Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers’ rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
The AFL-CIO’s “Death on the Job” report shows why U.S. workers deserve much better protections than they are getting.
Hundreds of workers at fast-food restaurants in Chicago staged a one-day walk-out last week calling for a $15 an hour wage.
The USDA Secretary tells Congress that his agency still plans to implement a new poultry slaughter inspection system that will allow producers to drastically increase line speeds, while a disturbing new report on poultry workers in Alabama explain the harmful effects of the current working conditions.
Eric Rodriguez and his colleagues at the Latino Union of Chicago quite literally meet workers where they’re at — on the city’s street corners. Many of the day laborers who gather there are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work arrangements are hardly formal and day laborers are frequently subjected to unnecessary and illegal dangers on the job. Unfortunately, worker safety is often kicked to the curb in the street corner marketplace.
A quick review of the bi-partisan Senate immigration reform bill reveals a few provisions related to workplace safety.
For Angel Nava, Chicago’s newly adopted wage theft ordinance is particularly personal. Until recently, Nava had worked at the same car wash business in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood for 14 years. The 55-year-old employee did it all — washing, detailing, buffing — for about 50 hours each week. Then, his boss decided to stop paying overtime.
Although Philadelphia’s City Council fell one vote short of overriding a veto of the city’s paid sick leave bill, paid sick leave efforts are gaining steam nationwide.
The death rate among individuals crossing illegally the U.S.-Mexico border reached an all-time high in 2012. Focusing on labor law enforcement, rather than border enforcement, could be a solution to the death toll.
As the list of US jurisdictions with paid sick leave laws gets longer, members of Congress introduce a bill that would require paid sick leave nationwide.