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On July 6th, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with the potential to affect an untold number of employers. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register at 80 FR 38515, drastically changes the DOL’s interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to overtime exemptions. The current rule, put in place in 2004, exempts employees with salaries of at least $455 a week ($23,660 a year) and who perform executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer duties from overtime regulations. In a Presidential Memorandum in March of 2014, President Obama directed the DOL...

I’m still not at the point where I’m willing to raise the possibility of Hillary losing the nomination to some number greater than 0% but there are some interesting smoke signals coming up on the horizon lately which might have me questioning the collective wisdom on the subject. Bernie Sanders is in Maryland this week attending the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting and making his pitch for why he’s a better candidate to support big labor than Hillary. (Clinton will be there after him.) Obviously he would like to have the support of the unions because, let’s face it, no...

Matthews: No one enforces immigration law because they want cheap labor - and votes for Dems Obviously, we’re used to a steady stream of crazy coming from the fine folks at MSNBC. Chiefest among the network’s primetime calamities is Chris Matthews, whose career is basically one, long, barely-coherent rant. Every now and then, though, it feels like one of his handlers stuffs his meds into a wad of peanut butter and Chris comes through with something approaching an actual truth. HTML5 video is not supported! Special: New Probiotic Fat Burner Takes GNC by Storm This, it seems, is one of...

It’s a progressive paradise.Public employees get 30 vacation days a year. Anyone who works over eight hours in a day gets paid time-and-a-half. Employees have strong rights.The minimum wage is high: 77 percent of the median wage.Environmental regulations are settled beyond the pressure of local economic interests. The forests and mountains are pristine destinations for ecotourism.Energy costs are kept high, pushing consumption down to a level deemed “socially beneficial”. Utilities have strong public backing and provide jobs to thousands.Union jobs in shipping are protected from outsourcing to cut-rate foreign competitors.The social safety net is buoyant and provides a solid working-class standard...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- President Barack Obama brings his push to raise salaries for low-income workers to Wisconsin, the state where Gov. Scott Walker built his expected run for the White House around curtailing collective bargaining powers and enacting a right-to-work law.

The Center for Energy Workforce Development estimates that nearly half of the electric power generation, transmission and distribution workforce may be replaced in the coming years due to baby boomer retirements. As the demographics change, the energy industry is challenged with replacing a massive number of experienced workers all at the same time. While the scope and magnitude of the issue is widely recognized, there is no single solution to the problem. A closer look at the workforce challenge reveals social, cultural, and economic factors that should be considered when forming an effective solution. The following is a look at...

With the rise of flexible working schedules, the freelance economy, and video conferencing, more Americans are getting their jobs done without ever heading into an office, according to new data from the American Time Use Survey released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among all workers, 23% report spending all or part of their day working from home. That’s up from less than 19% in 2003, the first year for which there’s comparable data.

A San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling by the California Labor Commission. The ruling, filed on Tuesday in state court in San Francisco, said Uber is "involved in every aspect of the operation." It is the latest in a host of legal and regulatory challenges facing Uber in the United States and other countries. Uber had argued its drivers are independent contractors, not employees, and that it is "nothing more than a neutral technology platform." If Uber drivers are employees, that opens Uber up to higher costs, including...

There are two kinds of commemorative days/weeks/months. There’s the nonprofit, “awareness” type, such as Black History Month or World Down Syndrome Day, intended to show solidarity for some cause. Then there’s the for-profit, commercial variety, like International Pickle Week or California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month, which are simply business marketing campaigns. And then there’s the profit-seeking effort masquerading as cause-promotion. That’s what June’s Immigrant Heritage Month is. Just as International Pickle Week was dreamed up by the Pickle Packers International trade association to sell more fermented cucumbers, Immigrant Heritage Month is a project that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg dreamed...

Tea party activists, labor unions both say Obama’s trade agenda is undemocratic and secretive Some of the fiercest opponents of President Barack Obama’s trade policy on the left and right are sending notably similar messages in a bid to kill legislation in the House designed to expedite a major Pacific trade deal. With a deciding vote set for Friday, unions and progressive groups are emphasizing arguments that also appeal to conservative organizations, accusing the Obama administration of undue secrecy, stretching the limits of executive power and undermining U.S. sovereignty. “The left is using the language I use,” said Richard Manning,...

One of the defining features of jobs "recovery" and the main reason why wage growth has been so far below the Fed's expectations for years it has prevented wage inflation from appearing despite years of QE, is that the quality of jobs added month after month has disappointing. May was no difference.Yes, the headline print of 280K job additions was great, but a quick look at how the BLS got there shows that nothing has changed because four of the five main job additions were, as usual for the lowest paid jobs. Here is the breakdown: Education and Health...

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces. The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. For much of the past eight months, labor activists have argued against special considerations for business...

In the second part of an exclusive interview with B&B Media, Professor Walter E. Williams explains how the government’s ability to force one individual into giving his or her property (taxes) to another is, in essence, slavery.

BREAKING: GotNews IDs Gay Activist Train Engineer Who Caused Amtrak Crash UPDATED W/ PHOTOS! May 13, 2015 by Charles C. Johnson 184 Comments Gotnews.com has independently identified the engineer at the center of the Amtrak crash that has killed at least seven. Brandon Bostian is the 32-year-old gay man who lawyered up after a deadly derailment in Philadelphia. The train was reportedly going twice the speed limit.

Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens? At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), and yet despite all of their hard work they still find themselves mired in poverty. One of the big reasons for this is that we have created two classes of workers in the United States. “Full-time workers” are entitled to...

Resurgent right. Conservatives in Britain are quite a bit less conservative than U.S. Republicans, which I suppose is quite the caveat given what we’ve seen in the McConnell/Boehner era. But they’re still the center-right alternative to the very left-wing Labour Party, and British voters decided once again yesterday that they’d rather keep their government in the hands of those on the right side of the aisle. The Conservatives look to end up with 329 seats, which is three more than they need for an outright majority. Labour won only 228 seats. It wasn’t really that close, and much as we...

Every year since 2002, Minnesota has been losing residents to other states. What’s worse: Young adults are leaving in the greatest numbers. Casey Sperzel is Minnesotan through and through. She grew up in Maple Grove, went to college at the University of Minnesota, and lived in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. But when the 27-year-old met with a job recruiter last year, she was set on the Pacific Northwest. “I don’t think I’ll be back,” said Sperzel, now with a Seattle ad agency. States are scrambling for young professionals like Sperzel to help offset the wave of baby boomer retirements....

- South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley considers the bid to unionize workers at Boeing Co's North Charleston plant a threat to one of her state's corporate crown jewels, and she is turning to radio, speeches and social media to denounce the campaign. "We don't need their bully middleman tactics between our associates and their employer," she wrote on Twitter last month. It was a message in keeping with Haley's previous declarations that she is a "union buster" who wears high heels to kick out organized labor "thugs" seeking to gain a foothold in the state. The April 22 union vote...

The largest labor organization in the United States on Tuesday launched a national immigration training plan called "We Rise!" to help Hispanics take advantage of the immigration relief measures announced by President Barack Obama last November. The effort is designed to reach, mobilize and organize immigrant workers in their workplaces and in their communities. The AFL-CIO on Tuesday in Washington began preparing representatives who have arrived from all over the country to support and teach undocumented workers how to request protection under Deferred Action, or DACA, for children born in the United States and under DAPA for parents of permanent...

"More specifically, Netanyahu's Likud Party won by siphoning voters away from the other right parties who will become its coalition partners. Mainstream Israeli opinion has shifted to the right: to win, Likud didn't need to win over a swath of centrist voters. It needed to jazz up the Right with nasty rhetoric about Palestinians and Arabs." "Meanwhile, Likud is going through a process that some observers have referred to as Tea Party-ization. Younger Israelis tend to be more conservative, increasingly empowering the more right-wing factions inside Likud. That causes center-right voters to defect to centrist parties, pushing the party ever...