Temp workers gain added rights in California
California has always been a sort of haven for worker rights. The Golden State, for instance, has the third highest minimum wage at $9 per hour; it will increase to $10 in 2016. It’s also one of two states with mandatory paid sick leave and one of three states with paid family leave. The state became even more worker-friendly this week when Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a measure to help temp workers hold companies accountable for pay and safety.
The law requires that the “client employer” who hires a subcontractor to supply labor for, say, a warehouse shares legal responsibility for paying wages to workers. The law also prohibits the client employer from shifting legal duties or liabilities for worker safety to the subcontractor.
The law is aimed at reducing the exploitation and weak rights of the temporary or contracted workforce, which included 3.15 million Americans in the second quarter of 2014—up 5.6% from the same period last year, according to the American Staffing Association.
New bill: San Francisco retail workers need predictable schedules
Also in California this week, San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu proposed legislation that gives retail workers predictability in their hourly work. The measure requires managers at retail stores to post work schedules 14 days in advance, to compensate workers for last-minute schedule changes or cancellations, and to give part-time workers the same access to time off requests as full-timers.
The legislation is similar to the Schedules that Work Act introduced in Congress in July that’s also intended to give workers advance notice of their scheduled hours.
Home care aides decry potential delay of pay raise
For years, advocates of home care workers—who occupy the worst paying, fastest growing job in the country—had pushed for the Department of Labor to recognize employees in the profession under the Fair Labor Standards Act that establishes minimum wage and overtime laws. They finally won that battle in September 2013, when the Labor Department announced that in 2015 it would end the Act’s 38-year-old exemption of these workers.
But the waiting might not be over for home care aides. The Labor Department recently disclosed that it was “carefully considering” requests to delay what had appeared to be a settled policy. The National Association of Medicaid Doctors, for instance, asked for a 18-month delay in the new rule since “many states are increasingly concerned that the tools and technology to comply with the rule do not exist in some areas and may require a significant investment of resources in other areas.” Kansas and Oregon have submitted similar requests.
In a letter to Labor Secretary Tom Perez this week, more than 40 worker groups expressed “alarm” at the department’s remarks about a potential delay. If the department takes such action, the letter says, an estimated 2 million workers would continue to be shut out of basic federal wage protections. “The continued lack of Fair Labor Standards Act protections for home care workers would perpetuate wage stagnation in a workforce where, already, more than one in two workers must rely on some form of public assistance to make ends meet,” the letter says.
