Supporters say a shortened week would push businesses to hire more people, increase labor market participation, and create healthier competition in the workplace that empowers workers to negotiate for better wages and working conditions.
By excluding jobs held by black and brown workers from basic worker protections, the Fair Labor Standards Act, adopted decade ago during the New Deal, injected institutional racism into a federal wage and hour law.
The future of work means fewer hours spent working.
“Wealth work” is one of America’s fastest-growing industries. It includes full-time retail and service jobs at nail salons and spas, as well as that nebulous network of people contracted through through driving, delivery and other online services.
Progressive Senators who have already criticized the administration on other economic issues — Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tom Harkin — wrote a letter last spring to Obama, applauding his decision to revisit overtime pay. But in their letter, the liberal Senators also set forth their desired threshold: Around $54,000 per year, rather than $42,000, the amount the Obama administration is supposedly eying.
Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.
When the Supreme Court ruled that unions could not collect dues from the home-care workers they represent, the justices set workers and their clients on a course that could harm them both.
Changes in labor market policies and practices have played an important role in the dynamic of rising inequality and wage stagnation for the vast majority. One example of a change in labor market policy that has eroded the standing of typical workers vis-à-vis their employers and contributed to this dynamic is the right of workers to earn overtime pay premiums for working excessive hours.
Forming a union is one of the only ways that workers in home-care jobs have been able to have a voice and a pathway out of poverty. Limiting the ability of a state to collaborate directly with home care workers on common sense solutions to meet their own growing workforce needs--which could be the outcome of a right-wing lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court-- sets a terrible precedent for both workers and consumers.
Tuesday marked the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ended some of the worst abuses of American workers by establishing the 40-hour work week, restricting child labor, setting a minimum wage and requiring overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a given week. When will home care workers receive these most basic labor protections?
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