Report: Wage Theft Reaches Deep into the Low-Wage Economy
 |
A new report shows how wage theft reaches deep into the low-wage economy.
“The Movement to End Wage Theft” illustrates the problem with the stories of workers employed by a grocery chain, a temp agency, a construction company and other incorporated businesses. These workers’ wages were stolen by their employers who failed to pay the minimum wage or overtime, or refused to abide by work-break and safety rules.
Findings from a 2009 study cited by the study’s author, Nik Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago, concluded that 26 percent of low-wage workers in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles were paid less than the legal minimum wage, and 76 percent of workers who worked overtime were not paid the legally required overtime rate.
Here’s one account from the report (available here in PDF format):
For six years Modesta has worked as a cashier in a retail store in Brooklyn, New York. When she started at the job she was paid $5 an hour. She worked 60 hours, 6 days a week, but received no overtime pay. Last year she was given a “raise” and now earns $6.60 an hour—still well below the state minimum wage. Most of her co-workers are paid even less, but she says her employer has been able to continue this practice because the workers are too scared to complain.
Taxi Workers Seek AFL-CIO Membership
 |
||||
|
||||
Saying “a worker is a worker,” Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), and several taxi drivers from New York City today told the AFL-CIO Executive Council they want to be a part of the national labor federation.
They said drivers work 60 to 70 hours a week in one of the most grueling and dangerous jobs around—at minimum wage. They have no job security. Employers routinely misclassify them as “independent contractors” and deny the drivers protections given to traditional employees, including the freedom to form a union. They risk their health and safety daily, from sitting in a stationary position for hours to the real possibility of being assaulted, robbed or even murdered by a passenger or street thugs. And they’re completely uninsured, unprotected.
AFL-CIO Partners with Domestic Workers Alliance, National Guestworkers’ Alliance
 |
||||
|
||||
In a historic move, the AFL-CIO today signed new, separate partnership agreements with the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Guestworkers’ Alliance. The landmark agreements outline a framework for the groups to partner around issues of organizing, winning rights for excluded workers and building long-term relationships. The new partnership agreements kicked off the three-day Excluded Workers Congress in New York City.
The partnerships are part of the AFL-CIO’s outreach to the growing numbers of workers whose fundamental rights are not guaranteed by law and who are often excluded from safety protections and other legal protections, including the right to organize for better living standards and a voice on the job. In 2006, the AFL-CIO signed a similar agreement with workers’ centers, partnering with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). Also in 2006, the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance became the first workers’ center to become a member of the New York City Central Labor Council.
Immigration Policies Hurt Children, Rip Families Apart
Two weeks before Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, takes effect, immigrant children and their advocates made an urgent plea to members of Congress to review how the nation’s broken immigration system hurts children and its long-lasting effects on children and families.
At a Capitol Hill press conference and in an ad hoc congressional hearing today, two young victims of our nation’s immigration system recounted their experience of being separated from their parents as a result of Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration enforcement practices. Arpaio’s tough enforcement practices have been condemned by human rights and civil rights advocates and challenged in court.
Eleven-year-old Heidi Ruby Portugal told reporters and members of Congress that before her mother’s detention, she admired “all uniformed people that protect our country.”
It’s a pity that those thoughts are gone thanks to all those mistreatments and the arrests….They took away the most precious thing that children have, our mother. With one hit they took away my smile and my happiness.
Social Forum Focuses on Workers’ Issues
Workers’ issues were the focus of five days of marches, rallies and workshops at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, which ended over the weekend. Grassroots activists and progressives from across the country came together to build new alliances, create new strategies and put new energy into the movement to turn around the American economy.
Writing in Workday Minnesota, Howard Kling quotes a UAW leader who says the forum was an opportunity for labor to build relationships with other movements and encourage a “strong, fight-back attitude toward the intense corporate agenda that is blocking change on health care, labor rights, fair trade policies and a host of issues that we believe in.”
Women Taking on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
 |
||||
|
||||
Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law has “paved the way for assaults on the basic human rights of women and created an environment in which violence against women and children has been state-sanctioned.” But immigrants and people of conscience are steadfastly resisting the law, a group of women activists said this week.
At the same time, religious groups, political leaders and sports teams are calling for the law to be repealed.
The Women’s Emergency Human Rights Delegation, which includes civil and women’s rights leaders, journalists, union leaders and organizers from the AFL-CIO, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA) and Jobs with Justice (JwJ), visited women at community centers in Phoenix on Mother’s Day to document the experiences of women in Arizona in the wake of the signing of the law. Ana Avendano, an assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, was among the delegation. Read the delegation’s statement here.
Immigrant Rights Are Workers’ Rights
 |
||||
|
||||
As long as America’s mostly immigrant day laborer workforce is discriminated against and denied their rights on the job, no workers’ rights are safe, a key organizer told the AFL-CIO Convention.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), said day laborers have become the symbol of what critics say is wrong with the nation’s immigration system. In reality, he says, they are the symbols of a drastically changing economy. While the economy depends on their labor, it refuses to allow them to fully participate in the American Dream.
Day laborers work in an economy that accepts the fruits of their labor but does not accept their humanity.
