Labour Urges Government To Delay Virgin Trains Decision:
Labour is urging the Government to delay signing a new West Coast Mainline contract so MPs have a chance to fully scrutinise the deal.
Maria Eagle, the shadow transport secretary, has said the decision to take the franchise from Virgin Trains and award it to FirstGroup should be put on hold until Parliament returns next week.
The politician said there were concerns over how the move would affect fares and levels of service.
Her plea comes after Louise Ellman, the chairman of the House of Commons Transport Committee, wrote to Transport Secretary Justine Greening asking her to hold off signing the final contract, saying that "important issues" had been raised.
More than 100,000 members of the public have also signed an online petition against the decision, in a campaign supported by double Olympic champion Mo Farah, Apprentice star Lord Sugar and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has offered to run the line for free to allow Parliament time to debate the issue.
The entrepreneur, who has claimed that FirstGroup's bid will lead to "almost certain bankruptcy", on Sunday made a last-ditch appeal to the Government to delay signing the 13-year contract on Tuesday.
He said Virgin Trains and Stagecoach would operate the joint venture on a not-for-profit basis or donate profits to charity if the franchise needed to be extended beyond December for a few months to allow Parliament to investigate the decision.
Sir Richard is also pressing for an independent audit of the Department for Transport's decision over the £10 billion deal.
Sir Richard said: "It is far better for MPs to have the chance to debate the issues, and question ministers on the detail before the decision is finalised.
"To assist in this process, there should be an independent audit of the DfT decision to ensure it has been based on correct criteria and reliable forecasting of customer numbers, revenue and payments to Government.
"We must ensure that this crucial decision is taken with all the facts correctly assessed and understood."
Virgin has operated the West Coast line since 1997 and has more than doubled annual passenger numbers over 15 years.
FirstGroup claims it will deliver better value for taxpayers.
It plans major improvements to the InterCity West Coast franchise to enhance the customer experience, including improved wifi and catering, as well as additional services and more seats and reducing standard anytime fares by 15% on average.
This is our opinion and feelings about the the posts added to this blog by ourselves and writers who have asked to write on our blog network and does not necessarily represent our agreement or disagreement with the writers concerned.Please tweet your opinion at #AceNewsServices and or add to your tweets alternatively email me at News & Views
Thank you, Ian [Editor]
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Monday 27 August 2012
Houses Of Parliament 'Could Be Closed' For Five Years For Refurbishment
Houses Of Parliament 'Could Be Closed' For Five Years For Refurbishment:
Parliament could be relocated for up to five years whilst essential repairs are made, according to commons officials.
Whilst Westminster's rotten plumbing, asbestos panels and creaking electrics are overhauled, MPs would either be housed in temporary chamber or a conference centre half a mile away, reported the Sunday Times.
The temporary evacuation is one of the options being suggested in an ongoing report into the renovation of Westminister by the House of Commons Commission, chaired by Speaker John Bercow.
Architect Charles Barry designed the building in the Perpendicular Gothic style
Commons officials believe moving the House of Commons and House of Lords to a different location is the most cost effective option, at an estimated £3 bn cost to the taxpayer.
"We either move out or spend £10bn over 20 or 30 years trying to do the work during the summer recess," a commons official told the Sunday Times.
In January the Commons Commission agreed a year long study should be conducted into renovating the Grade I listed building.
There were fears that Big Ben was leaning, the construction of tube tunnels had caused cracks to appear in the walls. It was even thought that parliament may be sinking into the Thames, putting the lives of those who work in Westminster in danger.
Fears that Big Ben was leaning and that Parliament was sinking drove the year-long study into possible options. However Bercow said that the building was "structurally safe"
Additionally, the building is known for its rodent problem and leaky toilets. Theresa May has had to deal with suspicious liquid dripping down from the ceiling, whilst senior Tory official Iain Corby told the Times " a waterfall" poured into the parliamentary Labour Party office last year.
Despite that a number of MPs have criticised the moving of parliament, with Greg Hands Conservative MP for Chelsea and Fulham calling it an "absurd proposal"
Nadine Dorries claimed that in the Houses of Parliament "what we have is unique and passionate" but admitted that "rodents were a problem"
Ian Lavery MP for Wansbeck tweeted that parliament was a "superb place" but suggested instead of holing up in a replica whilst the repairs were made, why not have parliamentary sessions across the country.
Labour's Deputy Leader in the Lords, Philip Hunt said it was a good opportunity to move parliament to "beautiful Brum"
The SNP's Pete Wishart MP expressed astonishment at the price tag for planned refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament, claiming the price tag showed the importance of Scottish independence.
"This puts the much-criticised Holyrood project into perspective. With estimates for refurbishment, let alone relocations, starting at an incredible £3 billion, it is seven times the final bill for the Scottish Parliament - and that's before the work even gets off the ground.
"This massive bill is one 'union dividend' that the anti-independence campaigners won't be keen to put on their flyers.
"A yes vote in the independence referendum in 2014 will save people in Scotland that enormous cost and move all decisions to a modern, progressive Parliament at Holyrood."
The posts l provide are not our views and also are shared from a number of contacts, news and blogging services. They are not always tried and tested by us unless it states!Please tweet this post at #AceNewsServices or email your News & Views
Thank you, Ian [Editor]
Parliament could be relocated for up to five years whilst essential repairs are made, according to commons officials.
Whilst Westminster's rotten plumbing, asbestos panels and creaking electrics are overhauled, MPs would either be housed in temporary chamber or a conference centre half a mile away, reported the Sunday Times.
The temporary evacuation is one of the options being suggested in an ongoing report into the renovation of Westminister by the House of Commons Commission, chaired by Speaker John Bercow.
Architect Charles Barry designed the building in the Perpendicular Gothic style
Commons officials believe moving the House of Commons and House of Lords to a different location is the most cost effective option, at an estimated £3 bn cost to the taxpayer.
"We either move out or spend £10bn over 20 or 30 years trying to do the work during the summer recess," a commons official told the Sunday Times.
In January the Commons Commission agreed a year long study should be conducted into renovating the Grade I listed building.
There were fears that Big Ben was leaning, the construction of tube tunnels had caused cracks to appear in the walls. It was even thought that parliament may be sinking into the Thames, putting the lives of those who work in Westminster in danger.
Additionally, the building is known for its rodent problem and leaky toilets. Theresa May has had to deal with suspicious liquid dripping down from the ceiling, whilst senior Tory official Iain Corby told the Times " a waterfall" poured into the parliamentary Labour Party office last year.
Despite that a number of MPs have criticised the moving of parliament, with Greg Hands Conservative MP for Chelsea and Fulham calling it an "absurd proposal"
Nadine Dorries claimed that in the Houses of Parliament "what we have is unique and passionate" but admitted that "rodents were a problem"
Ian Lavery MP for Wansbeck tweeted that parliament was a "superb place" but suggested instead of holing up in a replica whilst the repairs were made, why not have parliamentary sessions across the country.
Labour's Deputy Leader in the Lords, Philip Hunt said it was a good opportunity to move parliament to "beautiful Brum"
The SNP's Pete Wishart MP expressed astonishment at the price tag for planned refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament, claiming the price tag showed the importance of Scottish independence.
"This puts the much-criticised Holyrood project into perspective. With estimates for refurbishment, let alone relocations, starting at an incredible £3 billion, it is seven times the final bill for the Scottish Parliament - and that's before the work even gets off the ground.
"This massive bill is one 'union dividend' that the anti-independence campaigners won't be keen to put on their flyers.
"A yes vote in the independence referendum in 2014 will save people in Scotland that enormous cost and move all decisions to a modern, progressive Parliament at Holyrood."
The posts l provide are not our views and also are shared from a number of contacts, news and blogging services. They are not always tried and tested by us unless it states!Please tweet this post at #AceNewsServices or email your News & Views
Thank you, Ian [Editor]
Sunday 26 August 2012
Temp Worker Nation: If You Do Get Hired, It Might Not Be for Long
Temp Worker Nation: If You Do Get Hired, It Might Not Be for Long: 
Mon, 08/20/2012 - 13:41
Tweet at #AceNewsServices or email your News & Views and get your article printed.
Almost one-third of American workers now do some kind of freelance work, and they lack almost every kind of economic security that permanent full-time workers traditionally have had. Though exact figures are impossible to find, many experts and labor organizers estimate that about 30 percent of U.S. workers are “contingent.” That means they don’t have a permanent job. They work as freelancers, temporary workers, on contract, or on call, or their employers define them (often illegally) as “independent contractors.”
Their ranks include writers and warehouse workers, janitors and business consultants, truck drivers and graphic designers—and their number is rising. Richard Greenwald, a sociologist of work and professor at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, estimates that their share of the U.S. workforce has increased by close to half in the last 10 years. In July, Staffing Industry Analysts reported that the average share of contingent workers at companies it surveyed had gone up by one-third since 2009, to 16 percent. Last year, a different survey found that contingent workers averaged 22 percent of the workers at 200 large companies.
These workers are often called the “precariat,” a combination of “precarious” and “proletariat,” because the traditional social safety nets for workers don’t cover them. They have no job security as they hustle from one gig to the next, and they often don’t know where their next job is coming from or when it will come. They very rarely get paid sick days or vacation. They don’t get paid extra for working overtime. They are usually not eligible for unemployment benefits. They generally have to pay both the worker’s and the employer’s share of Social Security taxes. They have to pay for their own health insurance, and Obamacare won’t change that. (Beginning in 2014, people will be able to buy private insurance at group rates, and lower-income and working-class people will get some subsidies to help them pay for it.)
They have few options if an employer cheats them out of their pay. If they are independent contractors, they do not have the right to form a labor union.
“Instability is going to be with us,” says Sara Horowitz, head of the New York-based Freelancers Union. “The truth is that we’re in a period of decline for workers.”
The New Way We Work
Who are freelancers and contingent workers? The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has not done an official study since 2005, when it estimated that they were 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. workforce. If their income is reported on a 1099 tax form instead of on a W-2 form with deductions, its monthly payroll surveys won’t count them as having jobs. Its household surveys will count them as employed, but don’t ask about their job arrangements.
Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal codirector of the National Employment Law Project in New York, counts “everyone who’s not a W-2 employee,” including people paid on 1099s, franchisees, and people paid in cash, such as construction day laborers, as a contingent worker. Richard Greenwald arrived at his estimates by counting sole-proprietorship businesses and people who listed more income on 1099s than on W-2s.
The number has risen significantly in the last 15 years, Greenwald says, and the pace has increased since the recession began, with many new jobs “permatemps.” This trend affects workers at all income levels, but the fastest-growing sector is college graduates in “creative” fields. In the last few years, book publishers and advertising agencies have outsourced their graphic designers, hiring them back as freelancers with no benefits. Many publishers now hire editors on a per-manuscript basis.
“As the industry or technology tweaks, it often does so in a way that’s freelance or nonunion,” says Justin Molito, director of organizing with the Writers’ Guild of America East. For example, writers on HBO’s scripted shows are unionized, but those on basic cable and reality TV shows aren’t.
Greenwald distinguishes between workers who chose freelancing and those who were “shoved into it.” The most successful freelancers, he says, are information technology, management and finance consultants. They have a specific skill and steady clients, and “think of themselves as entrepreneurs.” Many white-collar freelancers make middle-class incomes, $45,000 to $50,000 a year, he says, but they have to pay for the office supplies, health insurance and taxes that would normally be covered by an employer, and they have no security.
This is not just a recession-induced thing, he says. It reflects a long-term change in the economy. Since the 1980s, management’s philosophy has evolved to “look at work as projects.” Instead of keeping workers on staff to perform all tasks needed, they outsource them or hire consultants.
“This gives companies tremendous flexibility without any risk,” Greenwald says. “Flexibility” means they don’t have to keep people on the payroll during slack periods, pay them when they’re sick, pay for their health insurance, or obey workplace regulations. This, he says, has “shifted all the risks that large institutions used to have onto the backs of individuals.”
“It’s a great business model, but as a social model, it doesn’t work,” he explains. Essentially, it means that the world of work is becoming more like the music business, in which a handful of superstars get rich and a minority of professionals have steady work with benefits, but most workers have to scuffle for intermittent, low-paying gigs, and hard work and talent are worthless without marketing skills, clout and charisma. “The bar to get in is low, but the ability to make a living is harder and harder,” he says.
The overall social change “might be as big as the shift from farm to factory,” Greenwald says. “I don’t think that many freelancers have thought of this as a permanent way of life. It seems to be a shift back to 19th-century artisanal culture.”
The Casual Working Class
Though the traditional image of a freelancer is a middle-class professional like a magazine writer or computer consultant, this shift affects a huge number of blue-collar workers too, especially in the fast-growing fields of warehousing, delivery and home healthcare. Many of these workers are now either temps or defined as “independent contractors.”
“Often relying on the use of temporary and staffing agencies, outsourcing in these industries has also resulted in comparatively lower wages for work similar to the jobs previously performed in-house,” the National Employment Law Project reported in “Chain of Greed,” a study of Walmart warehouses released in June.
At the Nissan auto factory in Canton, Mississippi, more than 20 percent of the 4,400 workers are temps, according to the Labor Notes monthly newsletter. The company says it plans to hire 1,000 new workers this year, but all will be temporary. The temps start at $12 an hour, below what permanent workers earn, and workers say no temp has ever been permanently hired at the plant. Even at Ford’s Detroit-area plants, the classic bastion of union industrial labor, local activist Dianne Feeley, a retired United Auto Workers member, says a significant percentage of workers are temps or contract workers.
“A huge problem,” says Catherine Ruckelshaus, is employers illegally defining workers as independent contractors. “Some employers are asking workers to form LLCs [limited liability companies, a form of business that combines features of a corporation and a partnership] before a construction drywall job.”
FedEx Ground, for example, defines its 15,000 drivers as independent contractors, even though they drive company-assigned routes and must drive vans with the FedEx logo and color scheme.
“There are millions of Americans classified as independent contractors by the companies they work for, but effectively working as employees,” American Rights at Work, a Washington-based labor-rights nonprofit, said in a 2007 report on FedEx Ground. “These workers suffer the worst of both worlds: they toil without the protections and benefits of employees, yet are without the control over their work that true independent contractors enjoy.”
The legal definition, Ruckelshaus says, is whether the person is running an independent business—are they investing their own money, and can they pass on increased costs? The Internal Revenue Service’s general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the person hiring them has “the right to control or direct only the result of the work,” while the worker decides “the means and methods of accomplishing the result.”
The scam’s advantage for employers is that they don’t have to pay minimum wage or overtime, Social Security, Medicare or unemployment taxes, or workers’ compensation. The result, the American Rights at Work report said, is that FedEx drivers not only make less money than those at UPS, who are permanent workers with a union; they also have to pay for gas and maintenance for their vans. Many lease vans from a company-approved supplier, Ruckelshaus says.
Some employers define even janitors and home healthcare aides as “franchisees,” she continues. For example, an office building’s management might hire a cleaning-services subcontractor, which will then have its workers buy the job of cleaning one section of the building in exchange for a piece of the company’s fee.
Coverall, a Florida-based cleaning-services company, calls its more than 9,000 workers “franchisees,” and its more than 90 regional offices are “support centers.” In Boston, says Ruckelshaus, these franchisees might have to pay the company as much as $10,000 to claim a job, recouping that investment from their wages. If they don’t have the money, they can borrow it from a company-recommended lender. In some cases, she says, they have had to work the first month on spec, getting paid for it only if the Coverall boss approves them for the job. They also have to buy cleaning equipment and supplies from the company. But Coverall makes the deals for the jobs, so the workers can’t raise their rates or ask the client for work on their own.
In home healthcare, a field with 3 million workers, mostly women, that is one of the fastest-growing job categories in the U.S. economy, for-profit agencies are calling themselves “registries” of independent contractors. They do this, says Ruckelshaus, even though they hire the workers, train them, assign them to jobs, and set rates. It means they don’t have to pay minimum wage or overtime.
“There’s no enforcement,” she says. “It becomes part of the structure of these jobs.”
Warehouse and shipping work is a major area of abuse. Walmart and Amazon outsource their massive warehouse and shipping operations to subcontractors, who then use temporary agencies to hire workers. Workers often don’t even know who their actual employer is, says Ruckelshaus.
“They pit these little subcontractors against each other,” says Erin Johansson, research director of American Rights at Work. “To compete and win a contract, you’ve got to pay your workers minimal wages.”
In this system, according to the “Chain of Greed” report, workers are paid piecework, according to the number of containers or trucks they finish unloading on a shift, instead of an hourly wage. They don’t get paid for anything else they do on the job. The result is “rampant minimum wage and overtime violations,” the report said. Workers also have to unload dangerously stacked piles of boxes, some of which weigh up to 200 pounds, says Johansson.
Walmart insists on ever-lower costs, so “workers are the ones getting squeezed and chiseled,” says Ruckelshaus. “This relationship is hurting low-wage women and those at the bottom of the supply chains, and the big corporations aren’t being held accountable for low wages and poor conditions.”
Another issue is that freelancers have almost no recourse if an employer cheats them. State wage-theft laws do not cover freelancers. If a client stiffs them, it’s considered a business dispute, so their only recourse is to sue in small-claims court. That can take months and multiple court appearances, and even if you win your case, collecting the debt is not guaranteed.
The Freelancers Union says 77 percent of its 180,000 members have had trouble collecting money they're owed. Earlier this year, it lobbied for New York to enact a law that would let stiffed freelancers file wage-theft complaints with the state Department of Labor. But in New York’s gerrymandered legislature, the measure wound up as a “one-house bill”: It passed in the Democrat-dominated Assembly, but never reached the floor in the Republican-controlled state Senate.
“If you have 30 percent of the workforce being exploited, that lowers standards for everybody,” says Johansson.
What Can Be Done?
Traditional union organizing is notoriously difficult with contingent workers. Organized labor’s strongest power over employers is workers’ ability to go on strike and stop production. If freelancers try that on their own, the employer will simply hire someone else. That they have neither a common location nor a collective workforce are also barriers to organizing collectively.
The Writers’ Guild of America, a union of TV and movie screenwriters, has successfully organized freelancers, winning elections and creating collective-bargaining agreements at studios. In July, it won company-paid health benefits, paid vacation, and a minimum salary for writers at two New York reality-show studios. But its 4,000 members’ status is much closer to permanent workers than most freelancers are. They usually work on long-term contracts, typically three or four years, and have “professional relationships and solidarity among themselves,” says Justin Molito.
“This is a long-term movement to aid those who’ve fallen through the cracks,” Molito says. “As other industries become more freelance, the labor movement has to develop strategies to create organizations that provide protections and make improvements.” Those strategies include “building a long-term movement, raising standards across the board, trying to organize an entire industry.”
The Freelancers’ Union’s Horowitz has largely abandoned the traditional union model, to the point where the organization might be more accurately described as a service and lobbying group than a labor union. Permanent workers are losing security and benefits, she says, so why should freelancers expect them?
“I exist in reality,” she says. “The first step is to admit that something’s changed.”
Instead, she touts what she calls the “new mutualism,” freelancers banding together on the principles of “affinity and solidarity,” such as networking and organizing cooperatives to buy food and health insurance. (The group sells nonprofit health insurance to 23,000 members in New York, and plans to expand that to New Jersey and Oregon in 2014, when the Obamacare insurance exchanges open.)
But how is any of that going to help get freelancers paid sick days? “Good luck with that,” she answers.
Organized freelancers “will be able to make the freelance economy work even better,” she explains in an e-mail, “by influencing the freelance labor market, by continuing to improve the laws that affect freelancers (i.e., passing legislation to give freelancers recourse when they are stiffed) and by continuing to give freelancers opportunities to work together.” On the other hand, she says the Freelancers Union will not be able on its own to “reverse larger economic trends” like declining wages in the media industry.
Workers should speak out about abuses, says Johansson. The bad publicity created by “shining a light on working conditions for large companies” such as Walmart and Amazon might help hold them accountable for how subcontractors and their workers are treated.
Legally, she says, “just enforcing the law” against misclassification would help. In June, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the 350 taxi drivers at Baltimore-Washington International Airport had been wrongly classified as independent contractors. Their employer, which has an exclusive contract for taxi service at the airport, is appealing the decision.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) have introduced bills to tighten the definition of an independent contractor.
Still, trying to improve conditions for freelancers and contingent workers is difficult in an economic system that has been vampirizing workers’ rights and incomes for a generation.
“The social contract that was part of American society for many years is dead,” says Greenwald. “We need to have a serious conversation about who’s winning and who’s not winning.”
The cutthroats can survive in this new world, he says, but “the rest of society is suffering.”
Their ranks include writers and warehouse workers, janitors and business consultants, truck drivers and graphic designers—and their number is rising. Richard Greenwald, a sociologist of work and professor at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, estimates that their share of the U.S. workforce has increased by close to half in the last 10 years. In July, Staffing Industry Analysts reported that the average share of contingent workers at companies it surveyed had gone up by one-third since 2009, to 16 percent. Last year, a different survey found that contingent workers averaged 22 percent of the workers at 200 large companies.
These workers are often called the “precariat,” a combination of “precarious” and “proletariat,” because the traditional social safety nets for workers don’t cover them. They have no job security as they hustle from one gig to the next, and they often don’t know where their next job is coming from or when it will come. They very rarely get paid sick days or vacation. They don’t get paid extra for working overtime. They are usually not eligible for unemployment benefits. They generally have to pay both the worker’s and the employer’s share of Social Security taxes. They have to pay for their own health insurance, and Obamacare won’t change that. (Beginning in 2014, people will be able to buy private insurance at group rates, and lower-income and working-class people will get some subsidies to help them pay for it.)
They have few options if an employer cheats them out of their pay. If they are independent contractors, they do not have the right to form a labor union.
“Instability is going to be with us,” says Sara Horowitz, head of the New York-based Freelancers Union. “The truth is that we’re in a period of decline for workers.”
The New Way We Work
Who are freelancers and contingent workers? The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has not done an official study since 2005, when it estimated that they were 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. workforce. If their income is reported on a 1099 tax form instead of on a W-2 form with deductions, its monthly payroll surveys won’t count them as having jobs. Its household surveys will count them as employed, but don’t ask about their job arrangements.
Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal codirector of the National Employment Law Project in New York, counts “everyone who’s not a W-2 employee,” including people paid on 1099s, franchisees, and people paid in cash, such as construction day laborers, as a contingent worker. Richard Greenwald arrived at his estimates by counting sole-proprietorship businesses and people who listed more income on 1099s than on W-2s.
The number has risen significantly in the last 15 years, Greenwald says, and the pace has increased since the recession began, with many new jobs “permatemps.” This trend affects workers at all income levels, but the fastest-growing sector is college graduates in “creative” fields. In the last few years, book publishers and advertising agencies have outsourced their graphic designers, hiring them back as freelancers with no benefits. Many publishers now hire editors on a per-manuscript basis.
“As the industry or technology tweaks, it often does so in a way that’s freelance or nonunion,” says Justin Molito, director of organizing with the Writers’ Guild of America East. For example, writers on HBO’s scripted shows are unionized, but those on basic cable and reality TV shows aren’t.
Greenwald distinguishes between workers who chose freelancing and those who were “shoved into it.” The most successful freelancers, he says, are information technology, management and finance consultants. They have a specific skill and steady clients, and “think of themselves as entrepreneurs.” Many white-collar freelancers make middle-class incomes, $45,000 to $50,000 a year, he says, but they have to pay for the office supplies, health insurance and taxes that would normally be covered by an employer, and they have no security.
This is not just a recession-induced thing, he says. It reflects a long-term change in the economy. Since the 1980s, management’s philosophy has evolved to “look at work as projects.” Instead of keeping workers on staff to perform all tasks needed, they outsource them or hire consultants.
“This gives companies tremendous flexibility without any risk,” Greenwald says. “Flexibility” means they don’t have to keep people on the payroll during slack periods, pay them when they’re sick, pay for their health insurance, or obey workplace regulations. This, he says, has “shifted all the risks that large institutions used to have onto the backs of individuals.”
“It’s a great business model, but as a social model, it doesn’t work,” he explains. Essentially, it means that the world of work is becoming more like the music business, in which a handful of superstars get rich and a minority of professionals have steady work with benefits, but most workers have to scuffle for intermittent, low-paying gigs, and hard work and talent are worthless without marketing skills, clout and charisma. “The bar to get in is low, but the ability to make a living is harder and harder,” he says.
The overall social change “might be as big as the shift from farm to factory,” Greenwald says. “I don’t think that many freelancers have thought of this as a permanent way of life. It seems to be a shift back to 19th-century artisanal culture.”
The Casual Working Class
Though the traditional image of a freelancer is a middle-class professional like a magazine writer or computer consultant, this shift affects a huge number of blue-collar workers too, especially in the fast-growing fields of warehousing, delivery and home healthcare. Many of these workers are now either temps or defined as “independent contractors.”
“Often relying on the use of temporary and staffing agencies, outsourcing in these industries has also resulted in comparatively lower wages for work similar to the jobs previously performed in-house,” the National Employment Law Project reported in “Chain of Greed,” a study of Walmart warehouses released in June.
At the Nissan auto factory in Canton, Mississippi, more than 20 percent of the 4,400 workers are temps, according to the Labor Notes monthly newsletter. The company says it plans to hire 1,000 new workers this year, but all will be temporary. The temps start at $12 an hour, below what permanent workers earn, and workers say no temp has ever been permanently hired at the plant. Even at Ford’s Detroit-area plants, the classic bastion of union industrial labor, local activist Dianne Feeley, a retired United Auto Workers member, says a significant percentage of workers are temps or contract workers.
“A huge problem,” says Catherine Ruckelshaus, is employers illegally defining workers as independent contractors. “Some employers are asking workers to form LLCs [limited liability companies, a form of business that combines features of a corporation and a partnership] before a construction drywall job.”
FedEx Ground, for example, defines its 15,000 drivers as independent contractors, even though they drive company-assigned routes and must drive vans with the FedEx logo and color scheme.
“There are millions of Americans classified as independent contractors by the companies they work for, but effectively working as employees,” American Rights at Work, a Washington-based labor-rights nonprofit, said in a 2007 report on FedEx Ground. “These workers suffer the worst of both worlds: they toil without the protections and benefits of employees, yet are without the control over their work that true independent contractors enjoy.”
The legal definition, Ruckelshaus says, is whether the person is running an independent business—are they investing their own money, and can they pass on increased costs? The Internal Revenue Service’s general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the person hiring them has “the right to control or direct only the result of the work,” while the worker decides “the means and methods of accomplishing the result.”
The scam’s advantage for employers is that they don’t have to pay minimum wage or overtime, Social Security, Medicare or unemployment taxes, or workers’ compensation. The result, the American Rights at Work report said, is that FedEx drivers not only make less money than those at UPS, who are permanent workers with a union; they also have to pay for gas and maintenance for their vans. Many lease vans from a company-approved supplier, Ruckelshaus says.
Some employers define even janitors and home healthcare aides as “franchisees,” she continues. For example, an office building’s management might hire a cleaning-services subcontractor, which will then have its workers buy the job of cleaning one section of the building in exchange for a piece of the company’s fee.
Coverall, a Florida-based cleaning-services company, calls its more than 9,000 workers “franchisees,” and its more than 90 regional offices are “support centers.” In Boston, says Ruckelshaus, these franchisees might have to pay the company as much as $10,000 to claim a job, recouping that investment from their wages. If they don’t have the money, they can borrow it from a company-recommended lender. In some cases, she says, they have had to work the first month on spec, getting paid for it only if the Coverall boss approves them for the job. They also have to buy cleaning equipment and supplies from the company. But Coverall makes the deals for the jobs, so the workers can’t raise their rates or ask the client for work on their own.
In home healthcare, a field with 3 million workers, mostly women, that is one of the fastest-growing job categories in the U.S. economy, for-profit agencies are calling themselves “registries” of independent contractors. They do this, says Ruckelshaus, even though they hire the workers, train them, assign them to jobs, and set rates. It means they don’t have to pay minimum wage or overtime.
“There’s no enforcement,” she says. “It becomes part of the structure of these jobs.”
Warehouse and shipping work is a major area of abuse. Walmart and Amazon outsource their massive warehouse and shipping operations to subcontractors, who then use temporary agencies to hire workers. Workers often don’t even know who their actual employer is, says Ruckelshaus.
“They pit these little subcontractors against each other,” says Erin Johansson, research director of American Rights at Work. “To compete and win a contract, you’ve got to pay your workers minimal wages.”
In this system, according to the “Chain of Greed” report, workers are paid piecework, according to the number of containers or trucks they finish unloading on a shift, instead of an hourly wage. They don’t get paid for anything else they do on the job. The result is “rampant minimum wage and overtime violations,” the report said. Workers also have to unload dangerously stacked piles of boxes, some of which weigh up to 200 pounds, says Johansson.
Walmart insists on ever-lower costs, so “workers are the ones getting squeezed and chiseled,” says Ruckelshaus. “This relationship is hurting low-wage women and those at the bottom of the supply chains, and the big corporations aren’t being held accountable for low wages and poor conditions.”
Another issue is that freelancers have almost no recourse if an employer cheats them. State wage-theft laws do not cover freelancers. If a client stiffs them, it’s considered a business dispute, so their only recourse is to sue in small-claims court. That can take months and multiple court appearances, and even if you win your case, collecting the debt is not guaranteed.
The Freelancers Union says 77 percent of its 180,000 members have had trouble collecting money they're owed. Earlier this year, it lobbied for New York to enact a law that would let stiffed freelancers file wage-theft complaints with the state Department of Labor. But in New York’s gerrymandered legislature, the measure wound up as a “one-house bill”: It passed in the Democrat-dominated Assembly, but never reached the floor in the Republican-controlled state Senate.
“If you have 30 percent of the workforce being exploited, that lowers standards for everybody,” says Johansson.
What Can Be Done?
Traditional union organizing is notoriously difficult with contingent workers. Organized labor’s strongest power over employers is workers’ ability to go on strike and stop production. If freelancers try that on their own, the employer will simply hire someone else. That they have neither a common location nor a collective workforce are also barriers to organizing collectively.
The Writers’ Guild of America, a union of TV and movie screenwriters, has successfully organized freelancers, winning elections and creating collective-bargaining agreements at studios. In July, it won company-paid health benefits, paid vacation, and a minimum salary for writers at two New York reality-show studios. But its 4,000 members’ status is much closer to permanent workers than most freelancers are. They usually work on long-term contracts, typically three or four years, and have “professional relationships and solidarity among themselves,” says Justin Molito.
“This is a long-term movement to aid those who’ve fallen through the cracks,” Molito says. “As other industries become more freelance, the labor movement has to develop strategies to create organizations that provide protections and make improvements.” Those strategies include “building a long-term movement, raising standards across the board, trying to organize an entire industry.”
The Freelancers’ Union’s Horowitz has largely abandoned the traditional union model, to the point where the organization might be more accurately described as a service and lobbying group than a labor union. Permanent workers are losing security and benefits, she says, so why should freelancers expect them?
“I exist in reality,” she says. “The first step is to admit that something’s changed.”
Instead, she touts what she calls the “new mutualism,” freelancers banding together on the principles of “affinity and solidarity,” such as networking and organizing cooperatives to buy food and health insurance. (The group sells nonprofit health insurance to 23,000 members in New York, and plans to expand that to New Jersey and Oregon in 2014, when the Obamacare insurance exchanges open.)
But how is any of that going to help get freelancers paid sick days? “Good luck with that,” she answers.
Organized freelancers “will be able to make the freelance economy work even better,” she explains in an e-mail, “by influencing the freelance labor market, by continuing to improve the laws that affect freelancers (i.e., passing legislation to give freelancers recourse when they are stiffed) and by continuing to give freelancers opportunities to work together.” On the other hand, she says the Freelancers Union will not be able on its own to “reverse larger economic trends” like declining wages in the media industry.
Workers should speak out about abuses, says Johansson. The bad publicity created by “shining a light on working conditions for large companies” such as Walmart and Amazon might help hold them accountable for how subcontractors and their workers are treated.
Legally, she says, “just enforcing the law” against misclassification would help. In June, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the 350 taxi drivers at Baltimore-Washington International Airport had been wrongly classified as independent contractors. Their employer, which has an exclusive contract for taxi service at the airport, is appealing the decision.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) have introduced bills to tighten the definition of an independent contractor.
Still, trying to improve conditions for freelancers and contingent workers is difficult in an economic system that has been vampirizing workers’ rights and incomes for a generation.
“The social contract that was part of American society for many years is dead,” says Greenwald. “We need to have a serious conversation about who’s winning and who’s not winning.”
The cutthroats can survive in this new world, he says, but “the rest of society is suffering.”
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Monday 6 August 2012
Why do Young People get Paid Less?
Why do Young People get Paid Less?:
At first glance the fact that companies are allowed to pay young people less for the same work that older people get paid more for might seem unfair. And I think for some people it is because they can already do the work that older people do at the same level, but the vast majority of young people’s work isn’t worth as much.
I put every effort into bringing you reliable information and keeping it up to date, but some information found on this website might not be accurate, complete or up to date. Please don’t rely 100% on the information I provide.
Please read the About page for more information.
The positions and jobs offered on this blog are provided by us obtaining details from other news sources and we always suggest you check out all posts and companies for further details. We will of course advise when a position is available within our organisation with our associates. Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share. Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]
At first glance the fact that companies are allowed to pay young people less for the same work that older people get paid more for might seem unfair. And I think for some people it is because they can already do the work that older people do at the same level, but the vast majority of young people’s work isn’t worth as much.
An Employer Has to Take Risks
when they hire teenagers. Generally they don’t have any past experience, require a lot of training and tend to quit sooner than older people. If everyone received an equal wage, regardless of their age, why would anyone decide to take in a potentially bad employee? Also for teenagers having a job is usually worth more than the money they get from it. It gives them work experience, professional training and knowledge about work relationships.Students Often Require Specific Work Hours
that adults wouldn’t need. When someone wants to employ someone they are looking to fix a problem. A solution is a lot less attractive if it is difficult to implement so there must be a reason for going with that solution over another. For an employee that usually takes the form of lower rewards for their time. I have been in the same position were I was seemingly doing the same work that other people were paid more for, but looking back I wasn’t as reliable and efficient as I am now a few years later.Related articles
- Seeking Success and Responding to Failure (auluftwaffles.com)
- Young People Are Left Behind On Jobs Front (huffingtonpost.com)
- UK youth employment challenge – A Report (jobmarketmonitor.com)
I put every effort into bringing you reliable information and keeping it up to date, but some information found on this website might not be accurate, complete or up to date. Please don’t rely 100% on the information I provide.
Please read the About page for more information.
The positions and jobs offered on this blog are provided by us obtaining details from other news sources and we always suggest you check out all posts and companies for further details. We will of course advise when a position is available within our organisation with our associates. Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share. Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]
How to Help Someone
How to Help Someone:
A lot of people try to help whenever they can. That is good, but there is definitely a good and a bad way of helping. You should be trying to assist, not impress or overwhelm. A lot of teachers aren’t good at helping well with problems either so even professionals might get something out of the tips below.
The other common technique is to give a step by step recipe to the solution. This usually involves particulars and helps with an individual problem, but when a similar question arises the answer you give won’t help and you get asked again.
You should not be the primary speaker whilst helping. You aren’t teaching, that task is already done. Whenever I found an demonstration good it was usually after I came to the solution myself, not after someone talked to me and I was nodding and assuring that I kept up with what I was told. Questions like “does that make sense?” are usually answered with yes or not at all regardless of whether it did or not. Glassy eyes and an open mouth and a lot of nodding is usually accompanied with your speech failing to connect.
On Saturdays and Sundays I will post articles about some topic that is relevant at the time. You can find all of them here.
I put every effort into bringing you reliable information and keeping it up to date, but some information found on this website might not be accurate, complete or up to date. Please don’t rely 100% on the information I provide.
Please read the About page for more information.
The positions and jobs offered on this blog are provided by us obtaining details from other news sources and we always suggest you check out all posts and companies for further details. We will of course advise when a position is available within our organisation with our associates. Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share. Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]
A lot of people try to help whenever they can. That is good, but there is definitely a good and a bad way of helping. You should be trying to assist, not impress or overwhelm. A lot of teachers aren’t good at helping well with problems either so even professionals might get something out of the tips below.
There is Helping and helping
one is where you try guiding to a solution, the other is where you go overboard with your explanation or just give the answer. There is a fine line between the two so be careful and observant of the other when you are talking. Don’t talk about something that isn’t really part of the solution. Often people say “Ohh, there is this other way that is much faster …” and then go off on a tangent wasting a lot of time.The other common technique is to give a step by step recipe to the solution. This usually involves particulars and helps with an individual problem, but when a similar question arises the answer you give won’t help and you get asked again.
Instead, Find Out where the Problem lies
and where something isn’t understood. If it is really basic, go back to definitions. Often questions relate to misunderstood information at the core of the question. Then guide through the procedure and speak only when you notice an error. If you get asked how to get around it talk about what the step is trying to do and why it needs to be done. Often the how is embedded in that explanation. At the end make sure that the answer isn’t just some numbers or symbols but rather that it carries a meaning and that the meaning is clear.You should not be the primary speaker whilst helping. You aren’t teaching, that task is already done. Whenever I found an demonstration good it was usually after I came to the solution myself, not after someone talked to me and I was nodding and assuring that I kept up with what I was told. Questions like “does that make sense?” are usually answered with yes or not at all regardless of whether it did or not. Glassy eyes and an open mouth and a lot of nodding is usually accompanied with your speech failing to connect.
On Saturdays and Sundays I will post articles about some topic that is relevant at the time. You can find all of them here.
I put every effort into bringing you reliable information and keeping it up to date, but some information found on this website might not be accurate, complete or up to date. Please don’t rely 100% on the information I provide.
Please read the About page for more information.
Related articles
- Making Mistakes and Problem Solving (quinncreative.wordpress.com)
- 93. “No need to explain, I got it” (marlenvargasdelrazo.wordpress.com)
- The 6 Characteristics of A Successful Educator (educatorstechnology.com)
The positions and jobs offered on this blog are provided by us obtaining details from other news sources and we always suggest you check out all posts and companies for further details. We will of course advise when a position is available within our organisation with our associates. Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share. Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]
Education and Career: Series Introduction
Education and Career: Series Introduction:
In this series I will go through all the stages of a career. From high school through the decision between University (college), other higher education and a work life, choosing a degree and finally applying for jobs. Along the way I will write about getting good grades, how to learn at the different stages and how to gain professional experience and building a good resume.
Higher education — Remember young man, your first step in the REAL WORLD is just 8 feet ahead. Best of luck !!! …item 2..Men and women both have different ways to get from A to B (2 May 2012) .. (Photo credit: marsmet471)is because a lot of people struggle with their education and with making career choices when they don’t have to. I’m not claiming its easy, but it certainly can involve much less stress and worry when you know what you are doing.
I will publish this series instead of the cooking series I have been doing on Monday. You can find the whole series here.
" The Roving Giraffe News Report " provided through Ace News Service
In this series I will go through all the stages of a career. From high school through the decision between University (college), other higher education and a work life, choosing a degree and finally applying for jobs. Along the way I will write about getting good grades, how to learn at the different stages and how to gain professional experience and building a good resume.
The Reason that I am doing this Series
Higher education — Remember young man, your first step in the REAL WORLD is just 8 feet ahead. Best of luck !!! …item 2..Men and women both have different ways to get from A to B (2 May 2012) .. (Photo credit: marsmet471)
I will publish this series instead of the cooking series I have been doing on Monday. You can find the whole series here.
Related articles
- University subsidies: do graduate winners need another prize? (theconversation.edu.au)
- Recession-proof careers: invest in a law degree (savings247.co.uk)
- Is Udacity The Future Of Higher Education (keptup.typepad.com)
- Class of 2012: what’s it like leaving higher education now? (guardian.co.uk)
" The Roving Giraffe News Report " provided through Ace News Service
Monday 26 March 2012
Teijin Aramid pioneers in protection technology for optical fiber cables
Arnhem, The Netherlands, March 19th, 2012 – Teijin Aramid announces a new and improved way of protecting optical fiber cables: Twaron Tape. Optical fiber cables play an increasing essential role in today’s telecommunications, and their fragile cores need protection from various hazards and strains.
Optical fiber cables are getting smaller and smaller – and at the same time it becomes more difficult to protect the optical fiber core. Twaron Tape is an aramid fiber matrix construction that enables the production of optical fiber cables with a diameter as small as 1.2mm. Simultaneously, it provides three to five times better crush resistance compared to currently used aramid fiber protection.
The production of thinner cables using Twaron Tape results into several more advantages compared to current solutions. For example, the production of 1.2mm cables translates into an increased capacity for optical distribution frames of 30-50% (compared with 1.6mm cable). Furthermore, the thinner cables demand less cooling power, thereby cutting costs – and emissions – at distribution centers.
Twaron Tape D2800 is a robust and flexible patented solution that contributes to increased cable production speed, saving valuable time. Twaron’s flexibility enables quicker and more convenient installation and handling, with easier stripping and connectorization of optical fiber cables. The Tape consists of a single, spread Twaron yarn which is impregnated and fixed with a matrix material. This results in significant saving in space and enables optical fiber cables to be this thin. In order to provide complete coverage and optimal force and crush resistance, it is evenly wrapped around the core of the optical fiber cable.
Christoph Hahn, Commercial Director at Teijin Aramid: “We are one of the early pioneers of reinforcement technology for fiber-optic cables, and as this market has developed, we have gained an in-depth understanding of the market requirements. We are proud to contribute to this industry by offering our knowledge in high performance aramid fibers to our worldwide partners.”
Teijin Aramid experts will be present at Wire Düsseldorf 2012, booth 9C37, to show Twaron Tape and discuss with visitors how they could benefit from the added value of this new product.
Here is a video to wet your appetite -
The contracts, positions and jobs offered on this blog are provided by us obtaining details from other news sources and we always suggest you check out all posts and companies for further details. We will of course advise when a position is available within our organisation with our associates. Need to email me leave a comment and use our new Disqus box and share. Thank you, Ian Draper [Editor]
Wednesday 8 February 2012
" Pay Day Loans And The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
" Pay Day Loans And The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
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These loans originally started in the US and are now commonplace in the UK and are not the type of funds anyone should be contemplating as an easy fix solution to short term borrowing. If you are or need advice leave a comment but can l suggest you listen to this video and it may help you to avoid the problems that you may have with this type of lending.
I will be writing more on this subject very shortly and providing in depth terms and conditions of lenders you should avoid and those that are not as bad.
All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.
NB Please ignore the note about comments being closed as it applies to youtube and not our our comments box, you can log into any social media and share this we need to spread the word.
I will be writing more on this subject very shortly and providing in depth terms and conditions of lenders you should avoid and those that are not as bad.
All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.
NB Please ignore the note about comments being closed as it applies to youtube and not our our comments box, you can log into any social media and share this we need to spread the word.
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" One Persons Story Of Being In Debt"
" One Persons Story Of Being In Debt": 
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Have you ever considered how to borrow money when you really need help and guidance maybe listening to this story you will be able to appreciate how other people can help you. This is one such account of Lissette and is well worth a listen and please comment using our comments box.
All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.
All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.
https://twitter.com/ad144000hoe
Analysis: Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 to be United
Analysis: Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 to be United:
#AceNewsServices
Microsoft will align its next major updates of Windows, both for phone and computers. Windows Phone 8 & Windows 8 will have several features and architecture in common like networking stacks, security and multimedia architecture.
It is also being reported that Windows Phone 8 will support multi-core processors, multiple screen resolutions, SD Cards and even C/ C++ programming. It is also worth noting that Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 will both run Metro apps, hence harmonizing the user experience over various Microsoft devices and reducing the time in learning curve of the user.
In a video, Joe Belfiore, manager of Windows Phone for Microsoft, said that the intention is for developers to be able to
“re-use, by far, most of their code” when moving behind the desktop and smartphone platforms. This should also help Microsoft to seamlessly transition many of its existing PC developers to mobile, resulting in a much larger pool creating apps. (Quote Courtesy: Mobile Business Briefing)
If the unification of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 occurs as planned and some applications could be used in both platforms while others easily portable, there is no doubt that a lot of developers will be attracted to develop apps for Windows based devices and hit maximum customers by a single app. This will also support the Windows Phone marketplace which has considerably lesser apps as compared to Apple Store and Android Market.
All of it depends on Microsoft’s ability to pull off the coup and change the app marketplace forever. However, if it fails to do so, Microsoft will lose credibility and will be left far behind Google and Apple especially in battle to attain superiority in the mobile and tablet platforms.
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