President Obama's announcement that his administration plans to
expand overtime protections was very good news for workers. Raising the amount under which all salaried workers are eligible for overtime pay from less than $24,000 to more than $50,000 means that workers will either get paid fairly for the time they work or they'll get more time off work, likely meaning jobs created for other workers.
The video above is a perfect example of the kind of abuses Obama's move will block. As Jared Bernstein writes:
Trust me on this: you'd be very hard pressed to come up with a rule change or executive order -- i.e., non-legislation -- to lift the pay of this many middle-wage workers. That's important, because we live in a time when the bargaining power of many who depend on their paychecks is much diminished relative to the clout and power of those whose income derives from their wealth portfolios. [...]
All the president did Monday was to put a powerful thumb on the scale to add some balance on behalf of working people. And for that he deserves our thanks.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Editorial staff at Salon announced plans to unionize:
We are doing this because we believe in our publication and want it to be successful. We’re especially proud to work for a media organization that has championed progressive values for nearly twenty years. We believe this organizing campaign is a positive and public way for us to put those values into practice, right here at home. In the wake of the Gawker staff’s vote to organize with the WGAE, we see an opportunity to help establish standards and practices in Internet journalism. It’s an exciting moment for our field, and we want Salon to be at the forefront of change.
We also fervently believe that an employee union is in the best interests of Salon, in the short and long term, and will yield benefits of many kinds. It will solidify Salon’s position as a progressive leader, generate tremendous employee goodwill, and transform the workplace environment in positive ways. We suspect that over the long haul it will also be good business. We want Salon to be an even better place to work and a stronger company, and that by organizing, we will strengthen our mission, our vision and our productivity.
- Maryland's minimum wage won't get to $10.10 until 2018, but it took a step up to $8.25 on Wednesday.
- The UFCW is shifting the focus of its Walmart campaign from organizing to media. This is not super confidence-inspiring.
- But elsewhere, on-the-ground organizing is very much a thing:
Workers from eight cleaning companies, who work at 50 Twin Cities retail locations, participated in a one-day strike—the largest yet in their campaign to raise standards for retail janitors.
- Victoria's Secret is doing away with on-call scheduling—a move that is, in its way, as big as raising wages:
The chain told employees it would no longer use the controversial scheduling practice, which requires staff to be available for shifts that can be cancelled at the last minute with no compensation, three current and former staff told BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity.
It also told staff that they will be notified in advance if upcoming shifts may involve “extensions” that require them to work past their scheduled end time. Workers will also be able to sign up for extra hours if they want them, the ex-employees told BuzzFeed News. Store managers were briefed on the new policies last week.
That means people can better plan their lives, their child care, and their transportation, and have a better guess at what their paychecks will be in advance.
- A judge upheld Louisville's minimum wage increase, in a piece of good news for workers. And:
- "I get food stamps, and I'm not ashamed—I'm angry."
I understand that there are some skills that are rarer or more necessary or valuable than others. But not only is my time and labor not as highly valued as yours, it's legal to deliberately keep me in poverty. And yes, every time an employer hires anyone at less than a living wage, or at part-time hours, it is a deliberate choice. Employers make it because they can, because they can get away with it. Because it's legal to pay a wage that I can't live on even working 40 hours a week. It's legal to use scheduling software to justify cutting hours to 20 a week. To pay certain employees half of the minimum wage and expect patrons to make up for it with tips.
It's legal to jigger schedules so that employees must make last-minute arrangements for child care or transportation. It's legal to force employees to either cancel plans or lose their jobs. Once upon a time, it was possible to work a day job and a night job. But when you never know when you're going to work for even one job, it's virtually impossible to hold down two unless you have some sort of skill you can freelance. Add the realities of child care, transportation, and communication into the mix, and most low-income workers can forget it.
Education