Category: Employment Law

Employment Law

McDonald’s to Raise Pay at Outlets It Operates

Posted on
McDonald-Raise-Pay-at-Outlet

McDonald’s announced on Wednesday that it would raise wages and offer new benefits to 90,000 employees in the 1,500 outlets in the United States that it owns and operates, responding to competitive pressure from a tighter job market and to labor campaigns drawing public attention to its pay policies.

The decision, however, does not affect the 750,000 employees who work for the more than 3,100 franchisees that operate roughly 12,500 McDonald’s restaurants around the country.

The company will increase wages to at least $1 over the local legal minimum wage for workers in restaurants under corporate control to an average of $9.90 an hour by July 1. That average will increase to more than $10 in 2016.

Employees who have worked in company restaurants more than a year will also be eligible for paid time off, whether they work full or part time. An employee who works an average of 20 hours a week might accrue as much as 20 hours of paid time off a year, the company said.

Employment Law

Movement to Increase McDonald’s Minimum Wage Broadens Its Tactics

Posted on
Increase-McDonald-Minimum-Wages

ATLANTA — On a recent Friday, Kwanza Brooks, a $7.25-an-hour McDonald’s worker, climbed into a 14-person van to take a four-hour ride from Charlotte, N.C., to Atlanta.

As she and other workers headed south, Ms. Brooks, a short, fiery woman, swapped stories with her companions about unsafe conditions and unfair managers. Upon arriving, they joined more than 400 other people — including home care aides, Walmart workers, child care workers and adjunct professors — at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been a pastor.

The gathering on March 21 was in part a strategy session to plan for the fast-food movement’s next big wave of protests, which is now scheduled for April 15. But the meeting was also seeking to be something far more ambitious. Through some strategic alchemy, the organizers hoped the gathering would turn the fast-food workers’ fight for a $15 hourly wage into a broad national movement of all low-wage workers that combined the spirit of Depression-era labor organizing with the uplifting power of Dr. King’s civil rights campaign

Employment Law

Final Retrospective

Posted on
minimum-wage

In the wake of the great recession, a sense of righteous anger has spread through the public. The long-standing fact that millions of American workers struggle in jobs with wages so low they can’t provide for their families is taking center stage in our national political discourse. A growing awareness of the extent of economic inequality has galvanized a set of progressive political and social actions that seek to build a more just economy. In 2013 and 2014 alone, at least 12 cities and 17 states raised the minimum wage. Fast-food restaurant workers, who for several years have been organizing for union rights and raises to $15 an hour, went on strike in nearly 200 cities in 2014. Domestic and construction workers, long marginalized in the labor force, are joining together to win rights and recognition.

(more…)

Employment Law

Black Workers Matter

Posted on
BlackLivesMatter-movement

Asserting that black lives matter also means that the quality of those lives matters. This report takes its title from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which was founded following George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murder in the death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.

In the time since, #BlackLivesMatter has served both as an umbrella and a focus point for protest and activism in response to the violent deaths of black people across America at the hands of law enforcement officials. The movement hit a peak in the latter half of 2014 as grand juries failed to indict the police officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. The explosion of political protest that arose in Ferguson and other cities has inspired a new wave of activism that goes well beyond the individual cases of these black people who lost their lives.

(more…)

Employment Law

The Movement to End Wage Theft

Posted on
End-Wage-Theft

Over the last decade, grassroots opposition to Wage Theft has grown dramatically across the country. Wage theft, the illegal underpayment of wages primarily affects the working poor. It is widespread and occurs in various forms and industries. It is estimated that millions of low wage workers annually are not paid at legally required overtime rates, at minimum wages or for total hours worked. In response workers’ rights organizations have engaged in increasingly sophisticated and successful campaigns to strengthen enforcement and make sure that monies due employees are repaid.

(more…)