NY state passes law to prevent wage theft

Good news for New York workers: Gov. Dave Patterson says he'll sign a wage theft prevention bill into law. The Legislature enacted the bill this week.

Wage theft is a huge problem in New York (and everywhere else, for that matter). A recent study shows employers steal almost $1 billion from New York workers by cheating them out of overtime and minimum wages.

N.Y. State Sen. Diane Savino sponsored the bill. She said it will raise penalties for employers who don't pay the minimum wage ($7.25 an hour), misclassify workers as independent contractors or force them to work off the clock. Savino said

"Businesses that are good corporate citizens and promptly pay their employees what is owed them, as required by law, should not be at a disadvantage to companies that are illegally withholding wages from their workers."

The new law will also for the first time subject partnerships and limited liability corporations to criminal penalties if they cheat their workers.

Illinois enacted a similar law this summer. Employers who steal from their employees will face felony charges for repeat offenses and will have to pay back wages, interest and fines.  Miami-Dade County also passed a wage theft law in February.

Kudos to Kim Bobo, founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice. The organization has done terrific work fighting for justice for workers across the country.  

Nasty jobs report today

The unemployment rate ROSE last month to 9.8 percent, we learned today.

The U.S. added a pathetic 39,000 jobs. We needed to add 150,000 jobs simply to absorb new people entering the work force. It's ugly.

Steve Benen at Political Animal called the news "a punch to the gut." He argues,

If our political system were sane, awful news like this would be a much-needed wake-up call that would spur policymakers to action. There would be an immediate drive on the part of Congress and the White House to do far more to stimulate the economy, inject more capital into the system, and invest in job-creation measures immediately.

Of course, if our political system were sane, Congress would have extended unemployment benefits for the millions of jobless people who are running out.

You can write Congress here and tell your representatives to extend unemployment now.

Video: Stop the Lies About Public Employees

This video about public service employees is especially timely given the news this week that the Fed loaned $9 trillion to financial services firms, corporations and 35 overseas banks.

Today's Teamster News 12.03.10

Historic trucks will soon be homeless  Vancouver Sun   ...The Teamsters Freight Transportation Museum & Archives displaying approximately 20 trucks from 1913 and up have called a warehouse on Kingsway in Port Coquitlam home...
Recovery Gathers Steam  Wall Street Journal   ...The U.S. economy is starting to fire on more cylinders, though the upturn remains too weak to bring down high unemployment...
Unemployed, and Likely To Stay That Way  New York Times  ...The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work...
Dispel myth that public employees are all rich (opinion) Wisconsin State Journal   ...The myth that public employees are living it up at the expense of taxpayers is all too common — and completely untrue...Piper Jaffray Continues To Be Overweight On UPS  Benzinga   ...it believes UPS is one of the best names to play the transport recovery...
'Right to Work' cuts wages, benefits (opinion)  the starpress.com   ...workers in "right to work" states make about $5,300 less a year...

The cranks were right about the Fed

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke definitely did not want the public to know which corporations and foreign banks got emergency loans from the Fed. He told Congress that it would be "counterproductive."

Three members of Congress led the fight -- and won -- the battle to make the Fed disclose who it gave taxpayer mony to. They were Texas Republican Ron Paul, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson, and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

As economist Dean Baker points out, they were viewed at the time as cranks.

The idea that the Fed should be held accountable to the Congress and the public was originally treated as a crank notion pushed by extremists who did not understand modern finance.

As Baker also pointed out, the Fed was held accountable and the world did not end.

Yet again, it turns out that the cranks were right, and those in positions of authority were either ill-informed or lying.

Unfair Labor Practice charges filed against Coke by Local 117

Local 117 in Washington state filed three unfair labor practice charges against Coca-Cola for failing to bargain in good faith, refusing to process grievances, reducing an employee's wages without bargaining, and removing bargaining unit work without negotiating the effects.


Read the whole thing here.

Biggest single transfer of tax dollars to corporations in history

That's how Eliot Spitzer described the Federal Reserve's emergency lending programs -- you can call them "bailouts" -- between 2007-10. We learned yesterday that the Fed's loans dwarf the amount of money the government lent the banks in the TARP. And that American taxpayers' dollars went to bail out foreign banks.


Spitzer was commenting on CNN last night with Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. It was Sanders' idea to make the secretive Federal Reserve reveal which banks and corporations it was lending to -- and how much. You can link to the video here.


Americans are angry, Sanders said, because they got nowhere near the kind of help the banks got -- and the banks have done little to help working families. He said,

The average American is sitting at home, his standard of living is declining, can’t afford to send his kid to college, may have lost their home....The American people are saying what is the government doing for me? Do they allow me to keep my house, my job, my savings?

What you have now, he said, is

...large financial institutions who are now doing very, very well, sitting on top of huge amounts of cash, but small businesses in Vermont and all over this country can’t get affordable loans in order to create jobs...

...You got credit card companies that were substantially helped by the bailout saying, ‘oh thank you very much for helping us out, now we're gonna charge you 25 or 30 percent interest rates'...