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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDoes President Obama Even Know What His Administration is Doing?-- (Amazon Worker's Action)
Published on
Friday, November 14, 2014
by
Black Agenda Report
The Obama Administration.... Standing Up For Poor and Working People Since... Never
by
Bruce Dixon
-----------
In warehouses and in retail, wage stealing by bosses, forcing people to work off the clock, and compelling them to wait in half hour long lines without pay for exit security checks are shockingly commonplace practice. Though all are pretty much illegal, and according to economist Dr. Richard Wolff, the amount corporate employers steal from the wages of workers year is roughly three times the monetary value of all the nation's armed robberies, state and federal prosecutors rarely bother to investigate or indict.
----snip---
The reality is that with no help from federal or state prosecutors, and in a legal atmosphere which makes union organizing more difficult than any time in the last seven decades, workers are forced to seek individual relief in the courts. An Amazon.com worker filed in federal court against his bosses, who forced employees to stand in line without pay for a daily security check before being allowed to leave the job. Workers asked to be paid for the time. Amazon said no. They asked their bosses to buy another scanning machine and hire more security staff to speed up the process. Amazon said no. And again, this is a common practice across a large section of retail and warehouse employers.
It took a couple years, but a federal judge ruled in favor of Amazon's workers, and an appeals court also ordered Amazon to pay them. Amazon's platoon of lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear the case.
"...If it suited the president to stand up for poor and working families in the campaign just past, many more Democrat voters might have turned out..."
And who did the Obama administration side with? The administration that would not help workers secure their rights with new laws, and would not prosecute employers for wage theft filed not one brief in favor of Amazon.com's right to NOT pay its workers, but two --- one from the Justice Department, and another from the Department of Labor, the cabinet bureaucracy supposedly created to safeguard the rights of working people. Bosses are watching this case carefully, and corporate media are for the most part ignoring it just as carefully.
If Amazon.com, the retail and warehousing industry, and the Obama administration get their way on this case, employers will be free to define the work processes so as to avoid paying employees for suiting up with protective gear, cleaning and maintaining machinery when the machinery is not running, and declaring that a wide variety of actual work tasks essential to their businesses are not work and should not be paid at all.
President Obama and the first lady regularly do personal appearances and speechifying at Wal-Mart and Amazon using a hundred or so diverse looking workers as their backdrop. ['b]They routinely praise these companies for their efficiency and innovation, even though the real names for that innovation and that efficiency are ecocide, genocide, robbing public treasuries and impoverishing their workers.
If it suited the president to stand up for poor and working families in the campaign just past, many more Democrat voters might have turned out. He could have spent a week jumping out of Air Force One to barnstorm the country with speeches and appearances talking up raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, or even indexing it to the cost of living, like civilized countries do. That's how advances are made. But the president spent the last two weeks of the campaign in rooms full of five and six figure donors.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/14/obama-administration-standing-poor-and-working-people-never
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)not gridlocked democracy. And of course he knows.
Revealing article. Thanks for posting it.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)When they won't go after Amazon and the like should anyone be surprised?
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)has convinced me that the "Media Industrial/Corporate War Machine" will ever change.
In FACT! It GROWS LARGER!
A GIGANTO (Silicon Valley Tech Industry Mogul's GREED).......SUCKING UP EVERTHING!
Tell Me that I'm Wrong?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)What is the reason for both the Justice Department and the Labor Department filing briefs against the Amazon workers? What do the briefs say? What is their argument? What is going on here?
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Might as well be on the payroll of the hyper rich. Yet surprisingly many BOG ers blame voters for staying home
Bobbie Jo
(14,341 posts)What's up with the BOG obsession??
I mean you make some sort of derogatory comment, naming BOG, in virtually every single post.
I don't post in the BOG, but it just seems a tad obsessive.
Just an observation.....
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)where they aren't allowed to trash Obama.
It drives 'em fucking crazy.
Sid
CrispyQ
(36,509 posts)~kick.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)where he said he spends all his time fighting for people like me.
2banon
(7,321 posts)during FDR. There were times when I had wondered whether or not Michelle would ever take a position in opposition of the oligarchy's agenda.
Sigh, I no longer even hold out a sliver of hope in this regard.
Tashca
(974 posts)Thanks for posting.
Response to KoKo (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
KoKo
(84,711 posts)which Undermines what Obama ran on.
Either he wants to keep his "hands clean" to get a nice Gig after Election 2016 or he's not "in Control" of the Ops in his Closest Advisers...
I think it's something we Dem Voters need to be concerned about for 2016 with our Candidates.
WHO are our DEM CANDIDATES ....beholden to? Themselves, Their Funders, Their Future Ahead for Profit......or "Lastly....Their Voters?"
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)the go-to source when someone wants to show that black people aren't happy with Obama either.
Sid