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Carlos Centero, a contingent worker at the Raani Corp.’s chemical plant in Bedford Park, Ill., lost his life in a workplace scalding when the company forced him to labor under conditions both Centero and Raani knew were unsafe.

In the year leading up to Centero’s death in December 2011, workers regularly suffered chemical burns on the job at Raani.  These included direct employees and those like Centero, called contingent workers because they are hired on a temporary basis through an agency.

Despite the repeated burns at Raani, the only protective equipment the company issued was latex gloves.  These did not shield Centero when a mixture of hot water and citric acid sprayed out of an open hatch in a tank he was cleaning.

There are approximately 2.5 million contingent workers in the United States.  Like Centero, many lack basic workplace protections.  With low pay and little training, these workers often fear protesting hazardous conditions because doing so might interfere with getting further job placements through the temp agency.

Contingent workers would be safer if they were unionized.  Labor unions work tirelessly to secure proper training for members and to ensure workplaces meet federal guidelines on health and safety.  Unions also intervene when employers try to retaliate against workers who demand safer workplaces.

Centero knew the work he did at Raani was dangerous and that his safety equipment was deficient. Six months before he was killed, chemicals splashed into one of his eyes leaving him partially blind for three days. He kept quiet about it because he couldn’t afford to lose the meager income his job at Raani provided.

In a recent study, the Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit research and educational organization, found that the environment of uncertainty and intimidation in which most contingent employees work makes their jobs especially unsafe.

Companies use temporary workers to boost profits and diminish corporate accountability, according to the report.

Outside staffing agencies hire workers for contingent positions and pay workers’ compensation insurance.  This allows companies to disassociate themselves from training and supervising contingent workers and leaves them financially insulated when these workers get hurt.  (more…)

Pattie Federico prays her car keeps running until she somehow finds the money to fix it.  Her low-wage job at a Boston area movie theater leaves her constantly scrambling to cover basic needs.

Each week, Federico feels like she falls further behind. “I’m not on food stamps so buying food takes up a lot,” Federico told Acting Labor Secretary Seth D. Harris at a roundtable discussion on raising the minimum wage. “I just have enough to get gas to get to work and food so I can live, and I go crazy when I still hear the people who still think we’re quote unquote lazy.”

Federico is one of the 18 million low-wage workers who would benefit from President Obama’s proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.  These workers, like Federico, live paycheck to paycheck, delaying essential purchases and finding ways to live on less.

Even a small increase in income would have a huge impact on Federico specifically and the economy generally.  A higher minimum wage would give low-wage workers like Federico greater financial security.  Better wages would also unlock billions of dollars in new consumer spending, giving the economy a much-needed boost as it continues to recover from the Great Recession.

For Federico, a higher wage would mean having reliable transportation without having to go hungry. (more…)

Although many states are passing laws intended to destroy both private and public sector unions, Minnesota may move to do the opposite for its independent child care providers.

Minnesota is considering a law that would enable unionization for individuals who care for young children in their homes and who are paid largely with subsidies working parents receive from the state.

Minnesota State Sen. Sandra Pappas and Minnesota State Rep. Michael Nelson introduced legislation last week that would allow their state’s 9,000 independent child care providers to vote to form a union.  

Such an organization, like child care unions in other states, would help these low-paid workers receive better wages, get health care coverage and attend training to improve their skills.

Child care unions are distinctive because instead of unifying workers in a single work place, like a large daycare center, they bring together independent small business owners, all of whom work out of their own homes.

All members of these unions get a portion of their income from the state by caring for youngsters who are enrolled in the state’s need-based Child Care Assistance Program. Parents give these child care providers co-payments, and the state government provides the remainder of the wages these workers receive for supervising qualifying children.

As a result, the level of state subsidy greatly influences independent child care workers’ wages, making subsidies a key concern for child care unions.

Child care unions, which are generally supported by large national unions like the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), negotiate with the state’s Department of Human Services to reach collective agreements that address reimbursement rates and other industry regulations.

These union contracts do not impact the amount that parents pay.

Because child care providers receive state funds, the state government must grant child care providers permission before they can vote on whether to form a union.

Since 2005, sixteen states authorized union elections for in-home child care providers.  In 2010, Republican lawmakers began walking back bargaining rights for child care providers. As a result, now only seven states formally recognize child care unions.

This hasn’t stopped independent child care workers in states like Minnesota and Vermont from fighting for bargaining rights in their states.

The proposed legislation in Minnesota is the state’s second attempt to allow child care workers to unionize.  In 2011, Gov. Mark Dayton signed an executive order authorizing a union election.  His order was overturned when a Ramsey County district judge ruled the state legislature must weigh in on the issue. That is what’s occurring now. (more…)

Last March, 18 bakers at a Panera Bread franchise in southwest Michigan voted to join a labor union.  Now, nearly a year later, they are still waiting for their employer, Bread of Life, to recognize their bargaining unit.

A combination of Bread of Life’s obstructionism and bureaucratic red tape has drawn out the unionization process, which should have been as simple as a group of workers exercising their legal right to organize.

The Panera bakers are not alone.  Union membership is in decline in the United States, a trend that is often attributed to globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs.  However, studies have found that employer interference has a profound impact on unionization rates.

Among the methods employers use to obstruct unionization are firing workers who lead organizing efforts, intimidating workers, forcing workers to attend meetings at which managers disparage the union and delaying the vote on  unionization.

At Panera, workers complained that Bread of Life used many of these strategies against them.

Although 90 percent of the bakers signed cards saying they wanted a union, Bread of Life refused to recognize the union.  Instead, it demanded a secret ballot election, its right under federal law.

Before the balloting, Bread of Life mandated meetings at which managers lectured and threatened workers, trying to intimidate them into voting against unionization.

Many companies strive to create a pervasive anti-union atmosphere to preempt union organizing efforts.  In 1994, the final report of the government-initiated Dunlop Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations found that 79 percent of workers believed they might be fired for trying to form a union.

Their fears were well founded.  Since the Dunlop Commission report, there has been a marked increase in anti-union activity, according to a study by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University, found that employers threatened to close plants in 57 percent of union elections and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent of union votes.  Employers actually followed through on threats to fire organizers 34 percent of the time.     (more…)

United Steelworkers’ Local 3657 Women of Steel joined Fight Back Pittsburgh and several other organizations in a global day of action to end violence against women on Thursday, February 14.

The rally, known as One Billion Rising, took place in Market Square in Pittsburgh and included performances from dancers, musicians and artists. Counselors were also on hand to provide emotional support along with a resource center with information on where victims can receive assistance.

Janene Hogan, co-chair of the Local 3657 chapter of Women of Steel, said the event was one the organization could not pass up.

“It’s important to bring awareness to the violence some women are subjected to,” Hogan said. “We are bringing light to the fact that this is still an issue.” (more…)

A recent audit of Apple’s manufacturing supply chain in China revealed numerous cases of illegal child labor, the company conceded late last month.

In one plant that makes circuit board components, the audit uncovered at least 74 cases of workers who were 16 years old or younger.  In another case, the audit revealed a labor agency supplied workers by pressuring parents into forging papers falsifying their children’s true ages.

Human rights violations at plants owned by Foxconn, Apple’s manufacturing partner in China, have been making international headlines since a series of suicides at a factory in Chengdu in 2010 first drew attention to the plight of its workers.

In response, Apple hired the nonprofit Fair Labor Association to audit Foxconn to get a better sense of labor practices in the factories where its products are made.  Troubling findings, including the discovery of child labor at plants that supply Foxconn, prompted Apple to call on Foxconn to boost labor union participation at its factories.

Apple’s turning to unions is understandable because of labor’s history of protecting workers. Labor unions helped eliminate some of the worst labor practices in the United States, and they continue to monitor employers to ensure ongoing compliance with laws that protect workers.

Labor unions, beginning in the 1830s, were among the first to campaign to end child labor, and unions were crucial to the passage of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which set wide-reaching standards to protect all workers, including children.  (more…)

Jeanine Gaver, an Ohio woman who was fired after she underwent treatment for an aggressive form of breast cancer, filed a lawsuit last week, claiming her former employer violated the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

The FMLA guaranteed Gaver, who worked as a radiology manager before her illness, up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for her recovery. Yet when she returned to work in October 2011, she was stripped of her health insurance and pushed into a different position with fewer hours.  A short time later, she was fired.

Unfortunately, Gaver’s case is far from unique.  Sociologists Naomi Gerstel and Amy Armenia found in their 2009 study of the Family and Medical Leave Act that as few as 57 percent of companies are compliant with the law.  Many workers do not fully understand their rights, the researchers also discovered, making it easier for employers to get away with violating the FMLA.

Labor unions, Gertsel and Armenia found, are a key part of both compliance and ensuring workers get accurate information regarding their rights.  “Unions lobbied for legislative change and were central to the passage of the FMLA,” they said.  But more importantly, “unions provide the means to translate policy into action.”

The FMLA protects workers who need long-term medical treatments; must care for sick children, parents or spouses; or bring new children into their families through childbirth or adoption.  When workers take leave under the FMLA, they may not be demoted or fired for missing work.

Long-term leave can inconvenience employers, and they must continue to offer workers costly employer sponsored health insurance during the leave.  As a result, some attempt to block workers from taking leave or, as in Gaver’s case, retaliate when workers try to return to their jobs.

Because unions monitor employer compliance, workplaces with unionized employees are nearly twice as likely to honor the Family and Medical Leave Act, Gertsel and Armenia found.

Unions also make sure that employers follow through on their legal obligation to distribute information about the act, and as a result, union workers are half as likely to be unaware of their rights. (more…)

Earlier this month, Gary May, who was a superintendent at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia when a 2010 explosion killed 29 workers, was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

May had pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges filed after the worst mining accident in the United States in 40 years. He’d confessed that between 2008 and 2010 he and other officials regularly alerted miners when Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) inspectors were coming so that they could conceal – rather than correct – known safety violations.

May also admitted that he ordered subordinates to falsify records and disable a methane monitor to make the mine appear safer.

The United Mineworkers of America (UMWA) called the UBB disaster industrial homicide concluding that by knowingly circumventing safety regulations, Massey Energy, which owned UBB, had all but assured a fatal accident would occur eventually.

Massey also further endangered workers by waging a war on organized labor.  Because unions fight to uphold workers’ rights, Massy, like other large mining companies, spent decades trying to reduce unionized work forces, either by closing unionized mines or by intimidating workers who tried to organize.

In a study of the impact of unionization on mine safety, Stanford Law Professor Alison Morantz found that “unionization predicts a substantial and significant decline in traumatic mining injuries and fatalities,” with fatal accidents reduced by as much as 68 percent.

Union workplaces are safer because union safety committees oversee working conditions and regularly check for hazards and safety violations.  A non-union worker risks suspension or firing for reporting safety issues, but union safety committees can report directly to MSHA or state inspectors with less fear of retaliation because the union will protect safety committeemen who are targeted by employers. (more…)

Two Republican state lawmakers vowed last week to bar voters in Orange County from deciding whether to mandate paid sick leave.

The measure, which began as a ballot initiative with more than 50,000 signatures, would require employers to allow workers to earn up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year, one hour for every 37 hours worked.  The Republicans say they’ll deny voters the right to decide whether to institute paid sick leave in Orange County because the lawmakers believe it would put businesses there at a competitive disadvantage.

The citizens who sought the referendum on paid sick leave believe most people do not want to drop their kids off at a daycare where the child care providers are sick.  They believe most people don’t want to eat food prepared by sick cooks or go to vacation destinations staffed by sick hospitality workers.

The referendum supporters know that without paid leave, many workers in these low-paid professions have no choice. They must work when ill.

This is why proponents of mandatory paid sick leave, including health professionals, labor unions and even some business owners, view sick leave as a human rights issue with significant public safety implications.

Nearly 40 percent of private sector employees do not have access to paid sick leave, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic.  The majority of these are low-wage workers in the service sector, including retail, food service and child care workers.

Workers understand that handling food or interacting with people when they’re sick endangers the public, but because they are paid so little—often less than $10 an hour—most cannot afford to take a day off.

More than half of all workers who directly handle other peoples’ food, for example, including pickers, processors, vendors, cooks and servers, reported working at least three days while sick in the past year, according to a survey by the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

“Like health code standards for restaurants, or immunization requirements for school children, this is an area that affects all of us and requires a minimum standard,” said the group Everybody Benefits in a statement in support a similar earned sick day campaign in Portland, Ore.

The public broadly supports more comprehensive sick leave policies.  Ninety-two percent of consumers reported that it was important to them that cooks and servers not work when sick, according to survey results the National Consumers League released this week.  (more…)

Last week, a Wendy’s franchise in Omaha, Neb., became the latest member of the fast food industry to announce that the costs of complying with the Affordable Care Act were forcing it to slash the hours of hundreds of its employees.

Even before Obamacare, however, fast food corporations kept much of their workforce at part-time status as a means of minimizing labor costs and maximizing profits. 

The Omaha Wendy’s joins Applebee’s and Taco Bell franchises as well as Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter in claiming Obamacare will likely force them to cut hours.

In the meantime, food franchises are making big bucks and paying big bucks to their CEOs. The Wendy’s Co., Papa John’s International, Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell, and DineEquity, which owns Applebee’s, are all generating profits that surpass pre-recession levels and all pay their top executives millions, according to a study by the National Employment Law Project.

In addition, a study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that rates of involuntary part-time work throughout the economy began accelerating in 2006, well before the passage of the Affordable Care Act—and even before the worst of the Great Recession.

Food service was one of three industries accounting for much of this growth, and in 2010, half of all fast food employees worked part-time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fast food restaurant employees are among the lowest paid workers in the country, most making less than $8 an hour. A study by the Economic Policy Institute titled “The Future of Work” found that nearly three-fourths of food service workers received wages at or below the poverty line.

In late November more than 200 New York City workers from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and other fast food chains walked out, demanding higher pay, better working conditions and recognition of their unionization efforts.  Unionized workers are a third more likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance than non-unionized workers. (more…)