Pushing back on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's minimum wage rant, Labor Secretary Tom Perez highlighted some actual New Jersey workers, as opposed to the imaginary parents around a kitchen table Christie won't stop talking about:
“I’ve met with minimum-wage workers in New Jersey,” Perez said today at a Bloomberg News event in Washington. “I’ve met with folks who—the only raise they got, they’re baggage handlers at Newark Airport, and the only raise they got was when the voters increased the minimum wage.”
But, you know, Chris Christie says people aspire to more, so screw those workers and their actual real-life raises. Christie is only representative of a bigger problem, though, and Perez didn't mince words on that:
The U.S. federal wage floor ranks third-lowest—as a percentage of median wage—among the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a status that Perez said was embarrassing.
“I mean, we suck,” Perez said. “We really do.”
By any measure having to do with the minimum wage, it's hard to argue that one.
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Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- A former paper mill worker and current Alliance for American Manufacturing field coordinator talks about the effect of mill closures on communities:
Instability in communities. Small businesses that traditionally support mills, the businesses where millworkers spend their money, are affected and also face closure or reductions. Towns are losing their tax-bases and facing shortfalls that can’t be made up just by raising taxes. Concessions are made to these large corporations, who then pull up stakes even when they are profitable just to fit a corporate strategy.
By the way, Rep. Mike Michaud, the Democratic candidate for governor in Maine, is himself a former paper mill worker.It would not be a bad idea to give him $3.
- A fascinating piece by Adrian Chen on the laborers who keep dick pics and beheadings out of your Facebook feed.
- The sharing economy's "first strike": Uber drivers turn off the app.
- Union organizing in Texas? The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is doing that—and succeeding.
- Some lawmakers want the Labor Department to look into those Jimmy John's non-compete contracts.
- How Uber, Lyft, and Facebook drivers are organizing.
- Stories like this are one of the ways the federal government can make a difference even with Congress broken:
The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $1,914,681.50 in back wages and fringe benefits for 147 workers at Proimtu Mmi-Nv LLC, a Henderson-based subcontractor providing construction services at the federally funded Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Tonopah. This project, which received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, is a 110 MW solar energy power plant that will power up to 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods.
"The money we've recovered for these workers is not a windfall—it is their hard-earned pay that their employer was legally obligated to pay them but did not," said Dr. David Weil, administrator of the department's Wage and Hour Division. "Companies that benefit from federal funding must see to it that the money is used properly, and that their workers are compensated according to the law."
- Yes, it's the Onion, but as is often the case, it's funny because of its proximity to reality.
- I have to believe there's some kind of weird selection effect going on (or a typo) in the pay disparity between men and women CEOs in the publishing industry, but even if you take that out, you're looking at a significant pay gap in publishing.
- Live, like, awesome.
- Check out Massachusetts Republican candidate for governor Charlie Baker accepting an outsourcing award.
Education
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