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Sitting on the sidelines isn’t an option when the push for immigration reform is shaping up to become one of the key political and economic debates in 2013. We — along with many workers’ rights and immigration reform advocates — are working to ensure that our nation’s leaders take a broad, inclusive, and humane approach to immigration reform policymaking to protect and advance bedrock civil, labor, and human rights for all workers in this country. Through 25 years of our history of supporting employees taking a stand to fight for dignity and respect on the job, we have witnessed the particularly inhumane and unjust treatment of immigrant workers across the country. It’s one key reason we joined with key allies to start the POWER campaign. The current U.S. immigration policy results in unscrupulous employers manipulating laws and threatening workers who try to exercise their labor rights. Too often, when immigrant workers attempt to organize to combat exploitation, employers use immigration enforcement as a weapon to squash those organizing efforts. As a result, immigrant workers — who are under the constant threat of deportation — are forced to accept diminished job conditions, which ultimately lowers the floor for all workers in this country. The victory of the CJ’s Seafood workers in securing U-Visas shows we can turn the tide for immigrant workers and protect the right to organize, thereby strengthening the opportunity for all workers to live and work with dignity. We’re ready to educate, mobilize, and inspire community members to stand with immigrant workers and push for policies that will benefit all workers in the long run. We’ll share more updates and opportunities for engagement in the weeks and months ahead in the fight for fair and inclusive immigration policy in 2013. Stay tuned, and stay off the sidelines!        
First off, in New Hampshire, a bipartisan group of legislators rejected the attempts of anti-worker lawmakers to achieve the two-thirds majority required to overturn Gov. John Lynch’s veto of “right to work.” As we’ve said time and time again, “right-to-work” is a thinly-veiled attempt at limiting the rights of workers, offering no rights and no work. Read more » Guest Post by Chair of UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, Ken Jacobs. Walmart is well known for both its low prices and its low wages, and the drive to keep prices down is offered as a ready rationale for the company’s substandard wages and benefits. New findings show that Walmart can still keep those prices low and pay its workers a living wage. In a recent study I completed with my colleagues Dave Graham-Squire and Stephanie Luce, we found that Walmart could raise its starting wage to $12, a significant improvement for many Walmart workers, with only the slightest impact on customers. Read more » Today, April 12 , is Equal Pay Day in the United States. Strategically chosen, the date marks how long it takes women to make up for the disparity in pay between genders. Just think, 102 days passed this year before women finally earned the same salary as men in comparable jobs during the past year. Weeks of protests across Wisconsin let unionbusting legislators know that workers won’t stand for ideologically motivated attacks on their rights. And this week’s Supreme Court race took that message from Madison to the polls. Read more » It’s opening day at Florida’s Tropicana Field – meaning ice cold beer, fly balls, and family fun are just around the corner for baseball lovers across the state. But with the surge of attacks on public employees fresh in the air, today’s season opener is turning out to be a lot more than just another day in the park for Florida fans. Read more » As if the anti-union attacks in the states aren’t enough, the airline industry is ramping up efforts to make the process of forming a union a bumpy ride for aviation and rail workers. The aviation industry is pushing Congress to pass the FAA Reauthorization Bill —with an amendment that would count non-voters as a “no” vote in union elections for both rail and air workers. |
Archive for the ‘Labor Law Reform’ Category
The California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (AB 889), introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), offers the almost 200,000 domestic workers in California basic labor rights from which they have been excluded for decades. If signed into law, California will become only the second state in the country, after New York, to extend labor protections to domestic workers – the caregivers, housekeepers, and babysitters providing vital services to families across California. 
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