Wage theft can take many forms, but if you're in any doubt that it's not some fringe practice, that in fact major companies practice it, check out these two stories. A lawsuit involving workers misclassified as independent contractors by Lowe's is being settled for as much as $6.5 million, plus more than $1.5 million in legal fees. Misclassification is when an employer gets out of paying things like the minimum wage and overtime, workers compensation, and benefits by saying the worker is an independent contractor.
In the Lowe's case, the company made that claim even though, according to the complaint leading to the settlement:
... Lowe’s had the right to control, and did in fact control, all aspects of installation jobs by, including requiring that the installers to identify themselves as “installers for Lowe’s” or by saying “I work for Lowe’s”; wear Lowe’s hats and shirts at work sites; use signs stating “Lowe’s Installation”; attend training by Lowe’s; and comply with Lowe’s production requirements.
The complaint also alleged that:
• Lowe’s Production Office managed each installation project;
• Lowe’s set the fees to be earned by each home improvement contractor;
• Lowe’s imposed a non-compete covenant on installers; and
• Lowe’s marketed the contractors’ services on its website on an “Installation” page that provided “Let Us Do The Installation For You” with our “trained installers,” who services were “guaranteed by Lowe’s warranty.”
But, you know, they were totally independent contractors. Meanwhile,
TGI Friday's faces wage theft allegations by 42,000 workers who say they weren't paid minimum wage or overtime:
In New York and Virginia, workers say they were required to arrive well before the start of business hours and work after the restaurants closed without getting minimum wage and/or overtime pay. They also accused the chain of using a centralized time-keeping system that shaved hours of their work from their records and made them work off the clock doing non-tipped tasks such as cleaning and preparing food in bulk. In Massachusetts, the lawsuit said that workers who put in more than 40 hours a week, the threshold for receiving time and a half in overtime pay, worked any additional hours off the clock. They also say waitstaff were forced to give some of their tips to host staff, who are paid the full hourly minimum wage, reducing the waitstaff’s pay to below the required minimum wage.
It's theft. It's breaking the law. It should be penalized as such.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Whaddaya know:
- College teachers unionizing might not sound like a victory for low-wage workers, but when the teachers in question are part-time adjuncts, that's just what it is. Now, organizers say adjuncts are on the brink of a win at Maryland's Goucher College:
The tentative count in the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised election produced a tie, with 33 adjuncts voting in favor of the new Goucher Faculty Union and 33 against, according to Maureen Winter, one of the instructors who helped organize the group.
But that 33-33 count is misleading because the legal challenges against most pro-union votes are spurious, Winter contends, and there is every indication that the union will prevail when the NLRB makes a ruling on the challenged ballots in the coming weeks. Nine ballots—all of them pro-union votes—were challenged by the lawyers for Goucher, she explains, even though all nine of the voters were specifically named as eligible in a pre-election agreement between Goucher and the union.
Goucher's administration retained a major anti-union law firm, but it looks like a string of wins for adjuncts in the Washington, DC, area is likely to continue.
- Some ideas to save labor's sinking ship.
- A giant corporation does the right thing. Aetna's CEO says the company is raising its base pay to $16, affecting 5,700 workers currently earning $13 or $14 an hour.
- A small business owner tells how she brought employee turnover to nearly zero. The answer is paid sick days, and the business, in case you're in the area, is Vermont's Alchemist Cannery.
-
- The story behind the century-old labor song "Solidarity Forever."
Education