Free Republic

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said President Barack Obama will take "aggressive executive action" on immigration, which Perez said will bring about more "shared prosperity." Addressing the National Press Club this week, Perez, who is reportedly on the short list to be Obama´s next attorney general, said the country needed to "fix our broken immigration system" with comprehensive amnesty legislation that is "big and bold" to ensure that there is "shared prosperity," which he said is a goal of his Labor Department. Though the Congressional Budget Office determined that comprehensive amnesty legislation would lower the wages of American workers, Labor Secretary...

Paid leave will improve the nation's labor participation rate, currently at record lows, Labor Secretary Tom Perez said on Monday. "It is a sleeper issue that will sleep no more," Perez told a gathering at the National Press Club. "Every first Friday of the month, the most frequently asked question I get, 'What can you do, Tom, to increase labor force participation?' Well, let's talk about paid leave and let's compare the United States with Canada," Perez said. "The labor force participation rate of women ages 25 to 54 in the year 2000 in the U.S. and Canada was virtually...

Kinkisharyo International LLC has scrapped plans to build a rail car manufacturing plant in Palmdale following a labor dispute and will instead look outside California to locate the facility. The Japanese company made the decision after failing to reach an agreement with Antelope Valley Residents for Responsible Development, a labor-supported group that objected to the plant citing environmental reasons. The group, which includes members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 11, in Pasadena, also objected to a backup plan by Kinkisharyo to build the cars in leased space from Los Angeles World Airports in Palmdale.

Everyone who isn't an Obamabot (Paul Krugman) or above the age of 5 knows that the current "official" unemployment rate of 5.9% is bogus. The real number that counts is the labor participation rate which has been shrinking for more than 5 years.Why is the labor force participation rate important? Ken Braun of MLive has very clear explanation: The U.S. “civilian noninstitutional population” - the total count of civilian adults - grew by 217,000 in September, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor. Those new entrants represent immigrants, young people coming of age, military personnel...

Most Americans think federal employees are working for the public. But a new report issued by the Office of Personnel Management on Monday shows that in fiscal 2012, 1.2 million federal workers spent 3.4 million hours reporting to their government unions. Paradoxically, time spent not working for the taxpayer is called “official time.” OPM reports that official time costs taxpayers $157 million in salary and benefits, up from $129 million in 2009 and $102 million in 2006. Taxpayers are subsidizing unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union and the National Federation of Federal...

Dawn Lafreeda began working at Denny’s when she was 16, making her way up from hostess to waitress. In 1984, at the age of 23, she bought her first store. She now owns over 70. “When I was a kid, I told myself that I was going to be self-employed when I grew up and have a better life and have the things I’d never had,” she told Entrepreneur magazine this past summer. Franchising was Dawn’s ticket to a better life. She’s not alone. Franchising has been a successful business model for Americans wanting to own their own businesses and...

“We made a decision very early on that protecting the Senate firewall was our top priority,” LCV spokesman Jeff Gohringer told The Hill.House Democratic strategists are frustrated that key outside groups are putting their money into the fight for the Senate at the expense of the House. Spending on House races by organized labor as well as groups representing women and environmental organizations as dropped by $18 million compared to the last cycle, the groups said. That has Democrats worried their House losses on Election Day could be in the double digits, making it that much harder to take back...

While by now everyone should know the answer, for those curious why the US unemployment rate just slid once more to a meager 5.9%, the lowest print since the summer of 2008, the answer is the same one we have shown every month since 2010: the collapse in the labor force participation rate, which in September slide from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7% - the lowest in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. And while according to the Household Survey, 232K people found jobs, what is more disturbing is that the people not in the...

Hey, no bigs. The state just fined a tiny winery $115,000 for using volunteers who were learning to make wine while getting the vineyard’s product to market. They were illegal paid labor, you see. Can’t have two free parties engaging in a trade of labor for specialized knowledge without the state getting involved and depriving the area of this particular business, its job opportunities, and its wares. Congrats, public. You have been served and protected: A small-time vintner’s use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000...

There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. ... Those attempting to minimize the startling figures about America’s vanishing workforce—workplace participation overall is near a four-decade low—will say an aging population is to blame. But in fact, while the workforce overall has shrunk nearly 10 million since 2009, the cohort of workers in the labor force ages 55 to...

The Department of Labor coordinated with the White House on whether or not to release hidden portions of former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ schedule as Solis battled an FBI investigation into her illegal fundraising for President Obama. New emails provided to The Daily Caller from the nonprofit legal research firm Cause of Action show the White House thanking the Department of Labor for “flagging” a public information request for “withheld” portions of Solis’ schedule. (SEE THE EMAIL CHAIN). The White House then asked for the name of the conservative group making the request — information that Labor officials were eager...

Opposition leader MK Yitzhak Herzog (Labor) was assured by officials in Washington on Tuesday that the United States will not compromise on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. Herzog met at the White House with President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken, and told them that the fight against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) is just as important as trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli media reported that the two officials assured Herzog that alongside the common global struggle against the IS, the United States does not intend to change...

<p>The largest government infusion of cash into the U.S. economy in generations – the 2009 stimulus – was riddled with a massive labor scheme that harmed workers and cheated unsuspecting American taxpayers.</p> <p>At the time, government regulators watched as money slipped out the door and into the hands of companies that rob state and federal treasuries of billions of dollars each year on stimulus projects and other construction jobs across the country, a yearlong McClatchy investigation found.</p>

<p>Time was, they had fact-checkers at the White House. They must've had the weekend off when President Obama let go a whopper at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee.</p> <p>'By almost every measure," he boasted, "the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office." This must explain why nearly half of American workers believe the U.S. is still in a recession.</p>

President Barack Obama says he’ll press Congress to raise the minimum wage in the same way he courted his wife — never taking no for an answer. Obama brought a buoyant Labor Day message to Wisconsin, telling union members on Monday that he sees, quote, “engines are revving a little louder” in an economy coming back from a near-depression five years ago. Now, he says, quote, “America deserves a raise.” He promises his administration will keep pushing for one. Obama told the crowd to great applause that he would join a union for job security.

Cookouts now mark Labor Day, instead of parades honoring country’s labor movement, says AFL-CIO honcho Richard Trumpka. (Picture) Few recall the bloodstained origins of this holiday as we fire up the grill, throw on the burgers and dogs and turn on the U.S. And, in a sign of the times, the Sunday morning network news shows didn’t even offer their usual, token pre-Labor Day weekend spot for the head of the nation’s labor movement. “No,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka when I asked him. “No invitations this year.” I told the former mine worker-turned-lawyer that there seems to be a...

California’s economic recovery has featured a growing share of lower-wage jobs, raising concerns about the opportunities for middle-class workers hit hard by the Great Recession, a new analysis finds. The California Budget Project, a nonprofit economic research group, analyzed decades of state labor data to find that low- and middle-wage workers have seen significant pay declines over the last decade. Local and state government jobs -- traditionally a reliable source of middle-class employment -- have been particularly slow to recover. -snip- Looking ahead, low-wage jobs are forecast to be one of the fastest-growing segments of the workforce. The state expects...

Labor Day used to be more than a summer-closing holiday; it was a celebration of labor unions and the American labor movement. That’s easy to forget these days because labor unions don’t have much to celebrate. At the height of their influence in the 1950s, labor unions could claim to represent about 1 of every 3 American workers. Today, it’s 1 in 9 — and falling. Some have seen the shrinking size and waning influence of labor unions as a sign that the US economy is growing more flexible and dynamic, but there’s mounting evidence that it is also contributing...

MK Erel Margalit (Labor) sharply condemned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday morning, in the wake of the massive renewed rocket fire by Hamas terrorists since Tuesday afternoon in breach of the ceasefire. "Where is the prime minister?" asked Margalit on his Facebook page. "This is a disgrace, simply a disgrace. There's no other definition of what is happening here. A terrorist organization is holding target practice on Israel and deciding for it. It sends Israeli residents time and again to shelters and disrupts their lives," continued the MK. Hamas has itself supported Margalit's appraisal that it is determining what...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is preparing to sign an executive order cracking down on labor violations by companies that contract with the federal government, the White House said Wednesday. Obama's order will require companies seeking federal contracts valued at more than $500,000 to make public any labor law violations in the last three years, a step the Obama administration hopes will incentivize companies to resolve labor disputes such as back wage claims.