The New York Times highlights a disturbing trend that has occurred during the Great Recession: the greater percentage of workers being hired as temporary employees instead of permanent ones.  Temporary workers often get lower wages, have little or no benefits, less job security, and less chance of promotion and a lasting career.

This is obviously bad news in the short term, but the possibility that this could be a long term feature of the economy is even more troubling.  Unfortunately, Japan provides an example of exacting this occurring.

To make matters worse, unemployed workers who get employed by shifting careers often end up with lower wages and a less satisfying job.   This all goes to the show that the Great Recession is not just a dire crisis for the unemployed, but also a crisis for many employer workers as well.

Categories: General News Tags: Great Recession, Japan, Labor and Employment, New York Times, Temporary Jobs, Wages

This New York Times article discusses an important employment issue that may become more prevelant: whether and how employers may test and discipline employees for using legal prescription drugs.  As the article relates, drug testing like this is regulated in part by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

In North Carolina, two other state statutes can come into play.  First is the Controlled Substance Examination Regulation, N.C. Gen. Stat. 95-230 et seq., which specifies some of the required procedures for drug testing.

Second is the statute protecting against workplace discrimination against persons for the lawful use of lawful products, N.C. Gen. Stat. 95-28.2.  Under the law, an employer generally may not discriminate based on an employee’s “lawful use of lawful products if the activity occurs off the premises of the employer during nonworking hours and does not adversely affect the employee’s job performance or the person’s ability to properly fulfill the responsibilities of the position in question or the safety of other employees.”

Categories: General News Tags: ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, Controlled Substances, Discrimination, Drug Testing, Labor and Employment, New York Times, North Carolina

Several recent articles highlight both the continuing pressure on workers’ wages as well how decreasing wages helped cause the Great Recession in the first place.

This article points to a troubling reality that even for those unemployed people fortunate to find a new job, that new job often means a decrease in wages and living standards.

This article describes how the entire annual increase in health care costs is being borne by employees with employer health insurance instead of being borne by the employers.  This is but one example of the skyrocketing cost of health care over the years has eaten away at any wages gains for the working class.

Finally, this extremely insighful op-ed by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich describes how the generation-long erosion of working class wages helped fuel the debt boom that ended in the Great Recession.  Unless and until serious measures are enacted to improve the wages of the working class, we will not experience a sustainable recovery or return to general prosperity.

Categories: General News Tags: Great Recession, Health Care, Health Insurance, Labor and Employment, New York Times, Robert Reich, Wages

A strike at the Mott’s apple juice plant in New York highlights a significant issue besides the pay for these particular workers, as noted by this New York Times article: “The union movement and many outsiders view the strike as a high-stakes confrontation between a company that wants to cut its labor costs, even as it is earning record profits, and workers who are determined to resist demands for wage and benefit givebacks.”

The parent company here, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, is not alone in making large profits even as workers earn less and less.  Our economy, however, cannot start growing again on a sustainable basis unless workers’ wages increase.  The Great Recession shows that families need higher wages to prosper in the long run instead of relying on more and more debt.

Categories: General News Tags: Great Recession, Labor and Employment, New York Times, Strike, Unions, Wages

Prompted by a stark pattern on the U.S. Supreme Court, David Leonhardt of the New York Times addresses the continuing burdens on working parents that still mostly fall on women.  Because employers do not make reasonable accommodations for parental leave, parents who take time off often suffer long-term drops in pay and position, or stop working altogether.  Paid parental leave would help to address this issue.  And, he notes, “With Australia’s recent passage of paid leave, the United States has become the only rich country without such a policy.”

But, given implacable opposition from the business community on this issue, “a more realistic immediate idea may be the recent British law giving workers the right to request a switch to a part-time or flexible schedule. Employers can still say no, but the establishment of a formal right seems to have made a difference. So far, about 90 percent of requests have been approved.”

Categories: General News Tags: Family and Medical Leave, Labor and Employment, New York Times, Paid Leave, Parental Leave, Pay Disparities, Work and Family Balance