#labor departments

[disabled-femme]

labor psa: a scab is somebody who does struck work. a scab may be a union member or not—usually not, in many industries. if you are doing work that would ordinarily be done by a person on strike, you are a scab, even if you yourself are not part of a union whose members are striking

for example, an influencer who starts doing promo work for struck companies that would ordinarily be done by actors: that is a scab

regular person going to see a movie: not a scab

annoyed addition: customer going to coffee shop whose baristas are on strike to get a coffee made by a scab: not scabbing, but crossing the picket line

[onlytiktoks]

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

[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.

[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

[science70]

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

Designer: John Massey

[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.

[stickytm]

gentle update: my niece, zia, was born yesterday after my sister went into a 14 hour labor!!! she is tiny but healthy with the Thickest head of hair i've ever seen on a baby!!!

[moleshow]

Real ones know I don't play about full employment. I was born a Keynesian.

(i have typos in these tags)

[writtenbylenora]

every day I go to work :’(

[nando161mando]

Union Busting Private Fire Dept

[iww-gnv]

INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Labor says more than 1,600 Indiana workers are owed more than $1.2 million in back wages that have been recovered. A large portion of that money has remained unclaimed because some of the workers haven't been able to be located, the department said.  Employees changing jobs or addresses, name changes and employers failing to retain contact information are among some of the reasons employees may not be located. The U.S. Department of Labor has created an online search tool where workers can enter information to find out if the department is holding back wages on their behalf.

[enigmatic-97]

CYCLES

Breaking the cycle's

The woman in my family suffered submissively

They hate on who I am because it is what they were too scared to be

I will break the chain to heal what they refused to see

No more silencing the voice's that long to be free ~ BX

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dave Jamieson at HuffPost:

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he would nominate outgoing Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to be his labor secretary.

“Lori has worked tirelessly with both Business and Labor to build America’s workforce, and support the hardworking men and women of America,” Trump said in a statement. Chavez-DeRemer lost her House reelection bid earlier this month after serving one term in Congress. A union-friendly Republican, she had the backing of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to lead the Labor Department under Trump. The incoming president’s choice of Chavez-DeRemer is a surprise considering her track record of working with labor groups. She was a rare Republican supporter of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would dramatically overhaul labor law to make it easier to form unions. Business groups have vehemently opposed the legislation. The anti-union National Right to Work Committee had publicly opposed Chavez-DeRemer for the labor role, saying she should “have no place in the Trump administration” due to her pro-union views.

The labor secretary has limited regulatory powers when it comes to collective bargaining. The agency’s top duties include enforcing wage-and-hour law and policing workplace hazards through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The Labor Department tends to take a business-friendly approach to such matters under Republican administrations. Unions and other worker advocacy groups could do a lot worse than having the moderate Chavez-DeRemer at the agency’s helm. Trump’s nominees for labor secretary during his first term included a fast-food chief executive and a management-side attorney who was the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Donald Trump threw all of us a curveball on his pick for heading up the US Department of Labor: Soon-to-be ex-Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R).

Chavez-DeRemer’s record is pro-union for GOP standards, as she endorsed the PRO Act.

[girderednerve]

The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.

While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct. Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge – which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion – have in recent years scooped up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers.

...Incarceration was used not just for punishment or rehabilitation but for profit. A law passed a few years [after the formal end of the convict-leasing system in 1928] made it illegal to knowingly transport or sell goods made by incarcerated workers across state lines, though an exception was made for agricultural products. Today, after years of efforts by lawmakers and businesses, corporations are setting up joint ventures with corrections agencies, enabling them to sell almost anything nationwide.

Civilian workers are guaranteed basic rights and protections by OSHA and laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, but prisoners, who are often not legally considered employees, are denied many of those entitlements and cannot protest or form unions.

“They may be doing the exact same work as people who are not incarcerated, but they don’t have the training, they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the protective equipment,” said Jennifer Turner, lead author of a 2022 American Civil Liberties Union report on prison labor.

[whatstheusgovernmentdoing]

11/15/24 - White House

President Biden will participate the APEC Leaders' Informal Dialogue with Guests; and meet with world leaders Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru of Japan, President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea, and President Dina Boluarte Zegarra of the Republic of Peru

Department of State: A new agreement will allow the U.S. and the United Kingdom to exchange equipment and classified information for defensive purposes - The DoS has imposed visa restrictions on the Nicaraguan National Police due to their violations of civil liberties

Department of Defense: The DoD will be working harder to make sure all congressionally authorized funding to Ukraine arrive before the end of the Biden-Harris Administration in January

Department of Justice: Christopher Carl Meier has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for CSAM - The DoJ has found that the Fulton County Jail in Georgia violates the 8th and 14th Amendments - Money Launderer Ilya Lichtenstein has been sentenced to 5 years in prison - George Semerene Quintero has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for violating the IEEPA

Department of Commerce: The DoC has given TSMC Arizona $6.6B to manufacture semiconductors

Department of Labor: The DoL has secured $14K in back pay for employee who was illegally fired

Department of Health and Human Services: Five states have been approved to grant continuous eligibility to healthcare

Department of Housing and Urban Development: The HUD has given $37M to the Reno Housing Authority to expand affordable housing options