In the News - Workplace Fairness [PDF]

US Congress used $17 million of taxpayers money to settle discrimination suits with its own employees. Source: Annalisa

5 downloads 29 Views 210KB Size

Recommend Stories


Fairness and Injustice in the Workplace - NSUWorks [PDF]
Employee Assistance and Drug Testing: Fairness and Injustice in the Workplace. William J. Sonnenstuhl, Harrison M. Trice, William J. Staudenmeir Jr., and Paul. Steele. Abstract. Every few years, the mass media report that a drug epidemic is sweeping

Dignity in the Workplace
We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone. Ronald Reagan

Smoking in the Workplace
Don't fear change. The surprise is the only way to new discoveries. Be playful! Gordana Biernat

fun in the workplace
No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Anonymous

Ethics in the Workplace
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Mahatma Gandhi

Women in the Workplace
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. Rumi

fairness
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. Rabindranath Tagore

IN THE NEWS IN THE NEWS
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. Isaac Asimov

Cheating in the workplace
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. Mich

Humor in the workplace
The wound is the place where the Light enters you. Rumi

Idea Transcript


skip to main content

Workplace Fairness Menu Your Workplace Rights Protect Your Rights Career Help Our Programs Blog Press About WF Site Search X

Choose Language:

print decrease text sizeincrease text size text Home Our Programs In the News main content

Our Programs In the News

Articles on workplace-related issues from newspapers and Internet news sources around the country.

December 14, 2017 Employers would pocket $5.8 billion of workers’ tips under Trump administration’s proposed ‘tip stealing’ rule Source: Heidi Shierholz, David Cooper, Julia Wolfe, and Ben Zipperer , Economic Policy Institute And although the bulk of tipped workers are in restaurants, tipped workers outside the restaurant industry—such as nail salon workers, casino dealers, barbers, and hairstylists—could also see their bosses start taking a cut from their tips. We estimate that under this rule, employers would pocket $5.8 billion in tips earned by tipped workers each year. The Reckoning: Women and Power in the Workplace Source: The New York Times, The New York Times As revelations of sexual harassment break, women have been discussing the fallout and how to move forward. Here, women from across the working world take on this complicated conversation.

December 13, 2017 Healthcare Insecurities Keep Workers Locked in Jobs Source: Todd Zwillich , WNYC Last year, 180 million Americans got their healthcare from their jobs. While this may seem like a great employment perk, millions don't seek new opportunities because they're afraid to go without benefits. Employer-sponsored insurance is a system so familiar today, it may seem to many like the natural order of things. But it's actually a century-old invention designed to save U.S. hospitals. In the first two decades of the 20th century, there was a medical care revolution. Under Trump, Union Election Rules Could Be Tilted In Employers’ Favor Source: Dave Jamieson, HuffPost Three years ago, federal officials overhauled the way union elections proceed in the workplace, streamlining the process to give employers less time to pressure workers not to join. The reform was long sought by labor groups who hoped the changes could make it a little easier to unionize. But now, President Donald Trump has reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that oversees union elections. With a new conservative majority, the board is considering scrapping the worker-friendly reforms from the Obama years and bringing back the system that employers were fond of.

December 12, 2017 Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case on Bias Against Gay Workers Source: Adam Liptak, The New York Times The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would not hear an appeal in a case that could have resolved whether a federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against gay and lesbian workers. The case concerned Jameka Evans, who said a Georgia hospital discriminated against her because she is a lesbian. She sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on sex. In March, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ruled that Title VII’s reference to sex did not encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation. Janus-Faced Source: Mark Joseph Stern , Slate On Wednesday night, the Trump administration declared war on public sector unions. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice reversed its position on the constitutionality of mandatory fees for public employees. The DOJ now believes that public sector unions may not charge these “fair share” fees, which support collective bargaining, to non-union members. It urged the court to strike down fair share fees as “compelled subsidization of speech” in violation of the First Amendment. Conservative politicians have long dreamed of imposing these “right-to-work” rules on the entire American public sector, and the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have prepared for this moment. In 2018, they’ll almost certainly answer the Trump administration’s prayers and permanently hobble U.S. unions.

December 11, 2017 Stopping Sexual Abuse on the Job Begins With Empowering Workers Source: Michelle Chen , The Nation Chicago hotel housekeepers will report to work with a new piece of gear in the coming months: not buckets and gloves, but a small electronic alarm, which they can sound if they encounter the occupational hazard that’s haunted them silently for years: a sexual attack. Black Americans Cross Jobs Milestone, Though Victory Is Tenuous Source: Jeanna Smialek and Jordyn Holman , Bloomberg Black Americans have been gaining ground in the labor market this expansion, narrowing the gap with white workers to a historic low. Yet there are reasons to interpret that progress cautiously.

December 8, 2017 Are There Workers Left on the Sidelines? Source: Eric Morath, The Wall Street Journal A long economic recovery and historically low unemployment pulled many Americans back into the labor force in recent years—and now there are few left on the sidelines.

Keila Pulinario Thought Prison Was Tough. Then She Had To Find A Job. Source: Jessica Testa, Buzzfeed Reentry is difficult for anyone who’s spent time in prison. For women especially, life after incarceration isn’t just the uphill battle they’d been warned about as inmates. It’s a cliff.

December 7, 2017 Facebook groups are the new workers’ unions Source: Annalisa Nash Fernandez , Quartz Complaining about your boss and pay is a favorite pastime of everyone from assembly-line workers to corporate cubicle neighbors. But what if you work from home? Or drive an Uber? If you don’t even know who your fellow employees are, how can you commiserate with them? Female TV journalists search for solutions to change a toxic workplace culture Source: Michael R. Sisak and Yvonne Lee, AP Women who say they were sexually harassed or mistreated by powerful men in television news have banded together to form a support network aimed at changing a newsroom culture they say has given men a free pass to misbehave for decades.

As Al Franken Resigns, We Asked This Sexual Harassment Attorney to Discuss Workplace Flirting Source: Daniel Villarreal, Hornet Most workplace flirtation — left there — isn’t sexual harassment, but only because it has to be “severe or pervasive.” But that’s just the legal standard, and we’re not going to change the culture of harassment unless we start before something is a legal problem. So dial down the charm and focus on interacting professionally about work matters — not flirting all day long.

December 6, 2017 CVS-Aetna deal will change the way many big employers buy employee health-care benefits Source: Reuters, Reuters CVS Health's proposed purchase of Aetna will change the way many major U.S. corporations buy health coverage for employees and raise new questions over the cost of those benefits, benefit consultants said.

We Got Government Data On 20 Years Of Workplace Sexual Harassment Claims. These Charts Break It Down. Source: Lam Thuy Vo, Buzzfeed BuzzFeed News received a trove of data on every sexual harassment claim filed between fiscal years 1995 and 2016 with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces laws meant to protect workers from discrimination.

December 5, 2017 Gig Economy Gives Workers Freedom, But What About Safety Source: Robin Young , WBUR Workers' advocates and some state departments of labor are starting to pay attention to employees who work full or part time, but only after signing agreements that free their employers from keeping them safe. Here & Now's Robin Young talks with Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, about worker safety in the so-called gig economy. Trump Administration Proposes Rollback of Tip-Pooling Rule Source: Reuters, Reuters The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday proposed eliminating an Obama administration rule that allowed restaurant employees to keep their tips instead of being forced to share them with non-tipped workers, saying the rule had contributed to pay disparities between servers and other staff like cooks and dishwashers. Employers who pay the tipped minimum wage, which is lower than the standard minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, cannot pool tips and share them with non-tipped workers under federal wage law. The Obama administration rule, which was adopted in 2011, also banned the practice for businesses that pay the higher minimum wage. The ban on tip-pooling is the latest labor regulation that was seen as helping workers to be targeted by the Trump administration.

December 4, 2017 Could recent sexual harassment cases change office design? Source: Maria Lamagna, MarketWatch Workplaces might do well to take ideas from college campuses and after-school programs by adding better lighting, cameras and security personnel , said Laura Palumbo, the communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, a nonprofit based in Harrisburg, Penn. This, plus open plan offices, might deter workers from having sexually explicit or offensive conversations, said Paula Brantner, a senior adviser at Workplace Fairness, an employment law nonprofit. Paid Parental Leave, Except for Most Who Need It Source: Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times However much we’d like to believe that the patriarchy is toppling because Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer have been expunged from television, there is still a great distance to go before the many remnants hit the ground. There is a special resonance to the fact that New York City schoolteachers, most of them women, do not receive paid parental leave. They are forced to hoard sick days or rely on the good luck that they will give birth at the end of June. The low regard in which teachers are held has been an expression of collective misogyny for decades. Into the 1960s, teachers hid pregnancies as long as they could because the law mandated that they tell principals as soon as they discovered they were expecting and begin unpaid leave right away. Trump’s Labor Law Enforcer Freezes Worker-Friendly Reforms Made Under Obama Source: Dave Jamieson, HuffPost During the Barack Obama years, the National Labor Relations Board took a broad view of worker rights, expanding protections for employees who try to join a union or come together to improve their working conditions. Under the Trump administration, those rights are being reined in to help out employers. In a memo dated Friday and obtained by HuffPost, the NLRB’s new general counsel, Peter B. Robb, orders board officials around the country to consult his office on cases that involve precedents set on worker rights during the last eight years. The move effectively strips away the discretion of regional board officers to pursue cases against employers based upon Obama-era rulings and policies.

December 1, 2017 Morgan Lewis Partner Said to be White House Pick for Labor Board Source: Ben Penn, Bloomberg Management-side attorney John Ring is going through a final White House background check to fill an upcoming Republican vacancy on the National Labor Relations Board, sources briefed on the process tell Bloomberg Law. If Ring clears the White House vetting, he would be tapped to fill the seat of Chairman Phil Miscimarra (R), whose term expires Dec. 16. It’s not clear whether Ring, a partner in Morgan Lewis’s Washington office, would also be named chairman of the five-member board. That role could instead go to one of other two GOP lawyers already on the board. Ring represents businesses in an array of industries who are facing union representation issues and unfair labor practice charges before the NLRB, according to his firm’s online bio. How Forced Arbitration and Non-Disclosure Agreements Can Perpetuate Hostile Work Environments Source: Michelle Chen, The Nation According to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), both forced arbitration and NDAs have in many workplaces become a standard tactic to preempt workers from taking legal action or disclosing sexual-harassment and -assault charges. These agreements force workers to sign away their rights in exchange for a job, by making them agree to settle future disputes outside the courts through an opaque negotiation process controlled by management and lawyers—effectively sentencing women to silence before they ever step into a courtroom.

November 30, 2017 As The Floodgates Open, Don't Forget About Our Cleaners, Nannies, And Carers Source: Alicia Garza, Buzzfeed Thanks to #MeToo creator Tarana Burke, we now have a language to talk about the consequences of what happens when powerful people abuse their influence to diminish the dignity of others. The dam has broken — people are telling their stories, naming their abusers, and demanding change. As we support survivors, we cannot forget that abuse also thrives in low-wage sectors like domestic work, a fastgrowing field that will take up a growing share of the workforce as our population ages. These workers, who are disproportionately women of color and immigrant women, are highly vulnerable to sexual harassment and sexual violence, working in private homes where even the minimal social restraints of white-collar office culture are not present. Sexual assault endured by domestic workers overlooked in national conversation Source: Janell Ross, The Washington Post As the nation faces the frequency of sexual harassment and assault at work, both experts who study the problem and the agency that enforces laws against it say that it’s women at the bottom of the labor market who suffer sexual harassment most often and are least likely to see anything like justice. Their experiences also suggest that the lines between predators and complicit cover artists don’t fall neatly along gender lines — often, the stories include women who overlooked sexual assaults or even facilitated harassment of female workers with less power to fight it.

November 29, 2017 US nail salons: the challenge to protect workers from toxic chemicals Source: Julia Carrie Wong , The Guardian The group’s work – which has included establishing guidelines for “healthy nail salons” – was recognized in November 2016 when the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of environmental justice awarded it a $120,000 grant over two years to pilot a micro-loan program.

The Workplace Culture In Congress Fuels Sexual Harassment Source: Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, FiveThirtyEight Speier is right to point to workplace environment as a key predictor for harassment; research shows that Congress has many of the ingredients for a work environment where sexual harassment is tolerated or even encouraged.

November 28, 2017 Want to stop sexual abuse in the workplace? Unionize. Source: Jeff Spross , The Week So what about all the female workers being harassed by men with power over them, but not enough power to be a juicy target for broad public outrage? For those women, a more old-fashioned solution may be in order: unions and labor organizing. The intensely hierarchical nature of American capitalism extends up and down the wealth and income ladder. Indeed, it gets worse for the lower rungs: poor and working-class Americans put up with far fewer benefits, far less leave, lower wages, more chaotic schedules, more safety violations, and a host of other indignities. These workers have to get by in an economic environment where they're treated like disposable widgets. Needless to say, being treated like a disposable widget extends to sexual predation — by customers and co-workers as well as by supervisors. Amazon workers working 55-hour weeks and so exhausted by targets they 'fall asleep standing up' Source: Harriet Agerholm , The Independent Amazon workers are so exhausted by long hours and relentless targets they are falling asleep on their feet, according to a new investigation. Employees reportedly had timed toilet breaks and some were made to do compulsory overtime, meaning some were working a 55-hour week ahead of the Christmas period. Pictures taken by an undercover reporter captured workers asleep standing up as they reportedly had to process a parcel every 30 seconds.

November 27, 2017 Republicans say corporate tax cuts will boost workers' wages, but CEOs might have other plans Source: Jim Puzzanghera and Don Lee, The Los Angeles Times Gary Cohn, the top White House economic advisor, was onstage making the Trump administration’s case that a huge cut in corporate taxes would trigger a surge of business investments. Then came an offthe-cuff question to business leaders listening to Cohn at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting last week: How many will increase investments if the Republican tax plan is enacted? Trump Is Quietly Making It Even Harder To Report Sexual Harassment And Discrimination Source: Emily Peck , HuffPost To the droves of women speaking up about sexual harassment and discrimination, the Trump administration’s message is clear: Shut up. Behind the scenes, and mostly through executive orders, the White House is making it harder for women to report sexual harassment and fight sex discrimination. The clearest example came in March. It received little coverage at the time. President Donald Trump reversed an Obama-era order that forbid federal contractors from keeping secret sexual harassment and discrimination cases. The 2014 rule prohibited these companies, which employ about 26 million people, from forcing workers to resolve complaints through arbitration, an increasingly common method businesses use to settle disputes out of the public eye.

November 24, 2017 'You can insure almost anything,' including sexual harassment in the workplace Source: Russell Hubbard, Omaha World-Herald “Companies have definitely insured against the risks of harassment lawsuits,” said Paula Brantner, an attorney for the Maryland-based employee advocacy group Workplace Fairness. “You can in some ways say they have put a price tag on it.” Workers in food service, retail at higher risk of sexual harassment, research says Source: Danielle Paquette, The Washington Post The casting couch. The holiday party. The black car. The setting for sexual harassment in the news and popular culture lately is Hollywood or Silicon Valley or Capitol Hill - but researchers say women who work in restaurants and clothing stores tend to encounter more predatory behavior than those in glitzier professions. "It's a story people haven't focused on enough," said Jocelyn Frye, who studies women's economic security at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. "Low-wage workers are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment." Black Friday retail workers are treated like yo-yos. They need scheduling protections Source: Steven Greenhouse , The Los Angeles Times When you go shopping this holiday season, you’ll no doubt come across smiling cashiers and perky sales clerks. But behind the holiday cheer, many retail workers have very un-merry tales to tell about the craziness of their work schedules. I’ve heard many tales of woe over the last five years — of unpredictable, ever-changing, stress-inducing work schedules — as I’ve researched labor conditions in retail and elsewhere in the service sector. Whether at big-box stores, department stores or specialty stores, many workers complain that their managers have ramped up the scheduling chaos as retail competition has grown ever fiercer, partly because Amazon is eroding the sales of brick-and-mortar retail.

November 23, 2017 Wealth inequality has been widening for millennia Source: The Economist , The Economist The one-percenters are now gobbling up more of the pie in America—that much is well known. This trend, though disconcerting, is not unique to the modern era. A new study, by Timothy Kohler of Washington State University and 17 others, finds that inequality may well have been rising for several thousand years, at least in some parts of the world. The scholars examined 63 archaeological sites and estimated the levels of wealth inequality in the societies whose remains were dug up, by studying the distributions of house sizes. 24,000 Uber Drivers May Lose Their Side Hustle Source: Dante Disparte , HuffPost Uber is truly a fascinating company. The 8-year-old firm is at once the source of strategy and business model admiration, as well as the source of a growing volley of corporate scandals and negative market reactions. The firm has wrestled with a barrage of setbacks culminating most recently with the ouster of its crestfallen co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick. There may yet be more trouble ahead. This time, however, for Uber’s drivers, who may face a decline in demand for their side hustling, as Uber recently announced the purchase of a fleet of 24,000 autonomous vehicles from Volvo.

November 22, 2017 This Transgender Professor Just Won A $1 Million Jury Verdict In A Major Case Against A University Source: Dominic Holden, Buzzfeed She took her case to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which handles federal civil rights claims in the workplace. The commission concluded that Tudor had a valid claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the law does not address transgender discrimination directly, courts have increasingly interpreted the law’s ban on sex discrimination to cover discrimination against transgender people as a form of illegal sex-stereotyping. US Congress used $17 million of taxpayers money to settle discrimination suits with its own employees Source: Annalisa Merelli, Quartz Over the past 20 years, the fund paid over $17.2 million to settle workplace complaints, according to a document released (pdf, p.2) Nov. 15 by OOC executive director Susan Tsui Grundmann. Grundmann wrote in a letter that she had decided to share a report of yearly payments made by the fund due to “the volume of recent inquiries regarding payment of awards and settlements.”

November 21, 2017 What Housekeepers Endure To Clean Hotel Rooms Source: Dave Jamieson, HuffPost Since the allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein were first revealed last month, more and more women have stepped forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault at work. Their bravery in speaking out has toppled powerful men’s careers in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Washington. But much less attention has been paid to the rampant harassment in blue-collar workplaces, particularly the hotel industry. Many of the stories center on powerful men who preyed on underlings or colleagues in hotel rooms. If famous A-list actresses must deal with unwanted advances in the privacy of a hotel suite, imagine the vulnerability of an immigrant woman cleaning the room alone, for close to minimum wage, plus tips. As Native Americans Face Job Discrimination, A Tribe Works To Employ Its Own Source: Graham Lee Brewer , NPR About a third of Native Americans say they have experienced discrimination in the workplace when seeking jobs, or when getting promotions or earning equal pay, according to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Slightly more said they were on the receiving end of slurs or negative comments based on race. In the NPR poll, almost two-thirds of Native Americans living in majority Native areas say the availability of local jobs was worse than other places. About the same amount also say Native Americans are paid less than white people for equal work. The Cherokees are trying to change that.

November 20, 2017 Women Waiting Tables Get Harassed Constantly, And We Know How To Stop It Source: Saru Jayaraman , Buzzfeed As the job that introduces so many young women to the world of work — more than a third of women say their first job was in a restaurant — the industry doesn’t just normalize sexual harassment as a workplace reality. Its unique pay system actively coerces young women to quietly accept mistreatment as a condition of getting paid. So many professionals who waited tables in their youth – including many high-profile women now sharing their stories of harassment and assault – first experienced harassment as a necessary evil of working life during their restaurant days. This can be traced in large part to the pay system, where servers rely on tips from customers just to earn minimum wage. In 43 US states, employers are allowed to pay restaurant workers a wage far below the standard state or federal minimum, provided they make the rest up in tips. When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work Source: Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Stacy Cowley and Natalie Kitroeff , The New York Times Few people realize that the loans they take out to pay for their education could eventually derail their careers. But in 19 states, government agencies can seize state-issued professional licenses from residents who default on their educational debts. Another state, South Dakota, suspends driver’s licenses, making it nearly impossible for people to get to work.

November 17, 2017 Why the U.S. Fails at Worker Training Source: Lolade Fadulu , The Atlantic Successful apprenticeship programs aren’t impossible. The apprenticeship model thrives in European countries such as Germany, partly because wages vary less across industries than they do in the U.S. In the U.S., apprenticeship programs are difficult to institutionalize because employees are more likely than their European counterparts to leave a job for a different one that offers better wages. Investing thousands of dollars in someone who may leave for a better wage opportunity is a risk few employers are willing to take. Supreme Court Ruling Could Limit Workplace Harassment Claims, Advocates Say Source: Yuki Noguchi, NPR As more alleged victims of sexual harassment have come forward in recent weeks, it's clear that they've found strength in numbers. But workers' rights advocates fear that cases before the Supreme Court could end up limiting employees' abilities to bring collective action on harassment and other issues in the workplace. All three cases before the Supreme Court have to do with whether a worker has a fundamental right to face arbitration with other workers — or if that right can be waived when workers sign employment agreements, which are increasingly common.

November 16, 2017 Tesla factory workers have filed a lawsuit claiming widespread racism, unsafe conditions Source: Lora Kolodny, CNBC Shares of Tesla closed down 2.1 percent on Tuesday afternoon following news of a civil rights lawsuit against the automakers. The proposed class-action suit alleges a racist culture at Tesla, unsafe factory conditions, and failure on the part of the company, including CEO Elon Musk personally, to prevent or investigate race-based harassment and discrimination. Filed on behalf of plaintiff Marcus Vaughn, an ex-Tesla worker, and more than 100 African Americans who worked at Tesla's Fremont factory between November 2016 and November 2017, the suit claims that Tesla allowed factory workers to use racist epithets, failed to take corrective action against harassers and fired black workers who complained. 'Weinstein effect' is boosting inquiries about workplace harassment Source: Heidi M. Przybyla , USA TODAY Phones are ringing off the hooks in law offices throughout the nation's capital. And lawyers can thank Harvey Weinstein for that. Inquiries to law firms have been rising since harassment and assault allegations about the Hollywood film executive were first reported in early October, according to three Washington, D.C., attorneys who specialize in employment law and sexual harassment. Rising interest in pursuing harassment charges comes after a decade in which the number of allegations had been on steady decline, according to federal figures. The number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016 was 6,758, 15% lower than in 2010. That small total that suggests that cases are vastly under-reported, according to the EEOC, which takes in approximately 90,000 complaints a year for all workforce violations. The number might start to rise.

November 15, 2017 Why freelancers face an uphill battle against sexual harassers Source: Leslie Albrecht, MarketWatch A few states, including California, have laws granting discrimination protections to independent contractors. Those laws may have helped Lidia, because she was working at a company in Los Angeles, but apparently her college’s career counselor was unaware of them. Washington state and Pennsylvania also protect independent contractors from discrimination. But in most other states, independent contractors are stuck if they want to file a legal complaint about harassment. It’s always best to consult a local attorney for the most up-to-date information on harassment laws in your state, said Paula Brantner, senior adviser with the workers’ rights nonprofit WorkPlace Fairness. The GOP Believes Businesses -- But Not Consumers -- Are Entitled to Their Day in Court Source: Melissa Stegman, The American Prospect It’s tough to imagine a more lopsided relationship than an individual and a big financial institution. Or more lopsided results: The CFPB study found that arbitrators side with the financial company more than nine times out of ten. If You’re Sick, Stay Away From Work. If You Can’t, Here Is What Doctors Advise. Source: Daniel Victor, The New York Times It’s clear on which side doctors come down: They say workers with the flu or a cold should use sick days far more often than they do. Though millions of Americans don’t get paid time off when they’re sick, those who do have the option often don’t take it.

November 14, 2017 Cuomo to announce new regulations on work schedules for hourly employees Source: Glenn Bain, New York Daily News The new regulations stop short of prohibiting what’s known as on-call scheduling but require most hourly workers to receive an extra two hours of minimum wage pay for assignments received without two weeks' notice. They also require employers to pay at least four hours for shifts that are cancelled within 72 hours of their start time. Add This to Your List of Job Demands: Paid Vacation for Extreme Weather Source: Rebecca Greenfield, Bloomberg Reports from Florida during Irma found that despite an evacuation order from the governor, some employers pressured workers into showing up for work. In a survey of 134 people, more than half of respondents said their employers threatened to fire or discipline them for not showing up to work during Hurricane Irma, according to a study by workers’ rights organization Central Florida Jobs with Justice. A librarian said he was told to man the building as a shelter or risk losing his job; a janitor who worked in a nursing home said she was threatened with her job unless she came in the night before the hurricane.

November 13, 2017 Sexual misconduct rampant in restaurant industry, workers say Source: Justin Phillips, The San Francisco Chronicle Many in the restaurant industry describe a culture that has not only failed to eradicate the pervasiveness of sexual harassment but has fostered it. The issue has plagued all types of restaurants, and it’s been embedded for decades. Because of several unique factors — a patriarchal kitchen hierarchy, a transient workforce, an insular community and lack of formal employment standards — the problem is endemic to the industry. New York City Expands Paid Leave Law to Include Domestic Violence, Sex Trafficking Source: Bryce Covert, Rewire In early 2013, Natasha Velez says she suffered a fractured index finger after her boyfriend at the time choked her. Even with her finger in a splint, Velez still showed up for her next scheduled shift at a Chipotle in New York City. But at her follow-up appointment, the doctors told her that she had to stay away from work for an additional couple of weeks. When she returned, she says she handed her manager a copy of her protection order that prevented her abuser from coming to the workplace, but her manager still responded by firing her because she had “too many issues outside of work.” This week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a law that could have aided Velez had it been in place four years ago. While the city passed landmark paid sick leave legislation in 2013, becoming the largest city at the time with such a policy, it didn’t explicitly include people like Velez who may need paid time away from work to deal with violent situations. That will now change: Starting in May of next year, the new legislation will expand the city’s law to include safe time, or time off to recover from domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, or sex trafficking.

November 10, 2017 Bloomberg Loses Bid to Stay Federal Overtime Class Suit Source: Jason Grant, New York Law Journal A Manhattan federal judge has denied Bloomberg LP’s motion to stay a class action lawsuit as the business media giant lobbies the U.S. Court of Appeals for permission to appeal orders certifying two classes in the case. She posted a photo of herself giving Trump the finger. She lost her job. Was her firing fair? Source: Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post Did Briskman deserve losing her job for using her finger to exercise her freedom of speech? Also, should an employer fire a worker over a social media posting?

November 9, 2017 Why the U.S. Needs a Federal Jobs Program, Not Payouts Source: Robert Rubin, The New York Times Too many people lack access to entry-level jobs with good wages, especially in industries like manufacturing, where activity is actually near a high. The reason is that technology has enabled this work to be done by far fewer employees — or it’s not being done at all, because workers don’t have the specialized skills certain jobs demand. 'Some kids are not orphans because of this': how unions are keeping workers safe Source: Steven Greenhouse, The Guardian As labor unions across much of the world struggle to increase their membership, how do workers get their employers to raise wages and assure safe conditions? That’s the question some of the world’s most innovative worker groups are asking. And they’re hopeful they have found a solution. Several of those groups gathered last week to launch an ambitious effort to improve the lives of millions of workers in the corporate supply chains. Meeting at the Ford Foundation to kick off the new effort, these and other worker advocacy groups maintained that corporate self-regulation was not doing nearly enough to assure safety and adequate conditions for the tens of millions of workers in apparel, electronics and agricultural supply chains worldwide. They are pinning their hopes on a new effort that aims to have workers play a central role in developing workplace codes of conduct and in overseeing enforcement of these codes. Their new effort is called the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network.

November 8, 2017 Desperate employers search for holiday workers in tight job market Source: Kellie Ell, USA TODAY As the holidays draw closer and holiday hiring is in full swing, industries across the board are feeling the unintended side effects of a falling unemployment rate— now at a 17-year low of 4.1%. But retail, food services and delivery, industries that are an essential part of the holiday grind, are among the most vulnerable. Billionaire’s Decision To Shutter DNAInfo, Gothamist Could Chill Union Campaigns In Media Source: Dave Jamieson, HuffPost When billionaire Joe Ricketts on Thursday shut down the Gothamist and DNAInfo news sites he owns, his company didn’t hesitate to identify one culprit: the staff’s successful unionization vote last week. Under U.S. labor law, it’s illegal to tell workers you will shut down operations if they join a union. But it’s not illegal to actually shut down the business once they unionize. Although Ricketts could not have legally laid people off in response to their vote, he was well within his rights to zap the entire company and turn the lights off in part or entirely because of the union. In a 1965 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, even if threats of layoffs are illegal, a company couldn’t be forced to rehire or shell out backpay to workers at a plant it had closed expressly because workers there had unionized. Theoretically, an owner like Ricketts could still run into trouble if it emerges that he closed the company in order to chill union activity at other properties of his. But Ricketts could certainly chill union activity at sites he has nothing to do with.

November 7, 2017 Why billionaires destroy jobs Source: Ryan Cooper, The Week The journalism world was shocked and appalled last Thursday, when billionaire Joe Ricketts abruptly shut down a slew of media properties he owned — DNAInfo, Gothamist, DCist, Chicagoist, and a few other sites — throwing 115 people out of work. Worse still, all the archives were immediately removed from the internet, with old links redirecting instead to a letter by Ricketts explaining his decision (though reportedly the archives will come back at some future point). The move comes only one week after Gothamist and DNAInfo voted to unionize, and it is widely assumed that the sites were shuttered as punishment for the vote. It's a perfect example of the capital strike — how wealthy business owners will destroy jobs and production when it suits their politics. More Wells Fargo workers allege retaliation for whistleblowing Source: Matt Egan, CNN More former Wells Fargo employees allege they were fired after they tried to blow the whistle on shady activity at the bank. That's according to a new filing by Wells Fargo (WFC), which disclosed claims of "retaliation" by ex-employees. Wells Fargo has been at the center of a number of scandals over the past year. This filing addresses two in particular -- when the bank forced thousands of customers into car insurance they didn't need and when it wrongly charged homebuyers to lock in mortgage rates. What are YOUR political rights as an employee? Paula Brantner from Workplace Fairness explains. Source: Dana Barrett, Biz 1190 WAFS Senior Advisor, Paula Brantner joins Dana Barrett to talk about when and if the law requires employers to give workers time off to vote, and whether your political speech and activity are protected in your workplace.

November 6, 2017 Unemployment is tumbling, but here's why some workers still can't find jobs Source: Trent Gillies, CNBC If you're looking for a job, the current market is the best it has been in years. Last week, the government reported that the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent in October, with more than six million open jobs available right now. According to the Labor Department, that's near the all-time high in July of this year when there were 6.2 million job openings. At the low point of the Great Recession in mid 2009, there were just 2.2 million jobs in July 2009. In an economy that appears to be gathering momentum, exactly why are some workers being left on the sidelines? DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shut Down After Vote to Unionize Source: Andy Newman and John Leland , The New York Times A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down. For DNAinfo and Gothamist, the staff’s vote to join the Writers Guild of America East was just part of the decision to close the company. The decision puts 115 people out of work, both at the New York operations that unionized and at those in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington that did not.

November 3, 2017 Capitol Hill’s sexual harassment policy ‘toothless,’ ‘a joke’ Source: Rachael Bade and Elana Schor, POLITICO The sexual harassment scandals involving major Hollywood and media figures are focusing new attention on Congress’ procedures, which critics say are woefully inadequate for deterring bad behavior in an institution filled with powerful men and young aides trying to advance their careers. Each congressional office operates as its own small, tightly controlled fiefdom with its own rules and procedures, which makes it that much harder to come forward. They’re Talking Behind My Back: Remote Workers Feel Unsupported Source: Joann Lublin, The Wall Street Journal Remote employees perceive greater workplace harm from these problems than on-site employees, including wasted time, more stress, lower productivity and lower morale, the survey found.

November 2, 2017 In a Superstar Economy, a Bull Market in Superstar Harassers Source: Noam Scheiber, The New York Times In the recent wave of reports of workplace sexual harassment, a recurring theme stands out: the willingness of companies’ supposed overseers to ignore credible allegations in order to retain a perceived star. The pattern is so well established that an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission task force, in a report on sexual harassment last year, gave those who benefit from it a name: “superstar” harassers. Booker calls on antitrust regulators to start paying attention to workers Source: Matthew Yglesias, Vox Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is challenging federal antitrust officials to explain what — if anything — they are doing about the impact of corporate concentration on labor markets. Antitrust law normally comes up in the context of monopoly power, the prospect that a company will control such a large share of output that it can raise prices or reduce quality. But it also applies to situations of monopsony power, in which market concentration offers undue leverage over workers or upstream suppliers. His newfound interest in the matter is part of a broader trend to a heightened interest in antitrust matters across a number of fronts — highlighting a potential opportunity to press anti-business and pro-worker themes. What happens if you break and NDA? Source: Meera Jagannathan, Moneyish Confidentiality provisions or clauses within settlement agreements can also mandate an employee’s silence. In the case of a serial violator, NDAs can function as “a way to prevent (employees) from being witnesses for each other, bolstering each others’ cases, or making the information public and shaming the violator and the company,” attorney Paula Brantner, a senior adviser to the nonprofit Workplace Fairness, told Moneyish.

November 1, 2017 Tipping May Be the Norm, but Not for Hotel Housekeepers Source: Tammy La Gorce, The New York Times Tipping norms, or the lack of them, may be especially unfair to housekeepers, who arguably do more for guests than park their cars or push the cart containing their dinners. In a First, New York Bans Salary Queries to Fight Gender Pay Gap Source: Reuters, Reuters New York City, in an effort to combat the gender pay gap, on Tuesday became the first U.S. city to ban employers from asking job applicants about previous salaries. Asking about past salaries can perpetuate unequal pay levels rather than allow applicants to seek pay based on their qualifications and earnings potential, city officials said. Under the city's new law, the first of its kind to take effect in the country, employers who ask applicants about previous salaries or search for the information in public records will be subject to a fine of up to $250,000. Workplace Fairness: Advice on how to get paid Source: Theresa Schmidt, KPLC News 7 Lake Charles LA On Sept. 15 workers descended on Coastal Staffing, a temporary staffing company in Sulphur. They were demanding their checks for hours they say they worked in Texas neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Harvey. Paula Brantner, from the Washington, D.C. metro area is senior adviser for an organization called Workplace Fairness. For workers to get paid, she says documentation is key.

October 31, 2017 Facebook is facing a class-action lawsuit for trying to avoid paying its workers overtime Source: Hanna Kozlowska, Quartz A lawsuit filed in a U.S. district court in Illinois alleges that Facebook routinely and knowingly misclassified certain workers as not eligible for overtime compensation. Although it has to be approved by the court, it is proposed as a class action, filed by a former client solutions manager at the company. Susie Bigger, the former “CSM,” as Facebook reportedly calls these positions, alleges that Facebook engaged in “systematic, companywide wrongful classification” of employees who had no managerial responsibilities or decision-making power as exempt from overtime requirements, thus depriving them of additional pay when they worked more than 40 hours a week. The lawsuit alleges the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act as well as Illinois’ minimum wage laws. Obama’s Overtime Reforms Aren’t Dead Yet Source: Dave Jamieson, HuffPost Trump’s election last year appeared to signal the death knell for overtime reform, leaving retail outlets, among others, free to order managers and other salaried workers to log very long hours for no extra pay. In its appeal, however, the Trump administration is trying to preserve the right to update the law the same way that Obama did by raising the “salary threshold,” the level below which all salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay, regardless of their job duties. On Monday, the Justice Department said it intends to appeal the decision that struck down President Barack Obama’s update to overtime regulations. The Trump administration plans to ask the court to sit on the case while the Labor Department “undertakes further rulemaking.” The move suggests that President Donald Trump, like his predecessor, may try to extend overtime protections to more workers but given the usual Republican wariness about boosting workers’ pay by government fiat, probably not nearly as many as Obama had in mind.

October 30, 2017 In $25 billion video game industry, voice actors face broken vocal cords and low pay Source: Todd C. Frankel, The Washington Post Yet voice actors in this industry are not treated like actors in television and movies. This led voice actors to go on strike last year against 11 of the largest video game developers over bonus pay and safety issues such as vocal stress. The bitter labor dispute dragged on for 11 months, making it the longest strike in the history of Hollywood’s largest actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA. Burch was forced to give up a critically acclaimed role she loved. Gaming fans feared delays for their favorite titles before a tentative deal was reached late last month. A vote by the full union is going on now. New York set to institute most aggressive paid family leave act in the nation Source: Kate Rogers, CNBC UncommonGoods in Brooklyn, New York, has a paid family leave policy in place, offering up to eight weeks of paid time off per year. CEO David Bolotsky says the policy isn't just good for workers — it's good for his bottom line. Come Jan. 1, all businesses in the state will have policies that look much like what workers have access to at UncommonGoods, as New York implements what's being hailed as one of the most progressive paid family leave policies in the nation. The program will be phased in over the next four years, allowing up to 12 weeks of paid time off by 2021 for a new child. The new measures apply to adopted or foster children, as well as ill family members, including children, in-laws and domestic partners. Those who are experiencing family pressures when someone is called to active military service also qualify.

October 27, 2017 SAG-AFTRA’s Gabrielle Carteris Calls for Protection of All Workers From Sexual Harassment Source: Dave McNary , Variety Spurred by the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal, SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris has called for unions in all sectors to protect workers from sexual harassment. Carteris, a member of the AFL-CIO executive council, disclosed in her speech that the leadership of the AFL-CIO has formed a cross-industry working group to deal with the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. The working group will attempt to develop best practices and tangible resources that make it easier for people to speak out and that helps to ensure a meaningful effective response. The Trump Administration Chooses Big Meat, Withdraws GIPSA Rule Source: Deena Shanker , Bloomberg After years of fighting for an Obama-era rule that would help farmers sue the mammoth companies they work for, advocacy groups for America’s small poultry, pork and beef growers may have been dealt a final blow by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The fight was about whether small farmers can sue if they feel they’ve been mistreated by big companies. Poultry farmers, for example, often get their chicks and feed from big meat producers, which in turn pay the farmer for the full-grown product. If a farmer wants to sue a company for retaliating against him because he complained about his contract— say, by sending him sick chicks or bad feed—the farmer needs to show the company’s actions hurt not only him, but the entire industry.

October 26, 2017 2 female former Uber engineers have filed a complaint about their pay and allege they were 'ranked' on their looks Source: Julie Bort , Business Insider Two former Uber engineers have filed complaints with California regulators alleging unfair pay and other workplace discrimination, the news website Axios reports. Among other allegations, the women claim their male colleagues ranked their attractiveness, according to The Information. The two women were part of Uber's reliability engineering team. Perhaps the most significant thing about the complaint is that it's based on a law that seems to allow employees to sidestep mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts. After Weinstein Scandal, a Plan to Protect Models Source: Vanessa Friedman, The New York Times The Harvey Weinstein news has spurred an outcry on sexual harassment from women far from Hollywood. Now some of that outrage is taking a new shape, beyond the repeated revelations, and has begun to influence the legal system. On Monday, New York State Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, a Democrat from Queens, announced she would introduce an amendment to the state’s current anti-discrimination laws. If passed, it would extend certain protection to models, putting designers, photographers and retailers (among others) on notice that they would be liable for abuses experienced on their watch. Models in New York State would require specific provisions because of their convoluted employment chain. Many are classified as independent contractors, with their agencies claiming to act in an advisory capacity.

October 25, 2017 Expelling Immigrant Workers May Also Send Away the Work They Do Source: Eduardo Porter, The New York Times Even if the Trump administration were to deploy the 10,000 immigration agents it plans to hire across the nation’s fields to detain and deport farmhands working illegally, farmers are very unlikely to raise wages and improve working conditions to attract American workers instead. ‘Everything is at stake:’ California unions brace for a Supreme Court loss Source: Adam Ashton , Sacramento Bee California labor leaders sound almost apocalyptic when they describe a looming Supreme Court case that many of them concede likely will cost them members and money. They’re alarmed by Janus vs. AFSCME, the Illinois lawsuit that challenges the rights of unions in 22 states to collect so-called “fair share” fees from employees who do not want to join bargaining groups but may benefit from representation. That practice has been legal and common since 1977, when the Supreme Court favored union arguments for fair-share fees in a lawsuit against the Detroit Board of Education. Now, unions anticipate a 5-4 Supreme Court decision banning the mandatory dues with President Donald Trump’s nominee on the court, Neil Gorsuch, tilting the balance against their side just a year after the court deadlocked on a similar case against the California Teachers Association.

October 24, 2017 Post-hurricane cleanup could kill more workers than storms themselves Source: Mike Elk, The Guardian More workers could die from the long-term effects of cleaning up after hurricanes Harvey and Irma than were killed by the storms, according to a nationwide network of workplace health and safety groups. The mainland US death toll for the two hurricanes, which battered Texas and Florida in August and September, now stands at approximately 200 people. But according to Jessica Martinez, executive director of National Council of Occupation Safety and Health (Cosh), a nationwide network of workplace health and safety groups, a greater number of people will die cleaning up in their wake “if more resources aren’t put into health and safety training from post-cleanup”. Inside Amazon, Diversity Concerns Flare Up After Harassment Accusations Source: Nick Wingfield , The New York Times Amazon on Friday tried to quell concerns among employees about sexual harassment accusations against an executive, sending an email to its staff saying the company would review its policies to ensure that “they are doing their job to provide a harassment-free workplace.” The email is the first broad internal communication by Amazon since Roy Price, who oversaw Amazon Studios, left the company this week after details of the accusations became public.

October 23, 2017 Why sexual harassers keep offending Source: Maria Lamagna, MarketWatch One major reason why repeat offenders can continue harassing for years: Some employers are reluctant to share information about a sexual harasser because they are embarrassed it took them so long to fire him, said Paula Brantner, a senior adviser at Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit based in Maryland. And they may also be protecting themselves against any potential legal action by current and former employees who may have been harassed. Freelancers Face a Bigger Gender Pay Gap and Most Don't Even Know It Source: Barb Darrow, Fortune Here’s some worrisome news: The gender pay gap is more pronounced among freelancers and consultants than it is in corporate settings, according to new research. Female freelance writers, editors, graphic designers, artists, and others who bill for their own work make 32 cents less on average than their male counterparts. This is according to new research from HoneyBook, a website that small businesses and freelancers use to bill for their services. That’s a significantly bigger gap than the 24-cent difference calculated by Payscale and the 19.5-cent cent gap reported in recent U.S. Census numbers. Invisible women: Domestic workers underpaid and abused Source: Carolyn Bick , Al Jazeera There are at least two million domestic workers in the United States, and most of them are black Americans or immigrant women. They are considered so unworthy of legal protections that basic workers' rights do not extend to them. Now, a political climate and leadership tells them that they are not only unwelcome, but they also should not expect safety because of their skin colour and ethnicity. Many face slave-like working conditions. They are one of the only classes of workers excluded from basic working protections, as set forth in the 1935 still-unamended National Labor Relations Act. Many are poor immigrant women of colour, which puts them in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump's administration.

October 20, 2017 Who's the Boss? Union Organizers Target Private Equity Owners Source: Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg The Los Angeles hotel workers’ union is getting ready to take on a new incarnation of management: private equity. Organizers are targeting the luxury resort Terranea, which was developed and is now controlled and operated by Lowe Enterprises, a real estate investment firm whose private equity arm manages more than $2.5 billion in assets. On Thursday, resort workers plan to confront their general manager and demand a fair process to unionize. They also plan to file a lawsuit accusing the company of failing to pay workers wages they’re owed -– the kind of illicit cost-cutting that they say exemplifies the worst practices of private equity -- and seek class-action status for the suit. The Wage Gap Is Only Getting Worse, Especially for America's Senior Citizens Source: Christianna Silva , Newsweek Income inequality is rising and the wage gap is widening for American workers—and the problem is even worse for U.S. senior citizens, a new report shows. It’s so bad, in fact, that the income inequality numbers among the elderly in the U.S. resemble more a report out of a developing country than what would be expected of America. The gap between wealthy and poor seniors is one of the widest in any nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The only countries with wider gaps among seniors are Mexico and Chile, according to a study by the OECD and a CNN article.

October 19, 2017 A workplace epidemic of bullying LGBT employees Source: Aimee Picchi, CBS MoneyWatch The office should be a place where employees can focus on getting work done, but a good share of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers say they're getting harassed on the job. Actresses—and Millions of Other Workers—Have No Federal Sexual-Harassment Protections Source: Bryce Covert, The Nation But there’s another reason actresses harassed by Weinstein may have been discouraged from reporting sexual harassment. Any who were working on a Weinstein film were almost certainly classified as independent contractors, not regular employees. And that means that the anti-discrimination and sexual-harassment protections of federal law didn’t apply to them.

October 18, 2017 Actors’ unions and Harvey Weinstein: Could he have been stopped? Source: Amanda Marcotte , Salon After both the New York Times and the New Yorker published lengthy exposés of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's long history of alleged sexual harassment or assault -- against pretty much any young woman who felt dependent on him for job opportunities -- a larger question has emerged: What can be done? Not about Weinstein in particular, as it seems that the film industry is ready to eject him from a position of power and influence. (As it largely did not do in the cases of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski.) But Weinstein is just one part of a much larger problem, which is so widespread and seemingly intractable that society needs more than Twitter hashtags to address it. The solutions will be multifaceted and complicated, of course, but one important piece of the puzzle is the role of unions. Work-related sexual harassment of the sort Weinstein is accused of dishing out is, ultimately, a labor issue. Epithets, racist drawings at Tesla factory, ex-workers say Source: Louis Hansen , The Mercury News Three former Tesla factory workers charge in a new suit the company’s factory is a hostile environment for black workers, adding to earlier accusations of racial harassment. The men, who are AfricanAmerican, claim in a new complaint filed Monday in state court that Tesla supervisors and workers used racial epithets and drew racist graffiti on cardboard boxes. Tesla has faced ongoing labor disputes and disruption this year. The company fired hundreds of workers this month after company-wide performance reviews. The new suit is the second by black employees charging Tesla failed to address racial antagonism at its factory. The electric vehicle maker also has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board over claims it illegally tried to silence workers promoting a union.

October 17, 2017 Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her. Then Her Job Moved to Mexico. Source: Farah Stockman , The New York Times The man from Mexico followed a manager through the factory floor, past whirring exhaust fans, beeping forklifts, and drilling machines that whined against steel. Workers in safety glasses looked up and stared. Others looked away. Shannon Mulcahy felt her stomach lurch. It was December 2016. The Rexnord Corporation’s factory still churned out bearings as it always had. Sometimes a bearing was rumored to have ended up in something notable — the retracting roof of the Dallas Cowboys football stadium or a nuclear submarine — giving the workers a feeling of greatness. But mostly, the bearings were unglamorous. Anonymous. Hidden from view. Like the workers themselves, they were rarely thought of beyond the factory walls. That was fine with Shannon Mulcahy. Being a female steelworker hadn’t been easy. But the factory anchored her otherwise tumultuous life. For 17 years. Until now. Shannon and her co-workers had gotten the news back in October: The factory was closing. Ball bearings would move to a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico. Roller bearings would go to McAllen, Tex. About 300 workers would lose their jobs. Chicken Safety: Factory Workers Already Slaughter 140 Per Minute—New Law Could Make This Dangerously Faster Source: Dana Dovey , Newsweek Americans eat a whole lot of chicken—about 8 billion each year. In an effort to meet this demand, poultry farmers and some Republican lawmakers are hoping to do away with current regulations that limit the number of chickens workers can legally chop up in a minute. While the result may be good for the chicken farmers, advocates for factory workers say the change would be dangerous for people on the assembly lines. Increasing the speed could put workers at risk for serious injury. A letter from Anthony "Marc" Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, to the NCC notes that poultry workers, who must debone chickens as quickly as possible, are already at twice the risk of being injured on the job as other workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has openly stated that doing away with this rule and allowing lines to work at any speed could result in more injuries among the workers doing the deboning.

October 16, 2017 Google commits $1 billion in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs Source: Brian Heater , TechCrunch The nature of work is changing on a global level at a rapid pace. The growth of automation, robotics, AI and the like have the potential to displace jobs at an unprecedented rate. And Google will almost certainly be one of the driving forces behind that transformation. The search giant has regularly expressed a desire to help stem some of that negative impact, and now it’s putting its money where its mouth is to the tune of $1 billion. CEO Sundar Pichai announced Grow with Google at an event earlier today in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the next five years, the initiative will commit $1 billion to nonprofits aimed at training American workers and helping build business. America's workers deserve to get paid for burning the midnight oil Source: Patricia Smith and Sharon Block , The Hill This summer, the Labor Department issued a formal “request for information” to get public feedback on which white collar employees should get overtime pay. In August, a federal judge in Texas purported to invalidate the Obama overtime rule in a far reaching and frankly unworkable decision. The judge didn’t just overturn the Obama rule, he also created a nearly impossible test for any future overtime rule to pass. Secretary Acosta is a lawyer and former law school dean. He surely understands the implications of this decision for any future overtime rulemakings, and by extension, the greater uncertainty it creates for businesses and workers around the country. In a time of rising income inequality and stagnating middle class wages, the question of who is entitled overtime is important for America’s workers and for restoring balance in our economy. It isn’t a time to leave workers in limbo, but time is running out for the Labor Department to act.

October 13, 2017 The Barriers Stopping Poor People From Moving to Better Jobs Source: Alana Semuels, The Atlantic America used to be a place where moving one’s family and one’s life in search of greater opportunities was common. Of course, it wasn’t simply “moving” that mattered—it was that they moved to specific areas that were growing. But over the past 30 years, that regional income convergence has slowed. Economists say that is happening because net migration—the tendency of large numbers of people to move to a specific place—is waning, meaning that the supply of workers isn’t increasing fast enough in the rich areas to bring wages down, and isn’t falling fast enough in the poor areas to bring wages up. Why is this? Why have people stopped moving? The reason, economists believe, isn’t that there are the jobs or wages to entice people to move to economically vibrant cities like New York and San Francisco—there are—but that housing prices are so high there that they outweigh any gains people could make from the better wages. As a result, high-income cities are still appealing to many workers, but only highly skilled workers who can command salaries high enough to make it worthwhile to move. Low-income workers will end up spending much of their incomes on housing if they move, and so stay put. Jeff Bezos Screws Over Workers At Amazon. Now He Wants To Do The Same At The Washington Post. Source: Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost Like most of the industry titans in the world of big tech, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is no fan of labor unions. Since 1994, he’s fended away every effort by Amazon warehouse workers to unionize. But when Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013, he inherited more than 1,200 workers unionized with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. That union now claims that Bezos and Washington Post management are trying to gut protections and benefits for workers in the latest contract negotiations.

October 12, 2017 More than 50% of workers subject to mandatory arbitration Source: L.M. Sixel , Houston Chronicle More than half the nation's private sector workforce is barred from the courthouse if they have disputes over pay, working conditions or discrimination, according to new survey of employers about their use of mandatory arbitration contracts. A report by Alexander J.S. Colvin, professor of conflict resolution at Cornell University, found that 56 percent of private-sector, non-union workers are subject to mandatory arbitration, preventing them access to the courts for a wide variety of legal claims including overtime and minimum wage violations, retaliation and discrimination for age, sex, race, national origin and disability. The arbitration contracts are typically a condition of employment. Sexual misconduct allegations now cost powerful men their jobs. But not the White House. Source: Z. Byron Wolf , CNN It took years for the stories to emerge, but when they did, Harvey Weinstein lost his job at the company that bears his name. The same is true for Roger Ailes, the Fox News mastermind who changed cable news. He lost his job after allegations from women were reported. Bill O'Reilly's ratings were strong when he was plucked from his anchor's chair after allegations and reports of settlements with women. As the US comes to terms with sordid, uncovered tales of powerful men preying on women, the shift in acceptance of such behavior feels swift and gratifying; abusers are facing public scorn and consequences in the court of public opinion, if not criminal court. But there's one glaring exception. Incredibly, when there is not a corporate boss and the fate of the powerful man rests with voters, as it did in the case of Donald Trump, he gets a serious promotion. To the White House. Sexual Harassment In The Workplace Source: Mike McIntyre, IdeaStream.org Workplace Fairness Senior Advisor, Paula Brantner, talks with Mike McIntyre about recent sexual harassment scandals in the news, and how to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. Start at 12:11 to hear the whole interview.

October 11, 2017 Can This Executive Make Uber a Place Women Want to Work? Source: Yoree Koh and Greg Bensinger, The Wall Street Journal Can Uber Technologies Inc. become a place women want to work? The ride-hailing company is famous for its hard-charging culture. A February blog post written by former engineer Susan Fowler alleged the company had become tolerant of sexism and chauvinism, a revelation that prompted an internal investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and led to the release in June of 47 recommendations on how Uber could improve its workplace. The responsibility for reforming Uber’s culture and carrying out many of the recommendations landed on the desk of Liane Hornsey, the company’s human-resources chief and a former Google and SoftBank executive. Will the Supreme Court Unravel Public Employee Unions? Source: Garrett Epps , The Atlantic This term at the U.S. Supreme Court seems likely to end with an assault foretold—on America’s public-employee unions. It will come in a case called Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, which was granted review on September 28. Janus challenges—for the third time in five years—the financial stability of public employee unions. By coincidence, these unions are an important pillar of the Democratic Party. Janus will be the third attempt since 2012 to gut the unions by court order. Formally it poses a First Amendment question; but under the surface, its central issue is whether public-employee unions are helpful labor organizations or baneful big-government lobbies.

October 10, 2017 Here’s what to do if you’ve been sexually harassed at work Source: Meera Jagannathan, Moneyish Here’s what to do if you find yourself fending off unwanted sexual attention — physical or verbal — from a coworker or boss: Think ahead to how you might handle it. “It’s very common that you just freeze” when you get sexually harassed, explains employment lawyer Paula Brantner, a senior advisor to the Workplace Fairness nonprofit. “The best way to keep that from happening is to kind of walk through in advance what you would do if this happened.” Sending a “loud and clear” message in the moment can both help establish that the overture was unwanted from a legal perspective, and potentially nip the problem in the bud, Brantner said. Firm behind ‘Fearless Girl’ statue underpaid female workers: feds Source: Chris Perez , New York Post The financial firm behind Wall Street’s “Fearless Girl” statue has agreed to pay out $5 million to more than 300 women and 15 black employees — over allegations that it paid them less than their white, male colleagues. State Street Corp., which erected the makeshift monument earlier this year to promote gender equality, said they would cough up the dough this week after being audited by the US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Since at least 2010, hundreds of women were paid less than their male counterparts — in base salary, bonus pay and total compensation, according to federal officials. No Class Action: Supreme Court Weighs Whether Workers Must Face Arbitrations Alone Source: Yuki Noguchi , NPR Suing one's employer can be scary enough, but it's even scarier doing it alone. Many employers are increasingly requiring workers to sign agreements requiring them to resolve workplace disputes about anything from harassment to discrimination to wage theft through individual arbitration. In other words, the language does not permit them to join forces with colleagues who might have similar complaints. Whether such prohibitions on collective arbitration are legal is at issue in a trio of cases heard by the Supreme Court this week. With Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch on the bench, many experts say a ruling against the workers in these cases could result in massive changes in how nearly all workplace disputes will be resolved, and how labor laws are enforced.

October 9, 2017 Why Aren’t Wages Rising Faster Now That Unemployment Is Lower? Source: Karl Russell and Peter S. Goodman , The New York Times Basic economics tells us that when workers are in higher demand, employers should have to pay more for their services. But in recent years, as unemployment has fallen below 5 percent in the United States, wages have not been increasing as fast as in the past. California won’t require Uber, Lyft drivers to be fingerprinted Source: David Kravets, Ars Technica California regulators won't require ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft to get fingerprinted as part of their background checks to operate in the Golden State. Taxi drivers, however, must be fingerprinted in California.

October 6, 2017 Jeff Sessions Just Reversed A Policy That Protects Transgender Workers From Discrimination Source: Dominic Holden , Buzzfeed News US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed a federal government policy that said transgender workers were protected from discrimination under a 1964 civil rights law, according to a memo dated Wednesday to US attorneys across the country and heads of federal agencies. Sessions’ memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News, says, “Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination encompasses discrimination between men and women but does not encompass discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender status.” It adds that the government will take this position in pending and future matters, which could have far-reaching implications across the federal government and may result in the Justice Department fighting against transgender workers in court. How Unions Are Already Gearing Up for a Supreme Court Loss Source: Katherine Barrett & Richard Greene , Governing Late last week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will add a case critical to the future of public-sector unions to its docket. With President Donald Trump's appointment of conservative-leaning Justice Neil Gorsuch, many expect the court to rule against the unions. Such a decision would energize the recent resurgence of state laws that effectively reduce the power of unions in both the public and private sector. Expecting the worst, unions are already preparing for a potential exodus of members and a loss of revenue.

October 5, 2017 To close the gender gap in jobs, women need new laws and men need new attitudes Source: Jenny Anderson , Quartz A new report from the OECD about gender equality includes some good news: Roughly two-thirds of OECD countries have introduced new policies on pay equality since 2013, and more countries are also implementing paid paternity leave. But the research also highlights some less good news: the median female worker still earns almost 15% less than her male counterpart (on average, across the OECD) and that’s barely budged since 2010. The OECD asked representatives of 35 member countries to choose the three “most effective ways to tackle barriers to female employment.” Here’s what they said. The Supreme Court Returns to Washington, and Workers Are on the Menu Source: Ian Millhiser, The Nation Less than one hour into the new Supreme Court term, which began on Monday, one of the Court’s embattled liberals warned that workplace protections that stretch back to the New Deal are in danger. With Neil Gorsuch, the man who occupies a seat that Republicans held open for more than a year in the hopes that Donald Trump would get to fill it, now beginning his first full term, the Court’s Republican majority appears emboldened. Last week, the Court announced that it will hear Janus v. AFSCME, a suit seeking to sabotage public sector unions. Then, it opened the term with three consolidated cases, all of which are likely to give employers a license to engage in many forms of wage theft.

Find an Employment Lawyer Practice Area: Select a Practice Area Your Zip: Zip Select Distance: 5 miles Find an Employment Attorney Support Workplace Fairness

Know Your Rights 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Hiring & Classifications Discrimination Harassment & Other Workplace Problems Unpaid Wages/Wage & Hour Problems Benefits & Leaves Privacy & Workplace Surveillance Health & Safety/Workplace Injuries Whistleblowing & Retaliation Unions & Collective Action Termination & Unemployment

Follow us on: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Sign Up For Our E-Newsletter Join Free Attorney Database Attorney Websites & Content

Find an Employment Attorney The Workplace Fairness Attorney Directory features lawyers from across the United States who primarily represent workers in employment cases. Please note that Workplace Fairness does not operate a lawyer referral service and does not provide legal advice, and that Workplace Fairness is not responsible for any advice that you receive from anyone, attorney or non-attorney, you may contact from this site. Practice Area: Select a Practice Area Your Zip: Enter Your Zip Select Distance: 5 miles Find an Employment Attorney Workplace Fairness is a non-profit organization working to preserve and promote employee rights. This site provides comprehensive information about job rights and employment issues nationally and in all 50 states. It is for workers, employers, advocates, policymakers, journalists, and anyone else who wants to understand, protect, and strengthen workers’ rights. More about Workplace Fairness Site Map Privacy Policy Terms of Service © 2017 Workplace Fairness Powered by Midwest New Media, LLC, a Cincinnati web design company

Smile Life

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile

Get in touch

© Copyright 2015 - 2024 PDFFOX.COM - All rights reserved.