Many of these workers ended up getting back pay because the government enforced the law.
Republicans hate that.
"Republicans have accomplished what Democrats and unions never could,"
Josh Eidelson writes. "[T]hey’ve made the National Labor Relations Board a household name." That's because under President Obama, the NLRB has taken steps to protect workers and slightly reduce the degree to which the system favors business over workers. Eidelson details three big tasks the labor board can and should take on in 2012: expediting the process by which it handles complaints such as workers fired illegally for exercising their legal rights, pass more rule changes expediting union representation elections and expand the categories of workers eligible to join unions.
The NLRB's acting general counsel released a summary of operations for 2011. One point stands out, making it clear just why Republicans hate the NLRB so much, at least under a Democratic president:
A total of $60,514,922 was recovered on behalf of employees as backpay or reimbursement of fees, dues, and fines, with 1,644 employees offered reinstatement.
Speaking of money recovered for workers by government agencies, the
Embassy Suites Irvine had to pay a housekeeper a $70,000 workers compensation settlement for injuries she sustained working at the hotel. Additionally:
In another dispute, late last year the hotel agreed to pay $99,999 in back pay after workers claimed the company denied them state mandated 10-minute breaks on the job. The ruling came one month after a state officer ordered the hotel to pay $36,000 to seven workers who had been denied rest breaks. Workers are permitted two 10-minute breaks and one 30-minute break per eight-hour shift, according to state law. For each hour a break is missed, the worker is entitled to an hour of back pay. The hotel has settled or been found liable on 32 wage and hour violation complaints. Payments to individual workers ranged from $1,000 to $5,700.
The hotel is operated by management company HEI Hospitality, which is the subject of a major
student organizing campaign to address its labor abuses; Embassy Suites Irvine also has several charges under investigation by the NLRB. Four HEI hotels are under
boycott, and
Princeton University just joined Yale, Brown and other schools in announcing it would no longer reinvest in HEI.
More below the fold
- Nearly 17,000 workers at United Airlines are now members of the International Association of Machinists; the passenger service and reservations workers at United had been unionized, but those at Continental—which merged with United in 2010—were not. The IAM now represents more than 31,000 workers at the airline.
- It may be fresh and it may be direct, but New York's FreshDirect is hurting workers and a poor community. Sarah Jaffe looks at the fight over taxpayer subsidies to the grocery delivery company, which pays its delivery drivers and warehouse workers less than $9 an hour, doesn't accept food stamps and won't even deliver to the poor neighborhood where it's trying to locate a new facility.
- Bankruptcy returns as a tool to crack unions, Mischa Gaus argues at Labor Notes. Hard to argue when you think about what's been going on at American Airlines and Hostess.
- Mitt Romney obviously knows he won't be getting the youth vote, so he tells young people to forget about government help with college tuition.
- Here's another example of a Project Labor Agreement that will put 1,450 people to work on a project with good labor standards and another benefit: It's a renewable energy transmission line that will help power 1.4 million homes in Illinois.
- The National Union of Healthcare Workers is calling on two members of the board of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital to resign after the California State Auditor reported that "the board may have violated conflict-of-interest laws."
- Anti-union Station Casinos tried and failed to have a worker-run Twitter account shut down—the account name is @workerstation, which the casino tried to claim was trademark infringement.
- Most Americans really do not have enough retirement savings, as Steven Greenhouse makes painfully, frighteningly clear.