Saving workers’ lives with the ’10 cents’ pledge

This morning, NCL is proud to announce the launch of the 10 cents social media campaign. Our new pledge campaign aims to harness consumers’ collective power and to send a message to retailers that we American consumers really do care about the health and safety of workers overseas who manufacture our clothes.

On April 24, in Bangladesh, the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed and more than 1,100 people died. We have to do everything in our power to make sure that type of disaster never happens again.

The Worker Rights Consortium has calculated that for $3 billion total, every factory in Bangladesh could be renovated and updated to meet basic safety standards, preventing such tragedies. Updates would include construction of proper fire exits or fire escapes, as well as installation of emergency lighting, safety equipment, and electrical rewiring. Recent events have demonstrated the devastation and death that are inevitable when factories do not have these safeguards.

There is an estimated 7 billion individual garments imported every year from Bangladesh. A mere 10 cents tacked on to the price of each garment would generate $700 million a year – more than enough revenue to cover these necessary factory updates.

While European countries are making moves to show their support for improvement, only two American retailers (PVH and Abercrombie & Fitch) have signed an accord agreeing to improve factory conditions for workers in Bangladesh. Other American retailers including Walmart, GAP, JC Penney, and others think American consumers would be unwilling to pay the extra 10 cents needed to keep thousands of workers out of harm’s way.

Consumers need to SPEAK UP and let retailers know we are willing to pay 10 cents. Sign a pledge that you will pay 10 cents more to protect workers. When consumers band together, they have amazing power to influence even the biggest corporation’s decisions.

Let your voice be heard! Take the 10 cents pledge today!

Arrested in St. Louis fighting for labor rights

Thousands gathered in St. Louis to support mine worker’s benefits

 

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

On Monday, the National Consumers League joined two legendary labor leaders – Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers of America, and Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America – at a rally and protest outside Peabody Energy headquarters in St. Louis. We made history by rallying with 6,000+ members of the UMWA, CWA, UNITE HERE, SEIU, and Jobs for Justice and then marched to the federal courthouse several blocks away, where a group of us were arrested for “impeding traffic” by sitting down in the street. Why were we there? Because the Patriot Coal company, which was created by Peabody Energy, is filing for bankruptcy, which will leave 22,500 coal miners and their families without health care and retirement benefits. Peabody Energy continues to rake in massive profits despite Patriot Coal filing for bankruptcy.

At this rally were some true legends: Van Jones, an environmental advocate and former Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House, spoke about environmentalists needing to care about workers facing dire loss of health care and retirement income as much as spotted owls or crickets. The NAACP’s director in Missouri, Adolthus Pruitt, read aloud sections of the Peabody annual report detailing the burgeoning profits the company was earning year after year. And of course, the two distinguished labor leaders, Roberts and Cohen.

If ever there was a just cause, this is it: ensuring that 22,500 miners who, for decades, performed dangerous labor hundreds of feet below ground, and who bargained for health care and retirement benefits for their families and gave up wages and other benefits in the process, get the benefits and income they are due. The National Consumers League proudly stands with these workers and their families, and that is why I and Van Jones and Larry Cohen and so many others spoke out, marched, and got arrested in St. Louis.

Lack of worker safety highlighted by April disasters

By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

April was not a good month for worker safety. Over a two-week span, four separate events – an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a fire at an Exxon refinery in Texas, a building collapse in Bangladesh, and the death of a poultry plant inspector in New York– highlight the human cost of big business. It is estimated that every day in America, 13 workers go to their job and never come home.

This last Sunday, April 28, was Workers Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have suffered and died on the job from workplace injuries and diseases. Each death has left friends and family behind to pick up the pieces and move on with a new reality. These are lives that could have been saved. Lives that, if the necessary precautions had been made and basic safety standards implemented, could have been prevented.

Big business has consistently put its interests ahead of the interests of its employees. Either through lobbying to weaken regulations and government oversight, or simply gross negligence, industry has gambled with people’s lives. Unfortunately, it is the workers who pay when this gamble fails. Government is continuously lobbied by industry to either weaken existing regulations or prevent new proposed regulations from becoming law. Industry has lobbied to skewer government agency budgets to prevent proper funding to agencies tasked with inspecting duties.

American companies have a responsibility to protect their employees.  Too often, big companies are deemed innocent of any wrongdoing in cases of preventable work-related injury. We must put pressure on these companies to raise safety standards throughout their supply chain to protect workers both at home and abroad. Stay tuned to nclnet.org for an in-depth piece on workplace disasters later this week.

Frustrations at Congress over Working Families Flexibility Act

By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

Yesterday was another frustrating day in Congress. Not only did the Senate cave with the gun vote, but a troubling bill advanced through the House of Representatives Education and Workforce Committee and will soon land on the House floor for a full vote. This measure passed unanimously along party lines in Committee and will presumably do the same in the full House.

The so-called “Working Families Flexibility Act” (H.R. 1406) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is NOT family friendly nor does it offer workers REAL flexibility in the workplace. The bill looks to change the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) overtime section by allowing private sector employers to “offer” employer-controlled compensatory (“comp”) time in place of paid overtime.

Last week, during the bill’s introduction, a parade of majority witnesses were singing the virtues of H.R. 1406, but under questioning it was revealed that those witnesses did not understand what the bill really said – it does not give employees the right nor protection to use their earned comp time when they want; rather it leaves the decision up to employers. It does not allow employees to easily take off to watch their children’s games or recitals nor does it allow them to stay home with a sick child.

What the “Working Families Flexibility Act” offers are empty promises of flexibility at work while doing an end run on the Fair Labor Standards Act.  H.R. 1406 does not assure that the decision to substitute comp time for cash overtime payments will be voluntary. While the bill nominally makes it unlawful for an employer to coerce or intimidate an employee into accepting comp time, it does nothing to prevent an employer from discriminating – in hiring or in the award of overtime –against those employees who choose overtime compensation. Nor does it provide penalties that would deter employers from coercing employees into accepting comp time – a much cheaper alternative for employers than paying overtime wages, which can be one and half or twice the hourly wage.

This bill is an invitation to engage in wage theft. The reality is that employers have a lot more power in the workplace than employees and all too many workers are victimized by “wage theft” because of unscrupulous employers and because the Department of Labor does not have the resources to investigate many of the violations of the wage and hour laws. This bill gives employers another vehicle to exploit their employees.

The FLSA established the 40-hour workweek to limit exploitation of workers and overly long work days and work weeks. . These were hard won victories with NCL in the forefront of these battles. The landmark 1908 case of Muller vs. Oregon establishing the legality of limiting the work-week to 60 hours is a case in point.

The FLSA also encourages employers to hire more staff when workloads increase. Sadly, this odious bill would encourage employers to set the clock back by allowing them to receive the benefits of overtime work at no additional cost. Employers could pay workers nothing at all for overtime when the work is performed, and schedule comp time only at their convenience and not the employee’s convenience.

Employees deserve fair wages, safe working conditions, and more flexible schedules to meet both workplace and family needs. There are far better bills to support. They include the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1286), Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 377), Fair Minimum Wage Act (H.R. 1010), and paid family and medical leave insurance so that all employees will be afforded more equitable, flexible and predictable working conditions. For more information on H.R. 1406 please look at the National Consumers League’s letter to House members and visit the Democratic Ed & Workforce Web site.

Not thrilled: President’s budget based on dangerous cuts to USDA program

By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety & Nutrition Fellow

The President’s budget, released earlier this week, has garnered a lot of media attention. There have been criticisms and questions from all sides. As a member of a coalition of labor and food safety advocates, my main concern was the inclusion of savings from the implementation of a new model of poultry inspection.

We’ve been talking about this program for a long time, advocating against it and trying to raise public concern. The concerns that we have enumerated before still stand; we are gravely troubled by the fact that the program could potentially increase the rates of certain foodborne illnesses and would put workers at a higher risk for musculoskeletal injuries. These injuries are caused by repetitive motion and the rule would allow plants to process up to 175 birds per minute; that’s three birds per second!

Clearly USDA disagrees with our assessment of the program—hence the inclusion of the program’s projected savings in the budget. They insist that these changes will improve rates of foodborne illness and will have no impact on workers. Given the number of unanswered questions that remain, we feel moving forward with this program would be irresponsible. What advocates are suggesting isn’t radical; study the impact of changes, to both food and worker safety, before making them. And if those studies show the changes would be harmful, don’t make them just to save a few bucks.

 

March Madne$$

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

I was watching the NCAA basketball Final Four this past week and asking myself, what happened to college sports? What about the idea that sports is a part of college life, not the only part; naïve, I know. But March Madness takes the obsession with college sport to a whole new level. How did these games become an enormous media frenzy, especially basketball, generating tens of millions of dollars and commercials every few minutes and huge corporate sponsorships. These players are amateurs and are forbidden from earning a dime from their labor. But someone – who? – is benefitting from huge amounts of money being generated.

I opened the pages of The Nation and found some answers. Dave Zirin, one of the few journalists who is a critic of the sports industry, had written a piece about March Madness. Zirin says that most of the programs don’t make money – but that the NCAA leadership greedily pays itself millions in salaries and coach salaries have soared: average annual pay has ballooned to $1.64 million for football coaches. The president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, refuses to discuss his seven-figure salary, or offer any perspective on the money juggernaut of the NCAA.

Emmert rejects the notion that student athletes should be paid something – anything – for their labor. “The student athletes are students. They are not employees.” A former college football player, Zirin writes about how much things have changed since he played in the 1960s. “When I played at Syracuse …it wasn’t like that. We had a regular season and 20 days of spring practice. Now it’s year-round. …you get hurt…tough, you’re out. And there’s no workers’ comp for injuries.”

Turns out the 68-team basketball tournament that makes up March Madness generates 90 percent of the NCAA’s operating budget. In that budget is included total compensation for NCAA top execs, nearly $6 million, with the President earning $1.1 million. Revenue also comes from video games, posters, jerseys, and boutique credit cards featuring images of popular athletes.

ESPN is deeply ensconced in this money machine generated by March Madness, acting as the number one broadcaster of college sports, so there’s no critique from ESPN. Meanwhile, the student athletes get no compensation for their spectacular performance. Zirin quotes a coach: “look at the money we make off predominantly poor black kids…” Desmond Howard, who won the Heisman trophy playing for Michigan in 1991, called the system “wicked,” telling USA Today, you “see everyone getting richer and richer. And you walk around and you can’t put gas in your car? You can’t even fly home to see your parents.”

Zirin recommends the following reforms:

• The athletes should have workers’ compensation protections.
• Scholarships should be guaranteed for four years so players can’t be dismissed by their coaches.
• Ceilings should be put on coach salaries, with money savings going toward paying stipends to the athletes.
• NBA and NFL should fund their own minor leagues, so universities don’t have that responsibility.
• NCAA should be abolished – Zirin calls it a “corrupt cartel.”

We’ve come so far from the days when college athletes were college students first, and athletes second. These reforms would go a long way toward bringing those old, more sane times back.

Equal Pay Day serves as a harsh reminder of the pay gap between men and women

By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 when women were averaging 56 cents for every dollar men made. While progress has been made, women now average 77 cents for every dollar men make, the pay gap remains. Today, 99 days into 2013, is Equal Pay Day. This day symbolizes the extra time needed for women to earn the same salary as their male counterparts in 2012.

President Obama highlighted this pay disparity during his 2012 campaign and painted his opponent as out of touch with the issue. The 2012 election also welcomed a record number of female senators providing an ideal landscape for finally passing the Paycheck Fairness Act. This bill would prohibit companies from penalizing employees for sharing salary information, and force companies to demonstrate that pay discrepancies are not related to gender.

The fact that women get less money for equal work is not only a women’s issue but also a family issue. At a time when women increasingly are the breadwinners, 71 percent of mothers are part of the labor force, a pay gap unfairly targets children in households with single mothers or where both parents work. The pay gap, when calculated over the course of a year, means women receive on average $10,784 less than males performing similar work. That figure is increased among African American women and Hispanic women, who make $19,575 and $23,873 less respectively than a white non-Hispanic male performing the same job. Using these figures, the Department of Labor estimates that women make on average $380,000 less over the course of their careers. That is a huge sum of money when trying to put a child through college, buying healthy groceries for the dinner table, or paying the rent.

Despite the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill signed into law by President Obama in 2009, more work needs to be done to ensure women have the resources and tools they need to confront discrimination and challenge unfair practices in the courts. Current law forces women to jump through too many hoops in order to make claims of gender discrimination. The Paycheck Fairness Act would reduce those obstacles and lower those walls in an attempt to finally achieve equal pay for equal work. It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act!

Experts discuss payroll fraud at Senate briefing

The National Consumers League’s Special Project on Wage Theft hosted a Senate briefing on March 13 to explore the under-reported and growing issue of payroll fraud. Payroll fraud is the result of misclassification, meaning that an employer will identify an employee as an independent contractor or pay them off the books, skirting certain worker protections such as minimum wage, paid leave, or worker’s compensation. This phenomenon is widespread in temporary employment industries such as construction, agriculture, trucking, and janitorial services. Unfortunately, misclassification continues to grow, with too few regulators and too many employers who see payroll fraud as an easy way to save money. Workers who do not receive proper benefits, as well as ethical businesses who follow the rules, are ultimately the biggest victims. More information about this issue can be found at the NCL Web site.

Employers responsible for payroll fraud do so knowingly and intentionally. Classifying a worker as an independent contractor is not a minor clerical error, but rather a conscious decision made by an employer. The problem is not that the laws are confusing or hard to understand. However, employers know that they can get away with not paying employees the benefits they deserve. In this tumultuous economy, with the added factor of fear over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, many purposefully break the rules. This puts honest businesses, especially those bidding on contracts, at a distinct disadvantage and unable to compete with the violators.

Heather Rowe, the Director of the Department of Labor Standards from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and member of the payroll fraud panel, explained how Massachusetts is handling this complex issue. Her state is a good example for how to combat violating employers. Using a joint task force and a fraud detection system, Massachusetts has begun the process of identifying employers who violate payroll rules and collecting the money they owe. From 2010 to 2011 the state of Massachusetts recovered almost 11 million dollars in unpaid revenues.

With this problem continuing to grow, the question becomes: how do you honor those companies that have followed the rules and punish the companies practicing payroll fraud? At Wednesday’s Senate briefing, panelists discussed one option: publicly shaming employers who violate the rules in order to drive business to companies that play by the rules. California included a public shaming aspect in the employee misclassification law passed in the state in 2012. Another option is to pass federal legislation such as the Payroll Fraud Prevention Act, which was proposed by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in 2011. Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid – And What We Can Do About It and member of the panel, says that there need to be more federal regulators monitoring payroll fraud. “The TSA was able to add 56,000 new regulators in one year. All we need is 1,000 regulators, but it’s an unpopular position in this economy, and people won’t support that,” she said.

The simple fact is payroll fraud is steadily on the rise and rapidly spreading to new industries. Today, many people who work low-wage jobs do not know that they deserve additional benefits or they are too afraid to complain to their employer for fear they will lose the job altogether. New sites such as payrollfraud.net allow people to anonymously report cases of payroll fraud and helps put public pressure on employers to cease violations. The issue needs more exposure and, as more states follow the example of Massachusetts and other states that have taken action, it will become clear that preventing payroll fraud not only benefits workers, but also provides additional revenues to the states at a time when nearly every state needs the money.

Celebrating Let’s Move’s third birthday

By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety & Nutrition Fellow and Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

This week, First Lady Michelle Obama is touring the country to celebrate the third anniversary of her Let’s Move initiative. The goals of Let’s Move are:

1. Creating a healthy start for children
2. Empowering parents and caregivers
3. Providing healthy food in schools
4. Improving access to healthy, affordable foods
5. Increasing physical activity

Through her various activities, Obama has increased national focus on alarming rates of childhood overweight and obesity; currently, one-third of children fall into this category. By putting the spotlight on increasing the health of school lunches and the importance of physical activity, Let’s Move has started important national conversations about the health of our children.

Additionally, the First Lady has worked with various restaurants and grocery store chains to develop healthier options, in the case of restaurants by decreasing the amount of salt and calories across their menus and by adding healthier default options to their children’s menu. By working with grocery stores committed to decreasing the number of food deserts by building new stores, Obama is also addressing the question of equitable access to healthy food.

While all of this work to ensure our children have a fair shot at a healthy future is beyond admirable, the companies the First Lady has chosen to work with to achieve these goals are not always so admirable. Specifically, both Walmart, the largest retailer in America, and Darden Restaurant Inc, the largest restaurant group in the U.S. and owner of the Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse and other restaurants, face widespread criticism about their treatment of workers, including numerous cases of wage and hour violations ranging from unpaid overtime to unpaid minimum wage to forcing employees to work off the clock – all forms of wage theft.

Despite revenues easily topping $113 billion, the average Walmart associate makes just $8.81 per hour and working full-time (which Walmart defines as 34 hours per week) would make just $15,576 per year. That means hundreds of thousands of people who work full-time at Walmart still live below the poverty line, forcing many to utilize state subsidized benefits. Three major studies – one in Georgia, one in California and one in Massachusetts – found that Walmart was the company whose employees were most reliant on government assistance. Making Change at Walmart estimates that Walmart employees cost taxpayers more than $1 billion nationwide.

Between July 2005 and June 2011, Walmart settled an estimated 70 state and federal class action wage and hour lawsuits and lost one jury trail, involving well over a million current and former employees and costing the company over $1 billion. The lawsuits covered wage and hour violations that occurred between the late 1990s and 2010, including unpaid wages and lack of legally required breaks. Walmart also faces gender discrimination class action lawsuits stemming from their policies and practices on promotion and pay.

Darden has also had their share of employment problems, ranging from wage and hour violations to racial and gender discrimination lawsuits and policies that result in below poverty level wages for employees. As a part of the restaurant industry, Darden is allowed to pay tipped workers the tipped minimum wage – a mere $2.13 an hour. Tipped workers rely on restaurant customers for the majority of their wages. Even at $7.25 an hour, workers only earn $15,080 a year, well below the income level needed to lift a family of three out of poverty ($19,090 – based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services). With more than half a billion in profits in 2010 alone, Darden can surely provide better wages and benefits to its workers.

According to ROC United’s Saru Jayaraman, whose book “Behind the Kitchen Door” highlights Darden’s practices, employees report they are forced to work through their breaks, off the clock, and overtime without proper compensation.

Last fall Darden ‘tested’ a program to move full-time workers to part-time in order to avoid paying health benefits under the ACA. When consumer backlash ensued and profits tanked for the last quarter, (CNBC article “Darden Profit Sinks as Restaurant Promos Fall Flat” and Washington Post article “How Not to Succeed in Business: Promise to Dodge Obamacare Mandates”) Darden abandoned this ‘test program’. Like Walmart, Darden faces gender discrimination lawsuits as well as racial discrimination lawsuits.

We admire the First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative, but she can and should also play a much bigger role in promoting both fair and equitable workplaces while touting healthier food and lifestyles.

Time to stop the delays!

By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

Happy anniversary! Besides being Valentine’s Day, today is also the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s (OSHA) submission of a draft proposed rule to reduce exposure to life-threatening silica dust to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The review was supposed to take 90 days — but two years later, the draft rule is still there, languishing in regulatory limbo while workers continue to be exposed to the deadly dust.

Exposure to silica, one of the oldest known workplace dangers, can result in lung cancer and silicosis. Breathing in the tiny bits of silica, basically sand, is something nearly 2 million workers face everyday on jobs ranging from construction to manufacturing.

The legal limit on how much silica dust workers can inhale was set decades ago but in decades since science has shown that the limit needs to be cut in half.  It’s time to move the proposed rule out of OMB and make it law.  Too many lives are at risk to keep sitting on this life-saving rule.