Labor

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.

“It is astounding that Caltech and JPL, home to the 21st Century’s leadership in science and engineering, could harbor administrative bureaucrats who develop workplace rules similar to those described in Charles Dickins’ 19th Century writings"

U.S. employers added 165,000 jobs in April, and hiring was much stronger in the previous two months than the government first estimated. The job increases helped reduce the unemployment rate from 7.6 percent to a four-year low of 7.5 percent.

We all enjoy the cheap prices we play for stuff here in the U.S., while remaining completley oblivious to where they are produced and by whom. You probably even read about the factory collapse and fire of five clothing factories in Bangladesh on your sweatshop-produced iPhones.

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) set off a media firestorm for his use of the offensive term “wetbacks” to describe immigrant workers. He has since apologized and said that he supports immigration reform.

The owners of R3 Electrical were in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday being charged with two counts of second-degree grand larceny, two counts of state labor law violations and 20 counts each of falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing.

Wages used to go up as productivity went up, but in the 1970s they decoupled. Productivity kept going up but wages stagnated.

The average American’s living standard would be much, much higher today if wages had not decoupled from productivity gains – with the gains all going to the 1 percent instead of being shared by workers. If wages had kept pace we wouldn’t feel the terrible squeeze that everyone in the middle class is feeling.

Rick Perry's job-poachin' trip to California didn't sit well with the locals, especially when he tried to steal companies away from their local communities. In Oxnard, Perry met with Haas Automotive, located in Ventura County. The company is planning an expansion, and is flirting with leaving California rather than expand on land adjacent to their current headquarters.
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The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s John Dewitt looked at what the minimum wage would be if it simply rose with productivity since 1968, and found that it would be almost 3 times what it is now.