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...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Walmart CEO Mike Duke Pushes Back Against Company's Minimum Wage Reputation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Labor, Then and Now (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fast food workers strike to double current wages (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The Reverberating Impact of Low Wages (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Walmart Gets Desperate | The Nation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

How Wal-Mart keeps wages low

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

“I think they don’t want me to actually let people know what’s really going on at Wal-Mart as an associate,” Lopez told me in an interview for the Nation following her June 21 firing. “So they’d rather get rid of me.” Firings like Lopez’s may not come as a shock — Wal-Mart once shut down a store in Canada after workers there won collective bargaining rights, and it eliminated its entire U.S. meat-cutting department after a handful of meat-cutters at one store voted to unionize. But the alleged retaliation defies an eight-decade-old promise from the federal government to most U.S. workers: Banding together to improve your workplace, whether you win or lose, shouldn’t cost you your job. That 1935 law — the National Labor Relations Act – is still on the books. But its ban on retaliation today reads more like a cruel joke than an ironclad commitment. A 2009 study released by the progressive Economic Policy Institute found that pro-union workers are fired — allegedly illegally — in at least a third of unionization election campaigns supervised by the government. As expected, Wal-Mart denies illegally retaliating against anyone. The company claims that some of the discipline was unrelated to the protests — Lopez ostensibly lost her job for violating a food safety policy by bringing the employee handbook into the deli area where she works. And Wal-Mart says other workers were punished not for...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Love for Labor Lost (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Fast-food workers call for nationwide walkout Aug. 29 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Big Labor: still a political force (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

EpiPens for All

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

AMARRIA JOHNSON, who attended first grade at Hopkins Elementary School in Richmond, Va., was an outgoing and energetic girl who loved animals, singing and telling jokes. She won reading and citizenship awards and planned to become a teacher. She also was allergic to peanuts. On Jan. 2, 2012, a classmate gave Amarria a peanut on the playground. Despite her allergy, Amarria ate the nut and soon had trouble breathing. She sought out a teacher, but at the school health clinic, there was no epinephrine auto-injector prescribed for Amarria. Epinephrine auto-injectors, the most well known of which are EpiPens, contain adrenaline and are the first line of emergency treatment for anaphylaxis, an extremely severe allergic reaction that can become fatal within minutes. At the time, employees in Amarria’s public school were not allowed to use epinephrine prescribed for one student on a different child; instead, the school called an ambulance, which transported Amarria to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead of anaphylaxis and cardiac arrest. I’m the mother of a child with food allergies, and stories like Amarria’s are my worst nightmare. In describing her tragedy, I question the fairness of reducing a 7-year-old girl to a symbol. Nevertheless I repeat the circumstances of Amarria’s death because it appears they directly affected legislation in her state. Just a few months after she died, “Amarria’s Law” was in place; the law requires...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

• A fatal trend: N.J. train deaths have increased since state launched safety initiative (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Ex-NFL Player Loses Workers' Comp Appeal Against Steelers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• What's Your Labor Worth? For Most of Us, Less Than It Was in 2000 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Speed Camera Enforcement Will Begin on Sepember 9th, the First Day of School (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The uneven playing field of workers' compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Thousands of doctors practicing despite errors, misconduct (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Highly hazardous pesticides should be phased out in developing countries (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Labor, Then and Now

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

On Thursday, the day after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, thousands of fast-food workers in 60 cities walked off their jobs, the latest in an escalating series of walkouts by low-wage workers demanding higher pay and the right to organize without retaliation. The parallels, though inexact, are compelling. A half-century ago, the marchers called on Congress to increase the minimum wage from $1.15 an hour to $2 “so that men may live in dignity,” in the words of Bayard Rustin, one of the chief organizers of the march. Today, the fast-food workers also seek a raise, from the $9 an hour that most of them make to $15.00 an hour. That’s not much different from what the marchers wanted in 1963; adjusted for inflation, $2 then is $13.39 an hour today. The strikers are targeting their employers — profitable companies like McDonald’s, Yum Brands (which includes Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC) and Wendy’s. But Congress could help. Today’s minimum wage is a miserly $7.25 an hour — which is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was 50 long years ago. Raising it would support the legitimate demands of the strikers and underscore the pressing needs of the country’s growing ranks of low-wage workers.

14 Worker Struggles To Pay Attention To This Labor Day

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from blog.workingamerica.org

Sure, to some people #LaborDayIs about barbecues and fashion rules. But #LaborDayIs also about, you know, labor. Today, workers across the country are struggling for decent wages, safe workplaces, affordable healthcare, and even basic civil rights. North Carolina’s Moral Monday North Carolina's Moral Monday Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) and the North Carolina legislature have passed huge cuts to state unemployment insurance, an overhaul of the state tax code, big education cuts and the nation’s strictest voting restrictions. Lead by the NC NAACP’s Rev. William Barber, North Carolinans of all stripes have gathered by the thousands to for huge weekly “Moral Monday” protests to stand up to Gov. McCrory’s agenda. Learn more about Moral Monday and check out some sweet protest photos. Oh and thanks to @sherierb for the thumbnail photo. The Wisconsin Solidarity Singers The Wisconsin Solidarity Singers After the huge protests in 2011 against Wisconsin’s new collective bargaining restrictions, Gov. Scott Walker and his allies changed the rules at the state Capitol Building in Madison, requiring protesters to have permits. His reasoning? Um, none.

Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough

Workers' Compensation benefits are usually based on an individual's wages and limited by the State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW). Likewise, premiums paid by employers are also determined by payroll costs. As medical costs soar, wage are not keeping up with wages, therefore premiums must rise. The result is a push by employers to limit workers' compensation claims through regulation and statutory reforms. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.baltimoresun.com

The good news as Labor Day approaches: Jobs are returning. The bad news: Most of them pay lousy wages and provide low, if not nonexistent, benefits. The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with wage losses for most workers since then, means that the bottom 60 percent of working Americans are earning less now than 13 years ago. This is also part of the explanation for why the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to around 14 percent this year. More than 35 million Americans now live below the poverty line. Many of them have jobs. The problem is that these jobs just don't pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.

Duration of Temporary Disability Payments Increasing

NCCI Holdings Inc. reports the duration of the average payment of workers' compensation temporary disability benefits is increasing.


When a worker is temporarily disabled as a result of a work-related injury so that he or she is unable to perform his job, the worker is entitled to temporary compensation benefits. If an employee is not absent from work, temporary compensation benefits are not payable.  An employee may be entitled to multiple periods of temporary disability benefits as a result of a particular injury. When there is a dispute with regard to the payment of temporary disability benefits and the respondent-employer has contested their payment either from the date of the accident or following the termination of medical care, the employee may look to the State or to a private temporary disability carrier for payment.

New Jersey standards for temporary disability benefits:
Temporary Disability

• When out of work and under authorized medical care for more than 7 days (retroactive), you are entitled to receive temporary disability benefits not to exceed 70% of the State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW).
• Authorization to return to “light duty” is interpreted by the Courts as a return to full time employment and temporary disability benefits will stop. If you remain under medical care and if your employer does not have “light duty” work available you may be entitled to continued temporary disability benefits.

....
For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered work related accident and injuries.


Related Articles on Temporary Disability Benefits

Wage Miscalculations Can Result In Incorrect Low Temporary ...

Jan 29, 2012

Universally workers' compensation temporary disability benefits are set calculating wages at the time of the accident. If an employer miscalculates an employee's wages then the payment of temporary disability benefits paid...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Overtime Counts Towards Workers' Compensation Awards

Jul 19, 2012

This amount, not the $400 basic wage, should be used to compute for his benefits, thus yielding an additional $50 per week in Temporary Total Disability benefits. Additional items of value are also included as part of the...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Court Holds That Social Security Decision ...

Feb 06, 2012

A NJ Appellate Court upheld that a trial judge's ruling that a decision of the Social Security Administration awarding total disability beenfits did not terminate a workers' compensation order for temporary disability payments.

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Trending: Opting-Out of Workers ...

Apr 10, 2012

Temporary disability plans and major medical plans act as coverage for loss time and treatment. Employee are willing to fore go permanent disability inorder to get certain and immediate medical care and lost time benefits.

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Related articles

• Nurse Case Managers: Friend Or Foe?
• Overwork A Recognized Compensable Condition
• Aging Population Requires More Attention

Slow Economic Grown Forecasts Dismal Future for Workers Compensation

The announcement today of slower economic growth predicts a gloomy future for the US Workers' Compensation industry. A 2nd Quarter growth rate of 1.6% is far below the minimum 2.5% rate necessary to halt the increasing numbers of unemployed workers.


The US workers' compensation industry is dependent on premiums, based on wages, paid to workers. A lack of workers on payrolls stalls the economic engine necessary to fund the system. The predictable response is an increase in rates chargeable to fewer employees in a time when the country faces a predictable deflation rate in advance of potentially soaring rates based upon inevitable inflation resultant from increased governmental spending. Seven more years, at a minimum of high unemployment has been predicted.


Compounding the scenario is the fact that the historical pattern of the past will most likely not allow for a major rebound as the facts of economic growth, globalization and transfer of manufacturing overseas has devastated the base of growth for the national workers' compensation system. 


Click here for more information on how Jon L Gelman can assist you in a claim for workers' Compensation claim benefits. You may e-mail Jon  Gelman or call 1-973-696-7900.


Related Articles
Is The Recovery Of The Workers’ Compensation System An Illusion?