Domestic Workers’ Rights

New York State has the chance to lead the nation in extending basic workplace protections to domestic workers — the nannies, housekeepers and caregivers for the elderly who are as essential to the economy as they are overlooked and unprotected.

The State Senate has just passed a domestic workers’ bill of rights, with an array of guarantees that most workers take for granted, like paid holidays, sick days, vacation days and the right to overtime pay and collective bargaining. The Assembly passed its version last year. The Legislature should swiftly reconcile the bills and send a measure to Gov. David Paterson for his signature.

Domestic workers, like farm workers, have long struggled for equality in the workplace. Labor protections drafted in the New Deal specifically excluded both groups of workers, who remain highly vulnerable to exploitation. The problem is especially acute for domestic workers, a largely immigrant and female work force that toils out of public sight in private homes.

The bill in Albany gives employers and workers a baseline of fairness about pay, hours and benefits. It also gives the State Labor Department and attorney general the power to enforce its provisions.

There is little doubt that these women are vital — an estimated 200,000 of them toil in the metropolitan area, where entire industries and neighborhoods are dependent on paid domestic help. The cruel injustice is that while nannies and caregivers make it possible for professional couples to balance the demands of family and work, they often cannot take time to be with their own families when sickness or injury strikes.

The bill’s success in Albany comes at a time when low-wage workers are suffering in a dismal economy, and losing battles to extend their rights. Home health aides, for example, still lack the right to a minimum wage and overtime pay, their pleas for justice having been soundly rejected by the Labor Department and the Supreme Court.

All the more reason to hail the progress in Albany, and push lawmakers there to revive and pass a long-stalled bill with similar protections for farm workers.

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/opinion/07mon3.html?th&emc=th

Courtesy
The New York Times Company

Wal-Mart to Offer Its Workers a College Program

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Now on sale at Wal-Mart: college degrees for its employees.

A Wal-Mart store in Pompano Beach, Fla. The company’s college program will allow workers to accrue credits for training at work.

Eduardo Castro-Wright said the program “reflects the kind of company we are.”

The purveyor of inexpensive jeans and lawnmowers is dipping its toe into the online-education waters, working with a Web-based university to offer its employees in the United States affordable college degrees.

The partnership with American Public University, a for-profit school with about 70,000 online students, will allow some Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club employees to earn credits in areas like retail management and logistics for performing their regular jobs.

The university will offer eligible employees 15 percent price reductions on tuition, and Wal-Mart will invest $50 million over three years in other tuition assistance for the employees who participate.

Executives at Wal-Mart, the nations’ largest retailer, said the company was not interested in entering the online-education field in a broader way. The point of the program, they said, was to help employees get more education and to build a better work force.

Even so, because of its size, Wal-Mart’s internal changes often turn into industry standards, as with its efforts involving environmental sustainability. And with 1.4 million employees in the United States, even an employees-only program could have widespread implications.

“If 10 to 15 percent of employees take advantage of this, that’s like graduating three Ohio State Universities,” said Sara Martinez Tucker, a former under secretary of education who is now on Wal-Mart’s external advisory council. “It’s a lot of Americans getting a college degree at a time when it’s becoming less affordable.”

Wal-Mart estimates that about 50 percent of its employees in the United States have a high school diploma or the equivalent but have not earned a college degree. With the average full-time employee being paid $11.75 an hour, it was unclear how many of them will be able to take advantage of the new program. With the work credits and tuition discount, an associate’s degree for a Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club cashier would cost about $11,700 and a bachelor’s degree about $24,000.

Wal-Mart made the announcement at an early morning meeting at the Bud Walton arena here, where about 4,000 employees were invited to attend events scheduled around the chain’s shareholders’ meeting on Friday.

“It’s important because it reflects the kind of company we are,” Eduardo Castro-Wright, who heads Wal-Mart’s operations in the United States, told the employees. “A company that says, ‘Anyone who wants to learn, who wants to grow with us, who is willing to work hard to get a college degree, can do that.’ ”

The employees clapped and nodded as Mr. Castro-Wright explained the program (though cheers seemed to be louder earlier, when Mr. Castro-Wright said that gas prices finally seemed to be dropping).

Jaymes Murphy, 24, a wireless salesman in a Wal-Mart based in Victoria, Tex., said he had been trying to take college classes while working, but found the scheduling difficult. But he said the program “gives me the confidence that I can go and not have to worry about sacrificing one thing or another.”

“I can get my education,” he said, adding that he would pursue his bachelor’s degree online. “The way the economy’s working, the way all the companies are working, you’ve got to go bachelor’s.”

The program will initially allow about 200,000 employees in positions like cashier, department manager and distribution center unloader to accrue credits for training they already receive in their jobs.

For instance, a department-level manager, who receives training from Wal-Mart in areas like pricing, inventory management and ethics, would be eligible for 24 on-the-job credits, at no charge, toward a 61-credit associates’ degree. A cashier would be eligible for six credits toward a 61-credit associate’s degree or a 120-credit bachelor’s degree.

“It came out of an awareness that the jobs in our stores are really good jobs,” Tom Mars, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Wal-Mart U.S. said in an interview, “but if we want to make them great jobs, we really have to do something different to distinguish those jobs and our company from everyone else in retail.”

When asked if Wal-Mart wanted to enter the online-education industry Mr. Mars said “no, no.”

Even so, Wal-Mart appeared to acknowledge its wide influence in a letter about the program to the secretary of education, Arne Duncan.

“While there is broad agreement about the need for more Americans to attain college degrees, we recognize that there is a healthy discussion under way about the best way to get there,” wrote Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs and government relations. “One of our aims with this program is to try some innovative approaches that seem promising, grounded in what is already known in the field.”

He added: “We hope in this way to expand the education and employer communities’ knowledge of what works most effectively, so that policy makers, other companies and other stakeholders can continuously improve such offerings.”

Wal-Mart executives said it decided to work with an online university instead of a brick-and-mortar school after surveying more than 32,000 of its employees and learning that most of them wanted the scheduling flexibility afforded by online classes.

American Public University, which is based in Charles Town, W.Va., is reviewing all jobs at Wal-Mart to determine which ones will qualify under the agreement. By January 2012, some 70 percent of United States employees will be in jobs that have been reviewed by the university, Wal-Mart said.

To be eligible for the program, employees must have been in the job at least one year full time, or three years part time, and must also score “on target” or “above target” on their most recent evaluation.

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/business/04walmart.html?ref=business

Courtesy
The New York Times Company

A Door Opens for Workers

Workers won an important victory at the Supreme Court on Monday when the justices ruled unanimously that a group of African-American applicants to the Chicago Fire Department did not wait too long to challenge a hiring test they claimed was discriminatory.

If interpreted properly by the lower courts, the ruling could give a chance at relief to minority groups, women, the elderly the disabled and others claiming to be victims of a discriminatory employment practice long after the practice went into effect.

The court ruled that the black firefighters could sue the city of Chicago over the scoring system on a test that they claimed had overwhelmingly favored white applicants. The issue was not the test itself, which a lower court had already ruled discriminatory against blacks, but the time lapse in bringing the suit. Under Title VII of the civil rights law, plaintiffs are supposed to file no later than 300 days after an unfair practice occurs; the question here is whether the practice occurred only when the scoring system began or every time the test was given.

Determining when a time limit begins became a serious issue after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 against Lilly Ledbetter, who had been paid less than men for years by her employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, saying she should have filed her complaint shortly after her pay was set, even if she did not know then about the disparity. Fortunately, Congress overturned that decision last year.

Writing for the full court, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted that there was a difference between the two cases.

Ms. Ledbetter’s deadline, he wrote, started with the first act of discrimination against her because she was trying to prove that Goodyear’s pay system caused a “disparate treatment” of men and women, a stricter standard that can result in more damages but requires proof of intentional discrimination. The aspiring firefighters, on the other hand, were trying to show that the test had only a “disparate impact,” which does not require intentional discrimination, and, Mr. Scalia wrote, lacks the strict deadline requirements.

Justice Scalia had written in a racial discrimination case last year that he had serious misgivings about the disparate-impact laws, and — as much as we disagreed with the Ledbetter decision — it was encouraging to see that he did not give in to those doubts on Monday.

It might be cynical to suggest that one reason for the court’s unanimity was the firm response by Congress to the Ledbetter decision. Whether through newfound judicial wisdom, or political calculation, the door has now been opened a bit further to victims of discrimination.

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25tue3.html?th&emc=th

Courtesy
The New York Times Company

Welfare scheme for migrant workers

Security net: Labour Minister P.K. Gurudasan with migrant workers before the State-level inauguration of a scheme for their welfare in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on Friday launched a welfare programme offering a measure of social security for the migrant people working in various sectors in the State.

This is the first such initiative in the country, Mr. Achuthanandan said while launching the programme at a function here. “Tens of thousands of people from States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal are working in Kerala in areas demanding heavy manual effort. They contribute in a big way to the development of the State and Kerala owes this gesture towards them,” he said.

Labour Minister P.K. Gurudasan, who presided, said several large companies involved in road and other construction works in Kerala were engaging workers from other States in large numbers. These workers received none of the social protection measures available for the workers hailing from within Kerala.

The programme, titled Kerala Migrant Workers’ Welfare Programme, is being implemented through the Kerala Building and other Construction Workers’ Welfare Fund Board. Migrant workers have to register their names under this scheme at the offices of the board paying a contribution of Rs.30 a year. Twice that amount will be remitted to each member’s account by the board and the government will contribute the remaining sum to carry out a host of welfare measures for the members.

Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/01/stories/2010050161680400.htm

Courtesy
The Hindu

Construction workers get maternity benefit

Commissioner of Labour hands over cheques to beneficiaries at a programme

---

Thirty women were given Rs. 5,000 each

The scheme was announced on August 15 last year

---

SOMETHING TO CHEER:Construction workers with their babies after receiving maternity benefit in the city on Thursday.

VISAKHAPATNAM, India: Thirty women construction workers received maternity benefit of Rs. 5,000 each granted by the A.P. Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board at a programme organised by the Labour Department here on Thursday.

Commissioner of Labour D. Sreenivasulu handed over the cheques to the beneficiaries. Maternity benefit is the one being given by the board to construction workers. A woman construction worker will get Rs. 5,000 each for two confinements.

The beneficiaries were from Parawada, Munagapaka and Atchutapuram mandals in Anakapalle Circle of the Labour Department and many of them were working in the NTPC.

They had applied after the scheme was announced on August 15 last year. As many as 136 had applied in the Visakhapatnam Zone (consisting of East Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts) and so far 96 claims have been settled and a sum of Rs. 4.80 lakhs was distributed to beneficiaries.

The beneficiaries were present with their toddlers and looked happy at the benefit they had received.

One of the beneficiaries, a 19-year-old Chintakayala Devi of Mutyalampalem in Parawada mandal, who received Rs. 5,000 after giving birth to a baby girl seven months ago, said the sum had taken care of her delivery expenses, though she and her husband, a mason, were now forced to spend money on the medical care of the baby, who is not keeping good health.

Daily wages

She was engaged as a construction worker since she was 17 years. She earns between Rs. 80 and Rs. 90 a day and work is available for around 10 days in a month. Medical care is available at Vaada Cheepurupalli, three km from her village.

Joint Commissioners of Labour — S. Lakshminarayana and P. Surreddi — Deputy Commissioners of Labour — K. Yella Rao and S. Bala Ravi — Secretary to the Board Ashok, ACLs — Chandramouli and M. Padmavathi — and other officials, BMS in-charge of unorganised sector M.V.S. Naidu and others were present.

Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/16/stories/2010041661220300.htm

Courtesy
The Hindu