Labor Union Blog

As we celebrate America’s workers this weekend, a new study shows how hard it is for low-wage workers to make a decent living because their employers engage in wage theft and break laws on pay.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, a group of respected academics estimates that 68 percent of the workers surveyed are routinely denied proper overtime pay and often are paid less than minimum wage. The average low-wage worker lost more than $2,600 in annual income due to the violations, 15 percent of their yearly earnings.

The study, “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers,” was released earlier this week. The  three  city  surveys  were  conducted  throughout  2008  in  eight languages  by  researchers  at  the  National  Employment  Law  Project (NELP), the  University  of California-Los Angeles, University of Illinois-Chicago, Cornell  University and Rutgers University.

Those surveyed are employed in various low-wage industries, including retail, restaurants and grocery stores, carwashes, building services and industrial laundries, home health care, child care, construction, warehousing, transportation and garment manufacturing.

The researchers cite, for example, the plight of carwash workers in Los Angeles. In February, the Los Angeles city attorney filed criminal charges against owners of four carwashes, charging them with failure to pay the minimum wage and provide employees with breaks. Dozens of carwash workers said they were paid a flat rate of $35 to $40 a day for shifts that usually lasted more than eight hours, with as little as 15 minutes a day for lunch—some worked for customer tips alone. The workers did not receive medical care for lacerations and acid burns caused by the machinery and chemicals they used. All told, these carwash workers could be owed close to half a million dollars in wages, the study estimated.

Says Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a co-author of the report:  

This report exposes a world of work in which the core protections that many Americans take for granted are failing significant numbers of workers. The sheer breadth of the problem suggests the country’s work laws are simply not adequate for the 21st century, and that the laws we do have are not being adequately enforced.

The study follows a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found the U.S. Department of Labor has not sufficiently protected workers or penalized employers in cases of minimum wage and other violations. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis responded to that report by announcing that the department’s Wage and Hour Division will add 250 new investigators, a staff increase of more than one-third.  

According to the “Broken Laws” report:

• One in four of the workers surveyed (26 percent) was paid below the minimum wage in a given workweek.
• Three quarters (76 percent) of those who worked overtime were not paid the required time and a half. 
• More than two-thirds (69 percent) did not get meal breaks they were entitled to.
• Seventy percent did not get any pay for work performed outside their regular shift.
• Almost all (89 percent) of in-home child care workers earned less than the minimum wage.

 Annette Bernhardt, NELP’s policy co-director, told The New York Times:

These practices are not just morally reprehensible, but they’re bad for the economy. When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.

This study also challenges the conventional wisdom that immigrant workers are the only ones who face such problems. While foreign-born Latino workers were the largest group to be shortchanged wages, all groups of workers in the survey were treated poorly. For example, women were significantly more likely than men to experience minimum wage violations, and among U.S.-born workers, African Americans had three times the violation rates of their white counterparts.

Kim Bobo, author of the book Wage Theft in America, agrees. She says it’s a myth that only undocumented immigrant workers are being denied their pay:

I’ve talked to restaurant workers who told me about having their tips taken [by the employer] and certified nursing assistants who stay over their shifts to make sure they brief their replacements on the patients’ conditions but don’t get paid for the overtime. It’s not just immigrant workers, it’s everywhere. 

The “Broken Laws” report outlines three recommendations to improve worker protections:

• Strengthen government enforcement of employment and labor laws;
• Update legal standards for the 21st century labor market by raising the minimum wage, updating health and safety standards, ending exclusions that deny workers coverage and strengthening the right of workers to organize through labor law reform; and
• Establish equal status for immigrants in the workplace.  

Tedmund Hall
Arnaldo Quinones

Firefighters across the country are mourning the loss of two heroic Los Angeles firefighters who were killed while battling the wildfires raging in Southern California. 

Tedmund Hall and Arnaldo Quinones, both members of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 1014, died Aug. 30. It appears the two were in a truck searching for an escape route for corrections personnel and inmates of an area prison camp when their truck went over the side of a dirt road and fell 800 feet into a canyon.

Services for the firefighters will be Sept. 12 at Dodgers Stadium. 

IAFF President Harold Schaitberger says:

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Hall and Quinones families. They made the ultimate sacrifice trying to save the lives of many others. Their heroic acts and dedication to duty will not be forgotten.”

Local 1014 President David Gillotte praised both men, saying:

“Brothers Hall and Quinones brought commitment, courage and honor to all that they touched as fire fighters and proud members of Local 1014.”

Gillotte says Hall, 47, was a frequent participant in union activities and dedicated many hours of service to protecting the prison camp. Quinones, 35, was “a rising star in the department and in our local, and was one of those genuinely good guys that you always want to have in your corner,” Gillotte adds.

Hall is survived by his wife, Katherine, sons Randall and Steven, and parents, Roland Ray and Donna Marie Hall.

Quinones is survived by his wife, Loressa, who is expecting their first child in the next several weeks, and his mother, Sonia Quinones.

Hall and Quinones were among the more than 5,000 fire service personnel working to contain the wildfires that have already charred more than 122,000 acres and destroyed more than 50 structures in the state.

Thousands of residents have been evacuated, and firefighters in the field report the combination of tough terrain and unrelenting weather conditions has made the fires difficult to contain. Temperatures have remained near 100 degrees and winds are blowing as high as 30 miles per hour.

The Rev. Dr. Climon Smith spoke out yesterday in New Orleans in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

In an open letter to U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, 118 Louisiana ministers and religious leaders are demanding the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to protect dignity and justice for all workers.

Hailing from across the state and representing a broad spectrum of faiths, the coalition of religious leaders announced their support for the Employee Free Choice Act in a press conference in New Orleans yesterday. They presented their open letter and asked their senators to recognize that the vital freedom of workers to form unions and bargain is under threat.

The letter reads, in part:

Whenever people stand together in mutual commitment and for the common purpose of  promoting and protecting their most essential dignity—a dignity that issues directly from God—then we as people of faith and good conscience have a moral responsibility to stand with them. We have a responsibility to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We make this appeal to the conscience of every Member of Congress.

The Employee Free Choice Act presents us with an opportunity to pass legislation that is at once economically and morally efficacious for the people of our nation and our economy. Even as unions serve as vehicles by which poor workers lift themselves from poverty and into the middle class, the increased purchasing power of union members provides an effective and consistent stimulus for the general economy. When workers form unions, they have an opportunity to empower themselves and provide security for their families. They have a meaningful voice on the job and participate in a collaborative effort with their employers to fashion mutually beneficial working conditions.

You can read the entire letter here.

The efforts of faith leaders and congregations have been a critical part of the coalition supporting Employee Free Choice. This weekend, more than 1,000 congregations across the country will celebrate and honor workers.

Members of Congress will be returning to Washington, D.C., next week, and they’ll get a reminder that America’s workers need the Employee Free Choice Act. The campaign to get the U.S. Senate and House to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain kicks off the fall with two TV ads.

The two ads, “We Don’t Ask” and “Fabric of America,” connect the Employee Free Choice Act to a healthier economy, where workers have a chance to join the middle class and get fair wages and benefits.

Produced by American Rights at Work, the ads will begin running on Labor Day around the country. In addition to the ads, supporters of the freedom to form unions will keep up their efforts calling, writing and speaking to members of Congress about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. On Sept. 10, allies of workers from a broad coalition are coming to Washington from 15 states to ask their senators to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Kimberly Freeman, executive director of American Rights at Work, says the ads are part of a large grassroots effort to restore a stronger, fairer economy:

We are redoubling our efforts to show how the Employee Free Choice Act will rebuild the economy and restore workers’ rights. As lawmakers return from the August recess, they will be reminded that Americans see the Employee Free Choice Act as fundamental to meaningful labor law reform and creating an economy that works for everyone.

You can help get great Employee Free Choice Act ads like these out by clicking here to donate to the Turn Around America Fund.

Georgetown University President John DeGioia (right) awarded AFL-CIO President John Sweeney the university’s highest honor.

It’s rare for a major university like Georgetown to grant honorary degrees. But rare are individuals like AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Last night in a formal robe and gown ceremony followed by a celebration with Archbishop Donald Wuerl in Georgetown’s elegant Riggs Library, Georgetown University President John DeGioia conferred upon Sweeney the degree, Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

Sweeney has dedicated his life to improving the lives of America’s working families, motivated in large part by his religious faith, one infused with the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church. Recognizing how Catholic doctrine influenced Sweeney’s life-long quest for justice and fairness for working people, DeGioia explained the importance of honoring Sweeney:

For many years, John Sweeney has worked to champion the dignity of workers—and work. And we at Georgetown take seriously the Catholic commitment to social justice for working people that has inspired John Sweeney’s remarkable career.  That commitment has recently led us, with the help of the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation, to inaugurate a new effort here, the “Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor,” which we will formally inaugurate later this fall—and in whose work we hope to engage many of you in the years to come.  Through its work, we hope to contribute, in our own way, to the tradition that John Sweeney has so well exemplified.

Throughout Sweeney’s more than 50 years of serving those who toil to earn their pay, he has joined his work in the labor movement with dedication to the faith community. He was an original member of the Catholic Common Ground Project, formed by the late Cardinal Bernardin. He participated in an a Vatican Social Justice conference and has been honored by Catholic Charities of Washington, and by Catholic universities such as his alma mater, Iona College in New York, and Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Noted labor historian and Georgetown professor Joseph McCartin, who was instrumental in the process which led Georgetown to recognize Sweeney, read the degree citation, which states in part:

Driven by family, faith, and a profound sense of justice, John J. Sweeney has had an indelible impact on the struggle for workers’ rights in this country and around the world. His efforts, as president of the AFL-CIO and with the many other organizations he has served, have always championed the right of all people to be able to live and work with dignity.

From an early age, John Sweeney understood the importance of worker solidarity and its role in Catholic social teaching. He credits his beliefs to the values and ethics instilled in him by his parents, to his father’s participation in the local transit worker’s union in New York City, and to his Catholic education at Cardinal Hayes High School, Iona College, and Xavier Labor School. Taken together, this formative upbringing instilled in Mr. Sweeney a sense of purpose that he has carried with him throughout his whole life.

Sweeney, who has been president of the AFL-CIO for 14 years, will retire at our convention in Pittsburgh that begins September 13.  The degree citation further describes his dedication, fueled by his faith, to achieving justice for working families:

Imbued with an understanding of social justice and the dignity of work that was informed by his Catholic faith, Mr. Sweeney took his first position as a labor organizer with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers—an organization that later merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. From there, he joined the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), eventually becoming its president in 1980.

During his 15 years of leadership, Mr. Sweeney increased membership by 75 percent, despite an extremely challenging political environment for unions at the time. In 1995, pledging a ‘New Voice,’ John Sweeney was elected President of the AFL-CIO.

Under Sweeney’s leadership, the AFL-CIO became the nation’s strongest grassroots political action movement to work for progressive change. He enlarged the labor movement by founding Working America, an affiliate for people without a union on the job that now has 3 million members. He forged new alliances with communities of faith, academics, students and more—and through new partnerships with worker centers and workers who are doing groundbreaking organizing on their own.

The American labor movement has been working fiercely to stop [our nation’s] slide into inequality and we are gaining traction in our struggle to turn around our economy and make it work for the many, instead of the privileged few… Our values call us to bring even greater good to society with universal health care, job creation, stewardship of our planet’s resources, stronger regulations governing our financial industry, trade laws respecting workers rights’ around the globe, new protections for today’s immigrants and federal legislation to restore workers’ freedom to form unions.

Saying faith “has been the bedrock of my life,” Sweeney said at the ceremony that the “Holy Father [the Pope] reaffirms our belief in government as a legitimate tool for correcting injustice and inequality, and for regulating business. He writes: ‘The market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak.’

He also reinforces the spiritual teaching that society should honor work—work is a way of worshipping God and participating in God’s ongoing act of creation.  Honoring the dignity of work is the core of our shared support for free labor unions, for the absolute right of workers to join together and bargain collectively, and the absolute obligation of corporations to honor those rights and hold themselves to higher standards of social responsibility.

 

As someone who has had the honor of working with President Sweeney for more than 18 years, it is my turn to recognize AFL-CIO President John Sweeney for holding me, and many of us in the labor movement, to these higher standards of social responsibility.

Some 216,000 U.S. jobs were cut in August, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data out today. That worsens the unofficial unemployment rate to 9.7 percent, the highest rate since June 1983. The rate was 9.4 percent in July.

If underemployed workers or those who want a job but have given up looking are counted, the broader U.S. unemployment rate stands at 16.8 percent, up from 16.3 percent last month. That means more than 25 million Americans need jobs or full-time work but cannot find it. Worse yet, there now are 5 million long-term unemployed workers, the worst such figure in any recent recession. That means there were nearly six workers looking for every job available. 

The 216,000 job loss is the smallest monthly decline since last year. Employers cut 276,000 jobs in July, compared with an average of 691,000 per month in the first quarter.

There is some good news: The economic recovery package has created about 1.2 million jobs, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Without the stimulus package, the monthly job loss would have been double what it was just six months ago.

Jobs were lost in all other sectors, except for health care, which experienced a small gain. Manufacturing lost another 63,000 jobs in August. 

Workers of color were very hard hit. The unemployment rate among African Americans remained steady at 15.1 percent in August and rose slightly to 13 percent for Hispanics.  

The broad sweep of the nation’s economic crisis is evident in the slow wage growth. Average hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers rose by 10 cents  to $18.58. Between December 2008 and June 2009 private-sector wages grew only by 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, production and nonsupervisory workers—representing about 80 percent of employees—have seen their annual wage growth slow drastically to 1.4 percent after a relatively steady growth of 4 percent from 2007 to 2008.

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “The Recession’s Hidden Cost,” details what the authors describe as a “remarkable slowdown” in hourly wages, and traces its impact across groups of private-sector workers. EPI economist Heidi Shierholz predicts the jobless rate will reach 10 percent by the end of this year and says the latest jobless figures show that layoffs are continuing, but that employers are not hiring new workers. She says:

The fallout from this recession is an equal opportunity disaster for millions of Americans throughout the labor market, and for the economy as a whole. Those who are out of work are facing longer spells of unemployment and rising competition for scarce job openings as employers continue to downsize.

That’s especially bad news for new college graduates who face the highest unemployment rate in 25 years. At the same time, they are carrying record student loan debt, expensive health insurance costs and an average of $4,100 in credit card debt.

Several economists point out that while this jobs report could have been worse, the numbers confirm the need for a second round of economic stimulus.