Urban American Workers Being Cheated Of Their Full Wages...Federal Enforcement Is Needed!

NY Times----

(Is your Employer ripping you off?)



Workers in America, Cheated


An important new study has cast an appalling light on a place where workplace laws fail to protect workers, where wages and tips are routinely stolen, where having to work sick, injured or off the clock is the price of having a job.

The place is the United States, all across the lower strata of the urban economy.

The most comprehensive investigation of labor-law violations in years, released Wednesday by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project and the U.C.L.A. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, surveyed 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Its researchers sought out people often missed by standard surveys and found abuses everywhere: in factories, grocery stores, retail shops, construction sites, offices, warehouses and private homes. The word sweatshop clearly is not big enough anymore to capture the extent and severity of the rot in the low-wage workplace.

Workers told of employers who ignored the minimum wage, denied overtime, took illegal deductions to pay for tools or transportation, or forced them to work unpaid before or after their shifts. More than two-thirds of them had endured at least one wage violation in the previous workweek. More than a quarter had been paid less than the minimum wage, often by more than $1 an hour. Violations typically robbed workers of $51 a week, from an average paycheck of $339.

The report paints an acute picture of powerlessness. Of workers who had been seriously injured on the job, only 8 percent had filed for workers’ compensation — a symptom, researchers said, of the power of employer pressure. Although 86 percent of respondents had worked enough consecutive hours to be entitled to time off for meals, more than two-thirds had had their breaks denied, interrupted or shortened. Workers who complained to bosses or government agencies or tried to form unions suffered illegal retaliation: firing, suspension, pay cuts or threats to call immigration authorities.

It is, of course, morally abhorrent that the American economy should be so riddled with exploitation. But it is also powerfully evident that there are practical consequences when the powerless are abused. Low-wage workers spend a high proportion of their income on necessities; when their paychecks are systematically bled by greedy employers, an entire community’s economic vitality is sapped as well.

The answers are basic, though too long ignored. Government needs to send more investigators to back rooms, offices and factory floors, and to enlist labor organizations and immigrant-rights groups as their investigative eyes and ears. Penalties for Wage-Law Violations need toughening. Employees who have historically been denied basic Labor Rights — domestic workers and home health aides — need to finally be given the protection of wage-and-hour laws. Companies must not be allowed to skirt their legal obligations by outsourcing hiring to subcontractors, letting others break the law for them.

The report has particular significance for immigrant workers, who made up 70 percent of the survey (39 percent of them were undocumented). Workplace abuses are flourishing in the absence of a working immigration system, where illegal immigrants are vital to the economy but helpless to assert their rights.

The report upends the argument that the way to help American workers is to make illegal immigrants ever more frightened and exploitable. Only by protecting all workers will the country begin to rebuild a workplace matching its ideals of decency and fair play.



Street-Level Groups Enlisted to Report Labor Violations

To crack down on businesses that pay less than the minimum wage, fail to pay overtime or to pay wages altogether, steal tips or commit other labor violations, the New York State Department of Labor is starting an experimental program that will rely on community organizations to monitor compliance with labor laws.

In an announcement, the state labor commissioner, M. Patricia Smith, called the program, the New York Wage Watch, a “one-of-a-kind grassroots tool in the fight against illegal labor practices.”

The six-month pilot will begin with six participants: the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which will focus on Chinatown, Flushing and parts of Long Island; Make the Road New York, which will focus on Bushwick; the Workplace Project, based on Long Island; the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which will look at high-end supermarkets; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which will focus on retail stores in Lower Manhattan, Bushwick, the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and parts of Queens; and the Centro del Inmigrante, based on Staten Island.

The six groups will conduct know-your-rights training, providing employers with information about compliance and distributing brochures to workers in supermarkets, laundromats, nail salons, day-labor sites and other work areas. They will have a designated contact in the US Labor Department’s Division of Labor Standards which enforces wage and hour laws, to whom they can refer violations or questions.

The department is to provide training and materials to the groups starting on Feb. 7.

After the first experiment in New York City and on Long Island, the Labor Department will seek additional groups for the program. The groups must be nongovernmental and nonprofit, and can include religious organizations, student groups, labor unions, business associations or neighborhood groups.

Ms. Smith said the program was loosely based on the Neighborhood Watch programs that began in Queens in the 1960s. In December 2007, she said, the Labor Department investigated a commercial strip in Bushwick. Two of the six groups now taking part in the pilot project — Make the Road New York and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union — maintained a presence in the Bushwick area, staying in touch with workers and employers, and the number of labor-law violations went down, Ms. Smith said.

The Labor Department has documented numerous labor-law violations at a variety of workplaces in recent years, from restaurants and car washes to sites like the Saratoga Race Course and the Erie County Fair.

Amy Carroll, a supervising lawyer at Make the Road New York, said, “The Department of Labor can’t be in every nook and cranny of the city and the state all the time. We want employers to know there are costs for violating the law. They can’t get away with it.”



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Sources: NY Times, Chicago Suntimes, Whitehouse.gov, US Dept of Labor, OSHA, Charlotte Observer, News & Observer, WRAL, Ultimate Wealth, Milwaukee World, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Seeks To Regain AFL-CIO Members' Trust (Public Option)...Ron Bloom As Manufacturing Czar

NY Times----


Pace of Change Under Obama Frustrates Unions

(Labor Unions are pushing for Public Option too. MSNBC reports.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

For eight years under George W. Bush, union officials barely set foot inside the White House. But 10 days after President Obama took office, the nation’s most powerful labor leaders mingled in the Blue Room, moments after the new president, a man they helped put there, signed a string of executive orders undoing Mr. Bush’s policies.

The mood was euphoric. “He walked in with the biggest smile,” James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said of Mr. Obama, “saying, ‘Welcome back to your White House.’ ”

Today that euphoria is giving way to a mixture of frustration and unease, as union leaders are growing concerned that the Obama White House has not delivered as much as they had expected. Some criticize him for not pushing hard enough or moving fast enough on their issues, while others blame the deep recession and Republican opposition for his failure to do more.

Mr. Obama has delayed a push for the unions’ No. 1 legislative priority, a measure to make it easier for workers to organize. He faces potential conflict with unions on trade, and on how fast to push for immigration reform. And on health care, friction between labor and the White House is suddenly spilling out into the open.

In response, Mr. Obama is renewing his courtship of the labor movement, whose members worked as foot soldiers in his campaign and spent August doggedly defending his health plan at town-hall-style meetings across the country. On Monday, the president will mark Labor Day by speaking at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. picnic in Cincinnati. During his visit, he is expected to name Ron Bloom, who heads the president’s automotive task force, to a second role in the administration as manufacturing czar. The next week, Mr. Obama will address the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Pittsburgh.

“He gets an A for effort, and an incomplete for results,” the incoming president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Richard L. Trumka.

While labor leaders, including the current A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, John J. Sweeney, say they remain extremely supportive of the president — especially his handling of the economic crisis — Mr. Trumka set off an uproar last week when he warned that unions would not support a health care bill that lacks a government-backed insurance plan. It was a shot across the bow to the White House, which is weighing whether to compromise on the so-called public option.

Another top union leader, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, cautioned that if Mr. Obama abandons the public option, “it will be harder to gin our people up on other issues.” Mr. McEntee said he had noticed a shift in sentiment even since July, when 14 union leaders spent 45 minutes in the White House Roosevelt Room with the president and top aides like David Axelrod.

“He said, ‘You’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with me’ — and I’m paraphrasing here — ‘I want you there, and I’m going to fight for you,’ ” Mr. McEntee said. “When we left, I think we were all on maybe not cloud nine, but cloud four. I shook hands with all the staff, Axelrod was there. This was the person we elected; this was our president with a voice. It felt good.” And now? Mr. McEntee paused. “Well,” he said, “not as good.”

Blue-collar workers have long been a little bit suspicious of Mr. Obama, who has never quite been able to demonstrate that he is one of them. Still, they stood strongly behind him once he became the Democratic presidential nominee, contributing money, running phone banks and knocking on doors in critical swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The two main labor federations, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, said unions and their political action committees had spent nearly $450 million in the presidential race. The addition of Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the ticket as Mr. Obama’s running mate helped with his union bona fides. So did the endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Today, Mr. Biden continues to play an important role as a link between the unions and the president. But Mr. Kennedy’s death is a significant loss, one that may force Mr. Obama to work that much harder to win union support for any health care compromise he might make, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist.

“Ted Kennedy was an incredibly important Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and if he lent his prestige to whatever compromise Obama felt he had to make, that would mean an awful lot to people in the labor movement,” Mr. Garin said. Mr. Obama, he added, must “persuade labor unions and others that his commitment is to getting it right in the interest of the average working person.”

He may have an easier time with some than others. Mr. Hoffa, for instance, said the public option was not a make-or-break provision for him; he is open to legislation containing a “a trigger” to create a public plan if private efforts to expand coverage fail. Mr. McEntee, by contrast, dismissed the trigger idea as “not a real public option.”

Dennis Rivera, the point man on health care for the Service Employees International Union, said simply that unions would have to be flexible. “Politics is the art of the possible,” he said, adding that Mr. Obama’s “heart is in the right place.”

Still, there are tensions between unions and the White House on matters beyond health care. Trade is an especially contentious issue; unions are irked that Mr. Obama has backed away from his campaign pledge to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement. And the United Steelworkers, which represents tire workers, is pressing Mr. Obama to punish China now that the United States International Trade Commission has ruled that China is hurting American manufacturers by inundating the market with cheap tires.

Union leaders have also been patient with Mr. Obama, both on immigration (they want legislation offering a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants) and the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill to make organizing easier. In the July White House meeting, Mr. Obama made a strong pitch that health care should come first.

Labor leaders were willing to accept that strategy, said David E. Bonior, a former Michigan congressman who is the chairman of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an umbrella group. But with Mr. Obama planning a major speech before Congress this week to lay out his priorities in a health bill, Mr. Bonior said, union members want reassurance that he will stick his neck out for their priorities.

“They don’t want him to leave it up to seven or eight committee chairmen,” Mr. Bonior said. “They want him to be the leader and to fight for this stuff.”



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Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Wikipedia, Google Maps

Nation's Largest Labor Union (AFL-CIO) Insist On Public Option Too

AFL-CIO: Public Option is a must

(Labor Unions are pushing for Public Option too. MSNBC reports.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Politico’s Alex Burns talks about whether President Barack Obama will drop public option to regain more momentum on the Health Care Reform battle.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

From NBC's Mark Murray:

Speaking with reporters today, leaders of the AFL-CIO argued that any final health-care legislation must contain the so-called Public Option to compete with private insurers, and that any Democrats who stand in the way won't receive its support.

"It is an absolute must," said AFL Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who likely will become the organization's next president when it gathers two weeks from now in Pittsburgh. "We won't support the bill if it doesn't have a public option in it."

Trumka also implied that members of Congress, including Democrats, who don't back health-care legislation with a public option risk losing the labor group's support -- something he mentioned yesterday when he said, "Today, more than ever, we need to be a labor movement that stands by our friends, punishes its enemies, and challenges those who, well, can’t seem to decide which side they’re on."

Today's remarks came at an event where the AFL-CIO released a poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Hart Research, showing the plight of younger workers (those 18-34) in this economy.

Per the poll, just 31% of these workers said they earned enough money to pay their bills and put some money aside; an additional 31% said they didn't have health insurance; and 51% said they had no retirement plan (pension/401k) at work.

The survey, said outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, "shows just how broken our economy is for young people and what is at stake if we don't fix it."


Nancy Pelosi: No Public Option, No Bill

As the White House signals that it is willing to move forward on a health reform plan without a public option, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a strong message Thursday evening: not so fast.

In her strongest statement yet, Pelosi said that any bill "without a strong public option will not pass the House":

“Any real change requires the inclusion of a strong public option to promote competition and bring down costs,” Pelosi said. “If a vigorous public option is not included, it would be a major victory for the health insurance industry.”

Pelosi’s remarks come less than one week before President Barack Obama delivers an address to a joint session of Congress as part of a re-launched campaign effort to sell his health care reform bill to both lawmakers and the public. White House aides have said the president will use the speech to offer more detail than he has so far about what sort of bill he'd like to reach his desk.

“President Obama has said that a public option will keep the insurance companies honest. If someone has a better idea for promoting competition and reducing health care costs, they should put it on the table,” Pelosi said. “But for the past month, opponents of health insurance reform have demonstrated that they are afraid of the facts. They have only offered distortions, distractions and misrepresentations to try to kill this historic legislation.”

“A bill without a strong public option will not pass the House,” Pelosi said. “Eliminating the public option would be a major victory for the insurance companies who have rationed care, increased premiums and denied coverage.”




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Sources: First Read, MSNBC, Politico, AFL-CIO, Today Show, Wikipedia, Google Maps