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wage theft
House Dems Unveil Sweeping Bill to Protect Worker Rights and Safety
"This bill will help level the playing field and, once again, restore the balance of power between workers and their employers," said Rep. Bobby Scott.
Jul 26, 2024
A group of Democratic U.S. House members on Friday unveiled legislation "aimed at bolstering protections for America's workers and ensuring accountability for employers who flout labor and employment laws."
The Labor Enforcement to Securely (LET'S) Protect Workers Act was introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)—the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce—and House Labor Caucus Co-Chairs Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), and Steven Horsford (D-Nev.).
The bill's sponsors said their legislation is based on the premise that "employment laws are a promise to our nation's workers" meant to "secure the most basic rights of work."
"That promise is broken," they contended. "Recent shocking revelations about massive increases in the number of children illegally overworked and trafficked into dangerous jobs—just over 85 years since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was enacted to eliminate that very problem—is the latest example of the ways that this promise to America's workers is broken."
Across the U.S., Republican state lawmakers have been advancing legislation to remove restrictions on child labor, despite several high-profile workplace deaths of minors. At the federal level, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) last year introduced a bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work in the logging industry.
The LET'S Protect Workers Act sponsors highlighted rampant wage theft and overtime violations, workplace injuries, and union-busting by employers who "know that even if a resource-starved Department of Labor catches a violation, the penalties are a mere slap on the wrist."
"People should be able to come home at the end of the day—alive, well, in one piece, and with all the wages they worked hard to earn," the lawmakers asserted. "Children should be in schools, not dangerous workplaces, and workers should be able to organize a union without interference or the threat of retaliation from their employers."
According to House Education and Workforce Committee Democrats, if passed, the LET'S Protect Workers Act would:
- Increase civil monetary penalties for violations of child labor, minimum wage and overtime, worker health and safety, and farmworker protection standards;
- Improve mine safety and reliable funding of black lung benefits through new and increased civil monetary penalties and the option to shut down scofflaw operators;
- Set new penalties for retaliation against workers who exercise their family and medical leave rights;
- Strengthen enforcement of mental health parity requirements for employer-sponsored health plans;
- Close a loophole that allows employers to escape penalties for failing to keep records of workplace injuries if [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] does not detect the violation within six months; and
- Create new penalties for violations of the National Labor Relations Act, consistent with the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
"Every American should be fairly compensated and be able to return home safely at the end of the day," Scott said in a statement Friday. "Unfortunately, shortcomings in our labor laws enable unethical employers to exploit workers, endanger children, and suppress the right to organize—with little accountability."
"That's why I'm proud to introduce the LET'S Protect Workers Act, which will hold bad actors accountable and strengthen penalties for labor law violations," he added. "This bill will help level the playing field and, once again, restore the balance of power between workers and their employers."
In a joint statement, Dingell, Horsford, Norcross, and Pocan said that "the lack of meaningful enforcement makes it all too easy for bad faith actors to get away with illegally violating workers' rights—from firing workers for organizing a union, to allowing children to work overnight shifts, or jeopardizing workers' safety by ignoring workplace regulations."
"We're proud to join Ranking Member Scott in introducing this bill to crack down on unscrupulous employers and to ensure that workers receive the protections they deserve," the lawmakers added.
Earlier this month, nearly 50 labor organizations led by the AFL-CIO and representing a wide range of U.S. workers urged congressional Democrats to resist Republican efforts to roll back rules enacted by the Biden administration to protect worker rights amid relentless attacks by abusive employers.
Specifically, the labor groups warned that Republicans are trying to use the Congressional Review Act—which was enacted to strengthen oversight of federal rulemaking—to overturn pro-worker rules enacted by the Department of Labor and other government bodies.
Meanwhile, Republicans including former President Donald Trump—the 2024 GOP nominee—have been trying to woo U.S. workers with proposals including a tax exemption for tipped employees panned as a "
hollow promise" by experts and by inviting Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention last week.
In response to Republicans' dubious courting of U.S. labor, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas)—who is a co-sponsor of the LET'S Protect Workers Act—recently called for holding what would be a largely symbolic vote on the PRO Act. The bill was revived last year by Scott and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and, if passed, would expand labor protections including the right to organize and collectively bargain.
"If Republicans wanna talk like they're pro-worker, then let's have a vote on the PRO Act next week," Casar
said on social media last week. "Let's see which politicians are for unions and which ones are all talk. Dems are ready to vote, how about you guys?"
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No, Immigrants Aren’t Taking US Jobs
It is clear the labor market is both absorbing immigrants and generating strong job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, including those in demographic groups potentially most impacted by immigration.
Feb 23, 2024
The immigrant share of the labor force reached a record high of 18.6% in 2023, according to our analysis of Current Population Survey, or CPS, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Anti-immigration advocates have been out in full force, using this as a talking point for deeply misguided commentary and analysis that roughly translates to “immigrants are taking all our jobs.”
The reality is that the economy does not have a fixed number of jobs, and what we see today is a growing economy that is adding jobs for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers. Here are six key facts that show immigrants are not hurting the employment outcomes of U.S.-born workers.
- The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers averaged 3.6% in 2023, the lowest rate on record. Obviously, immigration is not causing high unemployment among U.S.-born workers.
- The share of prime-age U.S.-born individuals with a job is at its highest rate in more than two decades. In 2023, the prime-age (ages 25–54) employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) for U.S.-born individuals was 81.4%, up from 80.7% in 2019 and now at its highest rate since 2001.
- The prime-age labor force participation rate (LFPR) for U.S.-born individuals is also at its highest rate in more than two decades. In 2023, the LFPR for prime-age U.S.-born individuals was 83.9%, up from 83.3% in 2019 and now at its highest rate since 2002. Further, the increase in the U.S.-born prime-age LFPR over the last year was the second highest on record—below only the increase that occurred the year before last.
- The prime-age LFPR of U.S.-born men without a bachelor’s degree grew at a record pace in each of the last two years and is above its pre-Covid trend. We focus here on prime-age men without a bachelor’s degree because though the immigrant population is comprised of men and women of all education levels, immigrants are somewhat disproportionately concentrated among men without a college degree (in 2023, the immigrant share of the overall labor force was 18.6%, but it was 20.0% of men without a college degree). That means that if recent immigration were affecting labor market outcomes of U.S.-born workers, it would be more easily detected among workers in this group. However, the LFPR of these workers is also beating expectations. It is clear the labor market is both absorbing immigrants and generating strong job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, including those in demographic groups potentially most impacted by immigration.
- Though the immigrant share of the labor force reached a record high in 2023, immigrant labor force growth is not occurring at an unprecedented rate. From 2019 to 2023, the immigrant labor force grew 2.3% annually on average, according to our analysis of CPS data. That is strong growth, but it’s roughly one-third the rate the economy experienced between 1996 and 2000 (which, just like 2022 and 2023, was a period of very low unemployment—and strong employment growth—for U.S.-born workers). Immigrant inflows into the labor force over the last year alone were also not unprecedentedly high—for example, the pace was slower than in 2022 and slower than three of the years from 1996–2000.
- Immigrants are an integral part of our labor market, filling gaps caused by demographic changes in the United States and contributing to strong economic growth. The immigrants that make up 18.6% of the U.S. labor force are playing key roles in numerous industries and are employed in a mix of lower, middle, and higher-wage jobs. And as the Congressional Budget Office recently reported, immigration is contributing to strong economic growth—with future immigration forecasted to boost real gross domestic product by 2% over the next 10 years—as well as increasing government revenue. Immigrants are also complementing U.S.-born workers by contributing to overall population and workforce growth. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that if the U.S. were to have lower-than-expected immigration levels, the population would begin to decline in 20 years, and if there were suddenly zero immigration, the population would begin to decline next year, deeply harming economic growth.
As these six facts show, the idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong. The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace, while simultaneously maintaining record-low unemployment for U.S.-born workers.
Claiming that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is often used as an intentional distraction from dynamics that are actually hurting working people—such as weak labor standards and enforcement, anti-worker deregulation, weak labor law that fails to protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining in the face of coordinated and well-funded attacks, and other dynamics that result in too much power in the hands of corporations and employers.
While there’s no question that the immigration system desperately needs updating so that workers are adequately protected, it’s important to remember that it is employers that underpay and exploit workers based on their immigration status—committing workplace violations against those who lack status at a vastly higher rate than U.S.-born workers. And it is employers that regularly and even systematically steal wages from workers who only have a temporary, precarious status provided by a work visa. The resulting two-tiered system of rights in the workplace prevents immigrants from asserting and enforcing their rights. Reform efforts in Congress and the executive branch should thus focus on providing status and work authorization to those who lack it and compelling employers to follow the law, rather than more funding for, and draconian measures on, border enforcement, deportations, and detaining immigrants.
If those who mischaracterize immigration as bad for the economy and for U.S.-born workers really care about improving wages and working conditions for U.S.-born workers, they should focus on pushing for labor law reform and strong labor standards and helping ensure that all workers—regardless of immigration status—have equal and enforceable rights in the workplace.
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How to Restore Trust in the US? Tax the Rich
The only major institution in American life that Americans trust less than Big Business just happens to be Congress, which has consistently refused to seriously tax the wealthy and the corporations they run.
Jan 16, 2024
We Americans don’t trust as much as we once did. So point out all the pollsters who’ve been tracking trust in the United States since the middle of the 20th century.
Back in the late 1950s, notes the Pew Research Center, “about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.” The 1960s and 1970s, amid the Vietnam war and then Watergate, would see that level of trust trend steadily downward, only to recover a bit with Richard Nixon’s exit.
But that trust comeback would prove modest at best, never nearing the levels of the late 1950s. The last two decades have now seen those modest trust levels totally evaporate. And the distrust Americans feel, Gallup polling adds, extends to almost every major institution of modern American life.
Back in 1958—the high point of trust in American life—these rich faced a 91% tax on their annual income over $400,000, a sum equal to about $4.2 million today.
In 2022, Gallup reported this past July, only 15% of Americans professed a “great deal” of trust in the nation’s key institutions—and just 11% extended those institutions a “fair amount” of trust.
What’s driving America’s stunning descent into distrust over the past four decades? Taking a closer look at the institutions Americans distrust the most can provide some clues. Our second most-distrusted national institution turns out to be “Big Business.” Only 14% of the American people trust Corporate America a “great deal.”
Do Americans have cause to distrust Big Business? Sure do. No other institution in American life over recent decades has benefited so royally from America’s growing inequality, with CEO pay stats coming to best symbolize those royal benefits. CEO compensation levels, the Economic Policy Institute has detailed, have “skyrocketed” some 1,460% since 1978.
Back in that year, CEOs at major American corporations realized some 30 times more compensation than the nation’s private-sector workers. By 2022, that gap was running nearly 400 times.
Other stats, released earlier this month, vividly dramatize just how much cause Americans have to distrust Corporate America. U.S. companies, journalists at Popular Informationreport, currently owe over 200,000 American workers some $163.3 million in back pay. These millions represent wages that have gone unclaimed from companies found guilty of committing wage theft by, for instance, ignoring minimum wage or overtime pay regulations.
The federal Department of Labor has the authority to impose extra penalties on companies that repeatedly violate federal wage standards. But American corporations, the Peterson Institute for International Economics has shown, have precious little incentive not to commit wage theft. Over the decade that ended in 2016, Peterson analysts note, U.S. Department officials, identified nearly 3,000 of these repeat offenders. Only 10 of them ended up with federal criminal convictions.
Deep pockets in the United States enjoy all sorts of other special treatment, maybe none more lucrative than how the federal tax code treats “unrealized capital gains,” the wealth our richest accumulate when the value of their stocks and other assets start soaring.
Researchers at Americans for Tax Fairness revealed earlier this month that our richest personally worth at least $100 million spent 2022 holding “at least” $8.5 trillion of “unrealized capital gains.” These gains, the AFR analysts went on to show, help these rich lead luxuriously “extravagant” lives. Yet these same gains “receive an ongoing exemption from taxation in life and a permanent exemption in death.”
Lawmakers in Congress have done next to nothing to fix this capital gains tax outrage. And they haven’t taken any steps to make sure the federal Department of Labor has enough staff to effectively identify and prosecute companies that willfully and repeatedly commit wage theft.
These failures, in turn, can help explain why the only major institution in American life that Americans trust less than Big Business just happens to be Congress. Over recent decades, lawmakers in Congress have consistently refused to seriously tax the rich and the corporations they run.
Back in 1958—the high point of trust in American life—these rich faced a 91% tax on their annual income over $400,000, a sum equal to about $4.2 million today. The equivalent top rate today: 37%. Taking all loopholes into account, our richest 400 today pay federal taxes at just an overall 8.2% rate.
In healthy societies, people trust one another. How can we start building trust in today’s United States? What might make a good place to start rebuilding that trust? We could start by taxing—again—our most fabulously wealthy.
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