What was intended to be a rule protecting workers’ rights has been stopped from taking effect by a judge’s order that was solely focused on the rights of union-busters.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The great Oz has spoken," the actor Frank Morgan thundered in the famous 1939 movie. If you believe in what an outside expert drafted for you to say to your employees, if you were willing to pay the outsider to help you say it, then open the curtain and reveal who scripted the message and managed its delivery.
Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.
I was pleased, and rather surprised, when I saw that the U.S. Department of Labor—in honor of its one-hundred-year anniversary—is assembling a list of books that shaped American ideas about work.DOL officials, after seeing a 2012 “Books that Shaped America” exhibition at the Library of Congress, were inspired to make a similar call for books about work in order to emphasize the “significant role published works have played in the shaping American workers and workplaces.”
Thomas Perez, reported to be President Barack Obama's choice to lead the Dept. of Labor, stands to be a target of conservatives because of his unapologetic civil rights advocacy.
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