New regulations surrounding dangerous silica dust have been swirling in a bureaucratic black hole for years. Now, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal is asking the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to move forward in the name of workers and families.

The AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions have long urged President Obama to move forward with new silica dust standards to no avail.  The reminder, in the form of a strongly worded letter from Sen. Blumenthal, is meant to put an end to the foot-dragging inaction that is costing people their lives. From the Senator’s letter:

“I’m writing OMB to remind the agency that there are human costs to delay,” Blumenthal said. “Parents should not have to worry about whether the juice they give their child has arsenic in it, and workers should not have to risk contracting lung disease while on the job. Rules and guidelines that could prevent both of these problems have been moved from the back burner to the deep freeze at OMB. Another regulation that would decrease deaths due to back-over accidents has been stuck at OMB for years.”

The regulations, proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), have been idle at the OMB for well over two years.  Along with another proposed regulation from the Department of Transportation (DOT) which would expand visibility in cars in order to keep children safer, Blumenthal demands that the OMB act now:

“As you know the Executive Order that requires federal agencies to submit proposed and final rules to OMB for review, also sets out a 90-day timeframe for OIRA to complete its work. Currently, 84 of the 153 regulatory actions pending review at OIRA have been there longer than 90 days,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to OMB Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell. “I urge you to complete your review of these proposed agency actions immediately and return those actions to the promulgating agencies. Otherwise, I would like you to please explain in writing the reasons for delay, and propose an alternate timeline for completion of OIRA’s review process.”

An OSHA fact sheet warns of the following dangers of Silica Dust inhalation:

Silica exposure remains a serious threat to nearly 2 million U.S. workers, including more than 100,000 workers in high risk jobs such as abrasive blasting, foundry work, stonecutting, rock drilling, quarry work and tunneling. The seriousness of the health hazards associated with silica exposure is demonstrated by the fatalities and disabling illnesses that continue to occur in sandblasters and rockdrillers. Crystalline silica has been classified as a human lung carcinogen. Additionally, breathing crystalline silica dust can cause silicosis, which in severe cases can be disabling, or even fatal. The respirable silica dust enters the lungs and causes the formation of scar tissue, thus reducing the lungs’ ability to take in oxygen. There is no cure for silicosis. Since silicosis affects lung function, it makes one more susceptible to lung infections like tuberculosis. In addition, smoking causes lung damage and adds to the damage caused by breathing silica dust.

Sadly, NPR reported last year that self-interested industry leaders were meeting behind closed doors with officials to tie up regulations.

A recent landmark verdict which awarded $240 million to 32 mentally disabled plant workers in Iowa has been almost entirely wiped out due to federal caps regulated under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The new total is $1.6 million, according to the Associated Press:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Henry’s Turkey Service agreed in legal briefs filed late Friday that under federal law, each plaintiff can only recover $50,000 apiece — a far cry from the $7.5 million a jury awarded each worker earlier this month. On Monday, one advocate for the men called the cap “grossly unfair.”

Each plaintiff will also be entitled to separate back pay averaging around $50,000 under an earlier order in the case finding that they were underpaid by about $1.37 million. U.S. Senior Judge Charles Wolle is expected to enter a final judgment in the coming days.

Think Progress provides background on the case:

Over 40 years, hundreds of men were shipped from Texas to work in Henry’s Iowa plant for 41 cents an hour. They were housed in a century-old, cockroach-infested school building with a broken boiler, denied access to disability services, and battered with constant physical and verbal abuse by their so-called caretakers. The complaint details how injuries and requests for medical aid were ignored, restroom breaks were prohibited, while caretakers mocked the men as “retarded” “dumbass” and “stupid.”

EEOC attorney Robert Canino explains that the cap was put into effect because the now-bankrupt Henry’s Turkey Service employed less than 101 employees.

The EEOC, therefore, understands that the amount of damages of $7,500,000 assessed and awarded by the jury to each of the 32 class members, while certainly an appropriate and meaningful measure of the actual harms suffered by these victims of discrimination, including but not limited to, the mental anguish, pain and suffering, and ‘loss of enjoyment of life’, must be drastically reduced in order to come within the stringent statutory limits for recovery,”

This arbitrary rule is not suited to handle a case that spans such a long period of time and involves such limitless atrocities. A new solution must be sought.

RELATED: Disabled workers are overlooked for new employment from Canada to Japan.

Nike founder Phil Knight loves Oregon but apparently not its workers.

A bill requiring prevailing wages on all projects built on Oregon college campuses passed the state senate last week.  

House Bill 2646 flew through the House in a 27-2 landslide despite attempts from Nike founder and University of Oregon donor Phil Knight to have the bill pulled.  State prevailing wage laws already cover publicly funded projects but HB 2646 expands the law to cover privately funded projects such as the University of Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena.  

After the vote, bill carrier Sen. Chris Edwards (D-Eugene) said:

“The requirement of paying prevailing wage on university projects has come under legal question when those projects are not publicly funded, depending upon how the project is structured.  This bill would bring clarity and would require prevailing wage on projects built on university property whether publicly or privately funded.”

The Senate made three minor changes to HB 2646 which must now go back to the House for what will likely be another breezy passage.  According to NWLaborPress, Gov. John Kitzhaber has assured building trades union officials that he will sign the bill when it gets to his desk.

Senate Majority Leader Diane Rosenbaum (D-Portland) celebrated the expansion of this important wage protection:

“Extending prevailing wages to university contracts will result in high quality and cost-effective work while protecting wages and compensation for employees.  Communities benefit when projects use prevailing wage, and HB 2646A will help more Oregonians get to work with good-paying jobs.”

Illinois-based Phoenix Industrial Cleaning has been fined $77,200 and issued 28 citations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) following the death of a worker who was overcome by toxic vapors while cleaning a storage tank.  The 6,000-gallon tank had previously been used to store Methylene chloride.  The accident occurred in November of 2012.  

According to the Daily Herald:

On Nov. 29, 2012, 37-year-old Bernardo Martinez of Cicero was cleaning a tank at Sunnyside Corp. at 225 Carpenter Road in Wheeling. He was inside the tank up high on a ladder when he was apparently overcome by methylene chloride vapors and fell to his death, according to an OSHA news release.

When emergency crews arrived, Martinez was at the bottom of the tank, lying face down in “chemical sludge,” and fire officials were sure he was already dead.

In announcing the fines and violations, Diane Turek, OSHA’s director for the Chicago North Area Office in Des Plaines, claimed Phoenix Industrial Cleaning had failed in its responsibility to properly educate and protect its workers from the dangers of working with the colorless, odorless solvent:

“No job should cost a person’s life because of an employer’s failure to properly protect and train workers.  Phoenix Industrial Cleaning failed in its responsibility to evaluate working conditions and provide proper respiratory and personal protective equipment to workers cleaning storage tanks containing hazardous chemicals.”

Pheonix Industrial Cleaning now has 15 days to contest the citations, comply, or request a conference with OSHA.

The violations put forth by OSHA include:

Eighteen violations involve confined-space entry requirements, including failure to:

• Evaluate the respiratory hazards present and select appropriate respiratory protection based on such hazards;
• Provide a written respiratory protection program and train workers on such a program; and
• Conduct medical evaluations for workers required to use respiratory protection and proper fit-testing respiratory protection.

The worker death was not the first in which Phoenix Industrial Cleaning was involved:

In 2000, one Phoenix Industrial employee perished and another was hospitalized when both became engulfed in sugar while cleaning a silo.

OSHA has inspected the company four times, the last time (prior to the November accident) in 2001. Two inspections resulted in citations for violating standards on confined spaces.

The chemical methylene chloride tops a list of chemicals under review from the Environmental Protection Agency.  OSHA has released several warnings about the dangers of the chemical which they consider a carcinogen. The use of methylene chloride is banned in several European countries.

The potential sale of the Los Angeles Times (LAT) to the Koch Brothers’ empire has sparked outrage from a wide array of onlookers with the newspaper’s employees apparently leading the charge.

Both right-leaning Hot Air and the Washington Post write that at a recent in-house awards ceremony, LAT columnist Steve Lopez asked his fellow workers how many of them would quit if the Koch Brothers bought the paper. Half of them raised their hands.

Unions have been among the most vocal critics of the possible purchase, perhaps because they have felt the brunt of the Koch brand of politics. At a recent march against Oaktree Capital Management, 20 percent owners of parent company, Tribune Co. and handlers of union pension funds, hundreds of workers chanted:

“Don’t sell out to the Koch brothers / Don’t let the brothers in the door. We don’t want them taking over / That is what we’re marching for.”

The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (SBCTC) joined in the protest and urged Oaktree Capital not to sell due to the Koch Brothers long history of being ““anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-public education and anti-immigrant.” In a letter from the SBCTC to Bruce Karsh, president of Oaktree Capital Management, union members warn that if bought the LAT would become a vehicle for the Koch Brothers to continue their rampant distortion of facts about unions. The letter, signed by several prominent labor leaders, also highlights the Koch Brothers ties to conservative groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

These protests concentrated around the sale of the Los Angeles Times but the actual Tribune Co. sale to the Kochs, if completed, would result in all eight of the conglomerate’s newspapers winding up in sullied, partisan hands. This would mean prominent papers including the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant would no longer be trustworthy either.

Daily Kos is currently organizing an anti-sale action in conjunction with SEIU in which anyone can participate.

A brilliant piece of investigative journalism from Andrew Martin of Bloomberg News exposes the dangers of global trade agreements and how they affect the sovereignty of nations.

As the U.S. pushes forward with the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) it is important to understand how such agreements allow multi-national corporations to operate above the law. Perspective is vital at this very second because the Obama administration has its heart set on keeping the American people in the dark with respect to the drawbacks of global trade.

The story focuses on a legal situation in Peru wherein New York-based Renco Group, Inc. has sued the government for $800 million after the country enforced pollution laws that eventually bankrupted their company, Doe Run Peru. Due to the nature of the trade agreement Peru entered into, the company doesn’t have to be on the defensive about its facilities causing lead poisoning in the region’s children. Instead, it can sue the government for enforcing laws that hurt their profits.

Lori Wallach, director of the Global Trade Watch division of Public Citizen, called the use of such agreements a “ quiet, slow-moving coup d’état” and suggested that investors and corporations are “using this regime to have another front at trying to limit the governance authority of nation states.”

By enacting arbitration clauses, companies breaking national laws can appeal to a “court” with more authority than the nation in which the crime took place. Countries such as Australia and South Africa have ended their participation in future agreements of this nature due to these invincibilities. If we’re lucky, Australia’s current stance will prove a hindrance to the TPP. According to Andrew Martin:

Arbitration clauses were originally included in treaties to deal with the nationalization or a company’s assets. Now arbitrators hear claims for lost business or costs stemming from public-health laws and environmental regulation and financial policies, with billions of dollars at stake.

Once a “shield of last resort,” arbitration has become a “sword of first resort,” according to a paper by Howard Mann, a senior law adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Winnipeg-based nonprofit. “They were never meant to be the first recourse of a foreign investor to create or settle a dispute,” Mann said in an interview.

In Renco’s case, any financial penalties resulting from their negligence are thought to be the responsibility of the Peruvian government. These types of successful deflections from legal responsibilities already have some nations looking to back out of trade agreements.

Renco, a New York-based metals, mining and industrial conglomerate that owned the La Oroya plant through a subsidiary, contends the pollution-curbing demands Peru made were onerous and unfair, and kept escalating. The government says it was only trying to hold Renco to the terms of the agreement under which it bought Doe Run Peru in 1997.

While Peru says it still believes in investor-state arbitration, other nations aren’t so sure. Since 2007, Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador have withdrawn from the World Bank’s arbitration forum, which they said favored corporations over sovereign nations

Americans should demand an immediate halt to the trend of corporate giveaway through trade before any further trade agreements are entered into.

When something goes terribly wrong in Los Angeles, citizens call 911. But who does 911 call when they have an emergency of their own? Union workers, that’s who.

A new video highlights this fact with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 45 members describing their work to keep 911 running at maximum efficiency.

Kentucky-based cable installer Bowlin Group, LLC has been ordered to pay $1,075,000 in back wages and damages to 196 employees after the Department of Labor (DOL) obtained a consent judgement from a federal court.

The decision concludes an investigation which found that 77 of Bowlin Group’s workers were misclassified as independent contractors. The company failed to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and underpaid workers for overtime. They also did not maintain accurate payroll records.

The case revolves around the practice of Bowlin Group paying their workers a “per piece” rate instead of an hourly rate. The company’s determination did not meet the IRS standard of what constitutes an Independent Contractor. According to acting Secretary of Labor Seth D. Harris.

“This judgment rightfully provides wages to the workers who earned them. The misclassification of employees as independent contractors cheats workers of wages and benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled to under the law, subsequently hurting our economy. It also leads to unfair competition because businesses that play by the rules operate at a disadvantage to those that don’t.”

According to the DOL Wage and Hour Division (WHD), the details of the case show an intent to misclassify:

Bowlin Group LLC maintains its principal office in Walton, Ky., and operates five subsidiaries throughout Ohio and Kentucky. One such subsidiary is Bowlin Services LLC, which until May 2012 performed installation services under contract to Insight Communications, a cable, telephone and Internet provider in Kentucky. An investigation by the division’s Louisville District Office found that this employer classified some of its cable installers as employees but misclassified other installers doing the same work as independent contractors.

The agency’s investigation found that all nonexempt employees, regardless of their classification by the employer as either an employee or independent contractor, were paid based upon the pieces of equipment they installed rather than at an hourly rate. They were thereby denied overtime compensation, which should have been time and one-half their regular rates of pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. Additionally, the employer failed to keep accurate records of the number of hours worked by each installer as well as employees performing fiber optic splicing, and falsified payroll records to minimize the numbers of hours worked.

The case is an important one insofar as it helps set precedent for companies pulling this trick out of from the bag of malfeasance. Cathy Ruckelshaus of the National Employment Law Project explains

“It’s really important what the department has done with this case,” Ruckelshaus said. “These are very fact-intensive cases. The real question is: ‘Is the worker running a business for him- or herself or is it an employer-employee relationship?”

She noted that the cable installers in this case and similar lawsuits can’t set rates and are told where to go by a dispatcher, among other indicators.

We are shocked that a recent New York Post piece about rich Manhattan mothers hiring handicapped tour guides in order to shorten amusement park wait times for their kids isn’t getting more attention. Perhaps the NY Post‘s credibility has something to do with it?

In hiring these “black market Disney tour guides” the wealthy pay $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day, in order to avoid standing with us normal people. The hideous, immoral practice is perfectly summarized in the NY Post‘s introductory sentence.

They are 1 percenters who are 100 percent despicable.

The plot line is stomach churning but not surprising. The 99 percent are well aware that the elite get to play by their own rules. More accurately, they make their own rules. Still, most alarming about this story is that those involved had the audacity to argue that the practice is actually cheaper than the system Disney has in place for those who want special treatment. “Disney Tours” provides VIP guide and fast passes for $310 to $380 an hour.

My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

Disney World, right or wrong, has sold itself in the past as a place that the middle and lower class should save up to come to in order to give their kids a “once in a lifetime experience” that the family will remember for decades. While Disney is not affiliated with Dream Tours Florida, the true offender here, it remains marred by their presence in the park.

The Disney World experience isn’t about the rides unless you are a small child. It’s about the shared experience, the meaning of family. This is a concept that these Mother Me Firsters apparently cannot process.

According to the article, the underground network of shame was discovered by Dr. Wednesday Martin, a social anthropologist currently studying the habits of Manhattan’s elite:

Passing around the rogue guide service’s phone number recently became a shameless ritual among Manhattan’s private-school set during spring break. The service asks who referred you before they even take your call.

“Who wants a speed pass when you can use your black-market handicapped guide to circumvent the lines all together?” she said. “So when you’re doing it, you’re affirming that you are one of the privileged insiders who has and shares this information.”

As the child of a disabled mother — Multiple Sclerosis long ago put her in a wheelchair — I, was able to use auxiliary entrances for long rides on family vacations to Disney World. But I would have given anything to be in the longer line, passing the time and creating memories, with my mother on her healthy feet.

Once again, wage-and-hour suits have increased year over year with 7,764 such lawsuits being brought forward between April 1st, 2012 and March 31st, 2013. Last year’s total was 7,064.

This marks the 5th consecutive year that the number of wage and hour suits has increased.  A sharpened focus from the Department of Labor (DOL) is partially responsible for the bounce, but increased scrutiny has not disturbed the trend of employers looking to avoid paying their workers properly.

Noah Finkel, partner in the law firm Seyfarth Shaw and co-editor of the book, Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation, explained the situation to Catherine Dunn of Corporate Counsel:

The wage-and-hour cases, brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act, typically fall under three categories, Finkel explains: 1) salaried employees who believe they are owed overtime pay; 2) hourly workers who contend they weren’t paid for all hours worked; and 3) restaurant workers who claim they are owed additional pay under the FLSA’s “tip credit” provision.

Other types of companies run into compliance challenges as the workplace modernizes, with employees dispersed geographically and work-related email being exchanged at all hours, according to Finkel. But the FLSA was designed in the 1930s. “So many regulations under the FLSA were written to cover an economy that we just don’t live in anymore,” he says, “and complying with that is hard.”

Finkel argues that the problem goes beyond purposeful underpayment of employees. Many of those facing litigation, he writes, are newer companies who fail to understand the finer details of a complex system.

“The younger a company, the less robust their wage-and-hour compliance,” says Finkel, “and that makes them more susceptible to lawsuits.”

In their analysis of the DOL’s numbers Seyfarth Shaw gives the following reasons lawsuits continue to rise.

• The improving economy may provide incentives for plaintiffs’ counsel to sue new and relatively unsophisticated companies, employers whose workforces are growing, and companies whose improved financial position has made them more attractive targets.
• The economic recovery has seen an increase in employment demands on all employees, both exempt and non-exempt, which cause them to question their employer’s pay practices.
• More lawyers who had not considered wage and hour claims in the past–both employment specialists and general practitioners–are now filing wage and hour lawsuits, perhaps motivated by large settlements in past cases.
• Attorneys in geographic areas that traditionally have not seen a large number of wage and hour filings have begun to focus their practices on those claims based on successful lawsuits brought by plaintiff-side attorneys in other jurisdictions.                                  
• Employers continue to struggle to comply with the ever increasing complexity of federal and state wage and hour laws and regulations, especially in today’s technological workplace.
• Employees are more sensitized to wage and hour issues, at least in part as a result of their access to social media.

The number of suits, once thought to be exacerbated by the recession, does not seem to be receding as the economy improves. For many workers, employer failure to comply with wage-and-hour standards is the new normal. In the past 11 years the number of lawsuits has increased by over 400 percent.

ROBERT CRAIG/THE NEWS JOURNAL

Delaware Governor Jack Markell was on hand when the Laborers International Union of America (LiUNA!) opened its new training facility in Newark earlier this week. The facility is the 78th to open nationwide and the first to open in the Blue Hen State.

The training center will help union members by providing free training and classes to keep pace with the ever-changing skills set needed for the modern construction worker. Gov. Markell noted the importance of such centers during the ceremony:

“The days of one employer, one career are over for most workers,” Markell said Monday. “It is not uncommon today for workers to hold 10 different jobs before the age of 45. Lifetime learning is no longer an aspiration. It is a necessity.”

The center will allow Delaware and New Jersey workers to become certified in several fields such as weatherization, environmental studies, blueprints, construction and other trades. Classes will be taught by the Construction Craft Laborers Training and Apprenticeship Fund of New Jersey and Delaware. The funding for the new center came from a partnership between the union and contractors, according to WDDE:

The 15,000 square foot facility features an 8,000 square foot training bay and will offer over 50 accreditation programs and skills training courses to train over 3,000 LiUNA members in Delaware and New Jersey.

“So many people characterize unions as sort of having this adversarial relationship between contractors and employers or employees, but in fact, working together is paramount. And pooling our resources is paramount, and that is how we paid for this facility,” said Lewandowski.

Gov. Markell suggests that in building the facility the region will gain an economic advantage by guaranteeing its workers are on the cutting edge of their respective trades:

“We’re in a global war for jobs and what that really means is that we’re in a global war for talent because the jobs are going to go where the talent is,” said Markell. “Talent isn’t just born, talent is developed. So, this investment here in Newark, Delaware in training, in talent, in talent development is an investment in opportunity and jobs for all of us.”

Raymond M. Pocino, the LIUNA regional president, was on hand for the opening and was excited about the role the facility will play in the lives of young men and women:

“Many of you will look at this building and see bricks and mortar. I look at it and see 15,000-square-feet of pure opportunity. This is the place where men and women can come to get a head start on a new career or a fresh start when they desperately need one.”

A list of all courses and certification programs is available at www.trainliunanjde.org

USA Today has put together a list of the 8 companies that most owe their workers a raise. The list was determined based on actual numbers not anger, sympathy or any other completely reasonable thing to feel in the face of rampant income inequality.

Authors Douglas McIntyre and Samuel Weigley argue that the lowest paid workers at large companies such as McDonald’s are collectively the true faces of these brands. They parse Capital IQ research of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies to determine which corporations have had the highest net income, high net profit margins, and major one-year growth in net income while keeping their lowest paid employees wages stagnant.

To quote Peter Gibbons from the famous workers rights advocacy film, Office Space, “You see, it’s a matter of incentive.” Do these companies owe anyone a raise based on anything other than morals and ethics? Not really. Would it be a good business strategy to reward those who interact with customers and represent the brand? Not probably. Definitely.

Here is McIntyre and Weigley’s list: Comcast, Disney, McDonald’s, AT&T, Yum!, DirecTV, Public Storage and Time Warner Cable.

Not surprisingly, several of these entities appear on the list of companies with the most low-wage workers.

Click through to USA Today for details of the analysis.

Claiming “management perrogative,” officials from the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) have announced that they will install inward facing cameras on all of their locomotives in the upcoming weeks. As this represents a signal of distrust and managerial overreach, worker representatives are not pleased.

In a meeting with the presidents of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the SMART (formerly SMWIA) Transportation Division, KCS announced that it does not have to, or intend to, negotiate with the unions over the use of cameras or the effects the change will have on employees. Such cameras are currently being used on trains in Mexico and preparations are underway to fit locomotives with cameras in Shreveport. The sudden announcement led to a flurry of legal action:

Without notifying the unions, that same day KCS filed suit in federal district court in Shreveport, La., to obtain a ruling allowing it to implement its plan. Upon learning of these developments, BLET National President Dennis Pierce and Mike Futhey, President of SMART Transportation Division, together told the carrier that both unions vehemently disagree that the carrier has the right to install and use inward-facing cameras unilaterally without exhausting the bargaining processes of the Railway Labor Act.

As of now, and until the court has issued a ruling regarding the parties’ respective rights, the carrier has agreed not to turn on or use the cameras.

The Globe and Mail wrote earlier this year that, “Despite the existence of privacy legislation, privacy-based regulatory bodies, privacy principles and even privacy-based torts (wrongful acts that lead to damages) there is still no clear “right” to privacy for many workers,” with respect to video. Surveillance of union activity in the U.S., however, is illegal according to the National Labor Relations Act.

LiUNA! Local 625 (Ontario) Apprentices

In Canada, apprentices working with unions are more likely to complete training and move into the job market than their non-union peers according to a new report.

Of the apprentices studied, 75 percent completed training that was run through a Joint Apprenticeship Training Trust (JATT) while only 58 percent completed training when apprenticing with individual, non-union affiliated employers. Apprenticeships are a key component of readying a new generation of skilled workers and suggest yet another reason why unions are central to a healthy labor market moving forward. Sean Strickland, chief executive officer of the Ontario Construction Secretariat (OCS), said of the findings:

“Ontario’s union-employer training centres are an integral and growing piece of the province’s jobs training infrastructure. Union-employer training partnerships deliver better results. We see this in the number of union apprentices who complete their training and earn their Certificate of Qualification to become a journeyperson.”

The report indicates that the unique partnership between construction unions and their contract partners results in apprentices being given the proper resources to build careers in their respective trades. Part of the higher success rate stems from a more effective screening process and pre-apprenticeship training that better prepares apprentices for the road ahead. These factors, combined with a higher rate of investment in training facilities, creates an environment for success.

More findings from the report, Completion Counts: Raising Apprenticeship Completion Rates To Address Skills Shortages in Ontario’s Construction Industry, suggest that union apprentices are:

– more likely to attend the technical in-school portion of apprenticeship training,

– less likely to change employers to seek improved work conditions or better training opportunities during the course of their apprenticeship.

For related stories on the importance of apprenticeship and investment in training, peruse this search of We Party Patriots.

In California, the Mountain View City Council is changing their stance on prevailing wage laws as they pertain to the building of affordable housing units.

In the past, prevailing wage laws were limited to public works projects and capital improvements. In a 6-1 vote, however, the council has directed city staff to create a resolution to expand the policy to include affordable housing units. Council members now believe they should lead by example and pay better wages on all projects. According to the Mercury News, Council Member Margaret Abe Koga argued in favor of expanding the prevailing wage during the council’s talks:

“Our city already has an existing policy. It’s an expansion of it. I think it makes sense to be consistent. Anything that we do as a city, I just feel very strongly that we should set the example and the standard. I fundamentally believe that we should be paying fair wages for any work that’s done for our city.””

Council Member Ronit Bryant was on the council the last time the subject was brought up for debate. She says her view on the subject has evolved over the better part of a decade.

“It’s one of the few decisions I’ve really regretted that I’ve made on council,” Bryant said.

“It’s basically like saying, ‘Do you give someone a fish or do you teach them how to fish?’ In this case, ‘Do you build affordable housing with workers who will need affordable housing?’ ”

Other members are waiting to see detailed studies on the subject before they fully support the expansion. Vice Mayor Chris Clark and Council Member Mike Kasperzak were among the hesitants:

“If we move forward with this, I just want to make sure that we do it the right way and that we’re not doing this on the fly,” said Clark, who indicated he would likely support paying a prevailing wage for affordable housing projects.

Anti-prevailing wage voices parrot the claim that raising labor costs hurts taxpayers but many politicians are taking notice of the higher return state governments achieve when wages are higher. This is becoming a powerful point of advocacy for prevailing wage protections around the country. Rick Solis of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local Union 405 made this point during the council’s meeting:

Many of these workers receive cash payments or even gift cards from stores instead of weekly paychecks that have the appropriate taxes taken out, further crippling our great state by not getting the appropriate funds to pay for education, health care and infrastructure improvements,” Solis said.

Jose Garcia of the Northern California Fire Protection Compliance Group noted the benefits he has enjoyed for the past 30 years that directly came from being paid a prevailing wage:

“Because of that (prevailing wage) I have never relied on public benefits at all. I don’t need affordable housing because prevailing wage forced me to buy my own home. I don’t need health care assistance … because the prevailing wage allows me to have my own health insurance.”