NEW LAW #1 - STATUTORY PAID VACATIONS
Every employee of every firm would be entitled to a minimum of 15 paid vacation days a year.
• Sick days would not count as vacation days.
• The vacation days would not need to be “earned” one at a time . 15 days off with pay would be available to all employees every year.
• Part-time employees would also qualify for paid vacations, although the number of days could be pro-rated.
Note: McDonalds restaurants in Austria and Denmark provide 22 days of paid vacation a year for all workers, plus paid national holidays, plus a living wage --and these restaurants are still open for business.
Nearly all employers In France close down for the month of August, and France is not bankrupt either.
In addition:
‘National holidays’ will be standardized across America -- to include Veterans Day, Presidents Day, and Martin Luther King Day, for all workplaces. If government employees get a holiday, everyone gets it.
Anyone asked to work on a Sunday or a national holiday will be paid double-time.
The cost of paid vacations will add about 6% in payroll expenses, if a firm offers no vacations now. However, the same companies have to cope with rising costs for energy, land, credit, and raw materials all the time. Cheap labor should not be treated as some kind of entitlement.
NEW LAW #2 - PAID FAMILY LEAVE
Any employee of any firm can take three months paid leave for a new child, a sick family member, or for their own serious illness.
The pay received will be no less than $1,500 per month, though an employer can pay more.
There will be no restrictions whatsoever on employer size or occupation. This benefit should be national and universal, instead of waiting for states to enact their own laws.
The base payments for family leave will be covered by Social Security, not the individual employer.
This can be financed by adding one-half of one percent to the payroll tax paid by all employers and employers. For the average employee this will come to an extra tax of $2 a week.
Conservatives have long praised ‘family values’, but only if the values did not cost anything. We will be different.
In addition:
Any worker with seven years’ tenure in one job will receive three months of paid educational leave. Again, the cost will be covered by Social Security.
NEW LAW #3 - NATIONAL WAGE AND HOUR STANDARDS
In most of Europe, any restaurant that tried to pay $7 an hour – or $2 an hour in ‘tipped wages’ - would be subject to strikes and boycotts by national unions.
(And if a strike occurred, no ‘replacement workers’ would be allowed. Stronger unions would support the restaurant workers: through boycotts, sympathy strikes, and refusing to deliver food to non-union cheap-labor establishments.)
In these nations, firms cannot relocate to “right-to-work” states, just to escape unions.
These nations still have ‘pattern bargaining,’ where all workers in an industry have the same basic pay package. Businesses are not free to compete by going after cut-rate workers, either native or immigrant.
They still have ‘prevailing wage’ laws. Subcontractors are not awarded jobs by paying lower wages than union scale. A $15-per-hour worker cannot be replaced with an $8-per-hour part-timer.
In the USA, unfortunately, things are different.
We have allowed companies to compete by utilizing cheap labor and paying no benefits.
American companies can crush or lock out unions, and give jobs to anyone who is desperate enough to work for less.
In many industries, any company which tries to set a wage floor will eventually lose out, because investors will put their dollars elsewhere. Jobs have moved from New England to the South to Mexico to the Phlllipines to Pakistan and then to China, and now to Vietnam! ……. in the destructive pursuit of cheap labor.
But we cannot wait another 50 years, or more, until millions of small firms are organized, one at a time. We need the government to set a wage floor for an entire geographical area. (This has happened in Seattle, with its $15 minimum wage.)
The minimum wage must be at least $10 an hour in all communities.
What we need is ‘ collective bargaining through legislation.’
This will cost the stingiest employers about $20 billion a year.
(Which is less, incidentally, than the $24 billion a year than Walmart and other large low-wage businesses now spend buying back their own stock and giving executive bonuses.)
In addition:
• Split shifts will mean that the employee must be paid full salary for down time.
• No employee will be forced to buy their own tools, or pay for their own licenses, or use their own vehicle on work duties without compensation. No one will have to pay to get a job.
• Super-low ‘tip wages’ will be banned.
• We should move toward a minimum weekly wage….i.e. if hours are cut back, the hourly wage would automatically increase.
And in the future:
• Every single employer must pay their share of social insurance taxes for every worker who they supervise. The number of ‘independent contractors’ should shrink by at least 50%.
Cab drivers, truck drivers, construction workers, et al, will be considered employees for the purpose of payroll taxes.
These industries must be forced to use ‘hiring halls’, where workers might be temporary but they all receive a living wage and full benefits.
Cheapskate contractors who resist the use of hiring halls deserve no sympathy or protection.
Criminal sanctions must be imposed for wage theft, but it will take more federal manpower. In 1941, the Labor Department had 1700 inspectors for 16 million workers; today, it has 1,000 inspectors for 130 million employees. (Yet we spend billions on ‘homeland security.’)
The government can also publish the names of violators in a national ‘shaming’ campaign. The government can educate the buying public about the worst employers.
If Whole Foods or McDonalds fired a worker for taking time with a sick child, this action would be publicized by an aggressive Department of Labor. Large corporations are still sensitive about their public image – publicity can help workers.
Resisting employers will also be ineligible for any government contracts whatsoever.
Note:
Labor laws are not all that different from marriage laws. Predatory employers will always go after cheap labor, in the same way that some men go after younger wives. No nation is immune ….German employers , for example, are just as greedy as anyone once they get outside of Germany.
In marriage, it takes the force of law to protect older spouses. The same is true for employment. Low wages have very little to do with the workers’ lack of technical skills or lack of formal education. In New York and Las Vegas, unionized hotel maids make over $20 an hour. Low wages come from poor bargaining power.
NEW LAW #4 - UNIVERSAL UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
Anyone who is laid off, for any reason, will qualify for unemployment. This includes part-timers and ‘independent contractors.’
The benefits will have a floor, i.e. $400 per week , and will last for one year.
This can also be financed by small increases in both income taxes and Social Security taxes. Employers will have no right or need to contest benefits.
In addition:
Anyone laid off due to outsourcing must receive severance pay.
This will be retroactive for the last twenty years – i.e., if a cheap-labor business moved to a non-union Southern state, Mexico, or China, et al., any workers who were laid off will have a legal claim for severance if they did not receive payments at the time.
To make these severance payments, corporations will be forced to turn to:
a. current corporate earnings
b. personal assets of the owners
c. personal assets of those who received dividends from the corporation after the layoff, including the Bain Capital-type investors and corporate raiders
d. if none of the above apply – i.e. if a business genuinely went broke and the owners lost money– then a special severance fund within Social Security will be funded with a one-third of one per cent increase in the payroll tax.
NEW LAW #5 - FREE VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
Education for new careers will be covered by a new GI bill –
Which offers free tuition up to $10,000 a year, plus a child allowance while the worker returns to school. Essentially, this is ia civilian GI bill.
No student loans will be required for most courses of study.
Greedy vocational schools will have to lower their tuition.
This can be financed at the federal level, mainly by redirecting about $80 billion from the bloated defense budget.
NEW LAW #6 - EMPLOYEE PRIVACY
• Credit checks and drug tests of prospective employees will be illegal.
• Denial of employment for misdemeanor convictions will be illegal.
• All records of non-violent felonies (i.e. drug convictions) will be expunged after five years. A criminal conviction will no longer bar someone from getting a state license for their occupation.
• Employees can demand that they not be contacted after hours or on vacation.
• Employees will receive free legal assistance for complaints of discrimination or unjust firing.
• The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission must be at least quadrupled in its staffing and budget. It should plan to hire a minimum of 500 new lawyers plus staff.
• It will be constantly active in suing the worst exploiters of labor in the restaurant, construction, hospitality, and retail sectors. Many of these businesses rely on wage theft, low pay, and arbitrary dismissal of employees today. In the absence of unions, these industries have had a free hand, and it will not be a peaceful change.
To paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, ‘The EEOC will be hated, and the EEOC will welcome that hatred.”
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