President Obama’s executive order banning labor law violators from getting federal contracts is set to go into effect later this month. Except, of course, industry groups are suing to block it. Here’s how the order will work:
The key change in how agencies buy goods and services involves the identification of scofflaw employers. Federal government contractors will be required to disclose violations of 14 federal labor laws and executive orders. The government’s contracting agencies will take these violations into account when deciding whether an employer has enough integrity to do business with the government. The laws include, among others, the National Labor Relations Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Service Contract Act, the Davis Bacon Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. The executive orders include E.O. 13658 (Establishing a Minimum Wage for Contractors) and E.O. 1124 (Equal Employment Opportunity). The rule requires contractors to update their reports of violations every six months.
All disclosures under the new rule will be public, but the main purpose is to inform agency contracting officials about the integrity of the contractors. If they violate labor law, they may be assumed to [be] less trustworthy than their law-abiding competitors and the government may choose not to do business with them until their compliance improves.
Literally this lawsuit is to force the government to keep hiring companies that break its laws. This is a lawsuit aimed at ensuring there’s zero accountability for businesses, ever. And it’s the sort of move Republicans enthusiastically endorse.
● Walmart is raising salaries for entry-level managers to get them above the new overtime eligibility threshold. This way, Walmart can make them work all the hours without having to pay overtime—but at least the base salary will be higher.
● Where did all the teachers go?
● Twin Cities janitors declare victory in union fight after 44-month campaign.
● What “TIFs” are and how they averted the Chicago Teachers Union strike.
● Gosh, what a surprise:
Workers at one Chinese footwear factory that, according to US customs data available on the ImportGenius database, has made more than 130,000 pounds of Ivanka Trump-brand shoes, describe being subjected to an array of workplace indignities, some that would potentially qualify as violations of local labor law. Workers say that the factory, Xuankai Footwear Ltd., located in the Houjie area of Dongguan in China’s Pearl River Delta, required them to work lengthy shifts stretching up to 16 hours that tested and exceeded the limits of human endurance. Some workers also allege that the factory paid illegally low overtime rates and systematically delayed wage payments.
● Paid sick leave is coming to Cook County, Illinois.
● Trump's "locker room talk" would get the average worker fired.
● Fusion is one of the news sites where workers have been organizing a union, but management is fighting them.
● Erik Loomis on the perils of a partisan NLRB:
President Obama’s NLRB appointees have, arguably, shown a stronger pro-labor record than have those of any President since the agency’s creation in 1935.
This is good news for American workers. But it also reflects the extreme partisanship of the modern United States and highlights to what extent workplace rights are increasingly dependent upon labor electing a Democratic President to office. Congressional Republicans have howled over these recent decisions and nearly every Republican who ran for President this election pledged to reverse them, while also promising to curb this supposedly out-of-control agency. This scenario obviously leads to great instability in workplace relations.
● Chicago teachers won't strike after reaching a tentative contract agreement.
● How D.C. drivers put the brakes on unsafe buses.