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Message to Solis: Get Tough with Labor Law Violators
Yesterday, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo filed a 176-count criminal case against two Los Angeles carwash owners for allegedly abusing and intimidating workers, and for failing to pay the minimum wage. Delgadillo said the work conditions “bordered on indentured servitude.”
With Hilda Solis poised to become the next secretary of labor, Art Levine, writing on Huffington Post, asks if Solis will be equally as tough on companies that violate labor laws. Writes Levine:
One of the challenges for Solis is whether she’ll be tough enough in cracking down on such rampant abuses with a Labor Department gutted by eight years of pro-business GOP hacks in charge. It’s not that likely, though, that the moderate Solis will pursue criminal cases against the top CEOs who have yet to face the prospect of jail time over wage theft.
Even so, as the AFL-CIO’s general counsel, Jon Hiatt, observes, “My dream is that the first act of the new Secretary of Labor would be to identify top executives of companies that routinely violate wages and hours laws—and take them out of their offices in handcuffs. The deterrent value would be enormous.”
Hiatt points out that in the 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt’s War Labor Board prosecuted the top executive of the Montgomery Ward company—the Wal-Mart of its day—for refusing to recognize a union. In fact, he was photographed in 1944 being carried from his office by two National Guardsmen.
Levine notes that it’s not just the Southern California carwash industry that routinely violates basic labor laws on pay, hours and workers’ rights. In Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It, author Kim Bobo says wage theft is “an epidemic” in the nation and there is an estimated $19 billion a year in virtually unpunished wage theft involving some of the country’s major corporations.
Click here to read Levine’s entire article.
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4 Comments
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When one considers the social and economic consequences of no paycheck or the consequences of working in an unsafe or unhealthy workplace, the penalties should be of criminal nature!
Ms. Solis must look at the adverse affects of the Bush regime and act accordingly! Corporations that profit off of the exploitation of workers, the deaths of workers and the injuries of workers should not be allowed to continue operating!
Yes, let’s get tough with Labor Law Violators. Let’s institute E-verify and reserve jobs only for those who are legally able to work in the US. Let’s implement attrition through enforcement and move illegal aliens out of the US. Are you up for this Rep Solis? If not, then bring on the next nominee!
Where should the onus be? If someone applies for a job, and I accept the documentation that person presents to me, and I hire them in good faith—should I get fined if it turns out to be false later on? What if I hire a number of “questionable status” folks and underpay and overwork them because they are least likely to stand up for their rights under the law?
If there are no jobs to fill—meaning no employer would dare to hire anyone without clear legal status—then there would be less of an issue with people of undetermined legal standing. As long as there are companies who search for and exploit illegal immigrant workers, people will keep coming looking for work.
I also want to see Solis get tough on the illegal labor employer(I doubt very much she will),there is no question that it costs nothing to use E-Verify,it is 99.9% effective,takes only a couple of minutes to do,and could be done before a job interview is even begun. No employer should be hiring people on good faith alone.E-Verify should be required for every employer in this country.By the way there is no fine they simple have to un-employ them. To not use it is simply foolish.Without it the illegal employer exploits them and us.