#Labor Department

[lifewithchronicpain]

The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing a sweeping new rule that would put an end to the decades-old practice of allowing employers to pay workers with disabilities less than minimum wage.

The agency issued a proposed rule this week to phase out what are known as 14(c) certificates. Under a federal law dating back to 1938, employers can obtain the special certificates from the government to pay those with disabilities less than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.

If the rule is finalized, the Labor Department would immediately cease issuing new certificates. At that point, existing certificate holders would have three years to stop paying workers with disabilities so-called subminimum wage. (Read more at link)

It shouldn’t have taken this long but I’m glad it’s finally being done.

[threefeline]

Haven’t seen anything about this here yet but they’re trying to pass something in March that basically makes companies like Lyft and DoorDash to reclassify their workers from "contractors" to "employees" and idk this is kinda cool. It basically makes them follow six criteria to see wether the worker is an ‘employee’ or a ‘contractor’ whereas Trump’s old rule was only two and it was like super weirdly vaguely worded

The title is a bit inflammatory but the article describes that it’s a pretty big win for the workers so

[follow-up-news]

The U.S. Department of Labor wants a federal judge to prevent Hyundai and two other Alabama companies from what the government contends is the illegal employment of children. The complaint filed Thursday follows an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division that found a 13-year-old worked between 50 and 60 hours a week operating machines on an assembly line that formed sheet metal into auto body parts. The defendants include Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama LLC, SMART Alabama LLC and Best Practice Service, LLC. The lawsuit said it seeks to end the use of child labor and require that the companies give up profits linked to the alleged practice.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Speaking Plainly About Who Is Robbing You

Hamilton Nolan

People who are saving money for retirement often seek out professional financial advice … What many professional financial advisers do instead, however, is to advise people to do things that will benefit the financial adviser … It is a form of legalized robbery, of polite fraud.

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The Biden administration tried to make this illegal. In April, the Labor Department finalized a rule that would require retirement advisers to be fiduciaries, meaning that they would be legally required to act in their clients’ best interests.

It would make it illegal for advisers to rip their clients off.

Many people probably assume that it is already illegal for their financial advisers to rip them off.

It is not. 

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Of course, the Retiree Robbery Industry was quite opposed to this new rule that would prevent them from robbing you.

“The lobbying group ACLI — whose board of directors includes executives from Prudential, Lincoln Financial and New York Life — argued in January that the government threatened to create an ‘impermissible barrier’ between savers and advisers,” the Post reports. “An allied industry group — the Federation of Americans for Consumer Choice, or FACC — argued that the rules would be ‘potentially devastating for the insurance industry,’ particularly because they could restrict agents’ commissions.”

“For Americans who choose to invest in annuities, the rules could save them about $32.5 billion over the next 10 years,” says the Post. That $32.5 billion can either go to you or to the advisers ripping you off. That is what this is about.

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Because this issue touches on issues that can be made to seem esoteric and hard to understand—as soon as you say the word “fiduciary,” it sounds like you are talking about something that requires some serious financial expertise—it has flown under the radar of the general public. That could be remedied somewhat if we just spoke about this issue in plain and direct terms. Republicans who have been paid off are trying to ensure that an industry that exists to rob you can continue robbing you. That is what is happening here.

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This is one of the best examples you will ever find of a common thing: An outrage that persists only because people don’t really understand it. And why don’t people understand it? Because keeping it obscured is a key to its continued existence.

“Pay me to rip you off!” is not a compelling advertisement.

This is a case where the media can actually be helpful. We can speak plainly about what all of this is.

This is a scam where Wall Street takes a piece of your savings for nothing.

They are robbing you.

Politicians who are in their pockets are helping them.

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All in all it is a pretty good picture of How Things Work. The mechanisms of oppression are easy to see here. The way that money is made dishonestly and then invested back into a system that protects the continued operation of the scam is shown here in stark relief. Notably, nothing at all would be different about this story if we were discussing instead racketeers running numbers who paid off the police and politicians to protect themselves, except for the legality in question. Morally and operationally, it is the same.

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It is common for people to think of contentious political issues as things that people differ on due to deep in unbridgeable ideological divides. Abortion, gun control, LGBTQ rights, racism—these are things that people have strong feelings on, but we assume that those feelings are products of our upbringings and cultural experiences and you can see how, if your life had been different, and you had been brought up differently, you might have landed on the other side. Much of the tendency of people to call for “civility” in politics is due to the implicit belief that most political beliefs are just natural outgrowths of our own life experiences and therefore we should be understanding of those whose experiences happened to be different from our own.

This is not that.

This is just power. This is material politics. The division of spoils. Powerful groups use their power to get money and they use their money to protect their grift. In this case, the grift is ripping off people’s retirement savings.

When clearly understood, there are not two equally legitimate sides to this issue. There is only, on one side, the robbers, and on the other side, the people who are getting robbed. The government will ultimately weigh in on one side or the other.

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The next time you get tempted to bow to the politesse of “We may disagree but we must all respect one another,” please remember this. This is the bulk of what happens in politics. Interest groups looking out for their own interests. All interests are not equally righteous. For example, one interest may be “Skim money away from regular people’s savings by posing as advisers who will help them,” and one opposing interest may be “Protect people from being ripped off.”

There is a right and wrong answer here.

It is not so much that the politicians on the other side of this issue think differently about the path to economic prosperity for all; it is that they are corrupt. They are okay allowing you to be ripped off because the continuation of that grift can be in their own personal interests.

Again, we all benefit from speaking plainly about this. Acquiescing to speak about things in bullshit word salad is a primary reason why this corruption can continue for so long.

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Should this make you cynical?

No, it should make you demand campaign finance reform.

In order to stop this mechanism we must cut off the flow of money from the Ripoff Industries to the politicians. Until then, this goes on and on and on.

[rightnewshindi]

मातृत्व लाभ और ग्रेच्युटी का लाभ नहीं दे रहे शिक्षण संस्थान, श्रम विभाग ने 15 संस्थानों को भेजे नोटिस

मातृत्व लाभ और ग्रेच्युटी का लाभ नहीं दे रहे शिक्षण संस्थान, श्रम विभाग ने 15 संस्थानों को भेजे नोटिस #News #RightNewsIndia #RightNews

श्रम विभाग ने कर्मचारियों को मातृत्व लाभ और ग्रेच्युटी का लाभ न देने वालों संस्थानों पर शिकंजा कसना शुरू कर दिया है। शिमला जोन के तहत विभाग के श्रम निरीक्षकों ने 50 से अधिक शिक्षण संस्थानों का निरीक्षण किया है। इनमें 15 संस्थानों को कानून का उल्लंघन करने पर नोटिस जारी किए गए हैं। यदि यह संस्थान कानून का पालन सुनिश्चित नहीं करते तोे अब इनके खिलाफ कानूनी कार्रवाई होगी। मातृत्व लाभ (संशोधन)…

[narmadanchal]

लोक सेवा केन्द्र कर्मचारी संघ ने कलेक्टर के नाम दिया मांगों का ज्ञापन

इटारसी। लोक सेवा केन्द्र कर्मचारी संघ (Public Service Center Employees Union) ने कलेक्टर को ज्ञापन देकर कर्मचारियों ने अपनी समस्या सुनाई। संघ ने कलेक्टर (Collector), अनुविभागीय अधिकारी, तहसीलदार एवं श्रम विभाग (Labor Department) के नाम ज्ञापन दिया। लोक सेवा केन्द्र कर्मचारी संघ के जिला अध्यक्ष सचिन केवट (Sachin Kevat) एवं प्रदेश कर्मचारी संघ के सह मंत्री उत्तम यादव (Uttam Yadav), भारतीय मजदूर संघ…

[onlytiktoks]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-strikes-down-biden-overtime-pay-rule-2024-11-15/

[parttimereporter]

PSSI, one of the country's largest cleaning services for food processing companies, started being investigated last summer, the DOL said. 

While searching three meatpacking plants owned by JBS USA and Turkey Valley Farms in Nebraska and Minnesota, department officials found 31 underage workers as young as 13. PSSI's headquarters in Kieler, Wisc., was also searched.

The DOL ultimately found 13 plants in eight states had 102 underage workers – Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas. 

[iww-gnv]

Oct 6 (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) must provide U.S. regulators with documents detailing its spending on efforts to discuss unionizing with workers, part of the agency's probe into whether the coffee chain violated financial disclosure laws, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, which the U.S. Labor Department announced on Friday, requires Starbucks to document travel expenses it paid to send former CEO Howard Schultz and other company officers to Buffalo, New York in 2021 after workers there filed a petition to hold a union election. The Labor Department subpoenaed the information as part of its investigation into whether Starbucks should have disclosed expenses related to the trip and bonuses paid to the company officers. Federal law requires employers to report expenses aimed at discouraging organizing and union membership.

[science70]

U.S. Department of Labor Graphic Communication Standards Manual, 1974.

Designer: John Massey

[nando161mando]

Investigators find 11 children working 'dangerous' overnight cleaning shift in meat processing plant

[todaysdocument]

News from the U.S. Department of Labor, "Federal Stop-Order on Indio Farmer" (USDL-IX-59S56), San Francisco, August 3, 1959.

Record Group 174: General Records of the Department of LaborSeries: Records Relating to the Mexican Labor ("Bracero") ProgramFile Unit: Mexican Labor Program, General Correspondence

NEWS from the U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

James P. Mitchell, Secretary

CONTACT: Tor Torland, Info Officer

630 Sansome Street, San Francisco

YUkon 6-3111, Ext. 647

[handwritten] Mr Robertson

File

Mexican Program [/handwritten]

[stamp] RECEIVED

AUG 4 1959

REGIONAL ATTORNEY

SAN FRANCISCO [/stamp]

FEDERAL STOP-ORDER ON INDIO FARMER

SAN FRANCISCO, August 3: Joseph Munoz, a member of the Coachella Valley Farmers Association in Indio, has been refused further authorization to employ Mexican farm workers in a decision made public today by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Under the terms of public law 78 and the international agreement between the governments of the U.S. and Mexico, Mexican nationals may be imported to work on our farms only if it has been determined by authorities that there are not enough American workers in a specific area to fill farm-labor needs there.

Munoz was found to be using Mexican nationals to sort tomatoes in his packing shed despite repeated warnings by the U. S. Labor Department and the California Department of Employment that American workers were available for the jobs.

Glenn E. Brockway, regional director of the Labor Department's employment security bureau, issued his decision in a letter to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association. Brockway said, in part:

"All authorizations issued to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association to contract Mexican national workers are hereby revoked with respect to the employment of Mexican national workers by the said Joseph Munoz."

The federal stop-order also specified that because of Munoz's "repeated failure to give preference in employment of United States domestic workers", no authorizations would be granted him in future to use Mexican nationals.

The move came as part of the U.S. Labor Department's continuing policy of strictly policing the foreign-labor importation program so as to ensure first preference for farm jobs to American citizens.

#####

USDL-IX-59S56

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Project 2025, a sprawling right-wing plan to provide policy and staffing to a future Republican president, proposes an extreme anti-worker agenda that would severely curtail unions’ ability to collectively bargain on behalf of their members and reverse gains organized labor has made in recent years. It would also weaken overtime regulations, give corporations wider latitude in misclassifying workers as independent contractors, and dismantle safety regulations that prohibit young people from working dangerous jobs.

The initiative’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, is an attempt to roll back New Deal-era, working class victories by allowing state-level exemptions from the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, and by creating nonunion “employee involvement organizations” to undermine unions’ negotiating power. It additionally calls for sharp reductions in the budgets of the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor and a freeze on new hires. Project 2025 is organized by The Heritage Foundation and includes more than 100 conservative groups on its advisory board, which have collectively received more than $55 million from groups tied to conservative megadonors Leonard Leo and Charles Koch. Leo has been pushing the Supreme Court to further erode the power of organized labor, and the Koch family has waged a war on unions for more than 60 years.

[...]

Project 2025: Eviscerate overtime and dismantle pro-worker regulations

One central proposal in Mandate that illuminates Project 2025’s extreme anti-work posture is the suggestion that employers should be allowed to eviscerate overtime regulations and potentially withhold pay. The attacks on overtime take several forms, including a proposal to allow workers to accrue vacation instead of time-and-a-half compensation — but at least 40 percent of lower- and middle-income workers already don’t use their allotted paid time off. Under this policy employers could coerce workers into “voluntarily” selecting vacation that they’re either formally or informally prohibited from taking, thereby denying them overtime compensation. Project 2025 further recommends that workers and bosses agree to extend the overtime threshold to a period of two weeks or one month. The policy would empower management to overload busy weeks with extra-long shifts and take advantage of slow periods through under-scheduling — effectively eliminating overtime altogether. 

[...]

A return to company unionism

Project 2025 seeks to roll back New Deal-era labor victories by proposing that Congress “pass legislation allowing waivers from federal labor laws” — like the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act — “under certain conditions.” Allowing state-level exemptions to the NLRA and FLSA would almost certainly trigger a race-to-the-bottom dynamic, where firms relocate to states with the weakest (or nonexistent) labor protections at the expense of workers. That’s what happened in states that passed so-called “right-to-work” laws — which starve unions of resources by preventing them from collecting fees from all employees they represent, thereby creating a free-rider problem — where employers were able to depress wages and union membership.    Unions have made significant gains under the Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board, which enforces labor law and investigates anti-union practices. That progress is largely thanks to NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has taken an aggressive, pro-worker enforcement posture. Project 2025 promises to fire her on “Day One.” It also calls for reductions in the budgets of the NLRB and the Department of Labor to the “low end of the historical average,” as well as implementing a “hiring freeze for career officials.” 

[...] Project 2025 would further undermine unions by eliminating “card check” — where a majority of workers who have signed union authorization forms can ask their employer for voluntary recognition — and mandating “the secret ballot exclusively.” Although the idea of a secret ballot has the veneer of democracy, in practice it’s a power grab for management. By forcing organizers to go through the byzantine NLRB election process, an employer can buy itself time to wage an anti-union campaign and bog down the process, often through illegal means. A 2019 study found that employers violated labor laws in 41.5% of NLRB-supervised union elections in 2016 and 2017 and intimidated or coerced workers in nearly a third of all elections. 

The radical right-wing Project 2025 spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation in association with over 100 organizations has an agenda attacking labor and unions.