Employee Rights In The News
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On January 23, 2017, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) launched the
Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages to track the Trump Administration's wage, labor, and employment policies, and hold them accountable for their record. According to EPI's press release, the project will be "[l]ed by former Department of Labor Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz... [and] will document and fight any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect and defend American workers."
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Stay Connected
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Workers' Rights By The Numbers:
4
The number of times Secretary of Labor nominee Andrew Puzder's
committee hearing
has been rescheduled
.
$8.90
The average
minimum wage per hour
among the 29 states that have
adopted a standard higher than the federal minimum wage
.
(
Economic Policy Institute
)
27
The number of
states that have so-called "right-to-work" laws
on the books, now that Gov. Mark Bevin has signed legislation enacting the policy in Kentucky.
30
The number of
minutes that the Department of Labor's report on LGBT rights in the workplace remained on its website
after Donald Trump's inauguration
.
36
The number of
cents a Native American woman earns for every dollar earned by a white man in the food-supply industry.
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Employee Rights In The Courts
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On January 13, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and consolidated a trio of forced arbitration cases. In
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Ernst & Young, LLP v. Morris, and
National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., the parties seek to determine whether forced arbitration clauses containing class and collective action waivers conflict with the employees' right to engage in "concerted activities" for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection," as provided by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Norris-LaGuardia Act (NLGA), rendering those waivers unenforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). Elizabeth Colman, The Institute's Paul H. Tobias (PHT) Fellow, synthesized the arguments in the cases in her blog post,
Horton Comes to a Head: U.S. Supreme Court Poised To Resolve Conflict Regarding Workers' Rights to Act Collectively.
On January 25, 2017, in
Salinas v. Commercial Interiors, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its two-part test and added a new 6-factor analysis to determine whether two persons or entities constitute a joint employer under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In so finding, the court refocused the analysis on the relationship between the two employing entities and rejected the application of common law control tests normally utilized in determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor.
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The Institute News
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Workers Beware: Forced Arbitration Can Happen To You
The use of forced arbitration clauses in the workplace is becoming more and more pervasive. Yet, because the proceedings often are confidential, it is impossible to know how many employees are affected. To expose companies that try to shield themselves from public accountability, The Institute has recently launched its
Workers Beware project, which enables employees to discover whether an employer is known to force its workers to forego their rights in exchange for a paycheck. Now workers and allies can use our new reporting tool to
help expand this list by identifying companies that attempt to hide their bad behavior behind the closed doors of forced arbitration proceedings.
The Faces Of Forced Arbitration
The Institute would like to invite you to be a part of a new project it is developing:
The Faces Of Forced Arbitration. Too often, discussions of forced arbitration involve a lot of legal and technical jargon, while the human impact is lost.
The Faces Of Forced Arbitration will serve as a platform for workers to tell their personal stories and share the real harm they endure when they lose their right to go to court. In order for this project to be successful, we need employees who have suffered under the weight of a forced arbitration clause to come forward. Please share information about this project with your networks, and encourage the people you know who have been harmed by forced arbitration to speak up. If you know of any employees who would like to participate in this groundbreaking effort, please have them contact PHT Fellow Elizabeth Colman at
[email protected].
Taking "Forced" Out Of Arbitration
The Institute is sharing far and wide its recently published
Taking "Forced" Out Of Arbitration: How Forced Arbitration Harms America's Workers to educate the public about forced arbitration of workplace disputes and why it jeopardizes workers' rights and their access to the courts.
Taking "Forced" Out Of Arbitration includes a plain language description of forced arbitration; an explanation of why forced arbitration harms employees and results in poor outcomes; and employee stories that provide real world examples of the negative impact of forced arbitration on workers. The publication is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. To obtain a free hard copy, contact Maria Rapier at (415) 296-7629 or
[email protected].
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The
Employee Rights Briefing is a monthly newsletter designed to help keep you up-to-date on breaking news and emerging trends impacting America's workers. From the growth of forced arbitration of employment disputes, to employee misclassification, to stories of wage theft and workplace discrimination, the
Employee Rights Briefing will report on employment law and policy developments from the federal government to state legislatures to the courtroom and everywhere in between. Our goal is to provide you with a digestible snapshot of the events shaping employment law and policy, so that you can be kept abreast of the most important issues facing today's workers.
We welcome your feedback! If you have any questions, or are aware of any stories or issues you think should be included in the
Employee Rights Briefing,
please contact us. If you would prefer not to receive the
Briefing in the future please unsubscribe below.
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