Los Angeles labor federation calls for minimum wage exemption for unionized workplaces
JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
…. which one
has it good under the Dems???
UNIONS LEAD CONSPIRACY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED and fill their pockets for doing so!
THE CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY THE AMERICAN
MIDDLE-CLASS: Unions Partner with Obama and His Wall Street Cronies
MARK
LEVIN on the GOP surrendering to Obama’s LA RAZA SUPREMACY:
"We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a
nation of citizens," Levin said to applause. "I am sick and tired of
the American citizen being demeaned and treated as a second-class citizen while
anybody who crosses the border is treated as the most virtuous human being on
the face of the earth."
"No more excuses. No more whining. No more
lying to get you elected. No more crony deals with the U.S. Chamber of crony
capitalism," Levin said, taking a political shot at the business community
powerhouse U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Los Angeles labor federation calls for minimum wage exemption for unionized workplaces
By Marc Wells
1 June 2015
After spearheading the “Raise the Wage” and “Fight for $15” campaigns in Los Angeles, unions are now calling for exemptions from the new minimum wage
draft law for employers that agree to unionize their workplaces and deduct dues money from workers’ paychecks.
The Los Angeles City Council on May 19 voted for the drafting of a proposal to raise the minimum wage. A new law is expected to be finalized later this month.
Before the ink on the draft was dry, Rusty Hicks, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) made a direct appeal for a waiver that would allow companies to hire unionized workers at a lower wage than the mandated one.
“With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them,” Hicks said a week after the City Council vote. “This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing.”
The fact that Hicks cynically presents the imposition of sub-minimum wages as some sort of democratic freedom only underscores what the trade union apparatus means by “collective bargaining rights.” Far from speaking for the “employees,” the unions bargain to protect the business interests of the executives who run them—at the direct expense of the workers they falsely claim to represent.
In the aftermath of the council vote, Hicks declared, “We are one step closer to making history in Los Angeles by adopting a comprehensive minimum wage policy that will change the lives of hundreds of thousands of hard-working Angelenos. The City Council’s action today creates a path for workers to succeed and gives our economy the boost it needs to grow.”
In fact, the proposed ordinance will not bring wages up to $15 an hour until 2020 and includes many loopholes for small businesses, tipped employees and others. Even with the increase, moreover, a worker would earn an annual wage that is barely above the official poverty threshold for a family of four, and this in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
The “path to success” is reserved for the trade union bureaucrats like Hicks who see the possibility of an influx of tens of thousands of new dues-paying members.
The benefits of being a “union member,” however, will be to earn less than the minimum wage!
This is a damning exposure of the trade unions, which have functioned for more than three decades as direct instruments of the corporations and the government, overseeing a relentless erosion of living standards and working conditions in the name of making American big business more profitable and competitive.
Facing an increasing number of states that have adopted Republican “Right-to-Work” laws, which make union membership and dues payment optional in unionized workplaces, the “growth strategy” of the AFL-CIO is to demonstrate their value to employers as the enforcer of speedups, labor discipline and poverty wages.
In this they have received the support of a significant section of the Democratic Party establishment, which sees the utility of the unions in suppressing opposition to further wage cutting and austerity. The International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and other pseudo-left groups have also championed the Fight for $15 campaign in an effort to revive the credibility of the trade unions.
In city after city, minimum wage laws have included union exemptions. The pro-business US Chamber of Commerce published an extraordinary report last year, “Labor’s Minimum Wage Exemptions: Unions as the ‘Low-Cost’ Options” which provided details about many of these ordinances.
The so-called “escape clause,” the document says, “is often designed to encourage unionization by making a labor union the potential ‘low-cost’ alternative to new wage mandates, and it raises serious questions about whom these minimum wage laws are actually intended to benefit.”
Adopting a cautionary tone, the Chamber of Commerce complains that these campaigns are essentially Trojan Horses for unions to gain a foothold among employers, and warns “the business community, the media, and the public to more closely examine the content of proposed minimum wage laws and the true impetus behind their passage,” as “it would be wise to read the fine prints.”
There are numerous examples of such waivers.
In Los Angeles, the hotel union, UNITE HERE Local 11, was able to increase its membership more than 50 percent between 2007 and 2013, thanks to a waiver the city included in a minimum wage increase for hotel workers. Proportionally,
Local 11’s revenue jumped almost 70 percent. Last year’s hotels contract also included a similar waiver clause, in fact a confirmation of it from previous agreements and ordinances.
San Francisco—the most expensive city in California—provides a similar case. In 2003, collective bargaining waiver language was approved by the city. Consequently, UNITE HERE Local 2 saw membership grow from 8,000 to 14,000 in the following 10 years.
Last November, the Minimum Wage Act of 2014, a ballot initiative sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, raised the rate to $15 for all employers by 2018. The waiver language was left in place, giving businesses a way to opt out, provided they unionize their workplaces.
The list in California is long: in Long Beach, Measure N, a living wage ballot measure was passed in November 2012 pertaining to hotel workers. The measure contained not only a waiver on minimum wage, but also on other living cost increases and paid sick leave.
In Oakland a minimum wage ballot initiative passed in 2014, which includes a waiver on any and all terms of the measure. Likewise, San Jose also approved its own minimum wage ballot measure in 2012, which contains a union escape clause. In Richmond similar ordinances were passed, including last year, all of which contained union-sponsored exemptions.
California is not an exception. In 2014, Milwaukee County adopted a minimum wage ordinance after a county board overrode County Executive Chris Abele’s veto. Abele’s statement correctly pointed to the collusion and partnership between unions and employers, saying,
“This means that an employer would not have to actually pay this higher wage to its employees, if that employer collects union member fees from its employees.”
Last December, Chicago also passed a measure increasing the minimum wage to $13 by 2019. The ordinance clearly states, “[A] union may waive its members’ rights to collect the minimum wage as part of a collective bargaining agreement.”
The case of SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle, Washington, is most instructive. Proposition 1 was passed in 2013 to increase wages for hospitality and transportation workers. The measure at the time established the highest minimum wage—$15 per hour—in the US. Despite a judge striking down parts of the law, the union escape clause provided bosses an opt-out, which negates the wage increase and various benefits, from paid sick leave to hiring preferences.
A group called “Working Washington,” a front for the SEIU, worked hard toward the implementation of Prop 1. They were also behind the recent
minimum wage hike voted by Seattle’s City Council. This is the same union that supports, and is supported by, councilmember Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative.
Last November, during a protest in support of Proposition 1 against the legal hurdles it has encountered, Sawant openly expressed her support for the SeaTac waiver contract and singled it out as the basis for future similar agreements, “It was the courage of SeaTac workers and their victory at the ballot that made $15/hour possible in Seattle.”
After decades of betrayals, the unions are incapable of boosting membership through appeal to workers. Instead, with the backing of a host of pseudo-left supporters, the minimum wage ploy is being used to entice employers to install unions in their workplaces and funnel money from workers’ already meager paychecks into the bank accounts of the union executives.
UNIONS
PARTNER WITH MEXICO and OBAMA TO PUT
LA RAZA ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS…
THEY SMELL
THOSE MEX UNIONS DUES AND KNOW
KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED FOR LEGALS IS THE
UNION
WAY!!!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/big-labor-wants-to-expand-la-raza-obama.html
OBAMAnomics:
OBAMA
and MEXICO PARTNER TO ASSAULT THE
AMERICAN WORKERS. KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED
MAKES THE 1% EVEN RICHER AND WALL STREET EVEN
MORE GENEROU$ TO POLITICIANS!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-report-shows-american-wages.html
HE SERVES THE 1%, CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS AND THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA.
OBAMA IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MEXICO
ELECTS OUR PRESIDENTS. DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TERM, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT
TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL AND BANKSTER PROFITS AND CRIMES SOARED AS
DID FORECLOSURES THESE BANKS CAUSED!
The
dismal jobs situation in the United States is not merely the product of
abstract economic forces, but the direct result of the policy of the ruling
class, led by the Obama administration, in response to the economic crisis.
Since the collapse of 2008, the government has devoted itself to bailing out
the banks, then initiating a policy through the Federal Reserve of funneling
hundreds of billions of dollars into the stock market.
The assault on the working class
continues. While preparing to spend billions of dollars on a new war against
Syria, the federal government has rejected any financial assistance to Detroit,
where an unelected emergency manager has thrown the city into bankruptcy in
order to impose wage cuts and layoffs on city workers, while decimating
pensions and other benefits. This is seen as a model for cities throughout the
country.
DO WE
REALLY NEED AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?
Jobless rate is a national scandal, and nobody in Washington cares
By Brent Budowsky
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/jobless-rate-is-national-scandal-and.html
The new jobless numbers are out, and the core
jobless rate is a punishing 7.3 percent. It would be much higher, except the
number of Americans who became depressed and just dropped out of the labor
force is now at its highest in 35 years.
The real jobless rate is almost double that.
This is a scandal. Shame on President Obama. Shame on Republicans. Shame on
Congress. And shame on the media.
DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TERM, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH
LEGAL AND ILLEGAL. OBAMA SABOTAGED E-VERIFY TO EASE MORE LA RAZA MEXICANS INTO
OUR JOBS and VOTING BOOTHS!
FIRE LEGALS only to HIRE ILLEGALS on
the cheap… but how “cheap” is Mexico’s
looting and occupation???
LAY OFF AMERICANS TO HIRE ILLEGALS… IT’S THE AMERICAN WALL
STREET LOOTERS’ WAY!
Of course, the U.S. unemployment rate is at
7.3 percent, with millions of American workers at all skill levels out of work,
and millions more so discouraged that they have left the work force altogether.
In addition, at the same time the corporate officers seek higher numbers of
immigrants, both low-skill and high-skill, many of their companies are laying
off thousands of workers.
US Congress to vote on union-backed plan to cut workers’ pensions
A bipartisan proposal has been added to the US
government funding bill now before Congress that would end 40 years of federal
law and sanction the reduction of pension payments to millions of retired
truckers, coal miners, supermarket, construction workers and other private
sector workers.
UNIONS PARTNER WITH
WALL STREET-OWNED BARACK OBAMA and MEXICO TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
These are self-serving lies pumped out by the ruling class
through its political servants and media apologists. Since the financial crash
of 2008, the Obama administration’s pro-business policies of bank bailouts,
virtually free money for the banks from the Federal Reserve, wage and benefit
cuts for auto workers, corporate tax cuts and deregulation have transferred
trillions from the working class to the super-rich.
Instead, the financial oligarchy that controls the economy and
both big-business parties is determined to steal the pensions that tens of
millions need to survive and return workers to the dark days when they labored
without end until they died.
OBAMA’S AMNESTY HOAX: Soaring welfare for
illegals… they already get our jobs!
"President Obama is going
rogue, doubling-down, and driving full speed towards a constitutional
crisis," Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who’s
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
SLASH PENSIONS FOR BIGGER BONUSES FOR
C.E.O.’s?
UNIONS PARTNER WITH
OBAMA AND CONGRESS TO ASSAULT THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS….
“It marks a major escalation of a social
counterrevolution that aims to take back every gain won by workers in the 20th
century.”
UNIONS JOIN THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY, MEXICO AND
WALL STREET TO ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER…
but
haven’t they always been organized crime???
UNIONS PARTNER WITH OBAMA AND WALL STREET TO ASSAULT
THE AMERICAN
WORKER WITH AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERS… It’s all about keeping wages
depressed
For
their part, US trade unions such as the United Auto
Workers have functioned as
junior partners in the
impoverishment and exploitation of the working class,
suppressing any opposition to the attack on living standards.
In
this corporate America has enjoyed the full backing of the Obama administration
and
both big business parties, which have slashed food stamps and long-term
unemployment
benefits. The White House, which orchestrated the slashing of
wages in the auto industry
restructuring of 2009, has made the lowering of
living standards for US workers the
centerpiece of its so-called revival of
American manufacturing.
THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: SERVING THEIR WALL STREET
MASTERS BY ASSAULTING THE AMERICAN WORKER!
WAGES
PLUMMET… and millions more illegals are arriving soon!
Low-wage males’ wages declined by an astonishing 31.2
percent, with mid-wage male workers seeing a 16 percent
drop, the study found.
Workers without a high school
diploma suffered a 46.3 percent fall in wages,
while workers
with only a high school diploma lost 32.1 percent, and those
holding a bachelor’s degree lost 4 percent.
THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!
"We could cut
unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal
workers," said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the
Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the
American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help
citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than
fail to enforce immigration laws."
BILLIONAIRES
partner with MEXICO, OBAMA and the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assault the
AMERICAN
WORKER…. Amnesty, it’s all about keeping wages depressed
and passing
along the real cost of all that “cheap” mex labor to
the American middle class.
UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS
OF JOBS GO TO HIS
PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!
“At
the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew
Hispanic Center, testified that in the year following the official end of the
recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while
native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”
"We
have a situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal
immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said.
"As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to
immigrants."
Mr.
Obama did take action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years
of age a tentative legal status that prevents them from being deported and
authorizes them to work in the United States.
Some
Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates
his powers and will mean more competition for scarce jobs.
NAFTA
the BUSH, CLINTON(S), and
OBAMA DEVICE TO DESTROY THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS….
Is it working?
“This nation no longer is a democratic
republic...rather it has become a tool of the super-rich members of the above mentioned elite who
preselect our presidents based on their cooperation and complicity with the
elite’s ultimate goals. Obama has, in their opinion done superbly carrying out
the plans well laid out for him by his backers.”
SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R)
“No party can
win without working and middle class voters. The path forward for the GOP
is to become the party of the American worker. The party of higher
wages. The party of full employment.
The Democratic Party has already cast its lot: its
members have endlessly enabled the President’s anti-worker policies, including
his wage-cutting agenda of uncontrolled immigration and the bleeding of
American manufacturing wealth overseas.”
WILL OBAMA CAUSE THE IMPENDING
GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN?
"Notwithstanding these powerful trends, the stock
markets continue to power on, providing a graphic demonstration of the degree
to which the accumulation of wealth by global financial elites has become
divorced from the actual process of production."
STAGGERING EXPLOSION OF POVERTY IN AMERICA …
as Obama eases millions of illegals into our jobs and hands them billions in
welfare!
OBAMA, HIS WALL STREET CRONIES, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, BILLIONAIRES, UNIONS and the U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE CONSPIRE TO END THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS…. they call it amnesty!
UNIONS WAGE STAGGERING WAR
ON WAGES FOR AMERICAN (LEGALS)
WORKERS!
WALL STREET’S PERPETUAL BAILOUT and the DEATH of the AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
WALL STREET SURGES … a day closer to the meltdown and another bailout!
In city after city, minimum wage laws have included union exemptions. The pro-business US Chamber of Commerce published an extraordinary report last year, “Labor’s Minimum Wage Exemptions: Unions as the ‘Low-Cost’ Options” which provided details about many of these ordinances.
L.A. at large
City Hall’s employees: The L.A. City Council wants to increase the
minimum wage to $15 an hour, but when asked what they pay
gardeners, housekeepers and babysitters, half of the council declined to say. A spokesman for Mayor Eric Garcetti said employees at the mayoral mansion,
Getty House, are paid $13.25 but later revised that to say they’re paid at least $15.
Daily News
L.A. unions accused of hypocrisy in
minimum wage push
Los Angeles' plan for a citywide $15 minimum wage hit a last-minute snag when the organized labor groups that had been pushing for it demanded an exception for unionized businesses. That is, they want unionized workers to be able to be paid
less than the new minimum.
The call has provoked anger from other supporters of the higher wage and charges of hypocrisy from business groups and their allies who have opposed the increase.
Rusty Hicks, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, nevertheless said Wednesday that unionized companies
need to be excepted from paying the new minimum wage. He argued that mandating that all workers get paid $15 an hour would hurt the collective bargaining process.
"With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them. This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing," Hicks told the Los Angeles Times.
Hicks is also a leader of L.A. Raise The Wage, a coalition group that has pushed for the increase over the past eight months. On its website, the coalition calls for "$15.25/hr for every full time worker," as well as "strong enforcement that holds all employers accountable to the law." The language on the web page does not include an exception for unionized businesses. It had previously opposed loopholes in the new ordinance for small businesses.
Unions argue they need to have the flexibility during collective bargaining. In theory, the workers are trading it away for something else, such as better benefits. Neither the L.A. AFL-CIO nor L.A. Raise the Wage responded to a request for comment.
The calls came at the eleventh hour. The City Council voted last week to raise the wage and Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he supports it. But it might not be too late. On Thursday, he told reporters he was open to revisiting the proposal.
"I think a lot of people have opinions, whether it's business or labor, or stakeholders. We'll always listen to that," the mayor told reporters.
Business leaders said the call for the exception exposed the hypocrisy behind the whole effort. "What we are seeing is that the whole Fight for $15 movement is not about raising wages. It is about pressuring businesses to unionize," said Glenn Spencer, vice president of the Workforce Freedom Initiative, a Chamber of Commerce-backed group.
The exception, he notes, gives businesses a huge incentive to unionize their workers, since if they strike a deal with union leaders they can avoid paying the new minimum and thus avoid higher labor costs. The workers could find themselves not only not getting paid the new minimum but also having to pay the union representation fees.
Spencer notes that last year, the L.A. council boosted the minimum wage for large hotels to $15.37 an hour, but included an exception for unionized ones. That exception was championed by Unite Here, which represents workers in the hospitality industry.
"This $15 citywide [rule] completely undercuts that. The hotels would have no incentive to unionize anymore if everybody has to pay $15 an hour regardless," Spencer said, adding it was "odd" that the unions let the city proposal get this far without including the exception.
San Francisco and SeaTac., Washington — two other cities that recently raised their minimum wages to $15 — also included carve-outs for unionized businesses. Similar waivers were included in recent minimum wage increases in Long Beach, San Jose, Richmond and Oakland, Calif., as well as Milwaukee County, Wis. In each case, the minimum wage push was largely backed by organized labor acting through grassroots groups and liberal coalitions.