Hope the Bleeding Heartland community has been enjoying the long holiday weekend. This is an open thread. I’ve enclosed some Labor Day-related links after the jump, including an excerpt from the Iowa Policy Project’s recent report on wage theft, which “deprives low-wage Iowa workers of an estimated $600 million, deprives state and local government of revenue, and puts law-abiding businesses at a competitive disadvantage.”
From the introduction to Wage Theft in Iowa (pdf), a report by Colin Gordon, Matthew Glasson, Jennifer Sherer and Robin Clark-Bennett.
What is Wage Theft?
Wage theft occurs whenever a worker is robbed of legally owed wages because an employer breaks the law or a contract. Common forms of wage theft include:
• Nonpayment of wages: An employer fails to pay workers for some or all hours of work performed, or fails to pay workers in a timely fashion.
• Underpayment of wages: An employer pays workers less than they were promised or less than they are legally owed under state or federal minimum wage or overtime statutes.
• Tipped job violations: An employer pays tipped employees less than the legally mandated minimum wage for tipped jobs, forces tips to be “shared” with managers or steals workers’ tips.
• Deduction violations: An employer diminishes workers’ pay by making unauthorized or illegal deductions from paychecks
• Misclassification of employees: An employer falsely labels an employee as an “independent contractor” in order to avoid obligations to pay minimum wage and overtime (along with a host of other employment laws, and unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and income tax payments). The “independent contractor” exemption is not meant to apply to those providing services under the direction and control of others; one example of misclassification would be to call a cashier a “salaried manager” to avoid the overtime provisions of federal law.
The report finds that Iowa’s “commitment to enforcing wage and hour laws lags far behind national and regional peers,” even though wage theft costs low-wage Iowa workers roughly $600 million, which in turn translates to $45 million in annual unpaid state tax revenue, as well as “$14 million in lost revenue to the state’s unemployment fund.”
Figure 1 on page 6 of this pdf file shows the distribution of federal Fair Labor Standards Act violations in Iowa by industry.
Three sectors claim a disproportionate share of FLSA violations: (1) accommodation and food services account for only about 8 percent of Iowa’s total employment, but nearly a quarter of all FLSA violations and nearly a fifth of all back wages paid; (2) administrative and support services (which includes waste management) has a share of FLSA violations nearly double its share of total employment; and (3) professional services has a violation share (over 10 percent) more than triple its share of employment.
Figure 2 on page 7 breaks down the FLSA violations in Iowa’s manufacturing facilities, according to what kind of products are manufactured.
Over three-quarters of all FLSA violations in Iowa manufacturing are in food processing, the bulk of these (44 percent of the manufacturing total) in animal slaughtering and processing. This is a subsector – as shown by a raft of recent cases – in which industry practices and vulnerable workforces make wage theft both more likely and more possible.
Food processors employ only about 25 percent of the Iowans who work in manufacturing, but account for more than 75 percent of the FLSA violations.
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has been fighting wage theft for years, both by advocating for legislation to address the issue and helping individuals obtain unpaid wages from unscrupulous employers. Page 17 of the Iowa Policy Project report describes the case of one woman who “filed wage claims with Iowa Workforce Development and the U.S. Department of Labor” thanks to assistance from Iowa CCI.
Labor unions helped secure so many things Americans take for granted, like overtime pay and weekends. But very few private-sector workers belong to a union anymore. From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest report on union membership:
In 2011, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union–was 11.8 percent, essentially unchanged from 11.9 percent in 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million, also showed little movement over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.
The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that obtains information on employment and unemployment among the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over. For more information, see the Technical Note.
Highlights from the 2011 data:
–Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9 percent). (See table 3.)
–Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent, while the lowest rate occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0 percent). (See table 3.)
–Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)
–Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.1 percent) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (2.9 percent). (See table 5.)
Table 5 of that report shows that in 2011, about 1,386,000 Iowans were employed, of whom 155,000 (11.2 percent) were labor union members, and 187,000 (13.5 percent) were represented by labor unions. Since Iowa is a “right to work” state, workers cannot be compelled to pay union membership dues, even if a collective bargaining contract covers the terms of their employment.
Peter Rothberg of The Nation lists his top ten labor day songs here (with YouTube videos).
UPDATE: Which is more obnoxious? A. This Labor Day tweet from U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:
Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.
Or B. This e-mail blast from Iowa Senate Minority Leader Jerry Behn last Friday:
For most Iowans, the upcoming Labor Day weekend and the picnics and community celebrations that accompany it act as a symbolic end to summer. It becomes one last great opportunity to get together with friends before the hustle and bustle of fall harvest and school activities take hold.
Labor Day is also historically a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the American worker and entrepreneur. It was hardworking Americans from all walks in life who built this country into the great nation it has become because they believed in creating better lives for themselves and their families.
Now, as we embark on this Labor Day at a time when many Iowans and Americans are unemployed, underemployed and hurting economically, it’s a good time to lay out what needs to be done to put more Iowans back to work and build a strong economy and therefore a strong Iowa.
Senate Republicans are committed to building a strong Iowa economy, a strong but efficient state budget and strong schools and communities. Here are 12 important steps to accomplish that:
• Promote job creation through tax relief and reform, especially property and income taxes
• Eliminate job-killing red tape and burdensome regulations
• Increase career opportunities by investing in a skilled and competitive workforce
• Send a strong message that Iowa is a place to start and grow a business
• Create certainty with balanced budgets that spend less than we take in
• Save taxpayers’ money by operating an efficient and effective government
• Implement sensible state government pay and benefits
• Encourage a stable and predictable business climate that provides certainty for job creators to begin investing and hiring
• Advance education reforms that offer accountability, innovation and choice for parents
• Promote career readiness and opportunities for future generations to prosper in Iowa
• Fight for Iowa solutions to meet Iowa needs for affordable patient-centered health care
• Preserve the values, freedoms and liberties that are the foundation of Iowa
As you enjoy your holiday weekend with your friends and your family – remember the true meaning of Labor Day and think carefully about what needs to be done so that we can build a stronger Iowa economy.
If we have the right people making decisions who are leading with the right policies, there is no doubt that in the near future, more Iowans and Americans will be back working again.
Way to make Labor Day all about business owners, guys.