Posts tagged overtime
Worker rights? Racial bias? A law change for manicurists prompts debate, confusion
February 17, 2025 // Since the beginning of the year, licensed manicurists and nail salon owners in Orange County and across the state have been confused about whether a change in state law allows the business practice of renting a booth to continue or not. After an exemption expired under state law, nail salon workers are now subject to a rigorous test to determine if they are independent contractors while licensed aestheticians, electrologists, barbers and cosmetologists remain exempted from it.
CATS union workers edge closer to a strike after an alleged wage freeze
February 13, 2025 // “We can’t allow a company to impose and implement its own labor contract on its workforce,” Garland says. “If we do that, they won’t agree with anything the union’s saying when we go to the table. They’ll just implement what they want to. Now we have no choice but to strike.” The new contract also includes changes to disciplinary, grievance and overtime policies that were made without union input, Garland says. Union organizers are now gathering in Baton Rouge to deliberate their next steps.
‘We’re gonna fight for our members’: Unions respond to Oakland layoffs
February 3, 2025 // This week’s layoffs are the latest in several steps Oakland has already taken in an attempt to emerge from its financial crisis. The city has also slashed OPD overtime spending, temporarily closed fire stations, and cut the arts budget, while credit ratings agencies have put the city on notice that it faces a potential ratings downgrade. Layoffs were discussed last year and not unexpected, said Blue, but she assumed the city would give advance notice so unions could negotiate with management. City officials have previously said they’d do whatever they could to avoid axing front-line staff.
API fighting to protect overtime tax cut for those ‘trying to work a little harder’ in Alabama
January 14, 2025 // “[T]he idea is, when people are trying to provide for their family working extra time, why would we tax them? Why would the state tax them for that work at a higher rate? And so yeah, that overtime tax elimination was accomplished in 2023 and it has a 2025 sunset, which means that it goes away, meaning that the tax comes back in 2025 unless the legislature act,” Smith said. “And so we’re advocating that the legislature actually makes that permanent, because we believe in the concept of work and the fact that there is dignity in work, and we don’t think that the state should be charging people extra for trying to work a little harder.”
California fast food restaurant owners warn that hiking $20 minimum wage will ‘cripple’ them
January 8, 2025 // The council, which consists of 10 members appointed by the governor, is empowered to raise the minimum wage by up to 3.5% — or the annual rate of inflation each year — beginning Jan. 1 of this year. The union representing fast food workers has accused restaurant owners of cutting employee hours in response to the wage increase — all but offsetting the hike in wages.
CA requires public school unionization lessons, bans mandatory anti-union work meetings
January 2, 2025 // Two new laws — AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and now SB 399, signed into law by Newsom this year, are set to help maintain or even increase union membership in the state. AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, requires California high school juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor, and students’ right to join a union. Education site Chalkboard News used public records requests to discover what exactly this new law is having teachers cover.
New York’s Fastest-Growing Union Is Management’s Best Friend — and Some Workers Don’t Even Know They’re Members
December 20, 2024 // Though she last worked for Five Borough two months ago, she stopped receiving pay stubs long before that, she said — paperwork that would have had to show deductions, including for union dues. Supervisors ignored her repeated requests for pay records, she said. Through such voluntary recognition deals with management, less than a decade after its founding, HHWA has exploded in size. It currently claims some 43,000 members, up from 14,141 in 2018. An investigation into Home Healthcare Workers of America by THE CITY, based on interviews with past and current members, legal records and other public statements, reveals that this fast-growing union is a tool of company management in the form of a labor organization.
Judge Kiboshes Labor Department’s New Overtime Requirement for Salaried Workers
November 19, 2024 // The Labor Department wanted the higher salary threshold for OT eligibility because it felt that lower-paid salary earners often work beyond 40 hours a week but don’t get compensated fairly for that additional time. Most hourly workers are legally owed overtime if their work time exceeds 40 hours in a week, but the same broad requirement isn’t in place for salary workers.
California: San Mateo County deputies union alleges retaliation behind leader’s felony arrest
November 15, 2024 // On Tuesday, the union along with the San Mateo County Organization of Sheriff’s Sergeants condemned Tapia’s arrest, saying it has “all the earmarks of whistleblower retaliation” in the wake of a report also released Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors compiled by a retired judge that investigated complaints by the union against civilian chief of staff Victor Aenlle.
With much at stake, labor unions knock on millions of doors in final campaign push
October 31, 2024 // The American Federation of Teachers has sent hundreds of its members from New York to Pennsylvania and from Illinois to Wisconsin to canvass “labor doors.” The United Auto Workers has similarly deployed union members to fellow members’ homes and work sites, in addition to an aggressive phone, text and mail campaign.