Workers' Compensation: Minimum wage

Showing posts with label Minimum wage. Show all posts

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Charts: Why Fast-Food Workers Are Going on Strike

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

This Thursday, fast-food workers in more than 100 cities are planning a one-day strike to demand a "livable" wage of $15 an hour. They have a point: The lowest-paid Americans are struggling to keep up with the cost of living—and they have seen none of the gains experienced by the country's top earners. While average incomes of the top 1 percent grew more than 270 percent since 1960, those of the bottom 90 percent grew 22 percent. And the real value of the minimum wage barely budged, increasing a total of 7 percent over those decades.
More of the numbers behind the strike and the renewed calls to raise the minimum wage:
Median hourly wage for fast-food workers nationwide:
$8.94/hour
Increase in real median wages for food service workers since 1999:
$0.10/hour
Last time the federal minimum wage exceeded $8.94/hour (in 2012 dollars):
1968
Change in the real value of the minimum wage since 1968:
-22%

Median age of fast-food workers:
29
Median age of female fast-food workers:
32
Percentage of fast-food workers who are women:
65%
Percentage of fast-food workers older than 20 who have kids:
36%
Income of someone earning $8.94/hour:
$18,595/year
Federal poverty line for a family of three:
$17,916/year
Income of someone earning $15/hour:
$31,200/year
Income needed for a "secure yet modest" living for a family with two adults and one child…
In the New York City area: $77,378/year
In rural Mississippi: $47,154/year
Growth in average real income of the top 1 percent since 1960:
271%
What the...

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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Minimum Wage in America Is Pretty Damn Low

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.motherjones.com

Everyone's talking about the minimum wage today. I'm in favor of raising it, and I always have been, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a picture for you. Courtesy of the OECD, it shows the minimum wage in various rich countries as a percentage of the average wage. The United States isn't quite the lowest, but we're pretty damn close.

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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Better Pay Now

The movement for an increase in the minimum wage is growing. An increase in wages will have a direct impact on workers' compensation as wages determine rates of compensation benefits.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

’Tis the season to be jolly — or, at any rate, to spend a lot of time in shopping malls. It is also, traditionally, a time to reflect on the plight of those less fortunate than oneself — for example, the person on the other side of that cash register.

The last few decades have been tough for many American workers, but especially hard on those employed in retail trade — a category that includes both the sales clerks at your local Walmart and the staff at your local McDonald’s. Despite the lingering effects of the financial crisis, America is a much richer country than it was 40 years ago. But the inflation-adjusted wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail trade — who weren’t particularly well paid to begin with — have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973.

So can anything be done to help these workers, many of whom depend on food stamps — if they can get them — to feed their families, and who depend on Medicaid — again, if they can get it — to provide essential health care? Yes. We can preserve and expand food stamps, not slash the program the way Republicans want. We can make health reform work, despite right-wing efforts to undermine the program.

And we can raise the minimum wage.

First, a few facts. Although the national minimum wage was raised a few years ago, it’s still very low by historical standards, having consistently lagged behind both inflation and average wage levels. Who gets...

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If the minimum wage tracked inflation, it would be $4.07 per hour.

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from online.wsj.com

Speaking at the White House on June 25, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that a higher federal minimum wage was practical and long overdue. "Just pay me [for] minimum wage what you paid folks in 1968," Mr. Biden said, echoing the argument numerous labor unions, left-wing think tanks and activist groups have made.
The logic goes something like this: Had the minimum wage tracked inflation since 1968, it would today be over $10 an hour, so Congress should seek to bring it up to at least that amount. There are two problems with this logic. First, it is inconsistent with other Labor Department inflation data. And second, it presumes that entry-level employees can't get a raise unless the government gives them one.
The federal minimum wage was first set in 1938 at 25 cents an hour. Had it tracked the cost of living since, it would today be $4.07 an hour, based on Labor Department data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator. This is the only logically consistent "historic" value of the minimum wage, and it's 44% less than the current amount of $7.25.
Advocates of a higher minimum wage arbitrarily selected 1968 as the historical reference point. It's no wonder: That's when federal minimum wage hit its inflation-adjusted high point.
How about picking other arbitrary years to track the minimum wage and inflation? If you used 1948 instead of 1968, the minimum wage's inflation-adjusted value would only be $3.81 an hour. If you chose 1988, the adjusted minimum wage would...

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Why Are Children Working in American Tobacco Fields?

Child Labor prohibitions are enforced through workers' compensation acts. Unfortunately that is an inefficient enforcement mechanism. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.thenation.com

Young farm workers are falling ill from “green tobacco sickness” while the industry denies it and government lets it happen.

This article was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.

The air was heavy and humid on the morning the three Cuello sisters joined their mother in the tobacco fields. The girls were dressed in jeans and long-sleeve shirts, carried burritos wrapped in aluminum foil, and had no idea what they were getting themselves into. “It was our first real job,” says Neftali, the youngest. She was 12 at the time. The middle sister, Kimberly, was 13. Yesenia was 14.
Their mother wasn’t happy for the company. After growing up in Mexico, she hadn’t crossed the border so that her kids could become farmworkers. But the girls knew their mom was struggling. She had left her husband and was supporting the family on the minimum wage. If her girls worked in the tobacco fields, it would quadruple the family’s summer earnings. “My mom tends to everybody,” Neftali says. This was a chance to repay that debt.
The sisters trudged into dense rows of bright green tobacco plants. Their task was to tear off flowers and remove small shoots from the stalks, a process called “topping and suckering.” They walked the rows, reaching deep into the wet leaves, and before long their clothes were soaked in the early morning dew. None of them knew that the dew represented a...

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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Redefining the Minimum Wage

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Business has been brisk at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, with a record number of passengers spending record amounts of money eating and shopping. But for an estimated 6,500 workers at the airport and its nearby hotels, car rental agencies and parking lots, the activity has not translated into economic security, let alone prosperity. Wages for airport-related jobs average an estimated $11 an hour, ranging from less than $10 an hour for airline contractors, like baggage handlers and cabin cleaners, to about $13 an hour for car-rental employees.

That could soon change. Although the votes are still being tallied, the people of SeaTac, the small city south of Seattle where the airport is, have shown support for a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage of the airport’s transportation and hospitality workers to $15 an hour, starting Jan. 1.

That would make the minimum wage at Sea-Tac airport considerably higher than Washington State’s minimum of $9.19 an hour. It would be more than the $12.93-an-hour minimum at the San Francisco International Airport, which was enacted in 2000. And it would blow away the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, in place since 2009, and exceed a proposal in recent legislation, sponsored by Congressional Democrats and supported by President Obama, for a new federal minimum of $10.10 an hour.

All of which makes $15 an hour sound too high. Hardly. Over the last half-century, American workers have achieved productivity gains that...

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Monday, November 11, 2013

Exhausted Workers Recall Minimal Efforts to Enforce a Minimum Wage Law

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Two weeks ago, Pin Zhu Zheng, who says she worked 69 hours a week behind a steam table at a Chinatown restaurant on Centre Street, presented herself at a New York State office to report what seemed to be flagrant lawbreaking by her former bosses.

“The first day of the month, they pay $1,500 cash,” Ms. Zheng, 55, said in an interview on Thursday.

“Everyone got the same.”

That works out to about $5 an hour for a six-day workweek that ran from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; the law requires a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour for the first 40 hours a week. After that, workers must be paid time and a half, or a minimum of $10.88 an hour.

“The Labor Department person told me that I had to wait a year for the follow-up,” Ms. Zheng said through a translator.

But what good is a minimum wage law if it takes forever to enforce it? Complaints with the State Labor Department about wage and hour violations were stacked 14,000 high at the end of July, according to documents obtained by the Urban Justice Center through a freedom of information request.

In May 2012, the records showed, 44 percent of the cases had been open for more than a year, said David Colodny, a lawyer with the center.

Carlos Rodriguez, 28, said he made $4.40 an hour in a pizza franchise on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, cutting vegetables, cleaning, unloading trucks by day and making deliveries at night. “We paid for the uniform, the hat, the T-shirt, the pants, the shoes,” Mr....

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Thursday, November 7, 2013

Wage Statistics for 2012

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.ssa.gov

The national average wage index (AWI) is based on compensation (wages, tips, and the like) subject to Federal income taxes, as reported by employers on Forms W-2. Beginning with the AWI for 1991, compensation includes contributions to deferred compensation plans, but excludes certain distributions from plans where the distributions are included in the reported compensation subject to income taxes. We call the result of including contributions, and excluding certain distributions, net compensation. The table below summarizes the components of net compensation for 2012.Net compensation components for 2012

The "raw" average wage, computed as net compensation divided by the number of wage earners, is $6,529,097,960,690.75 divided by 153,632,290, or $42,498.21. Based on data in the table below, about 67.1 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the $42,498.21 raw average wage. By definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $27,519.10 for 2012.
Distribution of wage earners by level of net...

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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits

Workers' Compensation Rates are computed from the State's Average Weekly Wage (SAWW). NJ voters will an opportunity to vote on this landmark change in NJ law. Today's post was shared from njtvonline.org

The state’s current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. If you work a 40-hour week, that’s $290 a week, or $1160 a month, before taxes, in a region where the average monthly rent is $1,760. Take away food, transportation and other incidental costs and, well, you do the math. It’s why a broad coalition of labor, elected and other officials are pushing hard for Public Question 2,

which would change the state’s constitution to raise the minimum wage to $8.25, and tie future increases to the cost of living, something that newspaper vendor Tony White would welcome.

“It would be nice if was $8.25 for a lot of jobs out here because the minimum wage has been down for a long time. It’s time for the little people to make a little something, ya know? That’s all,” White, of Newark, said.

Tazia Treadwell knows about working for $7.25. She did it for a couple of years at a fast food restaurant just out of high school.

“After two, three months, I got a 10-cent raise, so I was at $7.35 an hour. After two years, no progress. I was was frustrated. I was just out of high school and I was at that stage where I wanted everything new, the latest of everything and I could barely do that,” Treadwell said.
Then came an...

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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Labor Group Says Haiti's Factories Are Unsafe

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from abcnews.go.com

Haiti's garment factories are unsafe for their workers, often lacking marked fire exits, safe drinking water and sufficient toilets, a labor group said Wednesday.

A study by the Geneva-based Better Work organization looked at working conditions in 23 Haitian factories from May to August. It found 13 workplaces were not sufficiently lighted, and 11 failed to clearly mark emergency exits and escape routes. Eleven factories did not have adequate fire-fighting equipment.

It also found that 21 did not have the legally required number of toilets, and the same number didn't have onsite medical facilities and staff.

Henri-Claude Muller-Poitevien, president of a government commission that oversees Haiti's assembly plants, said he welcomed the survey by the labor compliance group, which is supported by the International Labor Organization and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation.
He said his commission is working with Better Work and the fire department to mark emergency exits and install fire-fighting equipment.

"All the buildings need improvement — this is what we are doing now," Muller-Poitevien said. "We definitely want to comply with everything, but we will never be the triple-A student."

Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe responded on his blog Tuesday night to a separate report from another labor group that alleges assembly plants don't pay their workers even the minimum wage. He said the country is "continuing to build an environment that holds ourselves and...

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Monday, October 14, 2013

In Washington State, Home of Highest Minimum Wage, a City Aims Higher

Wages have a direct effect on workers' compensation benefits as they usually determine the rate of the benefit paid for temporary and permanent disability. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Washington already has the highest state minimum wage in the country, at $9.19 an hour. Soon, voters in this tiny city south of Seattle will decide whether to push the local minimum even higher.

If a majority of the voters here say yes to a referendum known as Proposition 1 when their mail-in ballots start arriving this week, a minimum wage of $15 an hour would be required for many businesses in SeaTac, more than twice the federal minimum of $7.25.

The measure would lift wages for thousands of workers at one of the nation’s busiest airports, Seattle-Tacoma International, which is within city limits. But business and labor leaders say the economic and political implications, with local democracy going where state and federal legislators mostly fear to tread, could be equally profound.

Workers ask President Obama to raise their wages

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from america.aljazeera.com

President Obama has also shown sympathy for the issues of low-wage workers, although the minimum wage increase he's expressly supported -- to $9 an hour -- is still less than what activists usually consider a "living wage."
"I think the president's heart in the right place," Ellison said. "We’ve just got to get his pen on the right place."
Federal contractors employ over a fifth of the American civilian workforce, and more than 560,000 of these workers earn $12 or less an hour, according to Demos, a liberal think tank. Many of them are cleaners and concession workers in federal buildings. If you include all the low-wage jobs funded by public dollars, including the 1.2 million paychecks underwritten by Medicare and Medicaid, the total, Demos found, surpasses the low-wage workforce of Walmart and McDonald’s combined.
Labor group Good Jobs Nation, backed by the Service Employees International Union, organized three smaller building-specific strikes earlier this year, as well as a city-wide labor action in May. It’s part of a larger strategy by unions and labor activists to push for higher wages in the largely non-unionized workforces of retail and fast food. Organizers called Wednesday's event the largest low-wage federal worker strike to date. Both Ellison and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave passionate speeches at the event.

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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Many States Look to Raise Minimum Wage

The trend to raise minimum wages will ultimately raise workers' compensation rates and premiums. It is a necessary item to maintain a productive and healthy workforce,Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.pewstates.org

California’s recent decision to raise its minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016—a higher minimum rate than any other state has now—may add momentum to the drive for higher hourly rates in at least eight other states in 2014.

New Jersey could become the fifth state this year to increase its state minimum wage if voters approve a measure on Nov. 5 that would boost the hourly rate by $1, to $8.25.

In states as varied as Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts and South Dakota, advocates are pushing to put minimum wage hikes on state ballots in 2014. Meanwhile, elected officials are leading the charge in Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia.

The action at the state level comes as organized labor and liberal groups have backed a wave of strikes by fast-food workers in cities across the country to put a spotlight on hourly wages. Advocates are pressing for a national $15 hourly wage, more than twice the $7.25 federal minimum wage.

States cannot set a minimum wage that is lower than the federal standard, but they are free to establish a higher one. Washington state currently has the highest state minimum wage at $9.19; followed by Oregon ($8.95) and Vermont ($8.60). Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Illinois all have a state minimum of $8.25. In addition, some 120 cities have enacted “living wages” that set a minimum standard for businesses that receive city contracts. City minimums range from $9 to $16 an hour.
...

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California minimum wage bill close to final passage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Minimum wage in California to be $10 an hour (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Fast food workers strike to double current wages (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Tips and Poverty (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Labor, Then and Now (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Walmart CEO Mike Duke Pushes Back Against Company's Minimum Wage Reputation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Minimum wage in California to be $10 an hour

As wages rise so do rates of payment under workers compensation laws. Likewise, workers' compensationinsurance premiums increase also.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nbcnews.com

Minimum wage workers in California would earn $10 an hour by 2016 under a bill passed by the legislature on Thursday, making the state likely to become the first in the nation to commit to such a high rate.

The bill, which Governor Jerry Brown said he will sign, would increase the minimum wage for hourly workers in the most populous U.S. state from the current rate of $8 an hour to $9 in July 2014, and to $10 by January 2016.

"The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. "This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy."
Brown, protective of the state's tenuous economic recovery, had initially opposed the bill but agreed to support it on Wednesday after leaders of both houses of the Democratic-led state legislature agreed to postpone the effective date of the raise until 2016.

The measure won support from Democrats, passing the Senate on a vote of 26-11 and the Assembly on a vote of 51-25. But it was opposed by many Republicans who said it would hurt small businesses and ultimately cost some low-wage workers their jobs.

"The impact of this is not on huge employers," said Republican Senator Jim Nielsen, who represents much of the far northern part of the state near the Oregon border. "It is on the smaller employer, the mom and pop operation."

To get the bill passed, leaders in the more conservative state Assembly had to win...

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California Minimum Wage Raised to $10 an Hour (variety.com)
California to raise minimum wage (bbc.co.uk)
California Lawmakers Boost State Minimum Wage to $10 an Hour - Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Brown Supports Raising California Minimum Wage To $10 An Hour (sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com)
Bill would give Calif. among highest minimum wages (news.yahoo.com)
State Minimum Wage Will Go Up To $10 By 2016 (laist.com)

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

California minimum wage bill close to final passage

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.latimes.com

A bill that would boost California's minimum wage by 25% to $10 an hour won a key vote Thursday and is just one step away from the governor's desk.

What Gov. Jerry Brown will do with it is no mystery. The governor on Wednesday pledged to sign the measure, AB 10 by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville). Brown's support was bolstered by endorsements from the Democratic majority leaders of both the state Senate and the state Assembly.

"The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs," Brown said.

"This is an unprecedented wage hike," said Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Assn. He predicted that many of the state's 87,000 eateries would deal with increased labor costs by cutting back employees' hours and by reducing hiring.

But, Louis Benitez, 51, a waiter at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles welcomed the possibility of a wage increase. "It would be a big help to get a little bit more money per hour," said Benitez, who earns tips as well as the minimum hourly wage.

The bill passed the state Senate on a vote of 26 to 11. It's expected to win final approval from the Assembly on Thursday, before lawmakers recess for the year on Friday.

If it becomes law, it would raise the current $8 minimum wage to $9 an hour next July 1 and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

A minimum wage hike would be the first in California since Jan. 1, 2008.

The state currently has the eighth highest minimum wage in the country. Washington...

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Copyright

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Charts: Why Fast-Food Workers Are Going on Strike

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Minimum Wage in America Is Pretty Damn Low

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Better Pay Now

If the minimum wage tracked inflation, it would be $4.07 per hour.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Why Are Children Working in American Tobacco Fields?

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Redefining the Minimum Wage

Monday, November 11, 2013

Exhausted Workers Recall Minimal Efforts to Enforce a Minimum Wage Law

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Wage Statistics for 2012

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Labor Group Says Haiti's Factories Are Unsafe

Monday, October 14, 2013

In Washington State, Home of Highest Minimum Wage, a City Aims Higher

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Workers ask President Obama to raise their wages

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Many States Look to Raise Minimum Wage

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Minimum wage in California to be $10 an hour

Saturday, September 14, 2013

California minimum wage bill close to final passage

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