Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.

Here’s the best video I could find for Billy Bragg’s version of the Internationale, a stirring tune. Pete Seeger pressed Bragg to write new lyrics to it because he felt there wasn’t a good version in English. (In case you were wondering, this is offered in the spirit of democracy and human rights; I’m not an anarchist nor a commie, although I sometimes joke about being a commie with my conservative friends and family to make them laugh. Come to think of it, at least one conservative family member likes Seeger, too.)
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Citizen Carrie at Brilliant at Breakfast has an extensive post on H-1B visas called “The Never-Ending Post, or, Government and Business Leaders Work 24/7 To Keep Americans Away From High Tech Jobs.” Here’s a sample:

As reported earlier, Microsoft’s Bill Gates testified in front of Congress on March 12, 2008 by reading off his list of demands for the high tech industry. The crux of his speech is that he claims that we are not graduating enough students with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills, and businesses are forced to hire workers from overseas to fill all of the job openings. (And, oh, by the way, the tech industry can pay these foreign workers less money.)

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Today’s day sixteen of the Hollywood writers’ strike. Many blogs have done a superb job covering it, and it’s been nice to see at least a few conservative blogs among the supporters. If you haven’t been following all of the story, I hope this post will bring you up to speed.

Here’s “Why We Fight,” which lays out the basic issues. In a nutshell, the studios make immense profits, but still want to pay writers miniscule royalties - or none:

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SLAP!

Judge blocks U.S. illegal worker crackdown

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. federal court judge on Wednesday blocked a key part of the Bush administration’s stepped-up efforts to crack down on illegal immigrant workers and those who employ them.

Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction against a program that would force employers to verify Social Security numbers and fire workers whose numbers did not match official records.

The federal program developed by the Department of Homeland Security is at the heart of a new crackdown on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, after Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

But the “no-match letter” program was challenged in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO and other labor groups claiming it was unlawful and hurt all workers, including legal ones affected by errors in the data base.

Leonard Anderson, Reuters

Reuters

…took another hit this morning. Thank you, Mr. Bush.

The MONITOR:

Court Limits Suits on Pay Discrimination

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited workers’ ability to sue employers for pay discrimination that results from decisions made years earlier.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling, said that employers would otherwise find it difficult to defend against claims “arising from employment decisions that are long past.”

The case concerned how to apply a 180-day deadline for complaining about discriminatory pay decisions under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Lilly Ledbetter sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., claiming that after 19 years at the company’s Gadsden, Ala., plant, she was making $6,000 a year less than the lowest-paid man doing the same work.

Ledbetter claimed the disparity existed for years and was primarily a result of her gender. A jury agreed, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because she had waited too long to begin her lawsuit.

The deadline set in the law means nothing if employees can reach back years to claim discrimination, the company argued to the court.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, agreed that Ledbetter’s claim was untimely.

The decision broke along ideological lines, with the court’s four liberal justices dissenting.

But of course they do………

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Pentagon has the authority to pick and choose which labor issues it will negotiate with unions representing more than 600,000 civilian employees.

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The policy has been on hold since early last year when a federal judge said it eroded collective bargaining rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that ruling Friday, saying in a 2-1 decision that Congress temporarily authorized the policy change until 2009.

The policy gives Defense Secretary Robert Gates greater flexibility to change workers’ assignments and refuse to negotiate over certain issues.

The American Federation of Government Employees said the policy also unfairly restricts the appeals process for unfavorable personnel decisions and allows the Pentagon to avoid negotiating at all.

“This undermines the fundamental concept of collective bargaining,” said Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel for AFGE. “If they disagree with our offer, they can just take it off the table. What kind of bargaining is that?”

Read more at Yahoo News

The retailer appears to go beyond most companies in its sleuthing. Its surveillance group hunts computer hackers, trolls colleagues’ e-mails and tries to plug information leaks.
H/T Bat for this post!

A Wal-Mart worker fired last month for intercepting a reporter’s phone calls says he was part of a larger, sophisticated surveillance operation that included snooping not only on employees but also on critics, stockholders and the consulting firm McKinsey.

As part of the surveillance, the retailer last year got an employee to infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine whether it planned protests at the company’s annual meeting, according to Bruce Gabbard, the fired security worker, who worked in Wal-Mart Stores’ (WMT, news, msgs) Threat Research and Analysis Group.

The company also deployed cutting-edge monitoring systems made by a supplier to the Defense Department that allowed it to capture and record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network. The systems’ high-tech wizardry could detect the degree of flesh tone on a viewed Internet image and alerted monitors that a vendor sharing Wal-Mart networks was viewing pornography.

Wal-Mart has since disconnected some systems amid an internal investigation of the group’s activities earlier this year, according to an executive in the security-information industry.

More at MSNBC

He said President George W. Bush “will veto the bill” if it is sent to him. (because I’m the real President and I told him to!)
Our administration rejects any attempt to short-circuit the rights of workers. Now that’s the best joke I heard all day!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to allow workers to form unions by signing up, instead of voting, advanced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday as the Bush administration threatened to veto it.

The Democratic-controlled House Education and Labor Committee voted along party lines, 26-19, to approve the bill, which would require employers to recognize unions after a majority of workers have signed pro-union cards or a petition.

Vice President Dick Cheney declared the administration’s opposition to the measure earlier on Wednesday, saying secret ballots are needed to prevent possible worker intimidation.

“Our administration rejects any attempt to short-circuit the rights of workers,” Cheney told the business-friendly National Association of Manufacturers. “We will defend their right to vote yes or no by secret ballot, and their right to fair bargaining.”

He said President George W. Bush “will veto the bill” if it is sent to him.

Read more at Reuters

At Wal-Mart these days, snowy weather is no longer an excuse for lateness. It had better be a natural disaster like a hurricane or blizzard. And being 10 minutes or more tardy for work three times will earn you a demerit. Too many of those could get you fired.

It’s all part of a revised attendance policy implemented earlier this fall that makes Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hourly workers more accountable for excessive unexcused absences and formalizes such penalties.

The new rules already are drawing fire from critics who claim they are the latest attempt by the nation’s largest private employer to weed out unhealthy and costly long-term workers as it seeks to cut labor costs.

John Simley, spokesman for Wal-Mart, calls the charges by labor-backed groups “invalid” and said the changes are an enhancement of the company’s prior policy.

“We are formalizing and enforcing the policy to ensure greater consistency and to minimize subjectivity,” he said.

“It is designed to produce a better work environment and a better shopping environment. The result is better communication and a better shopping experience,” he said.

Documents furnished to The Associated Press by union-backed WakeUpWalmart.com show that employees must call an 800 number to report all absences and tardiness by an hour before the scheduled start time. They also have to call their manager with the confirmation code they received when calling the hot line number. In the past, employees got permission directly from their store managers.

“After a year of adopting antifamily policy after antifamily policy, Wal-Mart adds further insult to injury by adopting a new restrictive attendance policy that treats hard-working associates like children while penalizing them if, God forbid, they face a child or friend with a medical emergency,” said Chris Kofinis, a spokesman at WakeUpWalmart.com.

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Beth Shulman
October 17, 2006

China, that bastion of cheap labor, announced last week that it will soon pass laws to empower real unions. China’s leaders said its millions of workers need genuine labor unions to help bridge the growing gap between rich and poor, to prevent social unrest and to curtail the country’s notorious worker abuses.

So where is the thunderous applause from the global community? Isn-t this extraordinary announcement just what globalization is supposed to produce? We have been told for years that open markets would better the lives of workers in less-developed countries. And didn-t Poland’s Solidarity movement prove that freedom of association would lead to democratization?

Well, yes. But American corporations are not cheering China’s move. In fact, they are vehemently opposing it. They are even threatening to build fewer factories in China if the idea goes forward.

continue reading at Tom Paine.common sense

Beth Shulman, a lawyer and former labor union vice president, is the author of The Betrayal of Work (The New Press, 2003) and a spokesperson for the Russell Sage Foundation’s Future of Work program.

The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has been ordered to pay at least $78m (£42m) in compensation to workers who were forced to work during breaks.

A jury in a Pennsylvania court decided that Wal-Mart broke a state law by refusing to pay staff for the extra work they did.

The class action was brought by about 187,000 staff who worked for Wal-Mart between March 1997 and May 2006…

…The former employee who headed the case, Dolores Hummel, who worked at branch of Wal-Mart owned wholesaler Sam’s Club for 10 years, said she regularly had to work during breaks and after closing time because of work demands. She estimated she worked between eight and 12 hours unpaid each month…

…In the lawsuit, she said: “One of Wal-Mart’s undisclosed secrets for its profitability is its creation and implementation of a system that encourages off-the-clock work for its hourly employees.”

In December, a California court ruled Wal-Mart must pay $172m in compensation to 116,000 employees who had been denied meal breaks.

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“Separation of church and state was certainly part of American law when many of today’s public opinion makers were in school. But separation of church and state is no longer the law of the land.”
(John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University Law School).

The obvious is made more powerful when stated bluntly. When opinion is given by an expert in a field of study, in this case a professor of law, the blunt becomes startling.
The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the constitution, but rather it came from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists (1802) in which he affirmed this principle of the First Amendment of the Constitution as a “wall of separation.” James Madison, the main drafter of the Bill Of Rights, likewise wrote of “total separation of the church from the state.” (Madison quotes on religion) In successive years, these founding fathers voices are but two of the many defining this aspect of the First Amendment.
Why then do those who most loudly proclaim their patriotism fight this established principle? If one believes, as I do, that fundies are for the most part mindless followers, what motivates their leaders to seek recognition (read: favoritism) in law for their respective religions?
Along with protecting their assets from tax collection, here are other answers from two current NYT articles:

As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation

At any moment, state inspectors can step uninvited into one of the three child care centers that Ethel White runs in Auburn, Ala., to make sure they meet state requirements intended to ensure that the children are safe. There must be continuing training for the staff. Her nurseries must have two sinks, one exclusively for food preparation. All cabinets must have safety locks. Medications for the children must be kept under lock and key, and refrigerated.

The Rev. Ray Fuson of the Harvest Temple Church of God in Montgomery, Ala., does not have to worry about unannounced state inspections at the day care center his church runs. Alabama exempts church day care programs from state licensing requirements, which were tightened after almost a dozen children died in licensed and unlicensed day care centers in the state in two years.

The differences do not end there. As an employer, Ms. White must comply with the civil rights laws; if employees feel mistreated, they can take the center to court. Religious organizations, including Pastor Fuson’s, are protected by the courts from almost all lawsuits filed by their ministers or other religious staff members, no matter how unfairly those employees think they have been treated.

continue reading here

Where Faith Abides, Employees Have Few Rights

J. Jeffrey Heck, a lawyer in Mansfield, Ohio, usually sits on management’s side of the table. “The only employee cases I take are those that poke my buttons,” he said. “And this one really did.”

His client was a middle-aged novice training to become a nun in a Roman Catholic religious order in Toledo. She said she had been dismissed by the order after she became seriously ill - including a diagnosis of breast cancer.

In her complaint, the novice, Mary Rosati, said she had visited her doctor with her immediate supervisor and the mother superior. After the doctor explained her treatment options for breast cancer, the complaint continued, the mother superior announced: “We will have to let her go. I don-t think we can take care of her.”

Some months later Ms. Rosati was told that the mother superior and the order’s governing council had decided to dismiss her after concluding that “she was not called to our way of life,” according to the complaint. Along with her occupation and her home, she lost her health insurance, Mr. Heck said.

continue reading here