minimum wage

JLC Summer Hearings Schedule

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Our four key legislative priorities this year are the Safe Communities Act, paid family and medical leave, the $15/hour minimum wage and elimination of the tipped sub-minimum wage, the Fair Share Amendment. An important step in passing these laws is the hearing process.It's critical that advocates for these progressive pieces of legislation show up in force to demonstrate the widespread community support during the hearings and the Constitutional Convention. We hope you will join us.We encourage you to attend these lobby and hearing sessions for any portion of time you can. The length of each hearing will vary and is difficult to predict.If you have personal experience with topics covered by these bills and would like to share you experience publicly through a written statement or testimony, please contact Jenna at jenna.nejlc@gmail.com. Please also contact Jenna with any further questions about timing or logistics.


Safe Communities Act Hearing

When: Friday, June 9 | 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House Rooms A1 & A2


Paid Family and Medical Leave Hearing

When: Tuesday, June 13 | Briefing & Lobbying 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. | Hearing 1:00-4:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House | Briefing in Room 327 | Hearing in Room B2We will meet for a briefing and designated time to lobby your elected officials before the hearing time. We strongly encourage you to attend the pre-hearing program and to lobby your officials.


Fight for $15/Minimum Wage Hearing

When: Tuesday, September 19 | Briefing & Lobbying 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. | Hearing 1:00-4:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House | Briefing Room TBA | Hearing in Gardner AuditoriumWe will meet for a briefing and designated time to lobby your elected officials before the hearing time. We strongly encourage you to attend the pre-hearing program and to lobby your officials.


Fair Share Amendment Constitutional Convention

When: Wednesday, June 14 | 12:30 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House, House Chamber  

JLC Statement on Nomination of Puzder for Secretary of Labor

Jewish Labor Committee Opposes the Nomination of CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder to be the United States Secretary of Labor

December 22, 2016 New York, NY

The Jewish Labor Committee opposes the nomination of CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder to be the United States Secretary of Labor, as proposed by President-elect Donald Trump. It is unprecedented to appoint a corporate chief executive officer to this position, especially one who in his public statements, in the sexist advertising promoted by his company, and in his numerous writings has made clear he opposes most of the laws he will be sworn to enforce. A man who makes $17,912 in a day and who argues against a raise for minimum wage workers is not an acceptable Secretary of Labor.

Mr. Puzder has been CEO of a company which has been cited repeatedly for violations of our nation's employment and safety laws. That alone should automatically disqualify him from becoming Secretary of Labor. When the Department of Labor conducted investigations of the 20 largest fast food brands, more than half of the CKE-affiliated restaurants investigated were found to have at least one wage and hours violation. The company admits in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it faces multiple class action lawsuits over violations of wage and hour laws. Since Mr. Puzder took over as CKE CEO in 2000, the company has been cited 98 times for safety violations, including 36 classified as "serious", meaning risking death or grave physical harm to employees. Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, has argued that it is "hard to think of anyone less suited for the job" and we agree that a CEO whose company has such a record of rampant violations of the law is not a credible enforcer of labor and employment laws against other employers.

On policy, Mr. Puzder has been an outspoken opponent of government taking action to help raise wages of low-income workers, including opposing expanding coverage of overtime rules and raising the minimum wage. We are deeply concerned that Mr. Puzder has publicly promoted predictions of job loss in cities and states that have raised the minimum wage, but seems to refuse to adjust his views now that those predictions of job loss have proven false in cities and states with higher minimum wages such as New York and California. There is no place for such a rigid anti-worker ideologue in the position of Secretary of Labor.

We ask the United States Senate to reject this nomination when it is asked to deliberate on it early in 2017.

Jewish Community Must Join the Fight for $15 Minimum Wage

wages11— by Stuart ApplebaumFrom The Philadelphia Jewish Voice Jewish law and tradition are clear about our duty to fight for the basic rights of all working people.Shantel Walker makes $9 per hour at the Papa John’s restaurant in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood where she’s worked for the for the last 15 years, almost half her life. Because her wages are so low, she often has to choose between eating lunch or buying a Metrocard to get to work. She shares a one-bedroom apartment with family members, but still worries about making ends meet every month.But Ms. Walker is not staying silent and letting her challenges get her down. She is standing up and joining with other fast-food workers across the country in calling for fairness and respect on the job. Since late 2012, fast-food workers have been walking off the job as part of regular one-day strikes and their ranks have recently been supported by home health care aides, adjunct professors, airport baggage handlers and other low-wage workers. Their demand? $15 per hour and a union.The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is nothing close to a living wage. If someone earning the minimum wage is fortunate enough to be able to work full-time hours (and many are not), they would earn only $15,080 per year, which is under the poverty line for a family of two. At the current minimum wage, workers struggle paycheck-to-paycheck, and if they are able to pay all their bills at the end of the month, they are not able to save anything for an emergency, let alone for their retirement.Rising wages will allow millions of people across the country to lift their heads up and look towards the future with hope. But it will also benefit our economy at-large. A $15 per hour minimum wage will inject billions of dollars into local economies as many are finally able to buy new clothing for their children and other basic necessities. It will also ease state budgets, as millions who currently rely on state assistance will finally be able to afford groceries and rent.The history of American Jewry demands that we join with workers in their struggle for justice. When many of our ancestors first came to the United States, they worked low-wage jobs in the garment sector and other industries. Their experiences of struggle and pain encouraged many to organize and form unions that then fought for and won many of the basic wage and safety standards that we now take for granted. These gains enabled our families to raise their standards of living to where they are now, but we must never forget what it took to get here.The good news is that workers’ voices are having an impact. Already, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle have passed ordinances to raise their minimum wages to $15. Even more cities and states have passed smaller minimum wage increases that are an important first step for improving workers’ lives. But our obligation is not over until every working person has the ability to support their family without undue burden.At the very least, Jewish law and tradition means that we need to stand in solidarity with people such as Ms. Walker, who are taking a stand for the chance for a better life. Stuart Appelbaum is President of the Jewish Labor Committee.

Long Before Politicians Backed Wage Increases, Talmudic Sages Argued the Cause

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Earlier this year a statewide Massachusetts coalition to raise the minimum wage included two Jewish advocacy groups—the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action and the Jewish Labor Committee. About 50 representatives from 15 synagogues collected 9,000 signatures that were submitted to the state legislature as part of a successful effort to increase the state minimum. (The statewide coalition collection 360,000 signatures in all.)Synagogue outreach efforts met no organized opposition, said JALSA Director Sheila Decter, but neither was support always easy to come by: “Some of the Conservative synagogues worried about the impact within the synagogue. They focused on shalom bayit (peace in the house),” among congregants with opposing views on wage increases. Dechter continued, “That can sometimes become an excuse for not dealing with the substance of the issue.” But Jewish Labor Committee Director Marya Axner assesses a general level of support: “It’s written so many times—the source texts are really not kidding,” she commented, “This issue makes sense to people, even Jews who are not sympathetic to the labor movement.”Perhaps the most advanced level of organized Jewish involvement has been a trifecta of campaigns involving Jews United for Justice, based in Washington, D.C. Through the end of the statewide effort in May 2014, JUJ was a key player in organizing mass support for minimum-wage bills in the district (to $11.50 plus index and sick days); in adjacent and significantly Jewish Montgomery County (to $11.50); and as a secondary player in a legislated increase for the state of Maryland (to $10.10).“Thousands of people participated in these campaigns through JUJ,” says Jacob Feinspan, the organization’s executive director. JUJ grounds almost every campaign talk in a religious text and finds that the response among congregations to their message is generally warm: “Most people are surprised and excited to learn that the tradition has been grappling with these issues throughout its history,” says Feinspan.And so it has. Jewish source texts exhort the community to “champion the poor and needy” and mandate that employers “do not oppress” employees by manipulating wages and conditions of work. One discussion among three Talmudic commentators even illustrates the difference between “oppressing” employees and “robbing” them. And Meir Tamari, founder of the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem and probably the most recognized scholar of halakhic economic law, has written that “market forces must be constrained by consideration of justice and righteousness,” including some regulation of profits and prices.More specifically, the minimum wage was itself a hot topic among the Talmudic sages.The rabbis expected that employers would naturally attempt to minimize their labor costs. The Talmudic commentator Rava might be interpreted to argue rhetorically against a wage floor itself when he asks, “Has it ever been forbidden to reduce one’s hire to the lowest level?”Yet in the context of his other commentaries, it’s obvious that Rava is actually sympathetic to the hardship that low wages cause. He notes that the livelihood of low-income workers must be protected, even for those who break serious laws: “In the case of a laborer whose wage is small the rabbis did not impose a penalty.” Another commentator, Rav Yehoshua, holds that a new worker should be paid no less than the lowest existing wage.Most Talmudic opinions, though, are even more worker-friendly and find that the lowest existing wage is still insufficient, explicitly rejecting such a wage as too low if a new worker is hired. Rather than paying a just-arrived employee “as one or two of the (lowest-wage) townspeople” are paid, the sages say that “an average (of wages in effect for that job) must be struck.” The math suggests that the Talmudic logic lifts all boats steadily if slowly; add a minimum-wage worker to the average and it goes down. Add an average wage worker to the pot and the average increases.The sages considered a bottom-level wage disrespectful, inviting discontent and resistance. Efforts to deliver quality work underlay the difference in wages for a given job, even when menial jobs like filling and stacking bags of dirt on a dyke are at issue. The Talmud uses the example of workers complaining to a foreman who tried to reduce their wages: “Since you told us (the job) was for four zuz (not two), we took the trouble of doing the work particularly well.”In the current environment, minimum-wage levels have become politicized. The 2014 wage-increase initiatives range from $8.50 to $15—differences that often reflect the balance of local forces more than comparable local living costs. That’s one reason that many economists who favor increased wage levels like to talk about a “living wage” concept rather than the minimum-wage level alone.One way to assess a true living wage: Take the federal poverty line and multiply it by 130 percent—the maximum level allowed to receive food stamp assistance. Then add on the value of the food stamps themselves. The total works out to about $32,300 per year, or about $15.50/hour—precisely the minimum wage being targeted in high-cost cities like Seattle, New York, and San Francisco.Economist Lawrence Glickman has articulated the living wage as “. . . a wage level that offers workers the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect, and to have both the means and the leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.” Before him, Maimonides described the living wage in a commentary on how to compensate scribes. He asks, “How much are they paid?” and then concludes: “Ninety maneh a year. If this is not sufficient, they are given—even against their will—an additional amount sufficient to meet their needs, those of their wives, their children, and the other members of their household.” No race to the bottom there; rather, in the Jewish tradition, a living wage—enough to take care of a socially viable household—is required.