Minimum wage workers in two states, Washington, DC, and 15 cities and counties got a raise on Sunday. These state and local governments had passed laws to increase the minimum wage on a schedule, with July 1 and January 1 being the most common dates for raises.
Oregon doesn’t have a single statewide minimum wage, but it went up! The minimum is now $10.75 as a standard, $10.50 in “nonurban” counties, and $12 in the Portland metro area.
Maryland’s minimum wage went up to $10.10. In Maryland, Montgomery County boosted its minimum wage from $11.50 to $12.25
Washington, D.C., rose from $12.50 to $13.25.
Eleven California cities saw minimum wage increases, with Emeryville the high point at $15.69 an hour for larger businesses. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Malibu, Milpitas, Pasadena, and Santa Monica all went from $12 to $13.25. San Francisco rose from $14 to $15.
Workers in Portland, Maine, are seeing a modest bump from $10.68 to $10.90.
In Illinois, Chicago went from $11 to $12 and Cook County went from $10 to $11.
The federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 an hour, with Republicans continuing to refuse to consider an increase. Perhaps most depressingly—and showing most clearly where Republican priorities are—Birmingham, Alabama, and Johnson County, Iowa, were both supposed to have minimum wage increases on July 1, but didn’t. Their state legislatures stepped in to pre-empt local governments from improving life for workers.
About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at DailyKos.
This blog was originally published at DailyKos on July 4, 2018. Reprinted with permission.
Good news for Oregon workers in the retail and fast food industries. The state has become the first to pass a law protecting workers from some of the worst scheduling abuses employers love so much.
One in six Oregonians receive less than 24 hours of notice before their shifts, according to a survey the University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center published in February.
Now, Oregon is mandating that the state’s largest employers in the retail, hospitality and food service industries — those with more than 500 workers — give employees their schedules in writing at least a week ahead of time.
They’ll also have to give workers a 10-hour break between shifts, or pay them extra.
I worked for an international company that owns a bunch of coffee shops in airports. So while I was working there, they told me that I would have a set schedule. Within seven months, my schedule had changed eight times.
“I am a veteran with PTSD, due to being in Iraq a couple of times, and I was not able to go to my group counseling sessions because my schedule got changed.”
Laws like this should be on the Democratic agenda at all levels: Democratic state legislatures could be passing scheduling protections just as Republican state legislatures pass anti-abortion and anti-union laws, and if Democrats want to campaigning to retake Congress on a good jobs agenda, this belongs right alongside minimum wage and paid leave.
This blog was originally published at DailyKos Labor on August 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Laura Clawson is the labor editor at Daily Kos. Previous. she was senior writer at Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. She has a PhD in sociology from Princeton University and has taught at Dartmouth College and the Princeton Theological Seminary. She is the author of “I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers.”
Last week, domestic workers — those who care for children and clean inside people’s homes — won two surprise victories securing more rights in Connecticut and Oregon.
Oregon has considered a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights for many years, but then last week it gained traction. “At the last minute, this bill suddenly got the attention of a critical mass of legislators,” said Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The law would mean that all nannies, house cleaners, and housekeepers who work in people’s homes would have a right to three days off a year, overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week (or 44 if they live in an employer’s home), meal and rest breaks, 24 consecutive hours of rest each week or eight hours of rest every 24 hours for live-in employees, uninterrupted sleep and the right to cook food for those who live in their employers’ homes, and protections against harassment and discrimination.
Connecticut’s bill is a good deal narrower. It would change the state’s anti-discrimination and harassment statutes so that they include domestic workers, who are currently excluded. It will only apply to employers with three or more workers, however, which will exclude many households that only have one nanny or housekeeper. But as Poo pointed out, the state has “a density of wealthy employers who employ more than one domestic worker in their homes.”
And the changes can still have a big impact. “We believe a very high percentage of workers in Connecticut will benefit from this,” said Natalicia Tracy, executive director of the Brazilian Worker Center. Meanwhile, the symbolic significance is important. “It’s removing exclusions that are over 70 years old, it is creating changes in laws, but also showing it’s possible to change culture,” she said.
It’s also the first step in what organizers in the state hope will be a two-part process. Last year, the state convened a task force to study domestic workers’ rights in the state. The task force will release a report on its findings in October. At that point, Tracy, a member of the task force herself, says her group will use the recommendations to push for a full bill of rights that includes anti-relation provisions, parental leave and other benefits, and anti-trafficking measures. “I firmly believe that we’re going to be in excellent shape next year when it comes time to submit a bill and to have support on the bill,” she said.
It’s unclear whether the governors in each state will sign the bills into law, although advocates told ThinkProgress they believe both will. A spokesperson for Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) said, “The Governor will review the bill once it reaches her desk,” and a spokesperson for Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy’s (D) office said they are reviewing its bill.
Four states have already passed their own versions of Domestic Workers Bills of Rights: the first was New York, followed by California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts.
Beyond Connecticut and Oregon, Illinois could be another state to join the mix and pass a bill of rights. “We finally got a breakthrough last week with the House passing the bill, including some bipartisan support,” Poo noted. “We are now kind of all hands on deck trying to move through the Senate.”
Without the extra protections, domestic workers remain vulnerable to being paid poorly and mistreated. In a 2012 survey of more than 2,000 domestic workers across the country, a quarter were paid less than minimum wage and about half made an hourly wage that wasn’t enough to support their families. That left 20 percent to go without food because they couldn’t afford to buy any. Meanwhile, more than a third said they worked long hours without breaks but 85 percent didn’t get any overtime pay. But they have little recourse if they don’t like their working conditions: 91 percent who had problems didn’t complain for fear of risking their jobs, while among those who were actually fired, nearly a quarter was because they spoke up.
Poo’s group also isn’t settling for the basic standards required in the states that have passed bills of rights. They also want to see domestic workers get a living wage and paid time off. “We haven’t been successful in getting those pieces into many of the bills around the country,” she noted. But ever since they passed, her group has been focused on “using the minimum standards as a jumping off point,” she said, to get employers to go beyond the minimum.
This blog was originally posted on Think Progress on June 10, 2015. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: The author’s name is Bryce Covert. Bryce Covert is the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress. She was previously editor of the Roosevelt Institute’s Next New Deal blog and a senior communications officer. She is also a contributor for The Nation and was previously a contributor for ForbesWoman. Her writing has appeared on The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and others. She is also a board member of WAM!NYC, the New York Chapter of Women, Action & the Media.
On Monday, Oregon lawmakers considered a pair of bills that could significantly reduce the gap in average earnings between working men and women, which currently means the state’s women make 80 percent of what men do.
House Bill 2006 would make it unlawful for employers to pay workers of different genders who do equivalent work differently. House Bill 2007 would make it illegal to punish workers who ask about or discuss their pay with each other.
The first bill’s language is subtle, but it could have important consequences for women in the state. As written, equivalent jobs wouldn’t rely on having the exact same role at the exact same company. Rather, equivalent jobs would be those that are the same when the required skills, training, education, effort, responsibility, and working conditions are the same. For example, women who coach girls’ teams couldn’t be paid less than men who coach boys just because boys’ teams bring in more money. Employers could still have differing pay grades based on merit, seniority, training, and education differences among workers.
Rather than pay equality as we imagine it now, where only men and women with the same job titles should be paid the same, such an approach, often called comparable worth or pay equity, would seek to equalize pay for people doing different but similar work. This focus addresses the part of the gender wage gap caused by the fact that women choose or are limited to lower-paid work. Low-skilled fields that are 25 percent or less female pay nearly $150 more a week than those dominated by women. At the higher end of the skillset, male-dominated jobs pay nearly $500 more a week than those crowded with women.
Such an approach used to be widespread: As of 1989, 20 states had made comparable worth adjustments within their own workforces, spending more than $527 million between 1983 and 1992 to adjust 335,000 lower-paid women’s pay. This eliminated 20 percent of the gender wage gap, and in five states — Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, and Connecticut — it was reduced by 25 to 33 percent. And a research paper found that the reductions in the wage gap were due to the programs, not other factors.
But they have since mostly faded away. One state, Minnesota, still has a robust program that requires all cities, counties, school districts, and other government entities to assess and adjust the pay scales between men and women every three years. Gaps crop up in the intervening time — last year, just 64 percent of the entities had equitable pay when the compliance process began — but they get addressed in the end. Yet it still focuses on the public sector; a push to move it into the state’s private sector by requiring companies that contract with it to analyze pay equity didn’t get approval last year.
Oregon’s second bill, HB2007, could also have a big impact on the state’s gender wage gap. Currently, about half of all workers across the country say that they are prohibited or discouraged from discussing their salaries. That makes it hard for anyone experiencing wage discrimination to find out what’s going on and correct it; Lilly Ledbetter, for whom the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was named, didn’t find out she was being unfairly paid less than her male coworkers for 19 years.
On the other hand, wherever there’s salary transparency there’s a smaller wage gap. It’s much smaller for the federal workforce, where few workers are prohibited from talking about pay and wage scales are usually public, and has shrunk significantly over the last decade. It’s also 40 percent smaller for unionized workers than for non-union ones and has been falling, and union representation often helps make wage scales transparent.
Little improvement on the gender wage gap has been made nationally. It steadily shrank between the 1960s and 1900s but progress has since slowed to a crawl, with basically none made over the last decade. A federal bill would similarly ban salary secrecy but has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans, while the pay equity, which is part of the Fair Pay Act, hasn’t been on the agenda in many years.
This article originally appeared in thinkprogress.org on February 10, 2015. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Bryce Covert is the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress. She was previously editor of the Roosevelt Institute’s Next New Deal blog and a senior communications officer. She is also a contributor for The Nation and was previously a contributor for ForbesWoman. Her writing has appeared on The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and others. She is also a board member of WAM!NYC, the New York Chapter of Women, Action & the Media
Members of Congress met in town hall sessions Thursday with constituents who were on Capitol Hill to rally and demand health care reform. Read dispatches from some of the meetings.
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Ohio Weighs In
After the rally, more than 250 activists from Ohio met at the Columbus Club at Union Station to plan for an afternoon of lobbying and hear from members of Congress about health care reform.
“Nothing is more important to me than ensuring that President Obama passes health care reform.”
The session was introduced by Tim Burga of the Ohio AFL-CIO, who decried the “free market run amok” in the current health care system and affirmed that we must have a serious public health insurance option.
He introduced Hattie Wilkins, who made one of the most moving speeches of the event.
Her situation illustrates the deep problems working families have with the way the current system operates. Hattie is a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) union who worked for 35 years for Brentwood Originals, a pillow factory in Youngstown, Ohio. The USW struck Brentwood Originals in 2008, and more than three-quarters of the workforce has been laid off. She was fired because of her strong support for the union, Hattie said. She has been collecting $887 a month in unemployment since then. She has COBRA coverage, and now pays $275 per month—31 percent of earnings from unemployment—for her health insurance. She pays another $450 per month for her mortgage payment, leaving her only $162 each month for food, utilities, transportation and all her other expenses. Now her unemployment payments are ending and she doesn’t know what she is going to do.
At 58 years of age, Hattie is searching for another job at places like McDonald’s but has to compete with applicants much younger than she is. She gave us her cell phone number, though she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have it. Hattie came to Washington, D.C., to participate in the rally and make sure her elected representatives heard her voice on this critical issue.
Sen. Arlen Specter says health care is a right.
The Latest on Pennsylvania Town Hall
Sen. Specter has arrived, and compliments the crowd on its tenacity and commitment. Specter says he agrees that health care is a right and believes health care legislation will pass and will include a public option component. Of course, in a room full of union members, the Employee Free Choice Act came up. Specter says he is working hard to find an answer for early union certification and gaining first contracts.
Pennsylvania Update
The folks at Capitol City Brewing Co. are waiting for Sen. Arlen Specter to arrive. We hear reports he’s been at the White House.
From the North Carolina Meeting
Sen. Kay Hagan just arrived. She says the fight for health care reform is the “most important thing going on in our country.” Everyone in America must have health care coverage, she says, and patients with pre-existing conditions should be able to get health insurance.
About a public health insurance option plan, Hagan says some critics are getting caught up in nuance about language used in the debate. “I don’t care what you call it as long as it provides affordability accessibility and covers pre-existing conditions,” she says. We’d heard earlier reports that her staff told union leaders Hagan believes if health care reform passes, it will include a public option. The senator herself did not specifically say she supports the public option.
I think the key is if you have health insurance, you keep it. We don’t want to dismantle what exists.
More Pennsylvania Town Hall
Rep. Sestak arrived and talked about his daughter’s brain tumor and his health care plan to help keep her alive. Everybody deserves health care for themselves and their families, as well, he said. Sestak says his support for health care reform is “payback” to the country that provided health care for him and his family when he was in the Navy.
Everybody must be covered under health care reform, according to Sestak, and a public health insurance plan must be an option.
Nothing is more important to me than ensuring that President Obama passes health care reform.
Pennsylvania Town Hall
Hundreds of union members from Pennsylvania have packed a hall just a block from the U.S. Capitol to hear from their elected officials on the status of real health care reform. As they wait for Sen. Arlen Specter (D) and Rep. Joe Sestak (D) to appear, the chanting is in full force:
Congress, This is our demand. The option of a public plan.
What do we want? HEALTH CARE!
When do we want it? NOW!
Congress, This is our demand, the option of a public plan!
We are waiting for Specter and Sestak so we can spring that on them.
Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D) did not attend. A staff member is delivering her talking points.
Health care reform that guarantees quality, affordable health care reform must be passed.
We must ensure that patients’ choices are protected.
Maryland Town Hall
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Rep. John Sarbanes and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer speak to hundreds of Maryland workers and all support public option.
Rep.Blumenauer at Town Hall on Small Business
At a town hall focused on small business issues this morning at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) advocated a public insurance option plan, guaranteed coverage and a “pay or play” system that would require businesses to provide health care coverage for their employees or pay into a fund. These reforms would level the playing field and reduce cost burdens on small businesses, he said.
This article originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now. Re-printed with permission by the author.
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Minimum wage workers in two states, Washington, DC, and 15 cities and counties got a raise on Sunday. These state and local governments had passed laws to increase the minimum wage on a schedule, with July 1 and January 1 being the most common dates for raises.
