Workers at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center filed a complaint with the Labor Department on Monday alleging a slew of labor violations against their employers, including not being paid the minimum wage and working as many as 80 hours a week without overtime pay.
The Reagan Building is a federal property, but the workers who lodged the complaint are employed by private businesses in the building's food court, like a Subway sandwich shop, a Quick Pita franchise and a Smoothie King location.
Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo is building a political career on the strength of the pension reform she spearheaded in 2011, which she has touted as a model for other states to follow. But here’s something you probably don’t know about the new hybrid retirement plan for teachers and other government workers: it actually increases costs for taxpayers even as it cuts benefits for most workers.
A group representing service employees has organized a morning of demonstrations and civil disobedience at various locations throughout the capital on Tuesday to protest low pay and alleged wage theft by vendors at federal buildings.
Good Jobs Nation, which represents low-wage employees of government contractors, plans to start the day with a mock trial in an intersection near the Ronald Reagan Building, according to organizers.
Beginning at 8:30 this morning, non-union, federally contracted workers plan to walk off the job at the Ronald Reagan Building and Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington, DC. Today’s strike, and a “mock trial” and pair of civil disobedience actions planned for this morning, are designed to highlight alleged “wage theft,” and to pressure President Obama to use his executive authority to require higher labor standards for federal contractors.
June 25th marked the 75th anniversary of the federal minimum wage law in the United States, known as the Fair Labor Standards Act. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed this legislation, his vision was to ensure a “fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” and to “end starvation wages.”
Members of Congress are calling on the government to get out in front of the growing income gap by addressing the low wages paid within its own buildings.
In a July 2 letter to President Barack Obama, 17 House Democrats said the government needs to take action toward the fair treatment and decent pay of its unskilled service-contract employees, particularly those working at iconic sites such as Union Station, the Smithsonian and the National Zoo.
Low-wage workers at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. went on strike today. The striking workers are employed through private federal contractors—mostly vendors at federal buildings like the Smithsonian Museums, the Ronald Reagan Building and the International Trade Center. Although their labor keeps the federal government running, they are making poverty wages. The workers are demanding President Obama issue an executive order mandating that private federal contractors pay employees a living wage.
Without a doubt, the big banks should be broken up; the need is even more urgent than it was in 2007 or 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas – hardly an Occupy Wall Street affiliate – titled its 2011 Annual Report "Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail – Now."
When Governor Lincoln Chaffee signed the Temporary Care Giver’s Insurance law last week, Rhode Island became the third state—along with California and New Jersey—to grant paid time off to care for a sick loved one or a new baby.
Rhode Island’s law, which goes into effect in 2014, will not only provide most workers with up to four weeks off with about two-thirds of their salaries (up to $752 a week), it will protect employees from being fired and losing their health insurance while they’re out.
Employer-sponsored plans such as 401(k)s are workers' best hope for a secure retirement. Critics of the 401(k) system contend that the plans weren't designed to be the foundation of a secure retirement and should be scrapped in favor of something tailor-made, while supporters of the system say it just needs fine-tuning. While regulators, academics and the financial industry tussle over the best way to get everyone to retirement, investors have to keep saving as much as possible and, just as importantly, keep expenses low.
Financial markets, now heavily dependent on technology, need to be safeguarded against cyberattacks, natural disasters and the more prosaic scourge of human error that can cause massive disruptions, according to experts and a federal panel.
Today President Obama will give a major economic address in Illinois, the first in a series of speeches designed to refocus the national conversation on job creation and the struggling economy.
Employers don't want to look at the resumes of unemployed people. In fact, they don't even want those resumes sent to them.
Some employers will actually do whatever it takes — without doing anything illegal — to prevent the unemployed from applying for positions at their company.
I am of course glad to see President Obama focus the country on what he correctly identifies as the most pressing national problem, the crushing of the middle class. The solution he laid out in his address at Knox College, a middle-out economics which sees the middle class as the engine of the economy, is both good economics and a powerful political message. It is what progressives and Democrats need to keep emphasizing over and over again, both rhetorically and in their legislative agendas.
Picking a new chairman of the Federal Reserve may be the most important nomination a president can make. The next Fed chair will play an instrumental role in determining the future trajectory of America’s straggling recovery, and determining how financial regulation gets implemented.
On July 24, President Obama delivered a speech in Galesburg, IL, to lay out his vision for an economy that works for everyone and what he hopes to do to get us there. During his speech, he acknowledged that gridlock in Washington will likely prevent Congress from providing sensible solutions, but he said, “Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it." I hope the President keeps his word because he has the power to lift two million working Americans out of poverty. He just has to choose to use it. I work at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
After the D.C. Council approved a bill that requires large retailers to pay their workers a "living wage" of $12.50 -- and Walmart retreated from the capital in protest -- we thought it'd be worth considering what that requirement could do for the economy.