By Aaron Moselle

– A political corruption scandal and an open state Senate seat mean some Philadelphia voters are heading to the polls next month to pick new lawmakers.

Three special elections scheduled for Aug. 11 will mint new state representatives in the 174th District in Northeast Philadelphia; Southwest Philadelphia’s 191st District; and the 195th District in North and West Philadelphia.

Democrat John Sabatina Jr. resigned from his post in the 174th after winning a special election to the state Senate.

Ronald Waters resigned in the 191st after pleading guilty to conflict-of-interest charges. Ditto for Michelle Brownlee, who represented the 195th.

Waters and Brownlee were both part of a sting operation that caught several lawmakers accepting money or cash in exchange for official acts.

Democratic committeewoman Donna Bullock, who last worked for Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke, is one of two candidates running to replace Brownlee.

“I wanted to serve my community … to improve our schools, create job opportunities,” said Bullock.

She will face Republican ward leader Adam Lang, who wants to protect longtime homeowners in his Sharswood neighborhood from being pushed out by gentrification.

“The first piece of legislation I would introduce would be to change the tax assessment system to where a property’s tax assessment is locked in at the value that someone purchases their house,” Lang said.

In the 174th, Republican Timothy Dailey, a teacher, will challenge former City Councilman Ed Neilson.

In the 191st, Democrat Joanna McClinton, chief counsel to state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, is going up against political consultant Tracey Gordon, who is running as a member of the Tracey Gordon Party, and Republican Army veteran Charles Wilkins.

The candidates who win will serve the remaining 16 months of the two-year terms.

Voter registration heavily favors Democrats in all three districts, though voters with any party affiliation will be able to cast a ballot.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/84509-special-vote-set-for-aug-11-to-elect-three-to-pa-house-

By Sean Kitchen

– Yesterday, Budget Guru and House Speaker Mike Turzai claimed that House Republicans are ready for a veto override, but there’s an issue. A math issue to be exact.

“We have to look at overriding if we’re not going to have a substantive discussion,” Mr. Turzai, R-Marshall, said at a luncheon of the Pennsylvania Press Club, adding that Mr. Wolf’s own budget proposal has too little legislative support for negotiators to simply meet in the middle.

“I can assure you that many of my Democratic colleagues are not interested in Gov. Wolf’s tax package, and they would be more than happy with House Bill 1192,” Mr. Turzai said, referring to the Republican-crafted budget. “Some have even privately called it quite responsible. I think that’s a direction we have to consider.”

But here’s the problem. There are 203 members with Republicans holding 120 seats. To get a veto override, House Republicans would need 13 Democrats to defect and override Governor Wolf’s veto, which will not happen because there is one person who came into Harrisburg with a mandate, and that is Governor Wolf. Wolf campaigned on raising a severance tax and among others to fund public education. Republicans claim to have a mandate because of their outrageous majorities, but they do not because of the ridiculous gerrymandering that happened in 2010.

Source – http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2015/07/28/pabudget-guru-mike-turzai-fails-at-first-grade-math/

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