]

Worker Hours Are More Unpredictable Than Ever

After the recession, hourly workers have a harder time.

What a job looks like has changed for many people since the recession. In general, things are looking up: Both unemployment and jobless claims are falling (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-11/report-new-jobs-in-u-dot-s-dot-offer-lower-wages-than-before-recession). But a good chunk of job creation has come at the highest (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/americans-with-more-education-have-taken-almost-every-job-created-in-the-recovery) and lowest (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-06/the-job-market-s-missing-middle) ends of the spectrum, a trend that has only recently started (http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-dudley-idUSN9N19M017) to change with gains for middle-wage earners.

Many people who lost well-paying jobs have found work, but for less money (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/the-u-s-recovery-is-7-and-it-s-finally-starting-to-feel-good), doing hourly retail and food services jobs.
These new hourly workers not only make less money, but they have much less predictable schedules than hourly workers had before the recession, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.

"The jobs replacing the ones that were lost after the recession ended were a lot of low-wage hourly jobs with really variable schedules," said Ryan Finnigan, an assistant professor at U.C. Davis and one of the researchers who worked on the study.

Workers in these new economy jobs might work 38 hours one week and 15 the next. "Even though unemployment has sunk down, the quality of the jobs that replaced the ones that were lost were not quite the same," Finnigan added

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/workhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/worker-hours-are-more-unpredictable-than-everer-hours-are-more-unpredictable-than-ever

So for Ms of Americans, life has gotten much shittier, less secure, and inevitable poverty after 65.






That is what we have been saying for years when you bragged about the low unemployment rate.

[boutons_deux]

That is what we have been saying for years when you bragged about the low unemployment rate.

:lol What? Your obtuseness is approaching that of TB :lol

[boutons_deux]

Chris Christie Vetoed the $15 Minimum Wage Bill For New Jersey Restaurant Workers

he described the measure as being a “really radical increase” which “would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable.”

Democratic leaders will now put the measure on the Fall 2017 ballot and let voters decide. Unfortunately, that still leaves New Jersey way behind New York. According to The Times, by 2018 New York restaurant workers could be earning $6 an hour more than their neighbors across the river.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/chris-christie-vetoed-the-15-minimum-wage-bill-for-new-jersey-restaurant-workers/

Wall St Fat Boy solidifying his bona fides as Repug Warrior on Employees, spouting bullshit justifications with no evidence.

[boutons_deux]

The Shackling of the American City

Local governments want to set their own minimum wages, gun laws, and smoking bans. And statehouses have methodically stripped away their powers to do so.


In May 2011, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker, approved Senate Bill 23 (http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/16), which prohibited the state’s municipalities from enacting paid sick leave laws. From the outside, it might’ve appeared as if he was swinging a sledgehammer at a very tiny nail.

While the bill applied to every city, town, village, and county in Wisconsin, only one jurisdiction in the state had a paid sick leave law on the books: Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold.

Milwaukee’s ordinance, approved (http://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/33874059.html) in a 2008 referendum by 69 percent of voters, would have required large businesses to offer full-time workers nine paid sick days a year and businesses with fewer than 10 employees to offer five sick days a year. Ensnared by legal challenges, the law had never taken effect but had been ruled constitutional by the state’s 4th District Court of Appeals in March 2011. Two months later, Bill 23 arrived on Walker’s desk, and paid sick leave in Wisconsin was dead.

pre-emption is a tool used by conservative statehouses to restrict the ability of cities, towns, and counties to chart their own destiny.

To understand how, consider the path that Bill 23 took after Walker signed it. In the summer of 2011, copies were handed out (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/alec-paid-sick-leave_b_3007445.html) at the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a 43-year-old organization that brings together state legislators and corporate representatives to write cookie-cutter laws for statehouses across the country. Its members include many of the nation’s largest companies, a quarter of state legislators, one-fifth of the U.S. Congress, and seven sitting governors.

Since its distribution in the ALEC committee room, along with a U.S. map (http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALEC%20Labor%20Business%20Reg%20Subcttee%20Annual% 20Mtg%202011.pdf#8) designed by the National Restaurant Association,

versions of the sick leave policy have been adopted in
Alabama,
Arizona,
Florida,
Indiana,
Kansas,
Louisiana,
Michigan,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
Oklahoma, and
Tennessee. :lol red states! :lol

Cities in those states no longer have the right to decide whether the people who work there ought to receive a guarantee of sick time with pay.

ALEC has successfully pushed pre-emption into more and more areas of GOP policy, from guns and tobacco to sanctuary cities (http://www.apsanlaw.com/law-246.List-of-Sanctuary-cities.html), pesticides, and even municipal broadband.

The tactic has consumed state-level lawmaking as American political life has become increasingly polarized between Republican-led statehouses (the most since the 1920s) and Democrat-controlled cities (almost all of the nation’s largest).

Thanks in part to ALEC’s promotion of the concept, pre-emption has become the most powerful statehouse tactic of our time.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2016/09/how_alec_acce_and_pre_emptions_laws_are_gutting_th e_powers_of_american_cities.html

[boutons_deux]

Oklahoma’s Top Court: Companies Can’t Set Own Rules for Injured Workers

A national campaign led by Walmart, Lowe’s and other big companies to let employers opt out of workers’ comp insurance was dealt a blow after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled such plans unconstitutional.

https://www.propublica.org/article/oklahomas-top-court-companies-cant-set-own-rules-for-injured-workers?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1473808783

and of course, TX has an asshole crusader dedicated to killing all workman's comp, because it's fucking TX.

[boutons_deux]

Rep. Tom McClintock: Equal pay means women lose out on $1/hour jobs and ‘opportunity to negotiate’

California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock recently cited $1/hour jobs and the “opportunity to negotiate” as reasons that women are better off without the protection of equal pay laws.

“I believe that every person ought to have the freedom to negotiate terms that satisfactory to them and to their employer without some third party butting his nose into the transaction,” he opined. “That’s called freedom. It works and it’s time we put it back to work.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/rep-tom-mcclintock-equal-pay-means-women-lose-out-on-1hour-jobs-and-opportunity-to-negotiate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

Repugs and Repugs voters are stupid fucking misogynists.

"Hey lady, here's your big McClintock break, here's how I negotiate your "freedom": either you take $1/hour or GTFO"

[boutons_deux]

Gig workers make up 30% of labor force, says McKinsey study

Traditional 9-to-5 jobs are evaporating as more people make a living as independent workers. Now a major study from McKinsey Global Institute (http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview) has found that the gig economy is much bigger than previously thought.

“Up to 30 percent of working-age people in the United States and Western Europe are engaging in independent work, either as their primary source or supplemental source of income,”

Some 70 percent reported that they fly solo out of choice. “They enjoy being their own boss, they have more creativity, and more opportunity to learn and grow,” Lund said.

The study shattered some common perceptions.

Only a minority of independent workers are Uber or Lyft drivers, a visible segment that many people think of first when the subject of gig workers comes up.

Instead, most have more familiar occupations: doctors and dentists, accountants and therapists, plumbers and electricians, gardeners and construction workers, retail clerks and computer programmers.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Gig-workers-make-up-30-of-labor-force-says-9957527.php

Freedom offsets:

no job or income security,

no employer contributions to pension,

no paid vacation/sick days?,

pay employer's payroll taxes, etc?

I'd really like to know how much gig workers NET per year.

[boutons_deux]

A labor group has made an app to help Walmart workers organize — and the company is freaking out

Walmart has long been the toughest nut for labor organizers to crack, as the company’s brutally effective anti-union campaigns have regularly crushed unions’ efforts to get workers to sign up.

However, a labor group called OUR Walmart has come out with

a new mobile application that Walmart workers can use on their phones to help them organize for better wages and benefits —

and it seems that Walmart is not happy about it.

The Wall Street Journal reports (http://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-tells-workers-dont-download-labor-groups-chat-app-1479214510) that Walmart has sent out warnings to all of its employees that they should not download and install the WorkIt app onto their devices because it will allegedly swipe all their important personal information. LIE! :lol

In reality, the Journal notes, it only asks users to register and share their job titles and Walmart store numbers — and its permissions do not include location data, contacts or photos.

The purpose of the app is to help workers communicate with one another so they can learn about their rights as employees, as well as to develop strategies for improving workplace policies.

While there are already a lot of online forums where Walmart employees gather to talk about issues at work, OUR Walmart wants to give employees a centralized hub to help them with all of their complaints and questions.

Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/group-enlists-ibm-s-watson-to-answer-walmart-workers-questions) notes (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/group-enlists-ibm-s-watson-to-answer-walmart-workers-questions) that the app takes advantage of IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence chatbot to quickly answer employees’ questions about company policies and worker rights.

“On the first day, a group of 18 current and former employees identified 50 main issues and wrote questions workers might ask,” Bloomberg writes.

“They spent the next day answering them, relying on policy manuals that OUR Walmart had pieced together over the years, their own experience, and some expert advice. By the end they’d trained Watson to answer 93 questions.”

And because Watson is designed to keep learning, the app will only get smarter the more that people use it.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/a-labor-group-has-made-an-app-to-help-walmart-workers-organize-and-the-company-is-freaking-out/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

I suppose W-M will hire the Russians to crack the server and learn the names and comments of all the workers.

[boutons_deux]

This week in the war on workers: What happens if Obama's overtime expansion is reversed? (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/19/1601007/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers-What-happens-if-Obama-s-overtime-expansion-is-reversed)

Department of Labor’s takeaways from a Congressional Budget Office report:




CBO finds that reversing the rule would strip nearly 4 million workers of overtime protections. According to the report, there are nearly 4 million workers whose employers will be required to pay them overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week when the rule goes into effect.
CBO finds that reversing the rule would reduce workers’ earnings while increasing the hours they work. The report finds that if the rule is reversed, the total annual earnings of all affected workers would decrease by more than $500 million in 2017. Further, these workers would earn less money while working more hours.
At a time when income inequality is already of great concern, CBO finds that reversing the rule would primarily benefit people with high incomes. If the rule were reversed, affected workers, most of whom have moderate incomes, would experience a loss in earnings. These losses would be accompanied by an increase in firms’ profits, of which the vast majority (CBO estimates 85 percent) would accrue to people in the top income quintile.
CBO finds that reversing the rule would not create or save jobs. The report finds no significant impact on the number of jobs in the economy.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/19/1601007/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers-What-happens-if-Obama-s-overtime-expansion-is-reversed?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29



So how long will it take Don The Con's Dept of Labor to screw 4M workers, exactly the kind of low-wage, low-education people that voted to dump Trash in the WH.

[boutons_deux]

Having screwed over private sector employees for 40 years, VRWC/BigCorp's Useful Idiot Trash intends to pull govt employees, the ones he doesn't fire, down to private sector level.

Trump has a plan for government workers. They’re not going to like it.

President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation.

Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.

These changes were once unthinkable to federal employees, their unions and their supporters in Congress. But Trump’s election as an outsider promising to shake up a system he told voters is awash in “waste, fraud and abuse” has conservatives optimistic that they could do now what Republicans have been unable to do in the 133 years since the modern civil service was created.

“You have the country moving to the right and being much more anti-Washington than it was,”

(hey, Noot, Hillary won the popular vote by 2m)

“We’re going to have to get the country to understand how big the problem is, the human costs of it and why it’s absolutely essential to reform,” said Gingrich

The project aligns with Bannon’s long-stated warnings about the corrupting influence of government and a capital city rampant with “crony capitalism.” :lol

Breitbart headlines also provide a possible insight into his views, with federal employees described as overpaid, too numerous and a “privileged class.”

Chaffetz said he plans to push through wholesale changes to the generous retirement benefits that federal workers receive, by shifting to a market-driven, 401(k)-style plan for new employees.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/11/21/trump-republicans-plan-to-target-government-workers-benefits-and-job-security/?wpisrc=nl_most-draw7&wpmm=1

VRWC ideology, strategy: weaken, fuckup govt at all levels, then privatize so taxpayers' $Ts get distributed upward to the capitalists who charge taxpayers more and deliver the shittiest possible services.

[boutons_deux]

A jazzed House GOP with big ideas suddenly plans to cut down on three-day weekends next session (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/21/1602640/-A-jazzed-House-GOP-with-big-ideas-suddenly-plans-to-cut-down-on-3-day-weekends-next-session)

First on the chopping block: President Obama's overtime rule requiring time-and-a-half payment for employees working more than 40 hours per week but making less than about $47,000 per year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/21/1602640/-A-jazzed-House-GOP-with-big-ideas-suddenly-plans-to-cut-down-on-3-day-weekends-next-session?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

:lol there ya go, Trash voters, Repugs fucking your overtime before you even got any! :lol

[boutons_deux]

Judge blocks Obama rule extending overtime pay to 4.2 million U.S. workers

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked an Obama administration rule to extend mandatory overtime pay to more than 4 million salaried workers from taking effect, imperiling one of the outgoing president's signature achievements for boosting wages.

U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, in Sherman, Texas, agreed with 21 states and a coalition of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that the rule is unlawful and granted their motion for a nationwide injunction.

The rule, issued by the Labor Department, was to take effect Dec. 1 and would have doubled to $47,500 the maximum salary a worker can earn and still be eligible for mandatory overtime pay. The new threshold would have been the first significant change in four decades.

The states and business groups claimed in lawsuits filed in September, which were later consolidated, that the drastic increase in the salary threshold was arbitrary.

On Tuesday, Mazzant, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled that the federal law governing overtime does not allow the Labor Department to decide which workers are eligible based on salary levels alone.

The Fair Labor Standards Act says that employees can be exempt from overtime if they perform executive, administrative or professional duties, but the rule “creates essentially a de facto salary-only test,” Mazzant wrote in the 20-page ruling.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-employment-overtime-idUSKBN13H2JY?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

So the BigCorp War on Employees wins a huge battle. Employees are fucked and unfuckable.

Remember, it was Repugs who screwed Ms of workers by saying they couldn't get overtime.

[DMC]

I see these kinds of archive threads and think the OP must be a recluse in a wheel chair with some level of autism. That's not even ad hom. It's a fact.

[spurraider21]

yeah its scary to think that behind the booboo account is an actual person

[Th'Pusher]

I see these kinds of archive threads and think the OP must be a recluse in a wheel chair with some level of autism. That's not even ad hom. It's a fact.
What's a fact? That you think Boutons is an autistic recluse in a wheelchair? That's a nifty fact.

[Th'Pusher]

yeah its scary to think that behind the booboo account is an actual person

What scary about a dyed in the wool liberal ideologue?

[boutons_deux]

Mazzant is also the judge who dismissed the suit against Dan Patrick.

[boutons_deux]

I see these kinds of archive threads and think the OP must be a recluse in a wheel chair with some level of autism. That's not even ad hom. It's a fact.

You Lie. But with your lover boy Don The Con now, all facts are lies. Words don't matter for you Repug assholes.

And of course, you have nothing to say about the FACT of Mazzant screwing Ms of people out of $100Ms.

[DMC]

What's a fact? That you think Boutons is an autistic recluse in a wheelchair? That's a nifty fact.Yes that's it

[boutons_deux]

The next four years are shaping up as a disaster for organized labor

Trump is poised to roll back key protections, and the head of the House labor committee doubts whether unions should exist at all.

Trump has yet to select a Labor Department head, but the rumored shortlist for this position does not include any union-friendly names.

The name that pops up most frequently is Andrew Puzder (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/trump-has-second-meeting-with-former-st-louis-lawyer-who/article_f4d0bcca-e2ce-5588-90f7-ccf35082d253.html), currently the CEO of the parent company that owns fast food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Puzder opposes a higher minimum wage, and said (http://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-puzder-is-a-candidate-for-labor-secretary-2016-12) last year that he would “like to try” replacing fast food workers with automated kiosks because “government [is] driving up the cost of labor.”

picking a fast food executive to run the Labor Department would send a clear message regarding Trump’s priorities. Even by the anemic standards of modern private sector unionism, very few fast food workers in the United States are union members; but a nationwide, union-backed campaign called Fight for $15 has spent the past few years trying to raise wages and encourage unionism in the industry through targeted strikes and protests.

He has yet to give many specifics on which orders he would rescind, but they could very well include that tightened oversight regarding alleged wage theft in federally contracted workplaces and lifted wages for federally contracted employees.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-organized-labor-4dd6715e3974#.tfnjgluk6

=================

Trump violates federal labor law, refuses to negotiate with his Vegas workers’ union

The National Labor Relations Board ruling against Trump comes in the final days of the presidential election.


https://thinkprogress.org/trump-violates-federal-labor-law-refuses-to-negotiate-with-his-vegas-workers-union-44de410198e2#.lf23jy0j1

=====================

Trash's low-wage, low-info voters are going to be poorer, sicker, deader by 2020.

My guess is Repugs will also go further in destroying jobs by more attacks on USPS, which plays an important role in rural communities.

[z0sa]

The worst right wing dumbasseries is their anti unionism. It has no defense of any type, it is very simply "the person who pays you any amount of money should get the benefit of the doubt always."

[boutons_deux]

The American Dream, Quantified at Last

They’ve constructed a data set that shows the percentage of American children who earn more money — and less money — than their parents earned at the same age.

The index is deeply alarming. It’s a portrait of an economy that disappoints a huge number of people who have heard that they live in a country where life gets better, only to experience something quite different.

Their frustration helps explain not only this year’s disturbing presidential campaign but also Americans’ growing distrust (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx) of nearly every major societal institution, including the federal government, corporate America, labor unions, the news media and organized religion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/opinion/the-american-dream-quantified-at-last.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

And NOTHING and NOBODY from Trash and the Repugs will improve the 95%'s economics.

[boutons_deux]

Why Are Children Less Likely to Earn More Than Their Parents These Day?

What they found was that children who reached age 30 in 1970 were 91 percent likely to have higher incomes than their parents.

However, children who reached age 30 in 2010 were only 50 percent more likely to have higher incomes than their parents.

Why the decline? To demonstrate the answer, I have two charts for you.

Here they are, with explanations below:

http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_parent_child_income_1940_1980.jpg


http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_chetty_parent_child_income.jpg

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/why-are-children-less-likely-earn-more-their-parents-these-day

[boutons_deux]

Repugs will fuck over Labor to enrich Capital every time (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/2/1610642/-Not-so-fast-state-level-Republicans-say-to-local-minimum-wage-increases-and-sick-leave-laws)

Not so fast, state-level Republicans say to local minimum wage increases and sick leave laws (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/2/1610642/-Not-so-fast-state-level-Republicans-say-to-local-minimum-wage-increases-and-sick-leave-laws)

The legislation aims to block Cleveland, one of Ohio’s largest and poorest cities, from unilaterally boosting wages for its low-wage workers. According to U.S. census data (http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2016/05/who_are_clevelands_lower-wage_1.html), 35,000 Clevelanders work full-time for less than $15 an hour, and 50 percent of those workers are black.

After the Cleveland City Council rejected a both a Fight for 15 campaign lobbying effort to pass a $15 minimum wage in August (http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/08/cleveland_council_rejects_15_m.html) and an attempt to get the issue on the November ballot, labor advocates succeeded in securing a special election for May (http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/09/special_election_for_phased-in_1.html)2017.

Voters will decide whether to establish a $12 minimum wage beginning in 2018, with annual one-dollar increases up to $15 over three years and cost-of-living-indexed increases thereafter.

More than 20 mostly red states have passed preemption laws banning local minimum-wage increases, according to NELP. [...]

Outgoing North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s infamous “bathroom bill,” which curbed equal-protection advances for gay and transgender people, also included a provision (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/not-about-bathrooms-critics-decry-north-carolina-laws-lesser-known-elements/2016/05/14/387946ec-186b-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html?utm_term=.b8fef456f715) that prohibited cities and counties from mandating higher minimum wages for private employers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker launched the first major Republican preemption effort in 2011 when he signed legislation that prevented localities from requiring mandatory paid sick time.

The move retroactively voided a paid-sick-days ballot measure that Milwaukee voters had overwhelmingly approved in 2008.

With Congress in Republican hands, states and cities are the only path to improving conditions for working people through minimum wage increases, paid sick leave, and more. Republicans and ALEC are looking to put a stop to that.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/01/02/1610642/-Not-so-fast-state-level-Republicans-say-to-local-minimum-wage-increases-and-sick-leave-laws?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

Repugs voters elected Repug to fuck over voters at every possible chance.

Being poor, depressed, substance abusing, suicidal are its own reward for being hateful, bigoted, xenophobic, gun fellatin, paranoid, and self-impoverishing.

[baseline bum]

^ LOL at the whole conservative argument that their ideology is about localizing government when you see shit like this repeatedly coming down from the state level.

[boutons_deux]

^ LOL at the whole conservative argument that their ideology is about localizing government when you see shit like this repeatedly coming down from the state level.

localized only to red/state level, aka "states rights, federalism", not to the municipal level.

If Repugs lips are moving (whored dummies to the VRWC ventriloquists ), they're LYING, always.

Repugs/VRWC are relentlessly, aggressively pro-capital, anti-labor, while counting on their voters to be so stupid and ignorant as to screw themselves while voting "social" issues.

[boutons_deux]

Capital's hit destroying Labor and good jobs

Why Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky’s Assault on Unions

Workers should be preparing to push back as the Republicans who control the White House and the Congress bring their anti-union agenda to Washington.

 “A lot of working people voted for change in this election,” argued Bill Finn (http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/ky-legislature/2017/01/04/right%E2%80%94work-advances-union-workers-protest/96162430/), the director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council. “They didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for a pay cut.” :lol you got fucked, stupid

“The weakening of unions by so-called ‘right to work’ laws, has been shown to reduce wages and benefits overall in the states where such laws have been enacted. This cannot be seen as contributing to the common good.”

 No one should be fooled by this president-elect’s attempts to portray himself as a friend of workers.

Trump and Pence were elected on a militantly anti-labor Republican platform (https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-the-anti-labor-day-candidate-running-against-fair-wages-worker-rights-and-unions/) that is dismissive of the federal minimum wage,

declaring (in a stance similar to the one Trump appears to have evolved toward) that decisions about base hourly wages “should be handled at the state and local level.”

It endorses the anti-union “right-to-work” laws enacted by Republican governors such as Walker, and calls for taking the anti-union crusade national with a proposal “for a national law” along “right-to-work” lines.

The 2016 GOP platform also

attacks the use of the Fair Labor Standard Act to protect workers;

rips the use of Project Labor Agreements to raise wages and improve working conditions; and

proposes to gut the 85-year-old Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees “prevailing wage” pay for workers on federal projects.

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-workers-everywhere-should-be-scared-by-kentuckys-assault-on-unions/

I told y'all, the bogus "white working class" and other poor Trash voters gonna be WORSE OFF by 2020, starting ASAP.

[boutons_deux]

Iowa lawmakers champion bill to limit public-sector unions

Iowa lawmakers considered legislation on Wednesday to limit the powers of public-sector unions to negotiate for state and local employees, restrictions similar to those enacted in Wisconsin and Michigan despite huge protests.

Republicans in Iowa have gained an important advantage in pushing for legislation to rein in public-sector salaries and benefits after gaining control of the state Senate in last November’s election. Republicans also control the state House of Representatives.

Iowa Republican Governor Terry Branstad supports the legislation, which if approved, would see Iowa join Wisconsin and Michigan in imposing restrictions on public-sector unions in the past decade. Branstad said the measure was needed to save money for the state.

Many Southern states have long limited collective bargaining by public-sector workers.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/iowa-lawmakers-champion-bill-to-limit-public-sector-unions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

the slave states have a long, nasty history being shitty on "labor"

[boutons_deux]

Walmart Is Accused of Punishing Workers for Sick Days

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, routinely refuses to accept doctors’ notes, penalizes workers who need to take care of a sick family member and otherwise punishes employees for lawful absences.

The report, based on a survey of more than 1,000 employees, accuses Walmart of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, among other worker-protection laws.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/business/walmart-workers-sick-days.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

non-compete agreements screw employees, even for sandwhich/submarine shop employees

I learned the hard way why non-competes are bad for journalists
https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/non-compete-agreement-journalism.php

[boutons_deux]

Trump administration sides with employers in Supreme Court labor case

The Trump administration on Friday sided with employers in a Supreme Court case over the rights of workers to bring class action lawsuits against companies, court documents showed.

Reversing a position staked out earlier by the Obama administration, which backed employees, the administration said in a court filing it would no longer defend the position of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that employment agreements requiring workers to waive their rights to bring class action claims are invalid.

The waivers compel workers to individually arbitrate disputes with their employers rather than bring collective lawsuits with their co-workers.

The NLRB, an independent agency in the federal government, said in letter to the court on Thursday that its own lawyer would represent the board in the employees' class action rights case.

It is unusual for the government to change positions in a case already pending at the Supreme Court, and marks a sharp break from the administration of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, which had originally pursued the case on behalf of the NLRB.

Workers argue that pursuing their cases individually is prohibitively expensive and, without the prospect of large damages awards that class action litigation can lead to, lawyers will be deterred from taking their cases.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-workplace-idUSKBN1972P0?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28Reu ters+Politics+News%29

Trash's Exec sides with Capital against Labor.

[boutons_deux]

Trump picks Republican lawyer Kaplan for US labor board

The NLRB, which oversees union elections and disputes between workers, unions, and employers, has been controlled by Democrats for nearly a decade, and they currently have a 2-1 majority with two vacancies.

The board, when fully stocked, includes three members from the president’s party and two from the opposing party. Under Trump, lawyers and business groups expect the board to roll back a series of policy changes adopted during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

Chief among those was a 2015 decision that expanded the circumstances in which a company is considered a “joint employer” liable for legal violations by contractors, staffing agencies, and franchisees.

The NLRB is also expected to revisit new rules designed to speed up the union election process that business groups say favor unions, and decisions allowing workers to use company email accounts to organize and to picket on employers’ private property.

Business groups including the National Restaurant Association and International Franchise Association praised the nomination, saying Kaplan and a second nominee who Trump is expected to name this week would

bring more balance to the board. :lol

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/trump-picks-republican-lawyer-kaplan-for-us-labor-board/

Capital and BigCorp gonna fuck Labor real good.

[boutons_deux]

Republicans in Several States Are Lowering the Minimum Wage

In Missouri, Republicans just passed a law overturning a local measure passed by the city of St. Louis that had raised the minimum wage to $10 per hour.

The new law will prohibit counties and cities within Missouri from creating their own minimum wage laws. It will also roll back the St. Louis minimum hourly wage to the statewide floor of $7.70.

Iowa Republicans managed to roll back mandatory pay increases passed by local jurisdictions. It was the first time such a law had ever been passed (http://www.nelp.org/news-releases/on-iowa-blocking-all-local-minimum-wage-and-employment-benefits-laws/),

Kentucky's Supreme Court overturned a 2014 Louisville ordinance that would have raised the city's minimum wage to $9 an hour. In a 6-1 ruling (http://wfpl.org/kentucky-supreme-court-strikes-down-louisville-minimum-wage-ordinance/), the court ruled that the local law violated the state constitution.

Free-market advocates (aka anti-Labor warriors) and restaurant industry representatives (aka anti-Labor warriors) argue that adding tips onto a full minimum wage will cripple many food establishments by forcing them to raise prices or reduce staffing levels.

Republicans in Maine have also been successful at changing local minimum wage laws.

President Donald Trump appeared to support raising the minimum wage requirement to $10 an hour (http://www.salon.com/2016/11/14/donald-trumps-progressive-mandate-at-least-on-economics-thats-not-as-crazy-as-it-sounds/). Since he assumed office, however, Trump has made no movement toward promoting the idea. :lol Just another Trash LIE

74 percent of respondents favored increasing the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour.

Even 58 percent of self-identified Republicans supported the higher wage.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41209-republicans-in-several-states-are-lowering-the-minimum-wage-yes-you-read-that-right

Human-Americans who poll in favor of raising minimum are ignored, because only Corporate-Americans' checks are acted upon.

[boutons_deux]

Abuses hide in the silence of non-disparagement agreements

As more harassment allegations come to light, employment lawyers say nondisparagement agreements have helped enable a culture of secrecy.

In particular, the tech start-up world has been roiled (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html) by accounts of workplace sexual harassment, and nondisparagement clauses have played a significant role in keeping those accusations secret. Harassers move on and harass again.

Women have no way of knowing their history.

Nor do future employers or business partners.

Nondisparagement clauses are not limited to legal settlements.

They are increasingly found in standard employment contracts in many industries, sometimes in a simple offer letter that helps to create a blanket of silence around a company.

Their use has become particularly widespread in tech employment contracts, from venture investment firms and start-ups to the biggest companies in Silicon Valley, including Google.

Employees increasingly "have to give up their constitutional right to speak freely about their experiences if they want to be part of the work force,"

"The silence sends a message: Men's jobs are more important than women's lives."

new hires signed an employment contract that included the clause that "employee shall not disparage the company,"

Binary used the nondisparagement provision in her employment contract to threaten her and prevent her from talking about why she had quit her job.

The nondisparagement clause made it "hard for employees to 'speak up' about inappropriate or illegal conduct,"

"Companies wave the agreements around and use them to force a settlement and make the problem go away,"

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/21/abuses-hide-in-the-silence-of-non-disparagement-agreements.html

non-disparament agreements, non-compete agreements (for a sandwich shop) :lol Capital fucking Labor at every chance.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/21/abuses-hide-in-the-silence-of-non-disparagement-agreements.html (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/21/abuses-hide-in-the-silence-of-non-disparagement-agreements.html)

[boutons_deux]

For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades

http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/10/Wage_stagnation.png


http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/10/Wage_stagnation2.png

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

[AaronY]

The fuck is VRWC?

[boutons_deux]

The fuck is VRWC?

http://www.acronymfinder.com/

[spurraider21]

The fuck is VRWC?
vast right wing conspiracy

popularized by none other than shillary

[boutons_deux]

Texas Police Oppose Anti-Union Bill Championed by Abbott, Patrick

“They get the teachers this time … and next time they’re coming after us,” said a police association president

Senate Bill 7 (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=851&Bill=SB7), which passed largely along party lines with a 19-12 vote, would prohibit public employees from voluntarily having union dues withheld from their paychecks.

Leeton and other union members say the ban on automatic deductions — a special session priority set by Governor Greg Abbott — would decrease membership by making payment more difficult.

SB 7 carves out exemptions for police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, yet police associations still oppose it.

“The reality is this is a stepping stone,” said Leeton. “So they get the teachers this time, and other labor groups, and next time they’re coming after us. …

This is a union-busting bill, that’s all this is.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-police-unions-abbott/

[boutons_deux]

Trump Poised to Repeal Popular Federal Jobs Initiative, With Disproportionate Impact to Be Felt by Minorities (https://capitalandmain.com/trumps-program-repeal-will-kill-jobs-0824)

But with momentum on infrastructure (http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/345215-lacking-white-house-plan-senate-focuses-on-infrastructure) stuck in neutral, the administration this week is quietly moving ahead to repeal a two-year-old initiative dating from the Obama administration that

might be the only dynamic infrastructure and jobs program in existence at the federal level.

According to its August Significant Rulemaking Report (https://cms.dot.gov/regulations/august-2017-significant-rulemaking-report), the Department of Transportation (DOT) has set Friday as the termination date for

a program that has already enabled states and cities to create thousands of new, high-wage transportation and construction jobs in some of the nation’s most depressed local labor markets.

“Many of these jobs were finally addressing long-term unemployment — many, for people of color,”

said Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink, an economic and social equity think tank. “This is yet another example of the

Trump administration not standing up for jobs for the nation’s most vulnerable.”

Madeline Janis, executive director of Jobs to Move America (JMA), a national coalition that has been at the center of leveraging public transit projects to generate opportunities for the unemployed, has been raising the alarm about the repeal.

She told Capital & Main that

she discovered it buried in the DOT rules change report almost by accident.
https://capitalandmain.com/trumps-program-repeal-will-kill-jobs-0824

Repugs, job creators! :lol

[Thread]

Trump Poised to Repeal Popular Federal Jobs Initiative, With Disproportionate Impact to Be Felt by Minorities (https://capitalandmain.com/trumps-program-repeal-will-kill-jobs-0824)

They've been on their knees & the tit since LBJ.

Act like somebody.

[boutons_deux]

Trump Just Cut The Wages Of 4.2 Million Workers The Day After Labor Day

The U.S. Justice Department today said it will abandon efforts to appeal a ruling by a Texas judge (https://www.bna.com/texas-judge-kills-n73014463988/) that put on hold an order by President Obama that greatly increased the number of workers who should receive overtime pay by making it harder for corporations to pretend they are actually white collar supervisors who are exempt from wage rules.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/501449598963953665/JeeCPOBV_normal.jpegChris Opfer (https://twitter.com/ChrisOpfer)
(https://twitter.com/ChrisOpfer)✔@ChrisOpfer (https://twitter.com/ChrisOpfer)

Just In: Justice Department to drop appeal in overtime case.

Judge last week killed Obama rule to make 4 million overtime eligible.
9:54 AM - Sep 5, 2017 (https://twitter.com/ChrisOpfer/status/905081635233820672)

The impact is that with a shrug and a wink at the big companies,

Trump has slashed the wages for millions of workers,

and cost many of them payments due for work already done under the old rules which were enacted under President George W. Bush.

“The Obama overtime rule provided protections to workers who were listed in bogus salaried positions

in the service, retail, and other sectors of the economy as a way to avoid having to pay employees overtime,” reporter and lawyer Chris Opfer wrote for Bloomberg BNA.


President Obama pushed the rule when it became clear the Republican controlled Congress would never raise the minimum wage for those in economic terms who are at the bottom of the labor pool.

“President Obama raised wages for 4.2 million workers with this rule,” adds Opfer. “Donald Turmp will slice those wages so that the money can go back into the hands of corporations.”

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/09/05/trump-just-cut-wages-4-2-million-workers-day-labor-day/ (http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/09/05/trump-just-cut-wages-4-2-million-workers-day-labor-day/)


How many of these 4.2 million SCREWED employees voted for Trash?

[boutons_deux]

AMERICA STRESSES OVER MAKING TIME FOR HOLIDAY CHEER


It’s little wonder that Americans are stressing out about their ability to find time for merriment.

They are, after all, working very long days.

According to a 2014 Gallup Poll,

the average American works 47 hours per week,

compared with fewer than 35 hours per week in Western European countries like France, Germany and Denmark.

Half of full-time, salaried U.S. employees — those who don’t earn overtime pay — said they worked at least 50 hours.

http://www.ozy.com/acumen/america-stresses-over-making-time-for-holiday-cheer/82463?utm_source=dd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12112017&variable=992d608214b505003aa04bf10a595031

50 hours/week? Probably about right for Trash's TV watching hours.

[boutons_deux]

IT giant CSC screwed its 1,000 sysadmins out of their overtime – jury

DXC to appeal verdict after court heard biz giant deliberately shortchanged staff

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) “willfully” misclassified 1,000 of its system administrators to avoid paying the techies overtime.

On Wednesday, a jury in Connecticut, USA, found in favor of staff who had brought 11 claims of labor law violations against the IT services provider.

Their class-action lawsuit, launched in 2014,

accused the multinational giant of failing to pay mandatory overtime.

During the three-year legal battle (https://www.csclawsuit.com/resources/documents) in Connecticut and California, CSC merged (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/03/hpe_csc_becomes_dxc/) with the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise to form DXC Technology.

After deliberating over two days, the jury unanimously rejected

CSC’s claim that its low-level system administrators were exempt (http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html) from mandatory overtime pay under federal,

Connecticut and California law due to their “associate professional” and “professional” job labels.

The panel decided instead that the workers should have been classified as nonexempt, and thus should have been paid overtime.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/21/csc_sys_admins_should_have_been_paid_overtime_says _us_jury/

[boutons_deux]

the oligarchy / Capital is financing the eternal war on Labor

Janus and fair share feesThe organizations financing the attack on unions’ ability to represent workers

Organizations litigating fair share fees and their donor foundations

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF)

Center for Individual Rights (CIR)

Liberty Justice Center and NRTWLDF

Donors Trust/Donors Capital Fund

Sarah Scaife Foundation

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Ed Uihlein Family Foundation

Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking

The link between anti–fair share and the broader attack on workers

A driving factor behind these trends is an increasingly energized and well-funded campaign against workers’ rights.

This campaign has occurred across all levels of government—federal, state, and local.

http://www.epi.org/publication/janus-and-fair-share-fees-the-organizations-financing-the-attack-on-unions-ability-to-represent-workers/?utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=4be39a88d2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-4be39a88d2-59312805&mc_cid=4be39a88d2&mc_eid=3f6f7e5a76 (http://www.epi.org/publication/janus-and-fair-share-fees-the-organizations-financing-the-attack-on-unions-ability-to-represent-workers/?utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=4be39a88d2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-4be39a88d2-59312805&mc_cid=4be39a88d2&mc_eid=3f6f7e5a76)

Capital has $Bs to spend on fucking over Labor, and as Warren Buffet said, they are "winning" the Class War of Capital vs Labor

[boutons_deux]

Cheating workers out of wages is easier than ever

Two features alone, “rounding” and “automatic break deductions,” could result in the loss of up to 44 minutes a day – or US$1,382 a year at the federal minimum wage.

Timekeeping software was the focus of a study (https://yjolt.org/when-timekeeping-software-undermines-compliance) I co-authored last year documenting (https://theconversation.com/how-timekeeping-software-helps-companies-nickel-and-dime-their-workers-70981) how it could be used to facilitate wage theft.

But it left a lingering question: Did companies actually use these features to shortchange workers? Based on my review of hundreds of lawsuits like Willis’, the answer is yes – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.


“Wage theft” is a shorthand term that refers to situations in which someone isn’t paid for the work. In its simplest form, it might consist of a manager instructing employees to work off the clock. Or a company refusing to pay for overtime hours.

A report (https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year-survey-data-show-millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-than-the-minimum-wage-at-significant-cost-to-taxpayers-and-state-economies/) from the

Economic Policy Institute estimated that employees lose $15 billion to wage theft every year, more than all of the property crime in the United States put together.

Our 2017 study, which was based on promotional materials (https://www.tsheets.com/ways-to-track-time), employer policies (https://hr.vanderbilt.edu/apps/ts/RoundingProceduresEffectiveNov16-2014.pdf) and YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPSj2Md1h4), suggested that

companies can now use software to avoid paying all sorts of hourly workers.
Hundreds and hundreds

When an employee clocks in for the day – using a computer login, ID badge or phone – that employee’s time log becomes a form of data.

I ran a search of legal opinions to see if there were any cases in which workers sought to reclaim wages lost through digital wage theft.

I found hundreds and hundreds of legal opinions involving digital wage theft.

And this suggests there are hundreds more because, typically, for every case that results in a legal opinion many more do not (https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/43/).

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/cheating-workers-wages-easier-ever/ (https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/cheating-workers-wages-easier-ever/)

Capital screwing Labor, the eternal war.

[boutons_deux]

News from a Repug SHIT HOLE aka Texas

San Antonio City Clerk Certifies Petition Signatures For Mandatory Paid Sick Leave

Earlier this month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to the city saying any such ordinance mandating sick leave at the city level would violate the Texas Minimum Wage Act (https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxtons-office-warns-san-antonio-against-circumventing-texas-law-on-paid). :lol

http://www.tpr.org/post/san-antonio-city-clerk-certifies-petition-signatures-mandatory-paid-sick-leave

=============

AG Paxton’s Office Warns San Antonio Against Circumventing Texas Law on Paid Sick Leave

In April, Attorney General Paxton intervened in a lawsuit (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-intervenes-in-lawsuit-challenging-city-of-austins-unlawful-sick-l) filed by the National Federation of Independent Business, American Staffing Association, LeadingEdge Personnel, Staff Force, HT Staffing, and Burnett Staffing Specialists

against the city of Austin’s unlawful sick leave ordinance, which is scheduled to take effect on October 1.

https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxtons-office-warns-san-antonio-against-circumventing-texas-law-on-paid

of course a 5-4 or 6-3 oligarchy SCOTUS would side with the oligarchy/Captial whore Repugs against Labor.

In TX, get sick, family member gets sick, get pregnant, get fired.

[boutons_deux]

Solving The 'Wage Puzzle': Why Aren't Paychecks Growing?

some economists say that should add up to wage growth rates of about 3.5 percent.

Instead, wages are increasing at a 2.7 percent annual rate.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is among those who worry that

declining unionization and other factors

have eroded American workers' ability to demand higher pay;

they are not benefiting from the strong economic growth.

In 2012, recruitment firm Korn Ferry's survey ranked pay the top reason workers left jobs.

This year, it was "culture and purpose,"

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/02/634754091/solving-the-wage-puzzle-why-aren-t-paychecks-growing?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20180805&utm_campaign=&utm_term=

[boutons_deux]

quit rate is key to understanding workers. If they think they can get a better job (pay, conditions), they quit

Workers are quitting their jobs at a rate not seen since dotcom bubble

Americans are quitting their jobs at a record rate, with the proportion of workers leaving their jobs reaching the highest level in over 17 years,

Despite a tick down in the number of open jobs, there are still more open jobs than there are unemployed people—only the second time in two decades that has happened.

Businesses advertised 6.64 million available jobs in May, down from 6.84 million the month before. But there were only 6.1 million unemployed people.

The proportion of workers quitting their jobs (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/strong-labor-market-has-more-americans-quitting/), known as the quit rate, reached the highest level since April 2001.

Quits are seen as a positive sign that workers are confident they can find another job.

Most people who quit do so for higher-paying positions.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/workers-are-quitting-their-jobs-at-a-rate-not-seen-in-17-years/

[boutons_deux]

Americans have amassed a record $13.2 trillion in debt, but economists aren’t that worried about it

US household debt has set yet another record high. In the first quarter of 2018, it reached $13.2 trillion, a $63 billion increase from the previous quarter.

Now, household debt is half a trillion dollars higher than its previous peak in 2008,

Delinquency rates for credit cards and auto loans are rising,

while about 10% of student loans were at least 90 days overdue in the latest reading.

While subprime loans are no longer a serious issue in the mortgage market, they are still prevalent for auto loans (https://qz.com/913093/car-loans-in-the-us-have-hit-record-levels-and-delinquencies-are-rising-fast-too/).

In the first quarter, 19% of new auto loans were issued with credit scores below 620, amounting to $25 billion.

Auto-loan delinquencies have been rising since 2012, and

at the end of March 4.3% of auto debt was at least 90 days overdue.

The highest rate in the past 15 years was 5.3% at the end of 2010.

Meanwhile, wealth from housing has also increased to a record high, at more than $14 trillion.

For the most part, house prices have recovered since the financial crisis—

but homeownership rates haven’t, particular for younger people.

The homeownership rate for Americans under 35 is just 35%, compared with 43% before the crisis.

For over 65s, homeownership rates have held steady at around 80%.

“While housing wealth is at an all-time high,

it has shifted into the hands of older and more creditworthy borrowers,

in part because of tight mortgage lending standards,”

Although American households, in the aggregate, appear able to withstand a financial shock thanks to rising wealth and less worrying types of indebtedness,

the details reveal that this is mostly true for older borrowers with higher credit scores.

https://qz.com/1280927/us-household-debt-has-hit-an-all-time-high-of-13-2-trillion/

[boutons_deux]

City Council adopts mandatory paid sick leave ordinance for San Antonio workers

In a major victory for a coalition of labor and community organizations, the City Council on Thursday adopted a mandatory paid sick leave ordinance that would ensure nearly all workers in San Antonio earn the benefit.

In a 9-2 vote, the council adopted the ordinance that will become effective next year. It would apply to both for- and not-for-profit businesses.

Officials expect that

the (shit hole Repug) Texas Legislature will move to preempt the ordinance and similar laws in Austin and Dallas,

if voters there approve it in November.

If it isn’t addressed by state lawmakers, Mayor Ron Nirenberg suggested that the city would work with those who presented the petition for the ordinance and business owners who have voiced concerns with mandating that businesses offer paid sick time.

Councilmen Greg Brockhouse and Clayton Perry voted against the measure.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/politics/article/Council-calls-election-for-charter-amendments-13161016.php?utm_campaign=mysa_breakingnews&utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter

[boutons_deux]

Trump's war on workers is flying under the radar, but it's relentless (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/25/1789765/-Trump-s-war-on-workers-is-flying-under-the-radar-but-it-s-relentless)
the attack he’s mounted on working people is staggering … and mostly under the radar (http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21391/trump_workers_labor_unions_nlrb).

The Trump administration killed the Obama-era rule requiring federal contractors to disclose violations of labor law when they bid for contracts.

They stopped the Obama administration’s effort to expand overtime eligibility so that millions more people would get overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week.

Then there’s the string of damaging National Labor Relations Board decisions, including

a ruling against small unions within larger workplaces, the decision that got McDonald’s off the hook for workers in its franchise restaurants,

and:
— Reversing (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-establishes-new-standard-governing-workplace-policies-and-upholds-no) a 2004 decision bolstering workers’ rights to organize free from employer interference.

— Reversing (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-clarifies-duty-bargain-over-%E2%80%9Cchanges%E2%80%9D-are-consistent-past-practice-0) a 2016 decision safeguarding unionized workers’ rights to bargain over changes in employment terms.

—Overturning (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-reinstates-%E2%80%9Creasonableness%E2%80%9D-settlement-standard-and-holds-judge-0) a 2016 decision that required settlements between employers and employees to provide a “full remedy” to aggrieved workers, instead of partial settlements.


Over at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, meanwhile, they’ve

delayed three important workplace safety rules.

And, of course, the Supreme Court has said that employers can force workers into mandatory arbitration, denying them their day in court, and has also attacked public unions in the Janus decision.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/178976 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1789765)

Capital ALWAYS wins over Labor :lol

The oligarchy's pollution-increasing rules will kill 1000s more Americans than MS-13 or Muslims ever will.

but y'all stupid, ignorant rightwingnutjobs keep voting about God, guns, LGBT, immigrant animals/rapists, Muslims, globalism, MS-13, Hillary, welfare cheats, socialism, etc... :lol

[boutons_deux]

https://images.dailykos.com/images/583549/story_image/8-29-2018-mcfadden-915px.png?1535694169

[boutons_deux]

Southern cities are passing paid sick leave — but Republicans won’t let them have it

The United States is the only 1 of 22 rich countries that has no national guaranteed paid sick-leave policy

On August 16, the San Antonio city council voted (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/16/san-antonio-paid-sick-leave-ordinance/) 9-2 to pass a paid sick leave ordinance that will allow residents to earn an hour of time off for every 30 hours worked up to six days a year at small employers and eight at larger ones.

The United States is alone (http://cepr.net/documents/publications/psd-summary.pdf) among 22 wealthy countries in having no national guaranteed paid sick-leave policy. As a result, states are left to pass their own laws, and in those like Texas where GOP legislatures stand opposed to paid sick leave, it’s up to the cities.

San Antonio became the 33rd city (http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/work-family/psd/current-paid-sick-days-laws.pdf) in the country to take such a step, and the second in the South after Austin passed a similar law (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/16/legislators-challenge-new-austin-sick-leave-mandate/) in February.

The San Antonio law is supposed to go into effect in January, and Austin’s was scheduled to go into effect in October. But the fate of both laws is up in the air.

The very day after San Antonio’s ordinance passed,

an appeals court temporarily put Austin’s law on hold (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/17/state-appeals-court-temporarily-blocks-austins-paid-sick-leave-ordinan/) in the midst of a lawsuit brought by the conservative

Texas Public Policy Foundation — a member (http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html) of the Koch-backed State Policy Network—

that claims the law violates the Texas Minimum Wage Act.

Even if that lawsuit fails, many

Republican members of the Texas legislature have vowed (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/16/legislators-challenge-new-austin-sick-leave-mandate/) to pass legislation to block such local progressive laws throughout the state.

Lawmakers are expected to take up broad preemption legislation as a top priority when the next legislative session begins in the new year.

Greg Abbott pledged (http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-texas-abbott-preemption.html) to preempt cities’ ability to pass their own ordinances.

In 2017 he explained this decision would “continue our legacy of economic freedom” :lol (aka Capitial freedom to fuck Labor)

and “limit the ability of cities to California-ize the great state of Texas.” :lol

In 2015,

the state blocked (https://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/18/abbott-signs-denton-fracking-bill/) cities from regulating oil and gas drilling activity, including fracking, and

it has also banned local laws that would create sanctuary cities (https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/07/abbott-signs-sanctuary-cities-bill/).

It’s a growing trend in legislatures controlled by Republicans.

At least 25 states (https://www.epi.org/publication/city-governments-are-raising-standards-for-working-people-and-state-legislators-are-lowering-them-back-down/) have passed preemption laws that block cities from raising the minimum wage, and

20 have banned cities from instituting paid sick leave.

The majority of these laws have been enacted since 2013 and advocates for higher workplace standards say the trend is only accelerating (http://inthesetimes.com/features/alabama_fight_for_15_dillons_rule_preemption_racsi sm.html).

https://www.salon.com/2018/09/03/southern-cities-are-passing-paid-sick-leave-but-republicans-wont-let-them-have-it_partner/ (https://www.salon.com/2018/09/03/southern-cities-are-passing-paid-sick-leave-but-republicans-wont-let-them-have-it_partner/)

Uber/Lyft hired shit hole TX Repug whores to block Austin, Houston from imposing finger print checks / Federal b/g checks on rideshare drivers.

[boutons_deux]

Michigan GOP blocking paid sick leave by passing paid sick leave? (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/8/1793843/-This-week-in-the-war-on-workers-Michigan-GOP-blocking-paid-sick-leave-by-passing-paid-sick-leave)

https://images.dailykos.com/images/318393/story_image/GettyImages-516129824.jpg?1477596112

Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature just passed bills requiring paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage to $12.

The Republicans passed those laws in order to keep them weak:

That’s because the effort to pass the two measures was more about keeping the issues off the Nov. 6 ballot and

giving the Legislature the power to amend the two laws with a simple majority.

If the proposals had gone to the ballot and were

passed by voters,

it would take a three-quarters majority to amend the laws.

====================================


About two million low-income Americans would lose benefits under House farm bill, study says (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/politics/trump-farm-bill-congress.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur).


Under the bill, states could remove about 8 percent of those receiving aid from the rolls,

About 34 percent of seniors in the program, or 677,000 households, would lose benefits under the proposal

More than one in 10 people with a disability, another 214,000 households, would also lose eligibility.



https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1793843

[boutons_deux]

Sears execs to split $25 mil in bonuses after telling workers no severance because of bankruptcy (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/17/1819712/-Sears-execs-to-split-25-mil-in-bonuses-after-telling-workers-no-severance-because-of-bankruptcy)

https://images.dailykos.com/images/623243/story_image/GettyImages-838634714.jpg?1545074499


19 top executives will get to split a paltry $8.4 million if the company hits its “goals,” and

315 senior employees might get the remaining $16.9 million.

This means that the executives that helped to bankrupt the company in the first place

will get a little less than half a million dollars apiece in holiday cheer.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/17/1819712/-Sears-execs-to-split-25-mil-in-bonuses-after-telling-workers-no-severance-because-of-bankruptcy?detail=emaildkre (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/17/1819712/-Sears-execs-to-split-25-mil-in-bonuses-after-telling-workers-no-severance-because-of-bankruptcy?detail=emaildkre)

====================

Predatory, asset-stripping, job-killing vulture Capitalism

Hedge funds have killed Sears and many other retailers

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/investing/retail-sears-private-equity/index.html (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/investing/retail-sears-private-equity/index.html)

[boutons_deux]

Too Many Workers Are Trapped By Non-Competes

Employers shouldn’t get away with limiting their options.

Why have wages been so slow to rise at a time when demand for workers has pushed the U.S. unemployment rate to its lowest point in nearly half a century?

One answer: contracts that tie millions of unspecialized workers to their jobs.


In far too many cases, these so-called

noncompetes are an unwarranted restriction on freedom to transact and a drag on growth.

A 2014 survey (https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=1730221011190661030650830261221250 64057072038035075028088075127101004113006005027111 12412212702801804202607311611002502600509806001300 40750581011170870810641230050800850790011230950830 02103114005018025069087001081078113082071011111021 082081005117066073&EXT=pdf) found that about two in five workers were or had at some point been bound in this way,

including workers such as security guards (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/10/24/22363/noncompete-clauses-theyre-not-just-executives-anymore#correction) and camp counselors (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/noncompete-clauses-increasingly-pop-up-in-array-of-jobs.html?_r=0&module=inline).

Some 12 percent of employees without a bachelor’s degree and earning less than $40,000 a year were tied down.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-12/non-compete-clauses-trap-too-many-american-workers

[boutons_deux]

https://rwer.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/yearly-hours-worked-per-capita.png

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/yearly-hours-worked-per-capita-in-usa-europe-and-rest-of-the-world/

[boutons_deux]

From the anti-Labor Labor Dept

U.S. Labor Department moves to ease companies' liability for franchisee wage violations

The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday issued a proposal that would make it more difficult to prove companies are liable for the wage law violations of their contractors or franchisees,

a top priority for business groups.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor/us-labor-department-moves-to-ease-companies-liability-for-franchisee-wage-violations-idUSKCN1RD2UK (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor/us-labor-department-moves-to-ease-companies-liability-for-franchisee-wage-violations-idUSKCN1RD2UK)

[boutons_deux]

Senate TURDS shit on Labor for Capital in shithole Texas

Texas Senate passes bill to kill mandatory paid sick leave

Killing Austin's sick leave law would protect businesses from government overreach, :lol

Opponents say Austin is a darling of the global economy and is clearly doing something right. :lol

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/04/12/texas-senate-passes-bill-to-kill-mandatory.html?ana=e_du_prem&s=article_du&ed=2019-04-12 (https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/04/12/texas-senate-passes-bill-to-kill-mandatory.html?ana=e_du_prem&s=article_du&ed=2019-04-12)

[boutons_deux]

"In 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) attempted to strengthen overtime regulations for working people.

The updated overtime pay rule would have raised the overtime salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476 in 2016, and by 2020 it would have automatically increased to around $51,000.

That rule would have benefitted 13.5 million working people―making 4.6 million newly eligible to receive the overtime pay they deserve, and strengthening the rights of 8.9 million more."

this long-overdue update was

blocked in the courts by business interests and Republican-led states, and

the Trump administration refused to defend the updated rule.

the Trump administration’s lack of action has

already cost working people more than $1.6 billion in lost overtime pay.
Now, the

Trump administration has published a new proposal

that would dramatically weaken the DOL’s 2016 overtime rule―

leaving behind 8.2 million people,

including 4.2 million women,

3.0 million people of color,

4.7 million workers without a college degree, and

2.7 million parents of children under the age of 18,

who would have gotten overtime protections under the 2016 guidelines."

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/submit-your-official-comment-tell-the-department-of-labor-to-reject-trumps-weak-overtime-rules?source=20190412OvertimeComm_EPI&referrer=group-economic-policy-institute&utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=a40d993235-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_23_08_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-a40d993235-59312805&mc_cid=a40d993235&mc_eid=3f6f7e5a76 (https://actionnetwork.org/letters/submit-your-official-comment-tell-the-department-of-labor-to-reject-trumps-weak-overtime-rules?source=20190412OvertimeComm_EPI&referrer=group-economic-policy-institute&utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=a40d993235-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_23_08_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-a40d993235-59312805&mc_cid=a40d993235&mc_eid=3f6f7e5a76)

Trash supporters get screwed financially, but they are getting abortion restricted and getting the govt to fuck over the HATED LGBTQ people

[boutons_deux]

the oligarchy's corrupt SCOTUS5 protecting Capital and screwing Labor

Split 5 to 4, Supreme Court Deals a Blow to Class Arbitrations

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-988_n6io.pdf) that

workers at a California business could not band together to seek compensation

for what they said was their employer’s failure to protect their data.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s conservative members in the majority.

The decision was the latest in a

line of rulings allowing companies to use arbitration provisions to bar both class actions in court and class-wide arbitration proceedings.

In earlier 5-to-4 decisions concerning fine-print contracts with consumers (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/business/28bizcourt.html?module=inline) and employment agreements (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-workplace-arbitration-contracts.html?module=inline),

the court ruled that arbitration provisions can require disputes to be resolved one by one. :lol
Those rulings can

make it difficult for consumers and workers to pursue minor claims even where their collective harm was substantial.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/supreme-court-class-arbitrations.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/supreme-court-class-arbitrations.html)

[boutons_deux]

Capitalists' Repug whores screwing Labor

GOP-LED EFFORTS TO CRUSH UNIONS HAVE A NEW TARGET: HOME HEALTH CARE WORKERS

FIVE STATES ARE pushing back against the latest Republican-led assault to weaken unions across the country, which targets in-home caregivers who work with Medicaid beneficiaries.

On Monday, attorneys general representing California, Connecticut, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington filed a lawsuit (https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/ca-v-azar-complaint-medicaid-provider-payments.pdf) against the Trump administration challenging

a new rule, (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/06/2019-09118/medicaid-program-reassignment-of-medicaid-provider-claims) announced earlier this month, that impedes home care workers from paying union dues through their Medicaid-funded paychecks.

The rule, which goes into effect in July, will impact more than half a million workers in California alone, and several hundred thousand more in 10 other states.

The plaintiffs argue that the defendants have illegally reinterpreted federal law “in service of anti-union objectives.”

The new rule, they say, disrupts long-settled arrangements that allow seniors and individuals with disabilities —

who work with state governments to set wages, benefits, and terms of service for their providers —

to direct their own health care.

More than 700,000 individuals across the five plaintiff states currently use consumer-directed Medicaid programs.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/16/lawsuit-home-care-workers-union-dues/ (https://theintercept.com/2019/05/16/lawsuit-home-care-workers-union-dues/)

[boutons_deux]

From Economic Policy Institute email, Repugs enabling Capital to screw Labor

"Once again, the Trump administration is hard at work, trying to find new ways to undermine the rights and workplace protections of employees that have taken a century to build.

Just months after seeking to weaken workers’ ability to organize and collectively bargain as a union,

the Trump administration is continuing its assault on working people by proposing a Department of Labor rule that would

let America’s largest companies dodge their responsibility for violations of workforce laws and protections—including minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws.

Both this potential Labor Department rule change and last fall’s effort to weaken unions before the National Labor Relations Board seek to weaken the joint employer standard and

make it harder for workers whose rights are violated to access justice.

The goal: to let big businesses off the hook when contracting firms and franchisees violate the law."

[boutons_deux]

The Postal Service Wants To Make Deep Cuts To Worker Benefits, Internal Plan Shows

The agency hopes to get Congress’ help in trimming pensions and paid leave, as well as slashing delivery service.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-postal-service-wants-to-make-deep-cuts-to-worker-benefits-internal-plan-shows_n_5d092020e4b0e560b70a12d4?ncid=newsltushpmg news__TheMorningEmail__061919 (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-postal-service-wants-to-make-deep-cuts-to-worker-benefits-internal-plan-shows_n_5d092020e4b0e560b70a12d4?ncid=newsltushpmg news__TheMorningEmail__061919)

[boutons_deux]

For mothers, parental leave is a penalty whether they take it or not
On the flip side, if more parents took time off, a mother’s earnings would increase by about 7% for each additional month her spouse or partner takes off work.In the U.S., only 14% of the men who have access to parental leave take more than two weeks after the birth or adoption of a child, according to a study by Ball State University (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/dads-say-they-deserve-parental-leave-even-if-they-don-t-take-it).
Why aren’t fathers taking paternity leave? They don’t want to suffer the motherhood penalty.
A Deloitte survey found that 57% of men say taking paternity leave would be perceived as a lack of commitment to their careers—a penalty all too familiar to mothers who also do paid work.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90363981/for-mothers-parental-leave-is-a-penalty-whether-they-take-it-or-not?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds (https://www.fastcompany.com/90363981/for-mothers-parental-leave-is-a-penalty-whether-they-take-it-or-not?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds)

Capitalists / BigCorp wants Labor / workers to commit to their jobs, but won't commit to the workers.

[boutons_deux]

Oligarchy whores Repug Congress makes minimum wage history, going the longest without an increase since 1938 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/17/1865406/-Congress-makes-minimum-wage-history-going-the-longest-without-an-increase-since-1938)

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009.

That’s coming up on a decade, but it’s already hit an infuriating milestone:

June 16 marked the longest the minimum wage had gone without an increase since

1938, when the U.S. passed its first minimum wage.

Because Republicans are happy to have the minimum wage be a poverty wage—

and it is a wage so low that a full-time job is not enough to pull a family of two above the poverty threshold.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/17/1865406/-Congress-makes-minimum-wage-history-going-the-longest-without-an-increase-since-1938?detail=emailLL

==============

Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2018

In 2018, 81.9 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates,

representing 58.5 percent of all wage and salary workers.

Among those paid by the hour, 434,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

About 1.3 million had wages below the federal minimum.

Together, these 1.7 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.1 percent of all hourly paid workers.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm

[boutons_deux]

Another battle won by Capital in its decades long war on Labor

Appeals Court Delivers 'Tremendous Blow to Federal Workers' With Decision to Uphold Trump's Anti-Union Executive Orders

"There must be a check on the president's power to destroy federal employees' union rights."

The U.S. Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit said that it lacked jurisdiction to block Trump's orders (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/31/democracy-not-dictatorship-federal-workers-union-sues-donald-trump), which made it

easier to fire federal employees,

limited the amount of time workers can spend on union business, and

compelled federal agencies to devise unfavorable contracts with unions.

the appeals court ruled only that it did not have jurisdiction to rule on the orders, not on the merits of Trump's actions.

while the court advised the unions to appeal to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, Reins noted on Twitter that

"agency's ruling[s] have been uniformally anti-union thus far under Trump." duh of course

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/16/appeals-court-delivers-tremendous-blow-federal-workers-decision-uphold-trumps-anti?cd-origin=rss (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/16/appeals-court-delivers-tremendous-blow-federal-workers-decision-uphold-trumps-anti?cd-origin=rss)

[boutons_deux]

shitbag Paxton and shitbag Repugs in shithole TX side with Capital over Labor

Texas AG intervenes in lawsuit against San Antonio's paid sick leave ordinance

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/search/results?q=Ken%20Paxton) is siding in court with businesses that have sued the city of San Antonio (https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/07/16/local-business-associations-sue-to-block-sas-paid.html) to stop its paid sick leave ordinance from going into effect, saying such a law can only be enacted by the Texas Legislature.

The lawsuit against the San Antonio ordinance was filed by 12 businesses and business organizations in the city this week.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/07/19/texas-ag-intervenes-in-lawsuit-against-san.html?ana=e_sant_bn_breakingnews&j=&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpaaFpXVTNNMlJrTmpFNSIsInQiOiJTOG w3VVNYQUplQmx6NkRyb0VzY2g3S1dMOFNEOFQyaFVGb2N5ZkI2 SGJ6NG9qb3hDeVJoTUw0UTJTQktOVW9WY3VYa3hnRHYzd0lObl ViSDFwN0NtNFFZMzdaT1ZFOHkrdjRRVGJtUmRqdmNTWlFzM3hL UEY5T05VTmVpdG9wZnE0TnpDZXBGcE9McjE3a3lWZlUycWc9PS J9 (https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/07/19/texas-ag-intervenes-in-lawsuit-against-san.html?ana=e_sant_bn_breakingnews&j=&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpaaFpXVTNNMlJrTmpFNSIsInQiOiJTOG w3VVNYQUplQmx6NkRyb0VzY2g3S1dMOFNEOFQyaFVGb2N5ZkI2 SGJ6NG9qb3hDeVJoTUw0UTJTQktOVW9WY3VYa3hnRHYzd0lObl ViSDFwN0NtNFFZMzdaT1ZFOHkrdjRRVGJtUmRqdmNTWlFzM3hL UEY5T05VTmVpdG9wZnE0TnpDZXBGcE9McjE3a3lWZlUycWc9PS J9)

[boutons_deux]

Shitbag Paxton, whore to Capital, doing shitty stuff to Labor in pro-business/anti-worker shithole TX

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenges Dallas sick leave ordinance as supporters rally

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined two Dallas-area employers in a lawsuit challenging the city’s new ordinance requiring paid sick leave.

The new law went into effect on Aug. 1. It requires employers in the city of Dallas and those based outside the city limits who have Dallas employees working more than 80 hours in the city each year to give sick employees paid time off.

Those employees can accrue an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. It’s capped at six days for employers with less than 15 workers or eight days for those with more than 15.

Employers who don’t comply can face fines up to $5,000 for each violation.

Paxton supports them and explained

the Texas Legislature is solely responsible for setting the minimum amount of compensation for workers.

He believes Dallas’ ordinance unlawfully attempts to usurp voters. :lol

“Not only would this ordinance harm the ability of Texans to find and keep jobs, :lol

it is a blatant attempt to silence the millions of other voters :lol

throughout our State who disagree with

the agenda of urban elites, :lol

even after the courts have made it clear they cannot do so,”

http://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-challenges-dallas-sick-leave-ordinance-as-supporters-rally (http://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-challenges-dallas-sick-leave-ordinance-as-supporters-rally)

Paxton knows his ignorant, rural base and knows how to screw them on behalf of business. It's the Repug Way.

[boutons_deux]

Trump’s awful Labor Day trifecta: Attacking workers, Social Security — and government itself

his administration is in the midst of a stealth effort that

not only attacks workers but also our earned Social Security benefits and our federal government.

The long-term goals of Trump and his Congressional allies are to

destroy the labor movement,

wreck the federal government, and

end Social Security.

Trump’s latest stealth attack is not only anti-union,

it will eventually make it so difficult to access Social Security benefits

that some beneficiaries (particularly those attempting to qualify for their earned Social Security disability benefits) never receive them at all.

Others will eventually claim their benefits, but only after an unnecessarily burdensome process

For Republicans, that’s all according to plan. Trump and his Congressional allies are

intentionally breaking our government so they can turn around and say that it doesn’t work.

Trump’s war on workers is extremely well documented (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/opinion/trump-worker-safety-osha.html).

It is perhaps best illustrated by his anti-worker nominees to be Secretary of Labor

The first nominee (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/us/politics/andrew-puzder-labor-secretary.html) was guilty of scores of labor law violations and forced to pay millions of dollars in settlements to workers he cheated.

Trump’s second anti-worker nominee (https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-labor-nominee-alexander-acosta-is-more-dangerous-than-you-think/) was Alex Acosta, best known for his sweetheart deal with the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

His current acting Secretary of Labor (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/business/economy/patrick-pizzella-labor-department.html) ... has spent his career defending businesses seeking to roll back labor protections.

Trump’s war on the federal government is also well-documented (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-trump-white-house-is-destroying-our-civil-service/2018/08/03/1aad229e-969c-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html).

His administration is upending the lives (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-federal-workers-relocation_n_5d166993e4b07f6ca57d12c8?guccounter=1 ) of career civil servants by telling those based in Washington to move to the Midwest and those based around the country to relocate to Washington.

This is having the desired effect: Most are quitting (https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article232730352.html).

. He recently floated a proposal (https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/458280-trumps-latest-plan-to-undermine-social-security) to reduce Social Security’s funding.

he gloated over his intentions (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/donald-trump-republicans-federal-deficit) to cut Medicare as a “fun second-term project.”

Trump ran on a promise (https://medium.com/senator-bernie-sanders/14-times-donald-trump-promised-not-to-cut-social-security-medicare-and-medicaid-99beefa9f584) to protect Social Security and Medicare. :lol LIE! :lol

doesn’t have anything to do with the debt or deficit.

It has everything to do with the donor class trying to avoid paying their fair share toward the common good.

One of their most nefarious tactics is undercutting the Social Security Administration (SSA),

SSA has suffered (https://socialsecurityworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Continued-Cuts-to-Social-Security-Services-Harm-All-Americans_FINAL.pdf) nearly a decade of budget cuts from Congressional Republicans. These cuts have resulted in office closures, staff reductions, and a years-long wait for disability hearings.

the Trump Administration is playing hardball. It has issued anti-worker executive orders. It has failed to negotiate in good faith (https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/07/administrative-law-judge-union-accuses-social-security-bad-faith-bargaining/158257/) with those representing federal workers.

the Trump Administration is playing hardball. It has issued anti-worker executive orders.

It has failed to negotiate in good faith (https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/07/administrative-law-judge-union-accuses-social-security-bad-faith-bargaining/158257/) with those representing federal workers.

The Trump Administration’s goal is to make conditions at SSA so intolerable that demoralized workers will quit in droves,

taking essential institutional knowledge with them.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/trumps-awful-labor-day-trifecta-attacking-workers-social-security-and-government-itself/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1316

[boutons_deux]

Amazon-Owned Whole Foods Slashes Health Care Benefits for Part-Time Workers (https://gizmodo.com/amazon-owned-whole-foods-slashes-health-care-benefits-f-1838121898)

Amazon-owned Whole Foods is slashing benefits for 1,900 part-time workers at the start of 2020, with staff working 20 hours a week told the bar to buy into the company health care plan will now be set at 30 hours a week

In a truly headache inducing statement to the site, a Whole Foods spokesperson referred to the change as an attempt to make its “scheduling model” more “equitable and efficient”:

“I am in shock,” one Whole Foods worker told BI. “I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job — because of my benefits.”

Bezos signed a Business Roundtable (https://www.businessinsider.com/business-roundtable-ceos-say-companies-must-serve-more-than-shareholders-2019-8) pledge which (loosely) committed signatories to “deliver value to all” stakeholders,

not just shareholders,

including by “investing in our employees” and

“compensating them fairly and providing important benefits.”

“They already took our profit sharing.

Now they’re coming for our healthcare.”

the workers noted that profit sharing for non-management or home office positions for employees over 6,000 hours was eliminated under Amazon ownership.

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-owned-whole-foods-slashes-health-care-benefits-f-1838121898 (https://gizmodo.com/amazon-owned-whole-foods-slashes-health-care-benefits-f-1838121898)

Probably a warning to employees trying to organize a union either to STFU or GTFO.

[boutons_deux]

Aiming To Curtail Temp Rights, Labor Board Stands Accused Of Conflicts

Under the Trump administration, the National Labor Relations Board has been trying to roll back an Obama-era :lol decision that made companies more responsible for temporary staffers, fast-food-franchise workers and others who work for them indirectly.

The first attempt was foiled in early 2018 (https://www.propublica.org/article/william-emanuel-nlrb-member-is-under-investigation-for-a-conflict-of-interest) when a Trump appointee to the board was found to have a conflict of interest. :lol duh

as the NLRB tries to undo the rule for a second time,

it’s facing questions from two Democratic representatives about another potential conflict of interest —

and this one involves the NLRB’s own use of temporary staffers.

In May, the labor board engaged a company called Ardelle Associates to supply lawyers and paralegals to help review public comments on the proposed overhaul of

the provision in question, which is known as the “joint-employer rule.”
Among those who submitted comments advocating a reversal of the Obama-era rule are two trade associations that Ardelle belongs to and uses to recruit temps, according to contracting records.

In their comments to the NLRB supporting the rule change,

the trade associations asserted that companies have grown more reluctant to hire temporary employees

because the rule has left them uncertain of their labor law obligations.

In essence,

the NLRB hired temps whose bosses have a stake in the outcome

to review and potentially summarize the public comments.

https://www.nationalmemo.com/aiming-to-curtail-temp-rights-labor-board-stands-accused-of-conflicts/?cn-reloaded=1 (https://www.nationalmemo.com/aiming-to-curtail-temp-rights-labor-board-stands-accused-of-conflicts/?cn-reloaded=1)

Capital will NEVER stop fucking Labor hard and deep

[boutons_deux]

The Trump Labor Board Is Outlawing Grad Student Worker Unions (https://splinternews.com/the-trump-labor-board-is-outlawing-grad-student-worker-1838285248)

On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board will issue a ruling (https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-20510.pdf) that will make it impossible for graduate student workers to unionize.

This, as with almost everything the Trump NLRB has done, is bad.

The labor board is issuing

a regulation “establishing that students

who perform any services for compensation, including, but not limited to, teaching or research, at a private college or university in connection with their studies

are not ‘employees’” under the National Labor Relations Act.

This will overturn an Obama-era ruling :lol

that affirmed that grad student workers could, in fact, unionize.

https://splinternews.com/the-trump-labor-board-is-outlawing-grad-student-worker-1838285248

[boutons_deux]

Trash taking care of the working/hourly employees who voted for him

Trump Labor Department’s New Overtime Pay Rule Leaves Behind Millions of Workers

Department of Labor announced (https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20190924) Tuesday a final rule on overtime pay to replace a bolder Obama-era proposal blocked by a federal court in Texas.

“While the administration may be trumpeting this rule as a good thing for workers, that is a ruse,” aka LIE

“In reality, the rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration abandoned.”

roughly 8.2 million workers (https://www.epi.org/publication/epi-comments-regarding-the-department-of-labors-proposed-overtime-rule/) who would have benefited from the 2016 rule will be left behind by the Trump administration’s rule.

This 8.2 million is made up of 3.2 million workers who would have gotten new overtime protections under the 2016 rule and won’t get them under the Trump rule, and

5.0 million who would have gotten strengthened overtime protections under the 2016 rule and won’t get them under the Trump rule.

Additionally, unlike the 2016 rule,

the Trump administration’s version does not automatically update, meaning workers’ annual losses will grow over time.

“This is a disaster for those 8 million workers, and further undermines worker power and protections, which ultimately hurts everyone,”

“With this rule, the Trump administration continues to undermine the economic security of working families,

forgoing overtime protections for millions of workers who were covered by the Obama administration’s rule,”

“The white-collar overtime salary level has become so out-of-date, that people are working long hours away from their families, without needed overtime pay, losing out on time and money.”

“by weakening the overtime rule, President Trump is literally taking money from the pockets of workers to please corporate interests.”

“No one should be fooled

“It is not a pro-worker regulation, but rather, another gift to corporate America —

one that will allow it to continue to require far too many workers in this country

to work in excess of 40 hours per week without any additional compensation for doing so.”

once again, President Trump has sided with the interests of corporate executives over those of working people,”

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-labor-departments-new-overtime-pay-rule-leaves-behind-millions-of-workers/ (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-labor-departments-new-overtime-pay-rule-leaves-behind-millions-of-workers/)

[TheGreatYacht]

“We all face the same thing:” GM strikers in Flint defend Mexican workers fired for making international appeal

The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter spoke to pickets in Flint, Michigan, over the weekend, as the nationwide strike at GM approached its second week.

Flint, the site of the historic sit-down strike in 1936–1937, is one of the main centers of the GM strike today. Hundred of workers manned Saturday’s picket lines at Flint Truck Assembly Complex and a distribution facility in nearby Burton. Among their numbers were not only GM workers, but Ford and Chrysler workers, as well as teachers, postal workers and people active in the fight for clean water in the city, an indication of the broad support for the strike in the working class.

Autoworkers on the picket line explained to the Autoworker Newsletterthe international dimensions of their struggle. There is “no such thing” as a vehicle produced in one country anymore, Dan, a Flint Truck worker, said. “We get parts from Mexico, China and all over the world. With those parts we build the trucks.”

Dan denounced the firing of GM workers in Silao, Mexico, after they made an appeal for support from American workers. “We make the same truck as they do in Silao, and I think their wages must be very low. I heard about them refusing to increase their production when we went on strike. And now they’re fired? That’s not right.

“I want to thank those workers for their stand and we defend them. It’s a global economy. So I think we need a global strike. We all face the same thing. We’re fighting to get everything back GM took from us.”

James, a worker from GM’s CCA (Customer Care and Aftersales) distribution center in Burton, said: “We are a distribution facility. We repackage parts for the after-sale market. We handle parts that are made in China, Mexico, Serbia, Italy and all over. And then I guess they’re shipped out all over the world again—to dealerships, car owners and wherever.

“I have no problem supporting Canadian or Mexican workers, we should stand behind them. The Democrats and Republicans claim that these people will have fair rights and wages when that’s not the truth. We’re in a global economy now, we can’t fight in one country. But with the UAW, [they try to create] separation between the Canadian, Mexican & American workers.”

Once the center of GM’s manufacturing empire, Flint has been devastated by decades of plant closures and layoffs. Auto employment has fallen in the city from 80,000 workers forty years ago to little more than 6,000 today. The total population of the city has also declined from 196,000 to 96,000. More than ten percent of the urban landscape consists of empty, contaminated lots marking where auto plants once employed thousands of people.

The conditions in Flint are an indictment of the United Auto Workers. Beginning in the 1980s, the union collaborated with the companies in plant closures and layoffs. It was rewarded through the transfer of billions of dollars into the pockets of the union bureaucracy through the establishment of the UAW-GM Training Center in Detroit and other schemes.

Former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, who pled guilty over the summer for using training center funds to pay for lavish meals and luxury vacations, began as a local UAW official in Flint, where he was reportedly a political “kingmaker.” In 2014 Jewell and the UAW supported the scheme which lead to poisoning of Flint’s water supply as a “cost-saving measure.”

General Motors opened the Burton facility, a $65 million, state-of-the-art warehouse encompassing 25 acres, less than two months ago. The company’s expenses were partially offset by a 50 percent, 12-year tax abatement agreed to by local Democrats, a deal potentially worth millions.

The facility is a model for the “Amazonization” of the entire industry which GM is attempting to impose—a low-wage, highly exploited workforce. Two hundred of the 800 total workers are temps, who earn lower wages and fewer benefits than full-time workers. GM’s ultimate aim is to convert 50 percent of its hourly workforce into temps, according to a former GM executive speaking in 2017.

Temp workers at the site have been working a mandatory seven days a week, ten hours a day. They get only one twenty-minute break and a thirty-minute lunch. This is little better than in Mexico, where assembly workers labor for 12 hours a day—demonstrating the convergence of working conditions across national borders.

For full-timers, the situation is little better—they work for ten hours each day, six days a week. Prior to the strike, union officials pleaded with workers on Facebook to attend the local union meeting. One worker’s reply summed up the feeling of many, who said: “I’m not coming to the union meeting, because I need to re-introduce myself to my family.”

Full-time workers who spoke to the Autoworker Newsletter expressed enormous sympathy for the temporary workers. “I came from the old CCA plant and have been working with GM for 9 years,” said one second-tier worker. “It’s time we stand up against these powers. I started at $14 an hour during the recession, and I’ve been through three contracts [since then]. We were told $29 an hour from the media instead of what’s on the back end of the contract. They hold a signing bonus in front of workers as a victory [for second-tier workers], then possibly tier 1 health care. That’s good, but what did we lose in the back end of that? Now, we don’t have the right for temps to be hired in.”

Jessica, another full-time worker from the plant, told the Autoworker Newsletter, “My group was one that took 8 years to get to $18 an hour. I have co-workers filing for bankruptcy, who qualify for state assistance. The janitorial department’s wages top out at $17-18 per hour, with very little benefits. There are some serious problems. I hired in at Delphi in 2006 when starting pay was around $15. We got raises up to a little over $16 an hour and then took a pay cut to $14 [when transferring] into GM.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/24/flin-s24.html

[TheGreatYacht]

GM Yanks Health Care from Striking Workers

https://youtu.be/mXfQzm_iWt4

[boutons_deux]

The Trump Administration Wants Restaurant Servers To Do More Work For Less Pay

The Labor Department acknowledges in an analysis that its new proposal on tipped workers might accomplish just that.

https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5a7e19091e000038007ab48f.gif?cache=iwesd44al6&ops=scalefit_720_noupscale

The Trump administration is trying once again (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-tip-pool-plan_n_5a7dc7bfe4b0c6726e12d0bb) to tweak the rules that govern how tipped workers are paid. This time, their proposal would probably result in servers doing more nontipped work and at a lower pay rate than previously required.

includes a separate recommendation that has angered worker advocates: the elimination of the “80-20 rule.”

recent Trump appointee Secretary Eugene Scalia, wants to get rid of that explicit 20% time limit. Instead, the rule would simply require that the nontipped work be done “contemporaneously” or “within a reasonable time immediately before or after” the tipped work. So long as an employer met that vague criteria, there would be no precise cap on the nontipped work if the administration’s proposal becomes final.

For those who support strong workplace regulations, the language of the proposed rule is far too squishy and could lead to abuse.

“Unfortunately, today, DOL is proposing regulations that make it perfectly legal for employers to take advantage of tipped workers,”

The 80-20 rule is just the sort of regulation that employer groups and the Trump administration would hate,

since it requires restaurants and other tipped businesses to keep track of the work employees are doing to avoid lawsuits.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/labor-department-restaurant-servers-minimum-wage_n_5d9cc8b5e4b02c9da03fc583

iow, the NRAs (National Rifle/Restaurant Associations) pay political quid-pro-quo whores to enrich themselves.

Expect Trash and kakistocracy to screw Labor, environments, etc repeatedly for the next 12 months as it panhandles for campaign donations from Capital.

[boutons_deux]

Disabled Workers Are Done Putting Up with Three Cents an Hour

A legal loophole dating to the Great Depression is reaching a breaking point, thanks in part to increasingly left-wing politics.

he is paid a paltry $2.45 an hour for his work.

is one of the roughly 321,000 disabled workers (https://ncd.gov/newsroom/2018/latest-ncd-report-evaluates-progress-eliminating-subminimum-wage-employment-people) paid a sub-minimum wage in America.

a clause in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act

that allows any firm with what's called a 14(c) certificate to pay out wages based on productivity or ability.

This created a situation in which

disabled workers might be paid anywhere from the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25 to as little as three cents per hour (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/more-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-hour-v19916979) in the name of creating jobs for those who might otherwise never find one.

rather than providing a living wage or the training needed to enter the workforce, critics say, sheltered workshops tend to create ... “a bridge to nowhere."

Disabled people often end up stuck in career paths that don't seem like real paths at all,

"The reality is that people never leave sheltered workshops, people will stay there until they die, or until they retire."

directors of sheltered workshops can pull in huge salaries.

the ten largest sheltered workshops had a combined annual revenue of $523 million, and the CEO of the biggest sheltered workshop received a salary of $1.1 million while employing 1,790 sub-minimum wage workers.

People in the disabilities community feel totally segregated from the contemporary workforce.

her workplace was incredibly isolating.
"People think that we need to be in a contained place, somewhere that we could be together with our friends and not bother anyone else,” said Weintraub, who has cerebral palsy.

“(They think) we need to be with our kind of people or we’ll be a bother.”

Sheltered workshops have been closed (https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2014/09/30/what-sheltered-workshops-close/19717/) or are being phased out in several states,

thanks in part to oversight (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/developmentally-disabled-get-more-workplace-protections.html) by the Obama-era Justice Department.

“You shouldn't need to be a lawyer in order to get reasonable accommodations on the basis of disability from an employer, but all too often, that's what it takes,”

In 2018, the poverty rate for disabled adults 18 to 64-years-old was 25.7 percent. (https://www.povertyusa.org/facts)

"For people whose body/minds cannot conform to capitalist structures

(e.g., a 9-5 job, being a taxpayer, certain career paths and trajectories such as college),

they’re seen as unproductive and no longer of value to society.”

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywaeeg/disabled-workers-are-done-putting-up-with-3-cents-an-hour?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_842139 (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywaeeg/disabled-workers-are-done-putting-up-with-3-cents-an-hour?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_842139)

[boutons_deux]

U.S. Employers Spend $340 Million a Year Busting Unions

Experts say the tech industry is no exception.

A new report on employer opposition to union campaigns released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that

employers spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year against union organizing efforts, and

were charged with breaking federal labor laws in 41.5 percent of union campaigns in 2016 and 2017.

“Tech companies

have traditionally set themselves aside as a cutting-edge employers. But what you’re seeing increasingly is that

they behave the same way as Walmarts and Targets,”

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwwvb/us-employers-spend-dollar340-million-a-year-busting-unions?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_925599 (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwwvb/us-employers-spend-dollar340-million-a-year-busting-unions?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_925599)

[boutons_deux]

Trash govt makes it harder to sue corporations over franchise wage law violations

The U.S. Department of Labor on Sunday issued a rule that will make it more difficult to prove companies are liable for wage law violations of their contractors or franchisees.

The rule takes effect in March, and

should help franchisors who have been sued by workers in recent years for wage-law violations by franchisees.

In 2017, the department repudiated legal guidance from the Obama administration :lol that had expanded circumstances in which a company could be considered a so-called joint employer under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia :lol yep THAT Scalia family :lol

in a statement said the rule furthers President Donald Trump’s effort to address

regulations that hinder economic growth. :lol hinder the growth of profits that should go to Labor

“By giving greater clarity to businesses who want to work together, we promote an entrepreneurial culture that has driven American prosperity for decades,”

The rule returns to an earlier four-part test under which companies are considered joint employers only if they hire, fire, and supervise employees, set pay, and maintain employment records.

That would likely exclude many franchisors and companies that hire contract labor.

The Obama-era regulation was not legally binding, unlike the rule released on Sunday. That could make it more difficult for future administrations to undo, but also could open it up to legal challenges.

The National Labor Relations Board is moving to roll back a separate Obama-era standard :lol

for determining joint employment under federal labor law, which governs union organizing and workers’ rights to advocate for better working conditions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor/u-s-makes-it-harder-to-sue-corporations-over-franchise-wage-law-violations-idUSKBN1ZC1LU?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F +US+%2F+Top+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor/u-s-makes-it-harder-to-sue-corporations-over-franchise-wage-law-violations-idUSKBN1ZC1LU?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F +US+%2F+Top+News%29)

kakistrocratic NLRB ruling AGAINST Labor to please Capital

[boutons_deux]

Repugs encouraging wage theft and abuse of low-wage employees to continue and worsen

Trump makes wage-theft lawsuits harder — but not in California

The Trump administration Monday loosened the federal government’s “joint employer” rule for businesses that contract out work,

making it harder for victims of wage theft at staffing agencies and subcontractors to sue companies where the violations take place.

The rule also frees franchising companies from responsibility for working conditions at their franchises.

hailed by business groups and assailed by workers’ rights organizations.

will have no effect on California businesses

because “our laws are more protective” of workers

California labor laws are not preempted by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, under which the Trump rule was issued.

“The definition of employer in California is broad enough to reach any person, company or agency who directly or indirectly employs or exercises control over an employee’s wages, hours or working conditions,”

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-14/la-fi-california-joint-employer-labor-franchise-rule

One of the many reasons why blue CA is superior red shithole TX and other shithole Repug states

[boutons_deux]

DoorDash’s multimillion-dollar arbitration mistake

A federal trial court judge had to do something unusual on Monday:

order (https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/DoorDash-ArbitFeeRULING.pdf) the food delivery company DoorDash to honor its own arbitration clause.

Typically, the situation is reversed, and employees or consumers fight to have their day in court while companies argue for arbitration.

But this case is more than a “man bites dog” story:

It reveals how companies use arbitration to make it impossible for low-wage workers to enforce their rights

— and how some employees are turning the tables.

DoorDash — like many other “gig-economy” companies — includes an individual arbitration clause in the contracts that delivery drivers must sign to start work.

These clauses state that drivers, known as Dashers, must go to arbitration, not court, if they have a legal dispute with the company.

They also preclude Dashers from combining their claims before an arbitrator.

This increasingly common condition of employment becomes a problem when low-wage workers’ individual claims are not worth as much money as they would cost to arbitrate.

An employer that, say, fails to pay reimbursements required under state law might owe multiple employees a few thousand dollars each.

That’s a significant sum for most individuals, but few lawyers would be willing to take on such a case on behalf of just one worker.

So by eliminating class actions, companies can effectively use individual arbitration clauses to make workers’ claims against them disappear (https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5972&context=nclr).
That is, unless workers decide to call their employer’s bluff, as more than 5,000 Dashers did last year (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/doordash-ordered-into-individual-arbitration-with-5-000-workers).

The coordinated demand for individual arbitration prompted the firm that DoorDash chose to handle its arbitrations

to bill the company for nearly $12 million in fees (https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-otc-doordash/this-hypocrisy-will-not-be-blessed-judge-orders-doordash-to-arbitrate-5000-couriers-claims-idUKKBN2052S1).

The problem, as U.S. District Judge William Alsup discerned, is that if individual arbitrations are economically unfeasible and mass arbitrations are illegitimate, then only companies, not workers, can use the economics of individual arbitration to their advantage.

Alsup wrote that

“the workers wish to enforce the very provisions forced on them” and

use “the remnant of procedural rights left to them.”

In other words,

a business that imposes individual arbitration on its workforce must accept the risk that it might have to honor its end of the bargain.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/16/doordashs-multimillion-dollar-arbitration-mistake/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/16/doordashs-multimillion-dollar-arbitration-mistake/)

[boutons_deux]

'A Travesty and a Disgrace': Trump Quietly Issues Memo That Could Abolish Union Rights for 750,000 Federal Workers

"This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers' rights to form and join a union."

Trump on Thursday quietly issued a memo (https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/02/trump-administration-publishes-memo-could-end-defense-unions/163237/) granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department's 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions decried as part of the administration's far-reaching assault on organized labor.

The memo argues that a unionized Defense Department workforce could pose a threat to "national security" :lol

and that, if necessary,

collective bargaining rights at the department should be scrapped in the interest of "protecting the American people." :lol

"When new missions emerge or existing ones evolve, the Department of Defense requires maximum flexibility to respond to threats," the memo states. "This flexibility requires that military and civilian leadership manage their organizations to cultivate a lethal, agile force adaptive to new technologies and posture changes."

"Where collective bargaining is incompatible with these organizations' missions," :lol

the memo continues,

"the Department of Defense should not be forced to sacrifice its national security mission :lol

and, instead, seek relief through third parties and administrative fora." :lol

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/22/travesty-and-disgrace-trump-quietly-issues-memo-could-abolish-union-rights-750000?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/22/travesty-and-disgrace-trump-quietly-issues-memo-could-abolish-union-rights-750000?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email)

Nat Sec! :lol

The unionized DoD workforce has been fucking up "nationa security mission" forever! :lol

btw, Trash also cut federal employee annual pay raise below rate of inflation, trying to discourage enough them to quit.

[boutons_deux]

Worker Surveillance Is on the Rise, and

Has Its Roots in Centuries of Racism

a whole realm of technology is being developed so that companies can surveil their workers in order

to manage their productivity,

make hiring and promotion decisions, and

even predict their health outcomes.

Amazon-owned Whole Foods is now using an interactive “heat map”

to track unionization risk.

The surveillance tool uses a simple yet invasive methodology to see how likely employees are to organize for better working conditions.

The heat map is used to monitor more than 95,000 employees in over 510 stores. As Hayley Peterson reports:

The stores’ individual risk scores are calculated from more than two dozen metrics, including

employee “loyalty,”
turnover, and
racial diversity;
“tipline” calls to human resources;
proximity to a union office; and
violations recorded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The map also tracks local economic and demographic factors such as the unemployment rate in a store’s location and

the percentage of families in the area living below the poverty line.


https://truthout.org/articles/worker-surveillance-is-on-the-rise-and-has-its-roots-in-centuries-of-racism/ (https://truthout.org/articles/worker-surveillance-is-on-the-rise-and-has-its-roots-in-centuries-of-racism/)

[boutons_deux]

Facebook and Its Big Tech Cronies Are Upgrading Their Anti-Union Tools

Facebook unveiled its new Facebook Workplace (https://www.facebook.com/workplace), a Slack Connect-like intranet-style chat and office collaboration tool that

allows administrators to censor certain words,

company spokespeople explained, such as “unionize (https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-unionize/).”

The Workplace program with built-in labor suppression is simply the most recent example that suggests, contrary to stereotypes of open and egalitarian corporate cultures,

big tech is not that different from Walmart when it comes to its attitudes towards unions.
Google’s Anti-Union Spyware and Amazon’s Anti-Union “Heat Maps”

Google came under fire in October 2019 (https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/) for creating a spy tool in the form of a Chrome extension that would monitor its employees’ discussion of labor rights and protests.

Google has punished employees who have used it to inform coworkers of their labor rights.

Google attracted widespread media attention (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-consultant.html) for engaging the services of a notorious “union avoidance” firm, IRI Consultants.

Notoriously anti-union Amazon has also used its tech to undermine employee efforts to organize.

Amazon was one of the nation’s first corporations to use an anti-union website to defeat a union campaign at its Seattle call center in 2000.

the company adopted interactive “heat maps (https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionization-risk-with-heat-map-2020-1)” to assess the vulnerability of every Whole Foods store to unionization.

These heat maps rank the stores’ union vulnerability based on several external factors –

such as the percentage of families in the store’s ZIP code living below the poverty line and

the unemployment rate –

and internal store factors, including

the number of labor complaints filed by workers and

a “diversity index (https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-technology-heat-map/)” measuring the ethnic and racial profile of each store’s workforce.

https://truthout.org/articles/facebook-and-its-big-tech-cronies-are-upgrading-their-anti-union-tools/ (https://truthout.org/articles/facebook-and-its-big-tech-cronies-are-upgrading-their-anti-union-tools/)

[boutons_deux]

Microsoft's Creepy New 'Productivity Score' Gamifies Workplace Surveillance

the tool gathers data on each employee’s behavior across 73 metrics and presents a handy-dandy breakdown to their bosses at the end of each month,

VP Jared Spataro specified in a blog post (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/10/29/power-your-digital-transformation-with-insights-from-microsoft-productivity-score/) that the feature, which debuted to little fanfare on Nov. 17, is “not a work monitoring tool” :lol Orwellian lie

only an administrator (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/productivity/privacy?view=o365-worldwide), aka your boss, can access those controls in the first place, which is zero comfort for any employee justifiably concerned about potential invasions of privacy.

In a statement to Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/26/microsoft-productivity-score-feature-criticised-workplace-surveillance), a Microsoft spokesperson echoed this pretense of choice, calling the feature “an opt-in experience”

even though workers aren’t the ones who can decide whether to opt-in.

Privacy experts are understandably pissed to see blatant workplace surveillance repackaged as a productivity optimization tool,

and one with a cutesy game-themed “score” design no less.

“Being under constant surveillance in the work place is psychological abuse.

Having to worry about looking busy for the stats is the last thing we need to inflict on anyone right now.”

https://gizmodo.com/microsofts-creepy-new-productivity-score-gamifies-workp-1845763063?utm_source=gizmodo_newsletter

[boutons_deux]

Amazon to roll out tools to monitor factory workers and machines

Sensor, computer vision hardware come as tech giant pushes into industrial sector.

Amazon is rolling out cheap new tools that will

allow factories everywhere to monitor their workers and machines,

as the tech giant looks to boost its presence in the industrial sector.

Launched by Amazon’s cloud arm AWS, the new machine-learning-based services include

hardware to monitor the health of heavy machinery and

computer vision capable of detecting

whether workers are complying with social distancing. :lol BULLSHIT :lol

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/amazon-to-roll-out-tools-to-monitor-factory-workers-and-machines/

[boutons_deux]

Blame Home Delivery Driver Layoffs on Proposition 22

Vons and other supermarkets will soon start replacing their delivery drivers with gig service contractors.

In the runup to last November’s election, critics of California’s Proposition 22, which rideshare app companies spent an unprecedented
$224 million (https://www.latimes.com/projects/props-california-2020-election-money/) to pass, said that

it would encourage even more companies (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/opinion/prop-22-california-labor-law.html) to reclassify employees or fire them in favor of gig workers.

Now home delivery drivers who bring food directly to residents during the pandemic are finding these warnings to be prophetic.

Starting in late February, Vons, Pavilions and other Southern California stores owned by Albertsons Companies will begin

replacing their delivery drivers with independent contractors using a third-party delivery service.

https://capitalandmain.com/blame-home-delivery-driver-layoffs-on-proposition-22-0107

[boutons_deux]

Cops Hired by Amazon Are Intimidating Workers and Supporters of the Union Drive


Almost immediately, a police car pulled up next to us.

The cop inside told us that we were trespassing and couldn’t film on private property. “You can’t film here!”

We were nowhere near the facility, only a dozen feet from the main road.

There is no signage demarcating where public land ends and Amazon’s property begins, no signs prohibiting filming or pictures.

As we began to collect our things, another cop car rushed up to where we were, lights flashing.

“Stay where you are. My supervisor needs to collect your names and IDs,” the cop said.

“You’re with the press? Which publication?”

The two cops got out of their cars and stood close to us to make sure we didn’t move.

A few minutes later, a man in a golf cart rolled up behind the police cars. He came up to us and demanded our IDs.

“I need to take your names down.”

When we asked why, he gave no reply.

The cops demanded our IDs again and we refused.

After some back and forth, they finally let us go and we walked the two steps back to where other supporters were standing by the side of the road.

The cops stayed behind to keep watch.

The company has pulled out all the stops in its union-busting effort,

including financial incentives for “unhappy” workers to quit,

mandatory anti-union meetings, and

placing a mailbox on company property to “collect ballots.”

Amazon even petitioned the city to shorten stop light times at its entrance so that workers leaving their shifts could not talk to staffers standing at the entrance or be exposed to pro-union signage.

Amazon has also enlisted the efforts of the Bessemer Police Department (https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1375226020224192516?s=20) to act as “security” for the facility to intimidate not only workers,

but also the many supporters, canvassers, and press who have come from far and wide to cheer on and agitate for the workers’ struggle.

Off-duty cops guard the facility at all hours. Bessemer police trucks constantly ride up and down the streets around the facility and patrol the parking lot.

Moonlighting as union-busters for Amazon, the cops are key actors in Amazon’s behemoth campaign to kill the BHM1 union

They are literally being paid to contain the union campaign and to create a hostile environment for the workers coming in and out of the facility each day,

many of whom are people of color who are already the regular targets of police violence and harassment off the job.

https://truthout.org/articles/cops-hired-by-amazon-are-intimidating-workers-and-supporters-of-the-union-drive/

[boutons_deux]

Biden’s 180-Degree Shift on Trade Policy

Thanks to the Rapid Response mechanism in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, trade is now being used as leverage to protect workers’ rights.

Last week, something revolutionary happened in the history of U.S. trade policy. The government used trade law to help labor, not to help capital.

The specific case involved an auto parts company called Tridonex, located in the border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Tridonex is owned by a Philadelphia outfit called Cardone Industries—which in turn is owned by a Canadian hedge fund!

It sends most of its products to the U.S., and is a classic case of offshoring jobs to Mexico, as enabled by NAFTA.

USMCA, includes tough, enforceable labor rights provisions, guaranteeing workers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada the right to organize and join unions free from harassment.

if worker rights at a plant in Mexico are denied, the U.S. can slap tariffs on the factory’s exports (https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-secures-groundbreaking-provisions-for-workers-in-nafta-update) and U.S. Customs can block them from entering the U.S. entirely.

In May, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and Public Citizen filed a complaint under the USMCA’s Rapid Response provision. The U.S. trade representative confirmed the validity of the complaint, threatened retaliation, and in less than three months they and the company devised a settlement (https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2021/august/united-states-reaches-agreement-mexican-auto-parts-company-protect-workers-rights).

Under the agreement, 154 workers will get a total of $600,000 in back pay (about $4,000 each), and

the Mexican government commits to supervising an honest election. :lol

In another, more clear-cut case, the Biden administration did not wait for a union complaint, but initiated action directly. (

That case, also filed in May, involved a General Motors factory in the town of Silao that makes light trucks for export to the U.S.

the remedy agreed to by GM and the Mexican government is a do-over election with international monitors from the International Labour Organization.

The new election must be held by August 20. GM must be scrupulously neutral. If the election is not deemed fair (https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/fact-sheets/2021/july/fact-sheet-biden-administration-reaches-agreement-mexico-gm-silao-rapid-response-action-and-delivers),

the Silao GM plant faces tariffs or customs denial of entry of its trucks.

https://prospect.org/economy/bidens-180-degree-shift-on-trade-policy/

fucking amazing, even incredible

[boutons_deux]

Google reportedly underpaid employees for years and tried to hide it

Google faces more employee payment problems.

https://www.androidcentral.com/google-reportedly-underpaid-employees-years

[boutons_deux]

USPS HAS CHEATED MAIL CARRIERS FOR YEARS

“I knew what was going to happen,” said Campos, who delivers mail in Midland, Texas, “because it happens every pay period.”
Two weeks later, when she checked her paystub in the payroll system, she said she was missing six hours of overtime pay. That added up to about $201 in lost wages — a week’s worth of groceries.

Postal workers across the country share her frustration.

The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay,

Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.

From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages,

Supervisors found to be cheating were rarely disciplined — often receiving only a warning or more training.

In four cities, arbitration documents show, post office managers continued to alter time cards after promising union leaders they would stop.

The agency determined that those workers lost about $659,000 in pay.

But it allowed the Postal Service to pay back less than half after negotiations with the agency — a common practice at the Labor Department.

These findings point to widespread wage theft at the iconic quasi-governmental institution.

https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/workers-rights/cheated-at-work/usps-cheated-mail-carriers

[boutons_deux]

Walmart raises wage from $11 to $12, but stops the quarterly bonus

[boutons_deux]

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/244792894_209876541243928_5688338132262832751_n.jp g?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=xqzTGRqpFfgAX_YOj5V&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=9a6047c58a032330c895551dab11a340&oe=61863EC5

[boutons_deux]

Starbucks CEO begs workers not to unionize by comparing the company to Holocaust prisoners

https://www.rawstory.com/media-library/howard-schultz-starbucks-ceo-photo-screen-capture.png?id=27937181&width=800&height=450

Starbucks employees are inches from forming a union to advocate for safer working conditions, better wages and benefits.

Schultz compared Starbucks to Holocaust prisoners in his effort to stop the unionization.

He described the experiences of prisoners in rail cars headed to their torture and death in Nazi concentration camps,

Schultz explained that in those rail cars only a few were given blankets and had to share them with others.

He told the workers that the Starbucks workers should share the company's blanket instead of demanding their own individual benefits. :lol

One of the many problems with Schultz's argument is that the workers are still the Holocaust prisoners in that analogy.

https://www.rawstory.com/starbucks-howard-schultz-holocaust-blanket

I heard interview of Schultz on NPR.

The voice was flat, robotic, lacking in emphasis and affect, sounded like it was a recording of a synthesized voice.

[boutons_deux]

More than $3 billion in stolen wages recovered for workers between 2017 and 2020

rise in poverty and pay inequality is compounded by wage theft, which robs millions of workers of billions of dollars from their paychecks each year

https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021

one of the biggest wage thieves is USPS

[boutons_deux]

University of California academic workers strike over wages and benefits in largest walkout in U.S. higher education

Teaching assistants, researchers and other scholars seek higher pay and benefits amid soaring housing costs and inflation.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/14/university-california-workers-strike-00066767

Cost of higher eduction due to cutting state/Federal taxes to pay for state schools, and egregious bloating of college staff

[boutons_deux]

'Victory for American Workers':

FTC Proposes Ban on Noncompete Clauses

Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted that

"noncompete clauses give companies unfair power over workers,

enabling them to cut wages and benefits

without fear of workers finding a new job or starting their own business."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ftc-ban-noncompete-clauses

Would never see this from a Repug FTC