Category Archives: #WorkRights

New Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Would Remedy Decades of Injustice

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From The Nation Magazine:

There are about 2 million domestic workers in the country, a workforce that is only growing larger as baby boomers age and millennials have children. But despite the size of the workforce and the importance of the work it performs, domestic workers are excluded from basic workplace protections and face rampant abuse and exploitation. Eight states and Seattle have passed bills of domestic-worker rights that extend some of these protections, but outside of those places, domestic workers labor in people’s homes with little recourse if they get hurt or taken advantage of.

That could change under legislation that was just unveiled in Congress. On Wednesday, Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Pramila Jayapal announced a federal bill of rights for domestic workers, the first-ever nationwide legislation that would extend working rights to domestic workers and offer them financial stability and safety. The bill would ensure that domestic workers are covered by some basic labor laws: the right to overtime pay when they put in more than 40 hours a week, to the protections of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to form unions, and to recourse against harassment and discrimination. It also extends new ones, such as the right to meal and rest breaks, paid sick days, advanced notice of scheduling, written agreements, and privacy and other protections for live-in workers.

As of 2012, domestic workers made less than $11 an hour at the median, while nearly a quarter were paid less than their state’s minimum wage. They very rarely get health insurance or retirement benefits from work. Their schedules are usually dictated by their employer’s whims and wishes, even when this interferes with sleeping and eating. Rates of injury are high, as are incidents of discrimination and harassment.

Read the complete article here.

G.M. to Idle Plants, Cutting Thousands of Jobs in North America as Sales Slow

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From today’s New York Times:

General Motors announced Monday that it planned to idle five factories in North America and cut roughly 14,000 jobs in a bid to trim costs. It was a jarring reflection of the auto industry’s adjustment to changing consumer tastes and sluggish sales.

The move, which follows job reductions by Ford Motor Company, further pares the work force in a sector that President Trump had promised to bolster. Referring to G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, he told reporters, “I spoke to her and I stressed the fact that I am not happy with what she did.”

Mr. Trump also invoked the rescue of G.M. after its bankruptcy filing almost a decade ago. “You know, the United States saved General Motors,” he told reporters, “and for her to take that company out of Ohio is not good. I think she’s going to put something back in soon.”

In addition to an assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, the cuts affect factories in Michigan, Maryland and the Canadian province of Ontario.

Part of the retrenchment is a response to a slowdown in new-car salesthat has prompted automakers to slim their operations and shed jobs. And earlier bets on smaller cars have had to be unwound as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles as a result of low gasoline prices.

In addition, automakers have paid a price for the trade battle that Mr. Trump set in motion. In June G.M. slashed its profit outlook for the year because tariffs were driving up production costs, raising prices even on domestic steel. Rising interest rates are also generating headwinds.

Read the complete article here.

Google workers worldwide walk off job to protest its treatment of women

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

Carrying signs with messages such as “Don’t be evil,” Google employees around the world are walking off the job Thursday in a protest against what they said is the tech company’s mishandling of sexual misconduct allegations against executives.

Employees staged walkouts at offices from Tokyo to Singapore to London to Chicago. Hundreds protested outside Google’s office in New York, and others were expected to do so in California later in the day.

In Dublin, organizers used megaphones to address the crowd of men and women to express their support for victims of sexual harassment. Other workers shied away from the media spotlight, with people gathering instead indoors, in packed conference rooms or lobbies, to show their solidarity with abuse victims.

Protesters in New York carried signs with such messages as “Not OK Google” and the company’s onetime motto, “Don’t be evil.” Many employees outside Google’s New York offices cited job security in refusing to talk.

In an unsigned statement from organizers, sent from a company account, protesters called for an end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination. They also want Google to commit to ending pay inequity and to create a publicly disclosed sexual harassment report and a clearer process for reporting complaints.

Read the complete article here.

 

Miscarrying at Work: The Physical Toll of Pregnancy and Gender Discrimination

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From today’s New York Times:

If you are a Verizon customer on the East Coast, odds are good that your cellphone or tablet arrived by way of a beige, windowless warehouse near Tennessee’s border with Mississippi.

Inside, hundreds of workers, many of them women, lift and drag boxes weighing up to 45 pounds, filled with iPhones and other gadgets. There is no air-conditioning on the floor of the warehouse, which is owned and operated by a contractor. Temperatures there can rise past 100 degrees. Workers often faint, according to interviews with 20 current and former employees.

One evening in January 2014, after eight hours of lifting, Erica Hayes ran to the bathroom. Blood drenched her jeans.

She was 23 and in the second trimester of her first pregnancy. She had spent much of the week hoisting the warehouse’s largest boxes from one conveyor belt to the next. Ever since she learned she was pregnant, she had been begging her supervisor to let her work with lighter boxes, she said in an interview. She said her boss repeatedly said no.

She fainted on her way out of the bathroom that day. The baby growing inside of her, the one she had secretly hoped was a girl, was gone.

“It was the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life,” Ms. Hayes said.

Three other women in the warehouse also had miscarriages in 2014, when it was owned by a contractor called New Breed Logistics. Later that year, a larger company, XPO Logistics, bought New Breed and the warehouse. The problems continued. Another woman miscarried there this summer. Then, in August, Ceeadria Walker did, too.

The women had all asked for light duty. Three said they brought in doctors’ notes recommending less taxing workloads and shorter shifts. They said supervisors disregarded the letters.

Pregnancy discrimination is widespread in corporate America. Some employers deny expecting mothers promotions or pay raises; others fire them before they can take maternity leave. But for women who work in physically demanding jobs, pregnancy discrimination often can come with even higher stakes.

The New York Times reviewed thousands of pages of court and other public records involving workers who said they had suffered miscarriages, gone into premature labor or, in one case, had a stillborn baby after their employers rejected their pleas for assistance — a break from flipping heavy mattresses, lugging large boxes and pushing loaded carts.

Read the complete article here.

Overworking is overrated and unhealthy. Why so hard to respect work-life balance?

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From today’s Washington Post:

Why does our society perpetuate the idea that people must be constantly working in order to be worthy of respect?

I get tired of the way our culture fetishizes overworking. People contribute to this by competing over who has worked the hardest, longest hours as though overworking makes you a better person. This attitude can lead to a feeling of shame for taking a day off for being sick, tired, or needing a mental health day. In our very public, social media sharing society it can feel like we need to constantly “prove” how hard we are working to the watching world.

Instead, we should encourage the people around us to work hard for their goals, but also encourage them to remember to take breaks, relax and enjoy life. Overdoing anything is never healthy, and we should aim to be better at balancing work and play in our culture.

Read the complete article here.

With 8 Years of Gains, Unemployment Is Lowest It Has Been Since 1969

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From today’s New York Times:

The unemployment rate fell to a nearly five-decade low in September, punctuating a remarkable rebound in the ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a global financial crisis.

The 134,000 jobs that employers added in September reflected the slowest pace of growth in a year, and the growth in wages cooled slightly from August.

But there is little evidence that those mildly disappointing figures suggest a broader slowdown. The report on Friday extended the current run of monthly job growth to eight straight years, double the previous record.

By nearly any measure, today’s labor market is the strongest since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Job growth has repeatedly defied economists’ predictions of a slowdown. African-Americans, Latinos and members of other groups that often face discrimination are experiencing some of their lowest rates of joblessness on record.

“I view this as the strongest labor market in a generation,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor. “These really are the good times.”

The current economic expansion is already one of the longest on record, and there is no sign that it is losing steam. Economic output last quarter increased at its fastest pace in four years, and the current quarter looks strong as well. Yields on United States government bonds have risen sharply in recent days, an indication that investors expect faster growth, and more inflation, in coming years.

For months, the one knock on the economy has been that strong hiring has not yet translated into robust pay gains for many workers. There are signs that that could finally be changing.

The 2.8 percent increase in average hourly earnings last month compared with a year earlier was down slightly from the 2.9 rate in August. But earnings growth has drifted upward in recent months, and other measures show stronger growth.

Workers at the bottom of the earnings ladder are seeing particularly strong growth: Amazon announced this week that it would raise the minimum wage for all of its employees in the United States to at least $15 an hour.

Read the complete article here.

Amazon announces it’s raising minimum wage for U.S. workers to $15 per hour

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

Amazon is boosting its minimum wage for all U.S. workers to $15 per hour starting next month.

The company said Tuesday that the wage increase will benefit more than 350,000 workers, which includes full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal positions. It includes Whole Foods employees. Amazon’s hourly operations and customer service employees, some who already make $15 per hour, will also see a wage increase, the Seattle-based company said.

Amazon raising minimum wage for U.S. workers to $15 per hour

Amazon has more than 575,000 employees globally. Pay for workers at Amazon can vary by location. Its starting pay is $10 an hour at a warehouse in Austin, Texas, and $13.50 an hour in Robbinsville, N.J. The median pay for an Amazon employee last year was $28,446, according to government filings, which includes full-time, part-time and temporary workers.

Amazon said its public policy team will start pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

“We intend to advocate for a minimum wage increase that will have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people and families across this country,” Jay Carney, senior vice president of Amazon global corporate affairs, said in a statement.

Read the complete article here.

The Old Rules of the Workplace Aren’t Working. At Least Not for Women.

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From today’s New York Times:

Despite clear gains by women in so many aspects of society over the decades, their progress in the workplace seems to have stalled. It is as easy to find a man named John walking the corridors of American power as it is to find a woman.

The number of female chief executives in Fortune 500 companies is 5 percent and has actually declined — by 25 percent — over the past year. In Britain, a study by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission found that a third of employers still think it’s O.K. to ask a woman during a job interview if she plans to have children. It’s not.

Women receive the majority of college degrees in the United States — and more advanced degrees — and yet they still must work four extra months to earn what their white male colleagues earned the year before, according to United States census data. When those numbers are segmented by race, it’s clear: Women of color must work even longer.

And then, of course, there is the rise of the #MeToo movement, which revealed as never before the sexual pressure many women face in the workplace. At least one study has found that 81 percent of women say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment.

Economists have long contended that there is a clear financial case for gender equality: Companies are more profitable, more collaborative and more inclusive when they hire women. True gender equality, research from McKinsey & Company has shown, would increase the gross national product in the United States by 26 percent.

What is it that seems to stand in the way of greater strides by women in the workplace?

Read the complete article here.

One Reason for Slow Wage Growth? More Benefits, Sort of

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From today’s New York Times:

One of the most perplexing questions about the nation’s economic recovery is why a tight labor market has not translated into faster wage growth. Part of the answer appears to be that American workers are receiving a growing share of compensation in the form of benefits rather than wages.

The average worker received 32 percent of total compensation in benefits including bonuses, paid leave and company contributions to insurance and retirement plans in the second quarter of 2018. That was up from 27 percent in 2000, federal data show. The rising cost of health insurance accounts for only about one-third of the trend. And the data do not include the increased prevalence of nonmonetary benefits like flexible hours or working from home, or perks like gyms and “summer Fridays.”

Best Buy, the electronics retailer, began in July to offer four weeks of paid time off to its employees, including part-time workers, to take care of family members. The company decided that paid leave was the best way to show appreciation for its employees, said Jeff Shelman, a company spokesman. “Our philosophy is that our employees are our most important asset, and we want to take care of them and allow them to take care of the people that matter most to them in their lives,” he said.

For many workers, the returns from one of the longest economic expansions in American history have been paltry. Wages have grown more slowly than the economy in the wake of the 2008 crisis, and faster growth in recent months has been offset by rising inflation. Between August 2017 and August 2018, the most recent available data, average hourly wages increased by 2.9 percent, but after adjusting for inflation, the increase was just 0.2 percent, according to the Labor Department’s flagship survey.

Read the complete article here.

Amazon is considering up to 3,000 cashierless AmazonGo stores by 2021

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

Amazon.com Inc. is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with the matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains such as 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops such as Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks.

Amazon is considering up to 3,000 cashierless AmazonGo stores by 2021

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos sees eliminating meal-time logjams in busy cities as the best way for Amazon to reinvent the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, during which most spending still occurs. But he’s still experimenting with the best format: a convenience store that sells fresh prepared foods as well as a limited grocery selection similar to 7-Eleven franchises, or a place to simply pick up a quick bite to eat for people in a rush, similar to the U.K.-based chain Pret a Manger, one of the people said,

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.

The company unveiled its first cashierless store near its headquarters in Seattle in 2016 and has since announced two additional sites in Seattle and one in Chicago. Two of the new stores offer only a limited selection of salads, sandwiches and snacks, showing that Amazon is experimenting with the concept simply as a meal-on-the-run option.

Read the complete article here.