Category Archives: labor market

For Amazon workers in Minnesota, Prime Day means protest

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From today’s Washington Post:

As a “rebinner” at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Minneapolis, Meg Brady says she is expected to handle 600 items per hour, constantly pivoting on her feet to grab one item and place it in a nearby chute.

Brady, 55, compared the job to an aerobics workout — one she says has left her with a stress fracture in her foot and on short-term disability for almost two months.

She’s been an Amazon employee for a year and seven months. And on Monday afternoon, she joined a small group of her fellow workers and dozens of other protesters outside the cavernous warehouse to demonstrate against the company’s working conditions, benefits and corporate culture. The protest took place on the first day of Prime Day, one of Amazon’s flagship shopping events that generates billions of dollars in sales for the retail giant.

“To actually get out and say [to Amazon], ‘You’re not doing a good job,’ that’s not an easy thing to say,” Brady said. “Because Amazon is so huge, you do feel like you’re this small person trying to fight a giant.”

Amazon has long defended how it compensates and treats workers, and the company argues that employees don’t need to form a union because Amazon already provides comprehensive benefits. Last year, Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all U.S. employees, and chief executive and founder Jeff Bezos has challenged his retail rivals to do the same. Last week, the company announced it would retrain one third of its U.S. workforce — a total of 100,000 employees — to prepare them for increasingly tech-centered jobs. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

But Amazon has still come under increasing scrutiny from workers rights groups, lawmakers and politicians over issues ranging from corporate taxation to market competition. Amazon’s growing power has drawn particular attention on the 2020 campaign trail, with calls to break up the tech giant or more heavily regulate its vast empire. On Monday morning, presidential candidate and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted in support of the strikers, saying that “Their fight for safe and reliable jobs is another reminder that we must come together to hold big corporations accountable.”

Read the complete article here.

How to Disclose a Disability to Your Employer (and Whether You Should)

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From today’s New York Times:

If you, like thousands of others, live with a visible or invisible disability, here’s what you need to know if you want to tell your employer.

The invisible nature of my chronic illness protects me from a whole universe of discrimination and microaggressions, but it also insulates me from potential support.

Of course, I acknowledge that my position is a privileged one. Some disabilities announce themselves as soon as a job candidate enters an interview room, along with all of the misconceptions society places on anyone with any degree of difference. I wondered what we’d have to do to help people come out of it empowered and employed.

The issue is as complicated as people are. As with all forms of discrimination, there’s a world between what the law says and how we relate to one another that’s murky and difficult to navigate, even for legal professionals, disability-rights advocates and those long-practiced in explaining themselves to a world not built for them. But there are ways to make it easier, and difficult truths everyone should know.

Perhaps you’ve seen the little self-disclosure boxes on job application forms. Employers are prohibited from directly asking anything about your disability; that puts the onus on the employee or applicant to educate the employer, said Eve Hill, a disability rights attorney. You can request the accommodations you may need and explain how you can best perform the job, but that can be as much a burden as an opportunity, she said.

Read the complete article here.

U.S. Women Won, Men Lost, and Equal Pay Fight Tied Them Together Again

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From today’s New York Times:

For American soccer fans, the juxtaposition was hard to ignore: the United States women’s team winning a record fourth World Cup championship in France, its men’s counterpart falling to its bitter rival Mexico hours later in a regional championship in Chicago.

The two results Sunday were not a mere collision of games: they also highlighted a contentious battle about pay equality featuring the men’s teams and women’s teams, the different media and financial ecosystems in which they compete, and the often unequal rewards for success for male and female athletes. All of it was brought to the fore again by the women’s team’s latest world championship, and by the chants of “Equal Pay!” that serenaded the players after they won.

In recent years, that fight for pay equality has been the women’s team’s calling card. The players contend they are paid less by the United States Soccer Federation than the men — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars or more for top players in a given year — and that the situation has persisted for years even as the women’s team has collected more trophies and begun to produce more revenue than the men. U.S. Soccer has welcomed the team’s success — Sunday’s title was the team’s second in a row — even as it has challenged the players’ math, arguing that the situation is complicated by a compensation structure negotiated by each team that pays the men and women differently.

But the women’s players, who include some of the most prominent female athletes in the world, have pressed their argument in interviews and on social media and, most recently, in a gender discrimination federal court. On Sunday, bathing in the crowd’s adoration and set to cash in on bonuses of more than $250,000 each, one of their captains turned the screws again.

Read the complete article here.

Why Gay Rights Is a Republican Value

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From today’s New York Times:

Conservatives support freedom, which is why they should oppose job discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.

This week, more than 2,000 signatories — members of Congress, women’s rights groups, businesses — submitted nearly 50 friend-of-the-court briefs to the Supreme Court in three pending cases involving L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

The cases, which the court is likely to take up next session, consider whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex, prohibits discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The signers reflect what a broad cross section of Americans overwhelmingly believe: Such discrimination is wrong.

Polls consistently show a high percentage of Americans think that firing people or denying them jobs or promotions because they are L.G.B.T.Q. is wrong and that it should be prohibited under our nation’s civil rights laws. A full 92 percent said so in an April poll by Quinnipiac University. That’s in part because basic protections against job discrimination are fundamental to core American values of fairness.

This isn’t a new idea, or a partisan one. Abraham Lincoln wished for all workers to have an equal chance to acquire property and to gain wealth. “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life,” he said, “free society is such that he knows he can better his condition.”

Read the complete article here.

Machines May Not Take Your Job, but One Could Become Your Boss

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From today’s New York Times:

When Conor Sprouls, a customer service representative in the call center of the insurance giant MetLife talks to a customer over the phone, he keeps one eye on the bottom-right corner of his screen. There, in a little blue box, A.I. tells him how he’s doing.

Talking too fast? The program flashes an icon of a speedometer, indicating that he should slow down.

Sound sleepy? The software displays an “energy cue,” with a picture of a coffee cup.

Not empathetic enough? A heart icon pops up.

For decades, people have fearfully imagined armies of hyper-efficient robots invading offices and factories, gobbling up jobs once done by humans. But in all of the worry about the potential of artificial intelligence to replace rank-and-file workers, we may have overlooked the possibility it will replace the bosses, too.

Read the complete article here.

The Supreme Court May Erode Decades of Wins for LGBT Worker Rights

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From today’s Bloomberg Business Week:

For two decades, most of the LGBT movement’s highest-profile victories have come at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2003 the justices issued a ruling legalizing gay sex that dissenting conservative Justice Antonin Scalia warned would set the stage for nationwide legalized gay marriage. Within 12 years, his prediction was realized. The court made marriage equality the law of the land—reflecting, and also accelerating, a sea change in straight Americans’ views and treatment of their LGBTQ family members and neighbors.

But next year the high court could deal LGBTQ people a painful blow: wiping out lower-court rulings that shield them from getting fired for who they are.

In a trio of cases this coming term—involving a child welfare worker, a skydiving instructor, and a funeral director—the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether it’s legal for bosses to discriminate against LGBT employees. Contrary to what many Americans now assume, no federal law explicitly prohibits firing workers simply for being gay or transgender. Nor do the laws of most states—including some populous ones such as Texas and Ohio. (Only 21 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that explicitly prohibit private companies from firing workers for being gay or trans; another one restricts anti-gay firing but not anti-trans dismissals.)

Read the complete article here.

Opinion: Should women’s soccer players be paid as much as men?

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From today’s Washington Post:

The tipping point may have been the sixth goal. Or the seventh. Or the 13th, which turned out to be the last goal scored in the U.S. women’s national team’s handy defeat of Thailand in their first World Cup game.

Whichever goal it was that fans thought should have been the last for ecstatic celebration by the likes of Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan on Tuesday, the debate over the players’ sliding, kicking and group hugging drew attention to another issue: the 38 cents on the dollar that the women are paid compared to the men’s team.

On International Women’s Day in March, all 28 members of the women’s team filed a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, alleging they do the same job as the men’s team in exchange for lower wages and inferior working conditions. The men’s national team has never won a world title and did not qualify for last year’s World Cup.

The women have been fighting for fair pay for years. Five of them filed a wage-discrimination complaint in 2016 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces civil-rights laws in the workplace. Some of them then made the rounds on major television networks to plead their case.

Read the complete article here.

New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

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From today’s New York Times:

Across the United States, mammoth corporations and family businesses share a complaint: a shortage of workers. As the unemployment rate has tunneled its way to a half-century low, employers insist they must scramble to lure applicants.

The shadow of age bias in hiring, though, is long. Tens of thousands of workers say that even with the right qualifications for a job, they are repeatedly turned away because they are over 50, or even 40, and considered too old.

The problem is getting more scrutiny after revelations that hundreds of employers shut out middle-aged and older Americans in their recruiting on Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms. Those disclosures are supercharging a wave of litigation.

But as cases make their way to court, the legal road for proving age discrimination, always difficult, has only roughened. Recent decisions by federal appeals courts in Chicago and Atlanta have limited the reach of anti-discrimination protections and made it even harder for job applicants to win.

It is complicating an already challenging juncture of life. Workers over 50 — about 54 million Americans — are now facing much more precarious financial circumstances, a legacy of the recession.

More than half of workers over 50 lose longtime jobs before they are ready to retire, according to a recent analysis by the Urban Institute and ProPublica. Of those, nine out of 10 never recover their previous earning power. Some are able to find only piecemeal or gig work.

“If you lose your job at an older age, it’s really hard to get a new one,” said Richard Johnson, an Urban Institute economist who worked on the analysis.

Read the complete article here.

Walmart CEO to shareholders: America’s minimum wage is ‘too low’

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From today’s CNN News Online:

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon thinks the federal minimum wage is “too low.” Now the head of the country’s largest private employer is calling on Congress to raise it beyond $7.25 an hour.

“The federal minimum wage is lagging behind,” Doug McMillon said at Walmart’s annual shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas on Wednesday.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 2009, but McMillon’s surprise comments may give lawmakers an incentive to act. McMillon’s call may also ease pressure on Walmart.Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, along with workers’ rights groups, have called on Walmart to raise its wages above the company’s current $11-an-hour minimum.

McMillon said “it’s time for Congress to put a thoughtful plan in place” to increase wages. It was the first time he has pushed Congress to raise pay nationwide, according to the company.

Any plan to increase the minimum wage, however, should take into account cost of living differences around the country “to avoid unintended consequences,” McMillon said. He also noted that a hike may need to be phased in over time.

McMillon defended Walmart’s moves to raise wages, expand benefits and train its 1.5 million US workers in recent years. The company has steadily been raising its minimum wage, boosting it to $11 an hour more than a year ago. That’s up 50% in the last four years, McMillon said.

McMillon added that Walmart pays more than $11 in some markets to “recruit and retain the talent we need to run a good business.”In a hotel ballroom near Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Sanders pressed the world’s largest retailer to increase its wages and called out McMillon for his nearly $24 million in total pay last year. Sanders also introduced a shareholder resolution that would put hourly workers on Walmart’s board of directors. The resolution was voted down on Wednesday.

Read the complete article here.

Many Adults Would Struggle to Find $400 in an emergency, the Fed Finds

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From today’s New York Times:

Four in 10 American adults wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that could be quickly paid off, a new Federal Reserve survey finds.

About 27 percent of people surveyed would need to borrow or sell something to pay for such a bill, and 12 percent would not be able to cover it at all, according to the Fed’s 2018 report on the economic well-being of households, which was released Thursday.

The share that could cover such an expense more easily has been climbing steadily and now stands at 61 percent, up from just half when the Fed started this annual survey in 2013. Still, the finding underlines the fact that many Americans remain on the edge financially even as this economic expansion is approaching record length and people have become more optimistic.

Household finances over all have shown a marked improvement over the life of this report, thanks in large part to an improving labor market that has lifted wages and left more Americans with jobs. Three-quarters of adults said they were “doing O.K.” or “living comfortably” when asked about their economic well-being, up from 63 percent in 2013.

Underlying disparities persist. Just 52 percent of rural residents said their local economy was doing well, compared with 66 percent of city dwellers. And while nearly seven in 10 white adults viewed their area’s economy as good or excellent, only six in 10 Hispanic adults and fewer than half of black adults said the same thing.

Read the complete article here.