Are Unions Still Relevant?

In a recent conversation with a solidly middle-class friend, I was confronted by her comment that “we just don’t need unions anymore.” She went on to say that unions were “very important” years ago when “manufacturing was king in our country and workers were subjected to unsafe working conditions, long hours with no overtime, and no holidays.”

I was outraged and tried to explain to her that we need unions now more than ever. In fact, I said, it was unions that built the middle class in America and unions that are the only hope to save the middle class (which seems to be disappearing before our eyes.)

Do we still have a middle class in America? And how would you respond to this friend of mine?

Has the Labor Dept. Failed Workers?

In a recent article in the New York Times, reporter Steven Greenhouse described a GAO report finding the Labor Department’s Wage and House Division grossly unresponsive to worker complaints.

In one case, a GAO undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called the division four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks. It took four months to receive a return call.

According to Greenhouse, “The accountability office also investigated hundreds of cases that it said the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled. In one, the division waited 22 months to investigate a complaint from a group of restaurant workers. Ultimately, investigators found that the workers were owed $230,000 because managers had made them work off the clock and had misappropriated tips. When the restaurant agreed to pay back wages but not the tips, investigators simply closed the case.

“In another case, the accountability office found that workers at a boarding school in Montana were not paid more than $200,000 in overtime. But when the employer offered to pay only $1,000 in back wages as the two-year statute of limitations approached, the division dropped the case.”

It appears that new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has her work cut out for her cleaning up the mess left by her predecessor.

What are your thoughts? Is the Labor Department broken? And how can it be fixed?

Should NSPS be revoked?

Now that the Pentagon and Office of Personnel Management are putting NSPS under the microscope, what are your thoughts about the new personnel system?

Is it working?

Where are its weaknesses? What, if anything, can be done to fix those weaknesses or, do you think the system is too flawed to repair and it’s time to revoke NSPS altogether?