Wages

Airline Catering Workers Protest On Busy Travel Day

November 27, 2019 Juliana Feliciano Reyes, Philadelphia Inquirer. Resist! Health Care, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

Thirty-nine people were cited by police for failure to disperse Tuesday evening at Philadelphia International Airport as part of a nationwide push during Thanksgiving week to win higher wages and more affordable health care for the low-wage workers who prepare airline meals. The protests, which occurred at 17 airports, were the latest in a series of public actions by service workers union Unite Here to pressure American Airlines to help give workers better wages and benefits in their current contract negotiations. The workers — 400 in Philadelphia and 20,000 nationwide — are employed by subcontractors, but Unite Here has adopted a common labor strategy by targeting American Airlines: It’s an acknowledgment of who holds the economic power.

More Than 15,000 Indiana Teachers Walk Off Job

November 24, 2019 George Marlowe, WSWS. Resist! Education, Strike, Teachers, Wages

More than 15,000 Indiana teachers rallied Tuesday at the Indianapolis State Capitol building against low pay and the bipartisan attacks on public education. Teachers and educators walked off the job in defiance of state laws preventing them from going on strike, which forced more than half of the state’s 300 school districts to close. The mass demonstration of teachers in Indiana—formerly governed by current US Vice President Mike Pence—joins the growing global revolt of teachers against attacks on public education, social inequality and the social crisis educators confront daily in their classrooms. Teachers across virtually every continent have struck or carried out mass demonstrations in the last two years. Earlier this month, Dutch teachers facing high burnout rates carried out a one-day strike action and shut down 4,000 schools in defiance of their own unions.

Vote Yes: A Historic CUNY Labor Contract

November 7, 2019 By Luke Elliott-Negri, Gotham Gazette Create! Wages, Workers Rights and Jobs

Adjuncts across the country have been organizing in recent years, at universities like Tufts, George Washington, and many more. They are fighting for better pay, job security, benefits, and other improvements to working conditions. Though adjuncts have long been organized at CUNY, they have faced an uphill battle as decades of austerity have been foisted on the country’s largest urban university by powerful political and financial forces. Yet this round of bargaining represents a significant reversal of the inequality between full- and part-time faculty that has characterized the work life of 12,000 CUNY adjuncts.

Efforts To Claw Back Stolen Wages Painfully Slow, As California Employers Who Cheat Workers Often Get Away With It

October 16, 2019 By Eli Wolfe, Fairwarning.org Educate! California, Exploitation, Wages, Workers

In February, when California labor officials announced the biggest wage theft case against a private company in state history, they made sure to include a warning for all bosses: “Stealing earned wages from workers’ pockets is illegal in California and this case shows that employers who steal from their workers will end up paying for it in the end,” said Labor Secretary Julie Su in a press release announcing nearly $12 million in citations against RDV Construction, Inc. RDV has appealed the penalties.

In Stockton, Early Clues Emerge About Impact Of Guaranteed Income

October 11, 2019 Sarah Holder, Citylab.com Create! Guaranteed income, Inequality, Wages

A totaled car. A mother with cancer. Two kids at home, with field trips and Quinceañera outfits and football gear to pay for. Rent bills of $1,250 due each month. Two jobs—one part-time—both paying around $15 an hour, supplemented by unpredictable child support payments. Lorrine Paradela used to lie awake at night, thinking through all her expenses and income streams, struggling to breathe from the stress of it all. Now, Paradela says, she’s started sleeping again.

Paying The Boss 1,000 Times More Than A Worker Encourages Corporate Recklessness

October 9, 2019 By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org Create! Bosses, Profit, Wages

Back in the 1960s and into the 1970s, few American corporate chief executives pocketed more than 40 or 50 times what they paid their workers. That divide looks quaint by today’s standards, but back then business analysts like the famed Peter Drucker considered even those gaps much too wide. Drucker called for CEO-worker pay ratios no wider than 20 to 1 or 25 to 1. Average Americans today, according to Harvard Business School researchers, consider an even narrower margin — no more than 7 to 1 — to be ideal.

Red States Cut Worker Pay By $1.5 Billion

August 17, 2019 By Negin Owliaei, Otherwords.org Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Last month, the House voted to incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If the Senate passes the bill, it would be the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade — far too long for residents of the 21 states that don’t have their own higher minimum wage. Here’s another sad truth: Plenty of cities in those states have tried to raise their minimum wage, only to be stymied by state lawmakers. That’s thanks to state preemption laws that keep localities from adopting all kinds of policies, from paid sick leave to local fracking bans to wage increases.

CEO Compensation Has Grown 940% Since 1978

August 16, 2019 By Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, Epi.org Educate! Bosses, Inequality, New Economy, Wages, Workers

What this report finds: The increased focus on growing inequality has led to an increased focus on CEO pay. Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages. Average pay of CEOs at the top 350 firms in 2018 was $17.2 million—or $14.0 million using a more conservative measure. (Stock options make up a big part of CEO pay packages, and the conservative measure values the options when granted, versus when cashed in, or “realized.”) CEO compensation is very high relative to typical worker compensation...

Health Care Is Gobbling Up Your Wages

August 9, 2019 Bob Herman, Axios.com Educate! Health Care, New Economy, Wages

American incomes have barely changed over the past 20 years on an inflation-adjusted basis, and that's due in large part to the exploding costs of health coverage. The big picture: More people are plunging deeper into debt as the costs of housing, college and consumer goods greatly outgrow their paychecks. And those paychecks have been stagnant because employers are shoveling more money toward workers' health insurance. Between the lines: Employers consider a block of compensation for every employee.

5 Ways The Economy Is Stacked Against Young People

August 8, 2019 By Josh Hoxie, Otherwords.org Educate! New Economy, Wages, Workers, Youth

Today’s rising generation earns 20 percent less than their parents did at their age, despite being better educated and more productive. In fact, millennials are on track to become the first generation in modern American history to make less money than their parents did. The federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, is lower than the cost of living in every city in the country — and hasn’t gone up in 10 years. It’s hard to save when the money coming in doesn’t come close to covering the basics.

Kentucky Miners Are Blocking a Coal Train, Demanding Their Stolen Wages

August 4, 2019 Alexandra Bradbury, Labornotes. Resist! Coal Mining, Wages, West Virginia, Worker Rights

Harlan County, Kentucky, is probably best known for the hard-fought strikes in its coal mines in the 1930s and 1970s. Today the remaining mines are nonunion. But evidently the local spirit of militancy and solidarity is still kicking. For three days now, miners and their families have occupied a railroad track, blocking a train that’s loaded up with coal that these workers dug out of the earth and never got paid for. Word spread quickly July 29 that someone was loading up the train to move. A few laid-off miners headed down to the site to find out what was going on, and it didn’t take long to decide they weren’t going to let this train go anywhere. The miners want their jobs back, if possible—but bottom line, they want their wages for the work they already did. “I would like to get the money that I’m owed,” said miner Cameron Cornett, a father of three, “the money that I worked for, and that was taken from me and my family and these other workers.”

‘It Puts You Into A Process That Hugely Favors The Employer’

July 13, 2019 Janine Jackson, Fair.org Resist! Class Struggle, Unions, Wages, Workers

At the same time, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy describes the disturbing rise of a particular constraint on workers’ voices and their power. The press release for the report contains a quote that presents the problem clearly. Brenda Rojas, a college student in Oregon, says: While working at Buffalo Wild Wings, my coworkers and I experienced wage theft regularly, and worked in an environment of constant sexual harassment. Complaining about these working conditions was pointless...

This Is The Longest The Federal Minimum Wage Has Ever Gone Without Being Raised

June 17, 2019 Dave Jamieson, Huffpost.com Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Lawmakers set a new record Sunday by leaving the federal minimum wage untouched since July 24, 2009, the first year of former President Barack Obama’s first term. The rate hasn’t been increased from $7.25 in a whopping 3,615 days, making it the longest dry spell since the federal minimum wage was enacted under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938. That surpasses a previous milestone set between 1997 and 2007, when then-President George W. Bush signed minimum wage legislation.

Amid Declining Real Wages, Strikes In US Escalate

May 21, 2019 Jerry White, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Wages, Workers

In the midst of an intensifying political crisis in Washington and the Trump administration’s virulent attacks on immigrants, trade war measures and war threats against Iran and Venezuela, the working class in the United States is stepping up its struggle against austerity, declining living standards and social inequality. Despite the lowest official unemployment rate in a half-century, real wages fell by 0.8 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019, according to the PayScale Index. This is the fifth straight quarter of negative real wage growth.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources