Microsoft wants US suppliers to give employees paid time off

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft said Thursday that it will push its U.S. suppliers to give their employees paid time off — but that only applies for the staffers that do work for Microsoft.

Microsoft said it has about 2,000 U.S. suppliers, who provide services such as maintenance and security. The technology company does not know how many of its suppliers don't provide paid time off. It has heard from workers and media reports that some companies don't provide the benefit.

The announcement comes at a time when paid sick leave and income inequality have become hot topics. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass measures that would allow workers to earn up to seven days of paid leave.

Microsoft Corp. said suppliers with 50 or more employees will be asked to provide at least 15 days of paid time off for employees that mainly work with the Redmond, Washington, company. They can offer either 15 unrestricted paid days off or 10 days of paid vacation and five days of sick leave. Microsoft said it will give suppliers 12 months to make the changes.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the rules will be written into future contracts and those that don't comply may be dropped as a supplier. She said the company did not discuss the issue with suppliers before the plan was announced Thursday.

Microsoft wants US suppliers to give employees paid time off

Commentary: Rauner’s minimum wage plan just more of the same from GOP | The Rock River Times

 

 

 

Commentary: Rauner’s minimum wage plan just more of the same from GOP

February 25, 2015

By Gregory John Campbell
Guest Columnist

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s policy recommendation for increasing the minimum wage in Illinois to $10 per hour over a seven year period is insulting and demeaning to the very workers it proposes to benefit, because no family or worker can live on such a meager wage now, let alone in seven years, coming from a man whose political role is to cement elite privilege over common poverty in Illinois.

Somali Republicans, like Gov. Rauner, have as their sole motives the enhancement of power and acquisition of property over others, because they lack humanity, being what this citizen characterizes as “object beings,” not human beings.

Object beings exist to purchase, own or possess material objects, wealth and power only, treating others in the same manner—as objects to own or property to dispense with—as so much flotsam on the water or cattle in a pen. Accordingly, object beings are not moral in motivation or behavior because they lack the human capacity to be so, and cannot be trusted to serve those who are in any private or public venue.

But what they can be trusted to do is diminish the humanity in our state and nation to secure their personal property, economic privilege and political power over any persons or principles preventing them from doing so, like the social contract morally existing between “the people” and their elected representatives.

But Gov. Rauner is first and foremost a corporate businessman, before he is a human being or a public servant, because business, not public service or humanity, is his range of awareness, and he lacks consideration in dealing with others.

And so it’s to be expected Gov. Rauner would want more prison guards in our state, because he knows his policies are going to impoverish countless more in achieving “fiscal balance”; and because he also knows that desperate people do desperate things when living on the street and starving.

Like all Somali capitalists, endless greed and the lust for power are the only principals behind the Somali reality of Republican politics they use, to abolish the upward middle class mobility our nation once stood for, because their sole intent is to impound as much wealth and power from the middle class as they can through their Somali economic policies and practices. The Koch brothers personify this fiscal “free rape-it” ideological inhumanity precisely.

Today’s Somali Republicans are like the Robber Barons of the late 19th century, and should be understood as the fiscal plunderers who will kill the father, rape the mother, sell the son and keep the daughter to accomplish what they want in Springfield or Washington as political Genghis Khan’s.

And if you think this statement harsh, think of the millions who’ve lost their jobs or homes through Somali (corporate) foreclosure, offshoring and outsourcing, because without these their lives and families have been plundered.

The Illinois pension problem is the result of both political parties failing to meet the fiduciary requirements they pledged they would, to responsible citizen contributors who did, over a 40 year period. And so the Governor will complete the further pauperization of state pensioners by blaming them for policy shortfalls Somali politicians like himself, Democrat and Republican, intended or permitted.

Accordingly, Somali Republicans are skillful at laying-off workers, cutting benefits and social programs and ruining lives because they’re intrinsically Hobbesian, believing men to be more evil than good, like themselves. Such human self-contempt must turn outward then, to disguise what their conscience would never permit if they had one—that they’re not only anti-labor, anti-union and anti-American, they’re also anti-human and Christian.

Above is from:  Commentary: Rauner’s minimum wage plan just more of the same from GOP | The Rock River Times

TJ Maxx, Marshalls to follow Wal-Mart in raising pay - Yahoo Finance

 

Owner of TJ Maxx, Marshalls plans to boost pay to at least $9 an hour, following Wal-Mart

 

 

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- The owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods stores said Wednesday that it will boost pay for its U.S. workers to at least $9 per hour.

The announcement by TJX Cos. comes a week after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it would increase wages for its employees and is a sign that more competitors may follow suit. Low-paying retailers are having a harder time retaining workers as the job market improves.

"This pay initiative is an important part of our strategies to continue attracting and retaining the best talent," CEO Carol Meyrowitz said in a statement.

TJX spokeswoman Doreen Thompson declined to say what workers currently earn. A recent Credit Suisse report estimates TJX's current hourly pay at about $8.24. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

TJX said hourly workers will start to receive the pay increase in June. In 2016, the company plans to pay all associates who have worked at its stores for more than six months at least $10 per hour.

The company's 191,000 associates around the world restock shelves, greet customers and ring up purchases at the cash register.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is raising entry level wages to at least $9 an hour in April and to at least $10 an hour by February of next year. Wal-Mart said the change will affect about 500,000 workers. Also this year, Swedish furniture seller Ikea gave workers at its U.S. division a 17 percent average raise to $10.76 an hour. And clothing chain Gap Inc. raised its minimum hourly wage to $9 last year and to $10 this year.

TJX, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, operates 3,395 stores, including six of its outdoor goods chain Sierra Trading Post. Its shares rose 53 cents to $68.27 in morning trading Wednesday.

TJ Maxx, Marshalls to follow Wal-Mart in raising pay - Yahoo Finance

10 states with the highest minimum wages - Yahoo Finance

 

The U.S. has been setting a floor for worker pay ever since President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 and established a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour. Today, federal law requires most workers to be paid at least $7.25 per hour, a threshold that hasn't been raised since 2009. But 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted higher minimum wages. See where the lowest-paid workers earn the most.

 

No. 1: Washington, D.C.
$9.50

The nation's capital is home not only to the highest court in the land (the Supreme Court) but also to the highest minimum wage for any U.S. state or territory, at $9.50 per hour. It's going even higher this summer -- to $10.50 an hour. Of course, government leaders in Washington make far more than the minimum. The president is paid $400,000 annually.

No. 2: Washington
$9.47

The other Washington is close behind D.C., with a minimum wage just a few cents shy of $9.50 per hour. The state's minimum rose 1.6 percent at the start of 2015; it had been $9.32 an hour. Washington's largest city, Seattle, plans to go beyond the state requirement by enacting a higher, two-tiered minimum wage this spring: $11 an hour at many companies, including large employers, and $10 at some smaller ones.

No. 3: Oregon
$9.25

Washington state's southern neighbor also boosted its minimum wage as 2015 got underway, to $9.25 an hour. That's up 1.7 percent from Oregon's old rate of $9.10. For more than 10 years, Oregon and Washington have adjusted their minimum wages automatically each New Year's Day in step with inflation. Oregon is the only state paying exactly $2 more than the federal minimum wage.

No. 4: Connecticut (tie)
$9.15

The lowest-paid workers in Connecticut got a 5.2 percent raise at the start of 2015 as the state's minimum wage rose to $9.15 an hour, from $8.70. A law passed in 2014 is raising Connecticut's minimum wage in stages, to an eventual $10.10 an hour by January 2017. "Increasing the minimum wage is not just good for workers, it's also good for business," Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy said in a statement.

No. 4: Vermont (tie)
$9.15

The year was ushered in with the first of four annual increases that will elevate the Green Mountain State's minimum wage to $10.50 an hour by 2018. The initial step lifted the state's wage floor by about 5 percent, from $8.73 per hour to $9.15. The Vermont House of Representatives had approved a much higher $10.10 minimum wage for 2015, but later compromised with the Senate and governor on a slower-going approach.

No. 6: Massachusetts (tie)
$9

Massachusetts boosted its minimum wage by $1 at the start of 2015, and similar increases in the next two years will take the state's minimum to $11 an hour by 2017. However, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor calculates that a full-time worker needs at least $11.31 per hour to afford food, housing, transportation and other essentials in the Bay State.

No. 6: Rhode Island (tie)
$9

Like neighboring Massachusetts, Rhode Island kicked off 2015 by raisings its minimum wage by $1, to $9 per hour. The Rhode Island legislation was sponsored by Democratic state Rep. David Bennett. "Our entire economy suffers when the middle class and low-wage earners can't make ends meet," he said in a statement. "This raise will provide some measure of assistance for those struggling at the low end of the pay scale."

No. 6: California (tie)
$9

With Massachusetts and Rhode Island, California is the third state where minimum-wage workers earn $9 per hour. The nation's most populous state last raised its minimum in summer 2014 and will bump it up again, to $10 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2016. A number of California cities have chosen to go even higher, including San Francisco, where a voter-approved minimum wage of $11.05 per hour took effect at the start of 2015.

No. 9: Alaska (tie)
$8.75

Alaska is the newest state in the top 10, thanks to a voter-approved raise that took effect Feb. 24. The first increase in five years has taken the state's minimum wage from $7.75 an hour to $8.75. Another $1 hike is set for 2016. Most Alaskans, including minimum-wage workers, also get some extra money directly from the state: an annual dividend from an oil-wealth fund. The most recent payments were for $1,884.

No. 9: New York (tie)
$8.75

New York raised its minimum wage 75 cents at the end of 2014, to $8.75 per hour, and will hike it by another 25 cents when 2015 draws to a close. The Empire State doesn't allow its cities to set their own minimum wages. But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was able to issue an executive order requiring businesses heavily subsidized by the city to pay a "living wage" of up to $13.13 an hour.

More from Bankrate:

10 states with the highest minimum wages - Yahoo Finance

Illinois Policy Institute: “Welfare Cliff”

For a family living in poverty, a parent’s pay hike is more than just a golden egg.
It’s hope. It’s success. It’s cause for celebration with arms stretched upward, tracing the trajectory of a future filled with better opportunities.
But thanks to poorly planned policy, many Illinois families must brace themselves for a shuddering impact: a warped welfare system can make raises hurt.
Welfare benefits are structured with intent to address the myriad struggles associated with poverty, and even more, to serve as a foundation for upward economic mobility. But a phenomenon known as the “welfare cliff” is creating a poverty trap, making pay raises detrimental because they are outweighed by an even greater, simultaneous decline in welfare benefits.
New research from the Illinois Policy Institute details the welfare cliff experienced by single-parent, two-children households and two-parent, two-children households in Cook, Lake and St. Clair counties, as well as the city of Chicago.
The research model assumed that families have been aided by refundable tax credits, such as the state and federal Earned Income Tax Credit; cash grants through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program; and assistance for food, housing, health care and child care.
Under these assumptions, a working single parent in Chicago would be foolish to take a pay raise to $18 an hour from $12 an hour. They’d fall from the top of the welfare cliff and see a drastic net reduction in benefits, leaving them with as much as one-third less in household resources. This loss would only be made up again by finding a job paying $38 an hour.

Similarly drastic effects were observed in downstate St. Clair County, as well as northern Lake County, for both single- and two-parent households.
Per the study: “This result reveals a tremendous disincentive to seek work that pays more, essentially trapping single parents between the minimum wage and $12 per hour. It is unlikely that persons in this situation would be able to triple their incomes in order to recover lost benefits from the cliff.”
Creating this cavernous earnings gap for poor families to leap across in order to make up for lost welfare benefits is nothing short of cruel.
The welfare cliff detailed in the study is created by a combination of programs that taper off too quickly or are too generous to begin with. Specifically, housing benefits, child-care assistance and health-care assistance programs taper off steeply. It is with the narrow-minded designers of these anti-poverty initiatives where one should lay blame for the associated poverty trap.
While the state of Illinois currently has little authority to reform these programs, state and local officials must fight for Illinois families by lobbying the federal government for more discretion in welfare spending. This is the first step in addressing the inexcusable inequalities built in to the welfare system as it stands.

McDonald’s: Federal complaint says company is joint employer | The Rock River Times

 

the federal government on Friday, Dec. 19, charged that the company is indeed an employer that exerts substantial power over its employees’ working conditions.

In a complaint, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel found that the company wields such extensive influence over the business operations of its franchisees that individual franchise operators have little autonomy in setting or controlling workplace conditions. McDonald’s, for all intents and purposes, is the boss, the complaint concludes.

“McDonald’s and its corporate lobbyists continue to claim that the company has no responsibility for workers at its restaurants, but today’s complaint underscores the obvious fact that McDonald’s is the boss,” said Micah Wissinger, an attorney at Levy Ratner who brought the case on behalf of McDonald’s workers in New York City. “The complaint validates what workers have been saying over and over again — that McDonald’s requires franchisees to adhere to such regimented rules and regulations that there’s no doubt who’s really in charge.”

For nearly two years, McDonald’s and other fast-food workers across the country have been joining together and going on strike, calling for $15 and the right to form a union without retaliation. But time and time again, the company and other industry players have tried to sidestep workers’ calls, inventing a make-believe world in which responsibility for wages and working conditions falls squarely on the shoulder of franchisees.

“Rather than continue to deny the obvious, McDonald’s should own up to its responsibility for its workers and pay us enough so we can support our families,” said Richard Eiker, who has worked for the same Kansas City McDonald’s franchisee for 18 years. “Instead, the company is only fighting to keep the current system in place where wages are stuck at the bottom, even as profits grow.”

In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s plans to launch a “far-reaching campaign” to fight the board’s finding that the company is a joint employer, including a comprehensive lobbying effort targeting local, state, and federal elected officials and administrative bodies.

“It’s time McDonald’s put its powers to work to do something about the fact that its workers are living in poverty, instead of spending tens of millions on corporate lobbyists to defend a status quo that forces its workers to rely on food stamps to get by,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director of Fast Food Forward.

Catherine Fisk, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said: “The federal government’s complaint makes clear that fast-food companies like McDonald’s can’t have it both ways — it can’t exercise such pervasive control over a workplace and effectively dictate wages and working conditions while still saying that it’s not the employer. The NLRB general counsel’s complaint reflects the general counsel’s determination that evidence shows that McDonald’s exercises so much control over the operation of individual franchise restaurants that it is a joint employer with the franchise operator.”

The complaint is the latest challenge to the fast-food industry’s low-wage business model, in which franchisors reap rewards of a profitable industry, while forcing franchisees to shoulder all the risk. In March, McDonald’s workers in three states filed class-action lawsuits against the company, alleging widespread wage theft. The New York Times wrote that the suits, “argue that both the corporate parent and the independently owned franchises where many of the plaintiffs work are jointly responsible for illegal pay practices carried out by the franchises. … That strikes at the heart of the low-wage fast-food business model.”

McDonald’s: Federal complaint says company is joint employer | The Rock River Times

L.A. City Council votes minimum wage hike to $15.37 for biggest hotels

 

Los Angeles Times | September 24, 2014 | 12:31 PM

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-3 today to require the city's biggest hotels to boost pay for their workers to at least $15.37 an hour – one of the highest minimum wage requirements in the U.S.

Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he would sign the plan, which would hand a major victory to organized labor and a defeat to hotel and business leaders who contend it would cut profits and trigger layoffs.

Because the vote was not unanimous, the ordinance will require a second vote next week.

Above is from:  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/148a927ebf3905d3

Fast food workers prepare to escalate wage demands

About 1,300 workers are scheduled to attend sessions Friday and Saturday at an expo center in Villa Park, Illinois, where they'll be asked to do "whatever it takes" to win $15-an-hour wages and a union, said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the national effort and a representative of the Service Employees International Union.

The union has been providing financial and organizational support to the fast-food protests that began in late 2012 in New York City and have included daylong strikes and a protest outside this year's McDonald's Corp. shareholder meeting that resulted in more than 130 arrests

Read more by clicking on the following: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fast-food-workers-prepare-escalate-wage-demands-051155333.html