By The Pa. AFL-CIO

– A pair of bills in Congress are seeking to undermine the rights of rank and file workers at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. These two radical bills, HR 1994 – introduced by Rep. Jeff Miller (FL), and S 1082 – introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), represent a knee-jerk reaction to calls for accountability at the VA. Instead of taking concrete steps to improve services at the VA, these bills seek to scapegoat front line employees while giving a free pass to managers who engage in misconduct.

If this legislation passes, every VA worker will be an at-will employee, with no meaningful recourse – even if their termination was a result of whistle blower retaliation or discrimination.

Stand with our brothers and sisters in AFGE now! E-mail or call your members of Congress, and tell them to OPPOSE HB 1994 and S 1082.

Go to – https://www.afge.org/?Page=SaveDueProcessattheVA to Take Action! NOW, and to download flyers and fact sheets that will arm you with the information you need today!

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6211

BY David Moberg

– Are you an employee?

It seems like a simple question that must have a simple answer for most people. But definitions in different laws and rulings enforcing the laws vary. And that variation provides an opening for a growing number of employers to cheat governments of taxes and workers of income, benefits and protections by misclassifying their employees, especially as “independent contractors.”

Last week, the administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, David Weil, released a “letter of guidance” that clarifies who is an employee and who is an “independent contractor”—that is, essentially an individual running his or her own business. He argues that the most definitive statement from Congress comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says that “to employ” means “to suffer or permit to work.” And, he concludes, “under the Act, most workers are employees.”

The decision is “incredibly important,” says Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a pro-worker nonprofit organization, and may help to clear up confusion in the courts and encourage more enforcement of the law.

In recent years, many companies—from 10 percent to 30 percent or more of employers—employ at least several million people who are misclassified as independent contractors, according to a recent NELP report. They even go so far as to require workers to form a limited liability corporation or franchise (with themselves as the one and only participant) or to sign contracts declaring that they are independent contractors. According to another study from economist Jeffrey Eisenach of George Mason University, the number of independent contractors rose by one million from 2005 to 2010, including both fake and real contractors (often unemployed workers who re-label themselves as “consultants”).

One high-profile example is the Federal Express delivery driver—who wears a FedEx uniform, drives a company truck, follows a route set by the company and still is treated as a contractor. Weil’s ruling may also tip the judgment against companies like the Uber taxi service, increasingly targeted in lawsuits as improperly treating its drivers as independent contractors.

When employers misclassify workers, they often pay less for contractors, but most important, the workers lose a wide range of protections and benefits under the law such as unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, minimum wage and overtime regulations, and governments lose billions of dollars a year in taxes that support those programs.

In his recent book The Fissured Workplace, Weil argues that workplace phenomena like subcontracting, using independent contractors, franchising and other ways to make employers less responsible for their employees is not just a result of competition driving down costs, whether as a result of globalization, weakening of unions, new technologies or new work processes, but also “pressure from public and private capital markets to improve returns.”

Unlike the “common law” test for who is an employer, which emphasizes the degree of control over one’s work, the FLSA standard usually relies on an “economic realities” test, which examines many different dimensions of work without favoring one above all others. But in his guidance letter, Weil writes, “the ultimate inquiry under the FLSA is whether the worker is economically dependent on the employer or truly in business for him or herself.” But the varied economic realities tested include such questions as how integral the worker is to the business, how much does managerial skill affect possible profit or loss, how big is the worker’s relative investment, does the worker’s success rely on special business skills in addition to any technical skills, what kind of control does the employer exercise, or how permanent is the relation of the worker to the employer.

The impact of this guidance letter may first be felt in courtrooms and in various federal or state agencies, but Ruckelshaus hopes that employers will voluntarily take it seriously. More likely, it will only be quite meaningful if there are systematic state and federal efforts to audit employer behavior, especially in industries where abuses are common, such as lower-skill construction, home care and janitorial work. Unions are also in a position to push for more vigorous enforcement, as Ruckelshaus said the Carpenters have been.

And when it is clear that the workers are not contractors but employees, the unions can do the workers a favor and invite them to join the union.

Source – http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18224/independent-contractor-laws-department-of-labor

By Jeff Blumenthal

– A South Philadelphia labor contractor was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in prison for illegally transporting undocumented foreign workers and failing to pay employment and income taxes, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia said.

Kim Meas, 60, a native of Cambodia, pleaded guilty last November to two counts of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, two counts of transporting illegal aliens and two counts of failure to collect and pay federal income and employment taxes.

In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Jan E. Dubois ordered restitution to the IRS in the amount of $1.7 million during three years of supervised release, a $600 special assessment, and $23 million in forfeiture.

Meas was the managing director of LS Services Corp., an employee leasing company in South Philadelphia.

Prosecutors said he negotiated labor leasing contracts with various companies throughout the Philadelphia region and established 14 shell companies to create the illusion that the workers that LS leased to other companies were employed by the shells. The goal of that arrangement, prosecutors said, was to make the shells appear responsible for collecting and paying employment and income taxes for the employees.

Prosecutors said Meas tried to make it impossible for the IRS to determine the identity of the employer of the illegal aliens, as well as the amount of employment and income taxes that the employer of the illegal aliens was required to pay to the federal treasury. Prosecutors said LS also transported the undocumented foreign employees, free of charge, to various work locations in company vehicles.

Source – http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2015/07/23/meas-prison-sentence-undocumented-workers-charge.html

From Jobs With Justice

– Today, the New York Wage Board recommended raising the minimum wage for fast food employees to $15 an hour. The board said this increase should be implemented by 2018 in New York City and by 2021 in the rest of the state. If State Labor Commissioner Mario Musolino accepts its recommendation, nearly 180,000 New Yorkers who work in the fast-food industry will benefit from the policy.

The announcement is a clear sign that acting together and speaking up for one another for fair wages is paying off. Coming on the heels of major cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles raising their minimum wage to $15 per hour, today’s decision by the Wage Board represents an important milestone in the national Fight for 15 movement. It was fast food workers in New York City, after all, who were the first to call for $15 nearly three years ago during their historic strike. Though it was audacious at the time, $15 has since become a rallying cry for working people across the economy, with home care aides, Walmart associates, and even adjunct professors including it among their demands.

New York is one of the few states that can enact a wage board to investigate and raise wages by industry. Governor Cuomo convened the wage board on fast food earlier this spring, shortly after an April 15th day of action that saw strikes and other actions in 200 cities across the country. The three-person board includes representatives of business (Kevin Ryan, chairman and founder of Gilt), labor (Mike Fishman, secretary-treasurer of SEIU) and the public (Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo).

The board members reached their decision after holding four hearings across the state, each of which drew hundreds to testify. At the Buffalo hearing, Coalition for Economic Justice led a rally of more than 500 fast food workers and allies from Western New York, while across the state at the Long Island hearing, the crowd of over 400 brought together by Long Island Jobs with Justice included strong labor and faith support. Public comment on the recommendations will be accepted for the next 45 days, after which Musolino will make the final decision.

For far too long, giant corporations like McDonald’s and Burger King have made it impossible for their employees to make ends meet, providing abysmally low wages and ignoring their collective demands for improving their workplaces with a union. The minimum wage in New York is just $8.75 an hour, far too little to raise a family in one of the most expensive states in the country. While opponents of minimum wage increases have long claimed that fast-food jobs are reserved for single teenagers who have few expenses, demographic analysis of the New York workforce proves them wrong. The average age of a fast-food employee in the state is 29 and nearly 40 percent have children. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour means these men and women will not have to struggle so hard to meet their families’ basic needs.

”I’m not expecting to get rich off of $15 an hour,” McDonald’s employee Amanda Monroe said. “Just the ability to survive and take care of my family.”

This announcement is big news for everyone in New York, not just fast-food employees. When fast food companies refuse to pay a living wage, employees and their families are forced to rely on public assistance just to get by. In New York, 60 percent of fast-food employees receive public assistance. A study from the Labor Center at the University of California Berkeley found that states are spending $25 billion per year on public assistance programs provided to working families. That’s $25 billion of taxpayer money subsidizing wealthy corporations that refuse to pay their employees a living wage.

“Low wages in the fast-food industry cost New York taxpayers $700 million a year,” said Rev. Kirk Laubenstein, Executive Director at the Coalition for Economic Justice. “Fifteen dollars an hour for fast-food workers will relieve New York taxpayers of a huge public assistance bill.”

Putting additional dollars into the pockets of the people employed by the fast-food giants will also stimulate our out-of-balance economy. At a press conference last month, business representative Kevin Ryan explained that raising fast-food wages will lead to increased spending and potentially job creation. As fewer taxpayer dollars are shuttled towards subsidizing giant corporations’ low wages, more consumer dollars will be poured into the economy. Most importantly, the hardworking men and women who cook our food and ring up our orders will be able to care for their families and live decent lives. Everyone wins!

The willingness of New York State to use the wage board process to raise standards for the fast food industry opens up yet another potential strategy for the Fight for $15 movement, which has seen victories already through ballot initiatives, legislation and collective bargaining. Whether the NY wage board will move on to other industries is yet to be seen, but with 35,000 homecare aides in Massachusetts set to see a raise to $15 through their latest collective bargaining agreement, and ballot measures are underway in Portland, OR and Washington, D.C., it’s clear that the national movement shows no signs of slowing down. Rallies and events have just been announced to spread momentum for $15 and a better life across the country, click here to join an event near you.

Source – http://www.jwj.org/victory-ny-fast-food-wage-board-recommends-15-minimum-wage

By Hunter

– I find Jeb Bush’s consistent wrongness on basic economic and labor issues baffling. Not that he is so often wrong, but that he seems to put so much work into it.

Jeb Bush has created a flap with another statement about American workers. In an appearance in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Tuesday, he said Barack Obama’s proposal to expand overtime pay to millions more managers and white-collar workers would result in “less overtime pay” and “less wages earned.”

The problem, obviously, is that Bush’s statement is hokum. Closing the very frequently abused loophole that allows employers to require employees to work overtime hours with no overtime pay simply by declaring them so-called “exempt” managers will not result in reduced overtime or reduced wages. And experts in the field can’t even parse out where Bush is getting his abuse-of-workers-is-an-economic-win notions, much less Bush’s additional strange claim that the law promoting stronger worker overtime protections “won’t allow” employee bonuses.

Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas labor economist, said: “He’s just 100% wrong,” adding that “there will be more overtime pay and more total earnings” and “there’s a huge amount of evidence employers will use more workers.” […]

Ross Eisenbrey, a vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research group, said: “Bush should be embarrassed about how misinformed he was.” Eisenbrey said the proposed rules do nothing whatsoever to bar employers from paying bonuses. “All of that is exactly wrong – and pretty much nonsense,” he said. Eisenbrey and Bernstein wrote a seminal article that helped persuade the Obama administration to change overtime rules.

Between this and his previous insistence that what the American economy really needed is for you workers to simply “work longer hours,” Jeb Bush seems to be aggressively obtuse on economic policy issues—as if his entire economic advisory team is made up of Montgomery Burns and Rich Uncle Pennybags.

Again, it’s not particularly surprising that Jeb Bush, of the Trickle-Down Bush school of economics, would believe that laws restricting the corporate exploitation of workers via an IRS loophole would be a dreadful burden on the ability of our magnanimous and benevolent job-creators to job create most effectively. I would not, however, have expected him to take such baldly anti-worker public stances. That suggests he’s still so mired in catering to the donor class that he has pursued exclusively, up until this point in the race, that he’s finding it difficult to switch to the more nuanced, theoretically populist rhetoric of an actual public campaign. Let them eat cake is what you say in the back rooms, complaining about the shiftless 47 percent and their shiftless ways. You’re not supposed to say that stuff when you’re propped up on a public stage.

Source – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/20/1403990/-Jeb-Bush-says-preventing-unpaid-overtime-abuses-will-hurt-workers-What-planet-is-this-guy-from