Workers and Poverty News
"A strong minimum wage puts money into the pockets of low-income families who spend it in their local communities, increasing local buying power on which our economy depends... [L]ast year's rise in the minimum wage... generated $5.5 billion in new consumer spending."
"Meanwhile, fliers featuring a dissident member of the Engineers and Architects Assn. have been distributed in city buildings with a warning that the new agreement will force the union's members to 'retire into poverty.'"
"'These people are making wages that are underneath the poverty line," Legis. Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) said. 'To take away their dollar would require a very high standard of proof. I don't believe the industry met that proof.'"
"It's also true that while men still dominate the American power elite, they also dominate the bottom rungs of the ladder. By some counts, America's prisoners are 90 percent male, and most estimates are that homeless people are disproportionately male."
"Members of the Nassau County Legislature criticized the home health care industry yesterday for failing to justify its request for legislation that would defer a promised $1 hourly pay raise due to its low-income workers."
"In 1998, NBC News reopened the case of the migrant, paid pitifully low wages and given no job security or benefits for picking fruits and vegetables destined for more fortunate citizens in the Land of Plenty."
"I recently purchased a short book titled The Moral Underground in which the author, Professor Lisa Dodson, paints a rather depressing picture of the way some corporations treat their low-income workers."
"Putting an end to years-long litigation, a judge Thursday threw out a multimillion-dollar jury verdict awarded in 2007 to six Nicaraguan men claiming they were sterilized by a pesticide while working on American-run banana farms."
"In reality, I, as well as other agricultural employers, will have to cut workers' hours by adding seasonal labor, switch to a two-shift system, or pay lower wages to reduce the impact of more overtime hours."
"Thousands of low-income workers providing home care and other social services in Nassau County face the loss of a promised $1-per-hour pay increase Aug. 1 under a bill that would delay the hike for at least six months."
"Employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work, that Americans continue to shun despite the recession."
"A Harvard-educated businessman who cracked the racial barrier to become state transportation secretary in the 1990s has been fined for failing to pay thousands of dollars in wages to immigrant workers at a Popeyes chicken franchise in Boston."
"Gov. Quinn Monday ridiculed GOP rival Bill Brady as a tax-dodging millionaire who wants to cut the pay of Illinois' lowest wage-earners who are due for a raise this week."
"Even in jobs with the federal, state or local government, Idaho men make more than women doing the same work.... One in seven Idaho women and girls live below the poverty line (compared to about one in nine Idaho males)."
"Their jobless rate may be lower than average, but when an older worker loses a job, it can be devastating. These workers, typically 55 or older, aren't ready to retire. But their years of work experience don't make regrouping to find the next job any easier."
"Families headed by single women are most likely to live under the poverty line. On an average night, women and children make up two-thirds of the state's homeless population."
"'Any chink in the system can make it hard for them to achieve,' said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which studies issues affecting low-income District residents. 'It is a complicated web to fix.'"
"His ally, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R., Butler), preferred to talk about physical threats. He warned of 'illegal alien invasion' and linked foreigners, not to low wages, but to violent crime and the 'potential for terrorist attacks.'"
"It's worth noting, though, that those lost jobs paid low wages, an average of $9.02 an hour in 2008, according to the UIC/Loyola study. That compares with Wal-Mart's reported full-time average wage of $11.77 in Austin in 2010."
"Businesses spreading out along Jefferson Parish's lengthy commercial corridors are helping fuel job sprawl in the New Orleans region, complicating daily routines for low-wage earners, says a new report from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center."
"'They deserve a decent wage like anyone else,' Cantrell said. 'They are professionals, they shouldn't be poverty-stricken.'"
"Every day, 200,000 domestic workers in New York make it possible for their employers to go to work. Yet, many of these mostly immigrant women of color are employed without a living wage, health care and basic labor protections."
"Tyson Foods Inc. has settled a decade-long dispute with the Labor Department by agreeing to pay workers at poultry plants for time they spend putting on and taking off protective clothing."
"Kudos to Miami-Dade County for acting on behalf of low-wage workers by requiring companies to do the right thing and pay within two weeks of workers doing a job."
"Poor people are not poor because of low wages. For the most part, they're poor because of low productivity, and wages are connected to productivity."
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