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  1. #1
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    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...e-pay-and-more


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

    Hourly workers are currently en led 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, 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 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 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-go...king-moms.html


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



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    Pennsylvania Legislator Introduces Bill That Would Block Paid Sick Days

    On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Rep. Seth Grove (R) introduced a bill in the state House that would block cities and local governments in the state 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 in August, and in June Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a statewide ban that was backed by big business. These laws have been introduced in at least 14 different state legislatures, 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 and business growth has also remained strong. San Francisco’s has also spurred job growth and enjoys strong business support. Washington DC’s and Connecticut’s have come at little cost. On the other hand, the average employer loses $225 per employee each year due to the lost productivity of sick workers who don’t have access to paid leave. The laws are also effective at curbing outbreaks such as the flu.

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...ys-preemption/

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    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"





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

    Corporations continue to -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 do ents 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-stud...ut-of-poverty/


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    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 Ins ute on Taxation and Economic Policy, state and local tax incentives funnel $50 billion in tax revenue into corporate coffers 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 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 compe ion 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 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." 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, 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 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 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.)


    Even worse, as my colleague Richard Verrier recently reported, the film incentives have become the grist of a nationwide trade in tax breaks 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/17.../p2p-78768447/


  5. #5
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    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.

    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, 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 Durbin, and Republican Senator Rob Portman agrees: “Let’s close the skills gap and get Americans working again.”


    President Obama, too, maintains
    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, and since the president took office more than 18 billion federal dollars have gone to job training programs. Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin recently committed $8.5 million to training.


    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 have debunked the notion—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 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.


    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, “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 and Wisconsin 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, “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 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,”
    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.


    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. “Unemployment is high,” one analyst notes, “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,”
    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
    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 for not turning out fully employable products—and faults Americans for not pursuing the rewarding careers he says are available in today’s factories.


    Stories like this one
    , 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. .


    A recent example comes courtesy of Boeing. CEO Jim McNerney has said the U.S. faces an acute “compe ive 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.

    “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.


    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.

    Apprenticeships—which oblige employers to assume the lion’s share of training costs—have fallen 40 percent since 2008. The decline of America’s machine-tool industry, for instance, can be attributed to the collapse of the apprenticeship system.

    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—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.


    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 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://truth-out.org/news/item/21611...onvenient-myth

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    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

    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 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 than the pension shortfalls.

    http://pando.com/2014/04/04/revealed...mpaign-donors/




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    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"


    "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 do ents 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 do ents 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.



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    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/2014/0...n_5195463.html



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


    A new Washington Post 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 cons uted 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://www.nationalmemo.com/common-u...ess-2013-1999/

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    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 Ins ute for Policy Studies―The One Percent at State U―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, 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 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 ins utions 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, 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 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 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. 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 of adjunct and contingent faculty far outstripped their hiring of regular faculty at their ins utions. 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 cir stances of college and university faculty is not unusual. In 1969, tenured and tenure-track faculty comprised 78 percent 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 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 as public 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 cons uency that is faring poorly. The rapidly-rising tuition at public and private ins utions has sent student debt climbing to unprecedented levels. In 2012, students owed a staggering $1.2 trillion, 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, 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 my employees and my consumers whom I load up with debt (subsidize my buddies the financial sector).


    Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-08-2014 at 03:50 PM.

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    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/geniu...#ixzz345DwbqcC

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    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 compe ion 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/joegaro...nk-5536515.php

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


    Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-09-2014 at 06:04 AM.

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    a 1-year non-compete clause for a hair dresser? 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.


    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...y-of-jobs.html

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





  16. #16
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    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 ins uted, 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 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...l?from=opinion

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

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



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    How The U.S.’s Zero Weeks Of Paid Family Leave Compares To The Rest Of The World






    In the U.S., just 12 percent 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 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 borrow money and/or dip into savings while 15 percent go on public assistance.

    Some Americans are slightly more lucky than others: three states, 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 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 each year.

    The majority of New Jersey businesses surveyed also said that it hasn’t hurt their finances and some saw a benefit.

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...-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 subs utes 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.
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-31-2014 at 05:20 AM.

  18. #18
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    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 en lements, expect employers not to hire that gender group

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

  19. #19
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    Congress’ August Recess Is America’s Only Required Vacation

    Congress managed to adjourn 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“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 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 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 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, 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 last year and made workers come in to work.

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...gust-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.

    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 ed 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).





  20. #20
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    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 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.

  21. #21
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    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 en led 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, by failing to pay the minimum wage, or by cheating them ofovertime pay they have a right to receive. Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been the victims of wage theft.




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

  22. #22
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    Work Is Eating Up Americans’ Nights And 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.

    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.

    While advanced countries have all been reducing work hours since the 1970s, other countries have made far more progress:
    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/201...ghts-weekends/



  23. #23
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    How many of these private echo chamber threads are you maintaining?




  24. #24
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    How many of these private echo chamber threads are you maintaining?



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

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    don't worry, swine, my pearls are ignored.
    and of course, you have not comment on the thread topic.

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