Better pay for home care workers under U.S. labor rule, CA bill

Don't be fooled.  It's all about more union membership!!

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday that federal minimum wage and overtime requirements will be extended to home health aides, certified nursing assistants and other workers who provide home care to the elderly, injured and disabled.

California currently requires employers, including individuals and families who privately pay for the services, to pay minimum wage, but not overtime. The federal rule change would require overtime at time and a half for those workers who log more than 40 hours a week beginning in 2015.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez said Tuesday's announcement will ensure home care workers are paid a fair wage and "no longer treated like teenage baby-sitters."

Of the nearly 2 million people employed as home health care workers, approximately 90 percent are women and 40 percent rely on some type of public assistance.

"It's really a simple matter of fairness," said Henry Claypool, executive vice president of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

The federal mandate comes on the heels of a California bill calling for some domestic workers - in-home nannies and caregivers - to receive overtime pay for working more than nine hours a day or 45 hours in a week.

Assembly Bill 241 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, passed the Legislature last week and is awaiting consideration by Gov. Jerry Brown. While there is overlap between the two, Ammiano's office said they are still urging Brown to sign their bill because there are some differences in who and when a person is eligible for overtime.

If signed, Ammiano's bill would be on the books in January and provide overtime protections beyond nine hours a day, instead of the weekly threshold under the federal rule. Ammiano's bill includes in home child care workers, whereas the federal law does not.

Via: Sacramento Bee

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Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/#storylink=cpy

Federal Job Corps Vans Used to Bus Voters in Wisconsin

Media Trackers has found federal Job Corps vans being used to bus voters to at least one polling location in the City of Milwaukee. A van with federal plates and driven by a Job Corps employee was seen pulling up to the small polling station at the Clara Barton Elementary School in urban Milwaukee shortly after 1:00 pm on Tuesday. A Job Corps administrator inside the polling place said the federal vans had brought approximately 125 Job Corps participants to the poll as of early afternoon.

 

The administrator declined to give his name. The Job Corps is a division of the United States Department of Labor, a cabinet level agency that reports directly to President Obama, who is up for re-election today and who has campaigned hard in Wisconsin in recent days.

 

Poll workers inside the location struggled to handle the extra traffic created by the Job Corps participants brought in from a nearby training facility. A number of them were first time voters who had to be registered using Wisconsin’s same-day registration procedure. At one point a poll worker had to be asked by an unidentified election observer to confirm that a would-be registrant actually lived in the precincts served by the polling location.

Via: Media Trackers

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States That Spent Most Per-Pupil Get Labor Dept. Grants; States That Spent Least Get None

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Labor Department announced last week that it will distribute $75.7 million in taxpayer-funded YouthBuild grants to provide instruction and occupational training for high school dropouts, ages 16 to 24.

With some 5,000 individuals expected to benefit, the grants average $15,140 for each “out of school” individual. Meanwhile, the nation's elementary-secondary public school systems spent an average $10,615 per pupil in fiscal year 2010, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to a  June 2012 Census Bureau’s report, the District of Columbia spent the most on education in 2010 – $18,667 per student. The Labor Department just awarded a $1,099,932 YouthBuild grant to the city’s Sasha Bruce Youthwork Inc., which helps young people “transform their lives.”

New York spent the second highest amount on each pupil – $18,618. Six recipients in that state will receive a combined total of $5,209,046 from taxpayers through the YouthBuild grants.

New Jersey ranks third, spending $16,841 per pupil in fiscal year 2010. The Labor Department is awarding five grants to that state for a combined total of $4,323,900.

Census figures show that states spending the least per pupil were Utah ($6,064), Idaho ($7,106), Arizona ($7,848) and Oklahoma ($7,896). And none of those states received grant funding from the Labor Department.

Via: CNSNews

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House Ways and Means chairman demands Delphi pension termination documents from Obama administration

Republican House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp demanded Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury Department and the Obama administration release records connected to an emerging scandal surrounding autoworker pensions terminated during the auto bailout. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and the Treasury Department axed pensions in 2009 for 20,000 non-union salaried retirees who worked for Delphi.

Those workers’ pension plans lost between 30 and 70 percent of their value, while similar plans covering members of the United Auto Workers and other labor unions were preserved and made whole.

Camp fired off letters to PBGC director Josh Gotbaum, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, asking for dosuments by September 7. His committee seeks internal documents and communications relating to the decision-making process that resulted in those pension losses for non-union Delphi retirees.

From the PBGC, Camp demanded Gotbaum provide “all records, including but not limited to electronic mail to or from PBGC, the Departments of Treasury, Labor and Commerce and the Executive Office of the President of the United States” that relate to Delphi and General Motors’ interest in Delphi “for the period of January 1 through December 31, 2009.”

He demanded similar documents from Geithner and Ruemmler.

Via: The Daily Caller

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