Americans can thank the organized labor movement for many workplace standards we take for granted: 40 hours at work per week with weekends off, paid vacations and holidays, sick leave, and (unpaid) family and medical leave. Unfortunately, Republicans who now control state government have made working conditions worse for hundreds of thousands of people since last Labor Day.
Iowans who get hurt on the job can expect to receive significantly lower benefits, even for career-ending injuries, under our state’s new workers’ compensation law. Some will receive nothing, as Republicans created new loopholes to allow employers to avoid paying out claims. For instance, an injured worker with any sign of alcohol or drugs in the system will be excluded from the system, even if the trace amount stemmed from use weeks earlier or was far below a level indicating intoxication.
Because Republicans shredded a collective bargaining law that had worked well for more than four decades, tens of thousands of public workers are already experiencing an effective pay cut. Teachers in some school districts that did not extend contracts before the new law went into effect now pay much higher health insurance premiums, more than wiping out any small increase in base pay. In the districts that extended contracts in a hurry in February, local education associations “agreed to a much smaller salary increase than they might normally have received” in order to keep more subjects in their contracts for two years.
Also thanks to the new collective bargaining law, many state workers are facing forced overtime for no pay, or in some cases for their standard hourly wage, rather than time and a half. I’ve enclosed below excerpts from Jason Clayworth’s reporting on the overtime changes, along with a story by Barbara Rodriguez on Iowa’s worsening prison nurse shortage.
In the private sector, a long-term trend of replacing “good jobs” with “bad jobs” continues, with stagnant real wages and a “collapse of security and job quality within sectors and occupations,” wrote Colin Gordon in a commentary previewing a new report from the Iowa Policy Project. And while the unemployment rate is down to 3.2 percent statewide, “underemployment and long-term unemployment are still higher than they were before the financial crisis hit in 2007.”
The Iowa Policy Project found last year that “Nearly 114,000 working households in Iowa — 19 percent — do not earn enough to meet a basic needs family budget.” Raising the minimum wage would go some way toward addressing that problem, but Iowa lawmakers and the Branstad/Reynolds administration did the opposite, blocking local government actions to raise the minimum wage. That law shrunk paychecks for an estimated 85,000 people, mostly in counties that have a relatively high cost of living.
Meanwhile, Iowa still has “one of the lowest eligibility ceilings in the country” for child care assistance. Neither state lawmakers nor the governor showed any interest in addressing the “cliff effect” that cuts off that benefit for too many working families.
Two years after the Iowa Policy Project documented the scale of wage theft, that “invisible epidemic” still costs the state an estimated “$600 million in stolen wages and another $120 million in unpaid sales, income and payroll taxes annually.”
For an excellent analysis of national trends that have exacerbated economic inequality, read Neil Irwin’s New York Times article on two janitors: one cleaned offices at Eastman Kodak’s company headquarters during the 1980s, the other currently works for a contractor Apple hires to clean its corporate offices.
Final note: Americans have held parades or other Labor Day events on the first Monday in September for more than 100 years. Scroll to the end of this post for a list of celebrations happening around Iowa today.
From Jason Clayworth’s front-page story for the Sunday Des Moines Register on September 3, “Extra work and no pay: How Iowa ended overtime for thousands of state workers.”
Iowa has revoked overtime eligibility for about 2,800 state workers, a move critics say could cripple government services if employees leave for the private sector and better jobs.
In all, 167 job classifications, including nurses, public defenders and social workers, can now be required to work more than 40 hours a week without additional pay or comp time.
And for 12,800 state workers who remain eligible for overtime, the state has altered how it calculates overtime in ways that reduce their pay and the circumstances when employees qualify for it. […]
The state estimates the changes will save $5 million a year. […]
Among a host of other changes, the [collective bargaining] law allows the state to roll back overtime eligibility that historically had been granted to thousands of union employees under the Federal Labor Standards Act, or FLSA. […]
Iowa’s decision to widely reduce overtime benefits is uncommon and could result in workforce problems for state government, [National Employment Law Project federal advocacy coordinator Judy] Conti said.
“This is a short-sighted way for the state to do business,” Conti said. “If they have any intention of attracting and retaining the best talent to serve the citizens of Iowa, reducing compensation and worsening working conditions for state employees isn’t the way to do it.”
Clayworth reported that the Department of Human Services, Department of Corrections, and the Iowa Veterans Home “have appealed to state regulators and been granted at least a partial waiver to the overtime changes,” on the grounds that the rules would make nursing shortages worse. Barbara Rodriguez reported on that problem for the Associated Press on August 27.
The Iowa Department of Corrections says a shortage of registered nurses at some clinics within its nine prisons has led the agency to seek more licensed practical nurses. Known as LPNs, they need less health care education and are paid less. They can do similar tasks as registered nurses, but they carry restrictions in their interactions with patients and require more oversight.
Kathy Weiss, administrator of nursing for corrections, said it’s difficult to compete with nearby hospital jobs that offer signing and retention bonuses and student loan repayment options. […]
There were 24 nursing vacancies at Iowa prisons this summer, according to agency documentation distributed in July. Of those, 20 slots were for registered nurses and four slots were for licensed practical nurses. Corrections data for August indicates there are now 15 openings for registered nurses and six openings for LPNs. A total of 135 nurses are working for Iowa prisons.
More than half of the vacancies listed in the agency documentation were at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville. Weiss said staffing issues are prevalent in urban areas that have additional job options for registered nurses.
Cathy Glasson, president of Service Employees International Union Local 199, which represents more than 3,000 public registered nurses in Iowa, said nursing shortages won’t improve under Iowa’s new collective bargaining law. The law prevents most public employees from negotiating health insurance and other working conditions.
Labor Day events around Iowa, listed on the University of Iowa Labor Center’s Facebook page:
Burlington: September 4 – 4 pm. 40 & 8 Park (Located behind Community Field in Burlington) Single $5 and family $10. Ticket includes: Meal, Door Prizes, Kid Games and Bounce House.
Cedar Falls: September 4 (Waterloo) Black Hawk Union Assembly. Gateway Shelter 11:30 am. Serving food and drinks. (Black Hawk Union Assembly)
Cedar Rapids: September 4 11 AM. Food, music and children entertainment. Hawkeye Downs, 4400 6th St. SW Cedar Rapids. (Hawkeye Area Labor Council) Music by members of the musician’s union.
Des Moines: September 4- Parade at 11 am. (Parade line up at 8 am) March from Iowa Capitol to State Fairgrounds. Picnic for members, their families and special guests at Union Labor Park, 4640 Morningside Dr. Des Moines. noon to 5 pm. Grills, charcoal and water provided. (South Central Iowa Federation of Labor)
Dubuque: September 4 – Parade and Picnic. Parade starts at Jackson Park at 9#0am, 16th and Main and ends at 7 and Locust. Post Parade Picnic at Swiss Valley Park from noon to 2 pm.
Fort Dodge: September 4 – Picnic – 1 pm . Veterans Amphitheater at Kennedy Memorial Park. 1386 National Ave. (Western Iowa Labor Federation)
Iowa City: September 4 – Noon, Upper City Park, Shelter #2. People are encouraged to bring a side dish to share. All members, families and friends are invited to attend. (Iowa City Federation of Labor)
Keokuk: September 4 -Parade and Celebration all day at the Labor Temple.
Mason City: September 4 – North Iowa Nine Labor Assembly. Georgia Hanford Park, 2300 block of South Pennsylvania Ave. 11am. Hot Dogs and Hamburgers along with potato salad, beans, dessert and beverages. All are welcome. (Hawkeye Area Labor Council)
Quad Cities: September 4 – Parade 11am. Line up at 9 am at John Deere Harvester Works, lot at 1100 13th Ave in East Moline – proceeds along 15th Ave. East Moline.
Sioux City: September 4 – Picnic. Picnic 11 am. Riverside Park, 1301 Riverside Blvd. (Western Iowa Labor Federation)
Top image: Happy Labor Day, from the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO’s Facebook page.