Today's post is shared from blogs.wsj.com. Growth in worker compensation nearly stalled this spring as wages stagnated and health benefits fell. Private employers in the U.S. spent an average of $30.11 per hour worked for total compensation in June, the Labor Department said in a report Wednesday. That was up just 0.4% from March, a sharp slowdown from its 1.2% gain in the first three months of the year. Total compensation rose by 1.4% in the final three months of 2013, the fastest rate of the recovery. Growth of private-sector wages slowed to 0.3% between March and June, down from a 1% rate in the prior three months. Wages account for 70% of total compensation. Expenditure on health benefits fell 0.4% between March and June after jumping 2.6% in the first three months of the year. Health benefits are the second largest element of employee compensation behind wages, accounting for 7.8% of total expenditure. Economists are closely following measures of employee compensation for clues on labor market health and on the strength of price pressures throughout the economy. Stagnant wage growth during the economic recovery has signaled a high level of unemployment and tame inflation. Employer costs for employee compensation is one of two gauges that capture both wages and benefits. Several narrower gauges focus on wages. The most closely followed of these is the Labor Department’s measure of average hourly earnings, part of the agency’s monthly Employment Situation report. Similarly, economists and policy... |
Copyright
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Worker Compensation Stalls in Second Quarter
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage
The political posturing over raising the minimum wage sometimes obscures the huge and growing number of low-wage workers it would affect. An estimated 27.8 million people would earn more money under the Democratic proposal to lift the hourly minimum from $7.25 today to $10.10 by 2016. And most of them do not fit the low-wage stereotype of a teenager with a summer job. Their average age is 35; most work full time; more than one-fourth are parents; and, on average, they earn half of their families’ total income.
None of that, however, has softened the hearts of opponents, including congressional Republicans and low-wage employers, notably restaurant owners and executives.
This is not a new debate. The minimum wage is a battlefield in a larger political fight between Democrats and Republicans — dating back to the New Deal legislation that instituted the first minimum wage in 1938 — over government’s role in the economy, over raw versus regulated capitalism, over corporate power versus public needs.
But the results of the wage debate are clear. Decades of research, facts and evidence show that increasing the minimum wage is vital to the economic security of tens of millions of Americans, and would be good for the weak economy. As Congress begins its own debate, here...
|
Related articles
- Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for the Economy (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Many States Look to Raise Minimum Wage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Fast food workers strike to double current wages (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
The Minimum Wage in America Is Pretty Damn Low
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.
Related articles
- SeaTac workers celebrate win on $15 minimum wage as opponents request recount (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Better Pay Now (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Taxpayers pay high cost for low fast-food wages, lawmakers are told (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Democrats say minimum-wage battles to help 2014 turnout (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Redefining the Minimum Wage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Exhausted Workers Recall Minimal Efforts to Enforce a Minimum Wage Law (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Charts: Why Fast-Food Workers Are Going on Strike
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% 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... |
Related articles
- Fast-food strikes in U.S. amid push for higher minimum wage (cbc.ca)
- Wage Strikes Planned at Fast-Food Outlets (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Beyond Fast Food Strikes | Jacobin (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- The Minimum Wage in America Is Pretty Damn Low (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Taxpayers pay high cost for low fast-food wages, lawmakers are told (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Working ‘Off the Clock’ is Not OK
Working ‘Off the Clock’ is Not OK. |
Pilot Travel Center employees in #Mississippi "were working through lunch, without pay" ... The employees ended up receiving "$141,096 in back wages and liquidated damages." This award made a difference in the lives of the employees and their loved ones, according to the article below. #workers Here's the intro from the U.S. Department of Labor: "Not paying workers for all of the hours they worked not only harms the workers, but also their families by depriving them of the wages they need to get by. Because of a Wage and Hour Division investigation, the employees at Pilot Travel Center received $141,096 in back wages and liquidated damages. More information about workers’ rights and employers’ responsibilities also is available at www.dol.gov/whd." |
Related articles
- US sues Los Arcos Mexican Grill & Seafood in Tennessee to recover unpaid minimum and overtime wages for 70 employees (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Oakland A's Will Pay Back Wages to Interns and Clubhouse Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- NJ Gas Station Owner Agrees to Pay $3 Million in Back Wages to Employees (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Wage Theft -- Another Assault on Workers' Compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- US Department of Labor recovers $4.83 million in back wages, damages for more than 4,500 Wal-Mart workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Truckers Fired Over Workers' Comp Claim: What to Do Next (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Wage Theft is a Much Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft - But Workers Remain Mostly Unprotected (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Democrats say minimum-wage battles to help 2014 turnout
Wages determine rates of workers' compensation benefits and ultimately insurance premium costs for employers. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.usatoday.com
WASHINGTON — Democrats hope a slew of potential ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage next year in key states will drive up voter turnout and help their party in midterm congressional elections. Advocates of wage increases are pushing 2014 ballot measures in several states, including Massachusetts, Idaho, Alaska and South Dakota. Legislative campaigns are planned in other states, including Illinois. Last week, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approved an increase in the state's minimum hourly rate by $1 to $8.25. It became the fifth state to hike its minimum wage this year, joining California, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The flurry of state efforts comes as President Obama and some congressional Democrats push an increase of the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage, unchanged since 2009. In February, Obama proposed raising the hourly rate to $9, but it has not gained traction in the GOP-led House. House Speaker John Boehner has said it would result in fewer jobs. The White House recently endorsed a separate measure by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, that would hike the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2015 in several increments. "The refusal to increase the minimum wage is just one of the ways House Republicans have inflicted harm on the economy and hurt people's pocketbooks," said New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "2014 is going to be a referendum on who has helped the middle class and... |
Saturday, June 18, 2022
NJ Landscaper Ordered by Federal Court to Pay $400K in Back Wages and Damages to 32 Workers.
A federal court has approved a consent judgment ordering a Succasunna landscaping company and its owner to pay $400,000 in back wages and damages after the U.S. Department of Labor found the employer denied 32 of its workers the overtime pay they earned.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Wages should be growing faster, but they’re not. Here’s why.
When it comes to stagnant wage trends, I yield to no one (except maybe the Economic Policy Institute’s Larry Mishel) in my efforts to elevate the issue and tie it to deep-seeded structural changes that have been zapping worker bargaining power for decades. I’ve tried to be particularly vigilant in ringing this lack-of-real-wage-growth alarm bell in recent months, as the tightening job market has led to threatening chatter about the need for the Federal Reserve to ratchet up rates sooner than later. So when I tell you I’m a little surprised to see almost no movement in wage growth despite the improving employment situation, I hope you’ll give me a listen. To be clear, that’s “a little surprised.” There’s still considerable slack in the job market, and, like I said, workers’ ability to bargain for a bigger slice of the pie has taken a real beating over the years. But given the extent to which the job market has tightened up in recent months, I would expect a bit more wage pressure than I’ve seen (“tightening,” “improving,” “less slack” are all econo-mese for stronger labor demand leading to faster job growth and lower unemployment). So let’s look at the evidence for these claims and think about why the wage dog is not barking. While I offer a number of credible hypotheses, the one I favor is pretty straightforward: Raising pay is simply not part of the business model of... |
Related articles
- This is why wages have risen so slowly. (But the Fed can help!) (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Raising the minimum wage without raising havoc (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Report: Minimum wage hike would cut food stamp spending by $4.6 billion a year (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- How Wal-Mart keeps wages low (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Worker Compensation Stalls in Second Quarter (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- 1 in 13 minimum wage workers has a college degree (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Fast-food workers call for nationwide walkout Aug. 29 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Wage Theft -- Another Assault on Workers' Compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for the Economy (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Fast-Food Workers Nationwide to Stage Walkouts (usnews.com)
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
US Department of Labor recovers $4.83 million in back wages, damages for more than 4,500 Wal-Mart workers
Misapplied exemption resulted in pay violations; nearly $464,000 assessed in penalties
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., headquartered in Bentonville, Ark., has agreed to pay $4,828,442 in back wages and damages to more than 4,500 employees nationwide following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division that found violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime provisions. Additionally, Wal-Mart will pay $463,815 in civil money penalties.
The violations affected current and former vision center managers and asset protection coordinators at Wal-Mart Discount Stores, Wal-Mart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and Sam's Club warehouses. Wal-Mart failed to compensate these employees with overtime pay, considering them to be exempt from the FLSA's overtime requirements. The Labor Department's investigation found that the employees are nonexempt and consequently due overtime pay for any hours worked beyond 40 in a week.
"Misclassification of employees as exempt from FLSA coverage is a costly problem with adverse consequences for employees and corporations," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. "Let this be a signal to other companies that when violations are found, the Labor Department will take appropriate action to ensure that workers receive the wages they have earned."
Under the terms of the settlement, Wal-Mart has agreed to pay all back wages the department determined are owed for the violations plus an equal amount in liquidated damages to the employees. The FLSA provides that employers who violate the law are, as a general rule, liable to employees for back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages. The civil money penalties assessed stem from the repeat nature of the violations. Wal-Mart, which operates more than 3,900 establishments in the United States, corrected its classification practices for these workers in 2007, and negotiation over the back pay issues has been ongoing since that time. A third-party administrator will disburse the payments to the affected employees.
"Our department has been working with Wal-Mart for a long time to reach this agreement," said Nancy J. Leppink, deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. "I am very pleased that staff in our Southwest region persevered, ensured these employees will be paid the back wages they are owed and brought this case to conclusion. Thanks to this resolution, thousands of employees will see money put back into their pockets that should have been there all along. The damages and penalties assessed in this case should put other employers on notice that they cannot avoid their obligations to their employees by inappropriately classifying their workers as exempt."
The FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay requirements for individuals employed in bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales positions, as well as certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week. Job titles do not determine exempt status. In order for an exemption to apply, an employee's specific job duties and salary must meet all the requirements of the department's regulations.
The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for all hours worked, plus time and one-half their regular rates, including commissions, bonuses and incentive pay, for hours worked beyond 40 per week. Employers also are required to maintain accurate time and payroll records.
Related articles
- Delay By Worker Does Not Give Rise To Legal Malpractice (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Privacy: Why Injured Workers Are Stalked With Junk Mail and Nuisance Calls (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Fatal Occupational Injuries and Workers' Memorial Day (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- OSHA Cites NJ Store For Safety Violations - Blocked Exits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- The New Non-Subscriber Opt-Out Plan Is Emerging As The Alternative to Traditional Workers' Compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
McDonald's Profit Is Awkwardly Close To What It Costs Taxpayers Every Year
McDonald's announced Monday that it raked in $1.5 billion in profits in the third quarter, up 5 percent from last year.
The number is strikingly close to the $1.2 billion taxpayers are shelling out each year to help pay public assistance to the McDonald's workforce, according to a report released last week by the National Employment Law Project. The echoing numbers are simply a coincidence, but underscore the immense profits that the chain continues to pull in while its workers simply struggle to afford food, medical help and housing. The public assistance McDonald's workers receive comes via food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and other federal programs, according to the NELP report. In a statement to The Huffington Post, McDonald's emphasized that workers get training and the opportunity for career advancement. The company also said that its franchisees pay competitive wages that are based on "local wage laws." Those wages are stunningly low. Frontline fast-food workers make a median wage of $8.94 an hour, according to a recent Reuters report. "Fast-food workers work only 24 hours a week on average — at $8.94 an hour, this adds up to barely $11,000 a year," wrote Christine Owens for Reuters in August. With wages that low, front-line fast food workers are more than twice as likely as the typical worker to participate in a government assistance program, according to the NELP report: |
Related articles
- Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Home Care Workers Win Wage and Overtime Protection (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Many States Look to Raise Minimum Wage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Senior Care Workers Are Victims of Wage Violations (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Minimum wage in California to be $10 an hour (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Senior Care Workers Are Victims of Wage Violations (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- California minimum wage bill close to final passage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Monday, September 16, 2013
Tips and Poverty
When The Times’s restaurant critic, Pete Wells, recently called tipping “irrational, outdated, ineffective, confusing, prone to abuse and sometimes discriminatory,” he was referring mainly to mid- to high-priced restaurants that are considering an end to the practice in favor of surcharges or service-included pricing.
In the diners and other more “value oriented” restaurants that employ most of the nation’s burgeoning ranks of waitresses (the vast majority of servers are female), tips are all that and more. They are part of a parallel economic universe in which employers are allowed to pay sub-minimum wages, with predictably devastating results. According to census data, servers are far more likely than other workers to live in poverty.
It is a national disgrace when hard work, in any industry, leaves workers in poverty. But falling living standards and economic hardship among tipped workers signal prolonged stagnation throughout the economy. That’s because employment growth in restaurants and bars has outpaced growth in nearly all other sectors in recent years, including health care, manufacturing, retail and financial services.
If wages in food-service and other service jobs are not lifted, it is hard to see where adequate consumer demand will come from to generate and sustain a real recovery.
It is not tipping that most needs to end, however. What needs to change is the federal law that sets the minimum wage for tipped workers...
|
Related articles
- Despite backlogs, VA disability claims processors get bonuses (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- US Supreme Court Asked to Review MSP Preemption Issue (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Lots of data to process for Calif. lead paint judge (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Deadline for Filing 9-11 Claims Approaches - Cancer Claims Soar (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Interpreting the "Foreign Language" of Workers' Compensation (hasnerlaw.com)
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Obama to Increase Workers' Compensation Benefits
The majority the nation's patchwork of workers' compensation systems are based on a payment scheme linked to wages. The State Average Weekly Wage (SAAW) establishes the foundation upon which temporary disability and permanent disability payments are determined. As wages increase so will benefits.
President Barack Obama Delivering The State of The Union White House Photo: Chuck Kennedy |
"The President believes that no one who works fulltime should have to raise their family in poverty. But right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year – which leaves
too many families struggling to make ends meet, with a family of four with a minimum wage worker still living below the poverty line. That’s why the President is calling on Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage for working Americans in stages to $9 in 2015 and index it to inflation thereafter."
Related articles
- The Obama Agenda: The Road to Workplace Wellness (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Obama's Minimum Wage Plan (cato.org)
- Why The Minimum Wage Should Actually Be $21.72 (huffingtonpost.com)
- Downton Abbey and Workers' Compensation (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Jobs, Growth & Universal Healthcare (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Consequences of Increasing the Minimum Wage
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
NJ Offers Tax Credits to Employers to Offset Minimum Wage Increases for Workers with Impairments
To read more about "minimum wage" and workers' compensation, click here.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Study Finds Violations of Wage Law in New York and California
The United States Labor Department says that a new study shows that between 3.5 and 6.5 percent of all the wage and salary workers in California and New York are paid less than the minimum wage. The study, which examined work force data for the two states, found that more than 300,000 workers in each state suffered minimum-wage violations each month. Labor Department officials said that even if one assumed a violation rate half that nationwide, that would mean more than two million workers across the nation were paid less than the federal or state minimum wage. Violations were most common in the restaurant and hotel industries, the study found, followed by educational and health services and retail and wholesale. “These findings are alarming in terms of the prevalence of the problem, particularly in a set of industries where we already know workers earn low wages and struggle to earn a basic family budget,” said David Weil, administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. The minimum-wage violations in those two states translate into $20 million to $29 million in lost income per week, the study concluded. Those amounts represent 38 percent of the income of the victimized workers in New York and 49 percent of the income of victimized workers in California. The study was based on 2011 data, when the minimum wage in New York was $7.25 an hour and $8 an hour in California. The study found that 11 percent of low-wage workers suffered minimum-wage... |
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Wages Stagnate as U.S. Manufacturers Reap Record Profits
Machinist Michael Pargeter reached for a reference to a TV cartoon set in the Stone Age to explain why union members were spurning a contract offer from Boeing Co. (BA:US)
Wages would be set “back to the Flintstones era” with a plan to slow future raises for new employees, Pargeter, 62, said outside a Seattle union hall last week while ballots were being counted, referring to an animated television show about prehistoric family life. Boeing’s quest for concessions and employees’ opposition exposed a fault line in U.S. industry’s post-recession comeback: Even with hiring and output robust enough to be dubbed a manufacturing renaissance by President Barack Obama, workers are falling behind. Factory pay hasn’t kept pace with inflation and has fallen 3 percent on that basis since May 2009, while average pay for all wage earners slid only about 1 percent. “We need to focus on how many jobs there are that give an adult a chance to earn a decent living,” said Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center in Eugene. “Too much of the discussion has been about the number of jobs, and that’s obviously important, but there’s also a... |
Related articles
- John Burton Reports on Workers' Compensation Insurance Industry Underwriting Results (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Chamber takes aim at worker centers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- A Permanent Slump? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Stephen Colbert Chides Walmart For Employee Food Drive (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Is Walmart's request of associates to help provide Thanksgiving dinner for co-workers proof of low wages? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Privatization of workers, compensation continues throughout WV (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Report: Minimum wage hike would cut food stamp spending by $4.6 billion a year
Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour would reduce federal food stamp spending by $4.6 billion a year, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.
The proposal, a top legislative priority for President Obama and congressional Democrats, would reduce enrollment in the food stamp program by as much as 9.2 percent, the report said.
A report last month from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said about 15 percent of the nation’s workforce would see wages rise under Obama’s plan to raise the minimum wage, adding that the increase would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
Democrats are making a midterm election year push to raise the federal minimum wage. Reid Wilson takes a look at what that would mean for two cities. (/)
The CAP report, which was written by University of California Berkeley researchers Rachel West and Michael Reich, is the latest in a line of research highlighting the connection between low-wage work and government support programs.
Last year, a report done by researchers at Berkeley and the University of Illinois asserted that taxpayers are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers, many of whom earn the minimum wage or close to it.
“What is the best way to make people independent and be able to sustain their standard of living without having to depend on government support?,” Reich asked. “It turns out that...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]
Monday, December 8, 2014
Labor's new reality -- it's easier to raise wages for 100,000 than to unionize 4,000
Haltingly, with understandable ambivalence, the American labor movement is morphing into something new. Its most prominent organizing campaigns of recent years — of fast-food workers, domestics, taxi drivers and Wal-Mart employees — have prompted states and cities to raise their minimum wage and create more worker-friendly regulations. But what these campaigns haven't done is create more than a small number of new dues-paying union members. Nor, for the foreseeable future, do unions anticipate that they will. Blocked from unionizing workplaces by ferocious management opposition and laws that fail to keep union activists from being fired, unions have begun to focus on raising wages and benefits for many more workers than they can ever expect to claim as their own. In one sense, this is nothing new: Unions historically have supported minimum wage and occupational safety laws that benefited all workers, not just their members. But they also have recently begun investing major resources in organizing drives more likely to yield new laws than new members. Some of these campaigns seek to organize workers who, rightly or wrongly, aren't even designated as employees or lack a common employer, such as domestic workers and cab drivers. The decision of Seattle's government to raise the city's minimum wage to $15 resulted from just such... |
Related articles
- The Minimum Wage in America Is Pretty Damn Low (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Study Finds Violations of Wage Law in New York and California (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Is service work today worse than being a household servant? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Domestic Workers Treaty Goes Into Force (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Chris Christie berated by U.S. Labor Secretary over minimum wage comments (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Friday, November 15, 2013
Taxpayers pay high cost for low fast-food wages, lawmakers are told
SACRAMENTO — Low wages paid by the fast-food industry come with a high public cost for California taxpayers, academics and advocates for the working poor told state lawmakers.
Workers at hamburger, pizza and other, mainly franchise, eateries are paid at near-minimum-wage levels, making them eligible for public assistance that totaled an average of $717 million a year in California from 2007 to 2011.
The condition of low-wage fry cooks and sandwich makers was the focus of a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly labor committees Wednesday. The inquiry was held in the wake of a 60-city protest in August by fast-food employees. Protesters, backed by the Service Employees International Union, called for collective bargaining and a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Simone Sonnier Jang, a mother of two who works at a Los Angeles McDonald's, said she wouldn't be able to survive financially without subsidized housing, day care and medical care for her children and cash assistance. "Without that I wouldn't be able to pay rent, cover the cost of utilities," she said, "and I wouldn't be able to buy my own food." The drain on the safety-net funding is alarming, said Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina). "The taxpayer should not have to subsidize one industry," he said. The movement got a boost in September when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation raising the California minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour, in two steps, by 2016. Much of the data... |
Related articles
- Corporate America's new scam: Industry P.R. firm poses as think tank! (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- McDonald's Profit Is Awkwardly Close To What It Costs Taxpayers Every Year (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Beyond Fast Food Strikes | Jacobin (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Voters Will Decide on Minimum Wage Hike - Impacting Workers Compensation Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Dozens Hurt in Bangladesh Garment Factory Protest (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Exhausted Workers Recall Minimal Efforts to Enforce a Minimum Wage Law (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)