May 18th, 2012 by BMBB Law
Celebrity chef Jose Garces is getting some flak for trying to hire unpaid interns to work in the kitchens of his restaurants. Of course, it’s illegal to make someone work for free - if the employer gets any benefit from the work, the employee must get paid at least the minimum wage.
Somehow, many have accepted the idea that it’s a rite of passage for someone who wants a good job to first prove their worth by working for free for a while. A look at Craigslist shows dozens of employers advertising that they want to break the law. But unpaid internships not only hurt the intern, who doesn’t get the wages they’re entitled to, but also hurt those who would like to get on the corporate ladder but can’t afford to work for free.
It also hurts the person who would have been paid for that work, if the employer didn’t think it could get away with getting someone to do the same work for free. Letting employers get away with intern abuse means fewer jobs for everyone, and it keeps those at the bottom from working their way up. It’s un-American, and wrong.
May 17th, 2012 by BMBB Law
Currently, home healthcare workers –who provide health care services to people in their homes– are considered exempt from federal overtime and minimum wage regulations. The exemption was originally intended only to apply to babysitters and the like, but has expanded overtime to encompass home health aides. These workers often work extremely long hours, providing critical care to the sick and elderly, and yet current law allows them to be paid less than the minimum wage, with no overtime – even if they work around-the-clock shifts.
Late last year the Department of Labor proposed a change in the law, which would be a step towards closing this loophole. If the proposal passes, it would only exempt those people being paid directly by the family or household where they work. That means staffing agencies, through whom most people employ home health aides, would be required to pay the minimum wage and overtime.
The public response so far has been overwhelming, with 9,800 public comments submitted on the proposal, many by professionals in the health or legal fields, most in favor of the change. We would like to add our voice to that – this change is long overdue. The roughly two million home health workers in the United States – who take care of our nation’s most vulnerable population – deserve to be protected and deserve to be paid.
May 17th, 2012 by BMBB Law
A recent decision in the Eastern District of New York (Ehrhard v. Lahood) held that denying child care leave to men, and not women, constitutes illegal sex discrimination. The decision is important not only for men, but also for women. Any policy or attitude that views men’s childcare responsibilities as less important, or less deserving, also assumes that women should be the primary caregivers. It denies a father’s place in his children’s lives and also lessens the importance of women’s roles in the workplace. After all, if men can’t take time off to care for the children, then women must be the ones doing so. And that’s not fair to either parent. Men and women need to be considered equal – as workers and as parents.
May 10th, 2012 by BMBB Law
Yesterday, in Townsend v. Benjamin Enterprise Inc, the Second Circuit held that employees conducting internal investigations into harassment complaints aren’t protected by the anti-retaliation provision of Title VII (specifically, the “participation clause”). The Court held the clause only applies to people “participating” in investigations by government agencies (like the EEOC), and not internal investigations.
However, the only other anti-retaliation provision of Title VII, the “opposition clause,” also likely isn’t available to HR personnel conducting investigations. In order to be protected under that provision, someone must complain about something they have a “good faith basis” to believe is illegal. But if someone has just begun conducting an investigation, how could they possibly have a “good faith basis” to believe one way or another?
This puts HR personnel in a tough bind — they can be fired for not investigating, and thus not doing their jobs, but they can also be fired if they do investigate. Judge Lohier, in a concurring opinion, essentially asks Congress to step in and tie up this loophole. We couldn’t agree with him more.
April 30th, 2012 by BMBB Law
A recent report, Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers, confirms what many of us in the workers’ rights field already knew: wage theft and labor law violations are extremely commonplace in the United States.
The report surveyed 4, 387 workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. It found, for example, that one in five people surveyed were paid less than the minimum wage for the previous week — most by over $1 per hour. Of the people who worked overtime hours the previous week, only 24% were paid overtime premiums, despite the fact that most were working 10 or more hours of overtime. A worker in New York working 50 hours a week, and who is being denied overtime and being underpaid by $1 an hour would therefore be owed a shocking $90 each week.
In fact, the report found that, of all the workers surveyed, over two thirds had experienced at least one pay-related violation just that previous week, losing an average of $51 — even though the average weekly pay for the survey sample was only $399.
That means employers are stealing, on average about 13% of their workers’ wages. That’s a travesty.