How ready and willing are we to be just, slaves?

[MSgt213]

Santorum's Sweatshop Expansion Bill

Sweatshops Expanded, Overtime Attacked, and State Minimum Wage Laws Undermined

This is as low as it goes, as the GOP fights to expand sub-minimum wage sweatshops across the country. Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum is leading the charge for a GOP bill that would ostensibly raise the minimum wage by $1.10 per hour, but in reality would cut wages for millions of American workers and expand unregulated sweatshops across the country.

As this Economic Policy Institute analysis details, the bill is a trojan horse for assaulting workers rights.

Licensing Sweatshops: While a $1.10 per hour minimum wage increase by itself would help 1.8 million workers, Santorum includes a poison bill exempting any business with revenues of $1 million or less from regulation -- raising the exemption from the current $500,000 level.

The upshot: while 1.2 million workers could qualify for a minimum wage increase, another 6.8 million workers, who work in companies with revenues between $500,000 and $1,000,000 per year, would lose their current minimum wage protection.

And an even larger number of businesses, those with revenues under $7 million, would be exempt from fines under a range of other safety, health, pension and other labor laws. Essentially, the realm of unregulated sweatshops would be expanded and legalized under Santorum's bill.

Killing Overtime: It gets worse-- the 40-hour work week would be abolished and companies would not have to pay overtime if they cut hours the next week. The proposal is called "flex time", but workers would have no say in the matter. Their hours could be rearranged, upsetting child care and other weekly routines, and companies would no longer have the deterrent of having to pay overtime as a way to encourage giving workers a regular weekly schedule.

Click the link for the kicker.

http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/002263.shtml

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[applegrove]

2. I think corporations feel like slaves because whatever they make

goes to human stockholders. So every day the corporation wakes up with nothing. Corporations do not have a chance to become human. I think that when this all finally blows over and human beings get control of them again (because they really only exist on paper and if they motivate people enough ... people will fix them... apparently emotion trumps legal documentation in this new areana) that human being will build something into every major corporation to make them have a conscience. That is what we left out the firt try. We tried to fix it with Roosevelt and the spanking of the robber barons. They recently have hit back.

Millions of us have to think about this now. How to reform corporations so they never get loose.

[Deja Q]

4. I hope you're correct. Here's an article that adds to your claim:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=538310

U.S. workers, pushed to produce more and uneasy about new technology and other changes, are markedly less satisfied with their jobs than a decade ago, a new survey says.

But the decline in on-the-job happiness, which continued through economic cycles in recent years, has at least temporarily leveled off, according to the survey released Monday by The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group.

Half of U.S. workers are happy with their jobs, down from nearly 59 percent in 1995, according to the survey. Of those, just 14 percent say they are very satisfied.

(more in article)

[Deja Q]

3. Figure it out, it's very damn simple if you think about it:

A leader.

One who ALL of the malcontents can stand behind.

One figurehead.

Someone we can all follow; and who'll never stop fighting until the last drop of our blood has been spilt.

Now look into your typical American.

Needless to say, no one person is possible and people will be re-trained to work for peanut SHELLS until they die in misery.

Sorry, my optimism for the American working class is gone. Or the lower class, who seem contented in killing each other anyway. Or the upper class, who know they've got the simplist victory in years.

More people will give up their ideals TO survive rather than die. It's the concept of individualism in this country. Not to die for a common good, but to survive for one's self, regardless of cost. If you thought people were animals before, just you wait.

And each of us has our own price. It all depends on how we can get bought. And for how much. I know my price. You know yours. Don't you dare deny it unless you've got a lot of proof and means of demonstrating it.

The above is reality as it will likely become. I am merely an observer and I've got my own solution when the time comes, unless someone deems me worthy to survive - yeah, right. Now you need to go find and read the book; it's in stores everywhere and online. Here's a hint: Humphry.


(forgive me, my melodramatic use of the English language. That's what happens when I start watching too much "Blake's 7" again. Very odd parallels between a 27 year old British sci-fi program and the goings-on of today.)

[applegrove]

5. I agree that people will do anything if they are hungry & suffering.

Including volunteering for the army. The middle class in the 19th Century were all over themselves for Wars starting because it allowed them to get a salary and live off of more than they & their families could grow on a farm.