If April Showers bring May…Oh never mind. In Connecticut, April might as well mean that the General Assembly is getting serious about the bills under consideration. All the proposals that make headlines in February mean nothing until committees start to vote on the bills and the bills start getting the spotlight on them.
Usually by
As I take some extended time off from the office, frequent guest poster Chris Engler takes a look back at some of the earliest background on labor history.
Because I majored in history in college, I’m a firm believer that understanding history is of great benefit when planning for the future.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing more tweets from human resources types and mainstream reporters using the phrase “wage theft”. Two recent examples? William Tincup (who runs the popular online DriveThruHR show that I appeared on a while ago) recently tweeted:
RT Wage Theft Another Assault on Workers’ Compensation http://t.co/iXmbHnASUL @jongelman
— William Tincup, SPHR (@williamtincup) April 23, 2014
And The New York Times labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse yesterday tweeted:
NYT Editorial: Wage Theft Across the Board–Sorry to say, wage theft hits low-wage & middle-class workers alike. http://t.co/4xnMqgtyEr
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) April 22, 2014
Yes, even The New York Times Editorial Board is beginning to use the term with surprising carelessness suggesting “law enforcement officials” (a term typically reserved for police officers, not Department of Labor officials) routinely use it.
It’s time for employers to beware this phrase and fight its usage because, in my view, it’s really an attempt to turn something often unintentional, into something nefarious and intentional.
Or as Mandy Patinkin’s character in The Princess Bride said: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What DO I mean? Well, think of the word, “theft” and most of us think of the intentional taking of something that belongs to someone else. Like your jewelry, or your iPhone. Even your company’s trade secrets.Continue Reading “Wage Theft”: The Trendy Phrase That May Not Mean What You Think It Means
On Friday, the Second Circuit issued an important decision in the long-running battle between the state unions and the government about whether layoffs of only union personnel violated the First Amendment.
I’ve previously discussed the background of this case (and my very early involvement in it) in various posts.
The Second Circuit not only reversed
As we continue our series this week of highlighting employment law issues for the candidates, next up is Rep. Paul Ryan. (For previous posts and groundrules, see here, here, and here.)
UPDATED:
The cuts to the CHRO keep coming.
Governor Malloy this morning released his plan to reduce the size of government — should a deal with the state labor unions not be struck.
The plan calls for the elimination of the CHRO’s Waterbury Office (page 35) and the elimination of other staff positions. All
Another day, another statistical report from the Department of Labor. (Though in fairness to the DOL, it has a whole office addressed to labor statistics (BLS), so of course we’re going to get a lot of stats.
The latest is its annual release of data showing union membership. I first wrote about that data three