Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week


The end of the year normally means less time on the road and in court and more time to read through articles.  This year, unfortunately is much different with many, many courts holding hearings and trials to close out 2020.  Even with not having any travel, the amount of court appearances has left me with little time to read through articles.  With that being said, I did come across a couple articles worth mentioning.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


New York Senate Republicans Push For Delay to Minimum Wage Hike

Earlier this week, Senate Republicans in New York began to voice their support for delaying a minimum wage hike in the state, set to take effect at the end of the year.  While it is not expected that Governor Andrew Cuomo would agree to any delay (nor Senate Democrats for that matter), might this effort to delay the minimum wage hike prove effective?


OSHA Under Fire For Limited Enforcement At Meat Packing Plants

In recent months, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) has been heavily criticized for a perceived lack of enforcement of employer safety violations at meat packing plants.  One plant in South Dakota, for instance, has had over 1,000 employees contract the coronavirus with several passing away as a result.  The penalty imposed against the employer for the employees allegedly contracting the virus at work was a proposed penalty of $13,494.  A similar penalty was soon after proposed for another employer in Colorado.  This has led many former OSHA officials and a few Senators to publicly call out OSHA for what they consider to be extremely lenient penalties.  Whether this increased focus on OSHA and the proposed penalties results in a change is unclear at this time.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa