Labor Laws

The Superior Grocers supermarket chain was assessed $79,200 in fines Tuesday for allowing 16- and 17-year-old employees to operate heavy machinery in violation of child labor laws. U.S. Labor Department investigators found 40 workplace violations for the workers operating scrap-paper balers, paper box compactors, power-driven hoists and forklifts, said Deanne Amaden, a spokeswoman for the agency. "It's not just that their employees were 16 and 17, it was that these younger workers were using machinery -- heavy machinery," she said.

MADRID - Millions of Spaniards stayed off the job Thursday to protest new labor laws that allow companies to opt out of collective bargaining pacts, reduce wages and fire workers more easily. The general strike stalled public transportation and shut factories and schools across the country. Angry confrontations erupted between hordes of protesters and riot police officers, but no major violence was reported. It was the first such large-scale labor action against the policies of conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the strongest public rebuke yet of his austerity measures.

Daily overtime. Kin care. Health and safety rules. Having trouble keeping track of all the state workplace law changes that went into effect Jan. 1? The California Chamber of Commerce has compiled information that can help. Their 2000 California Labor Law Survival Kit is designed for employers trying to comply with the new state laws. It includes a 2000 labor law digest written for laypeople, as well as a monthly supplement to keep you updated on additional labor law changes.

President Obama circumvented Congress and moved Thursday to require that home-care aides be paid minimum wage and overtime, giving the fast-growing workforce long-sought assistance. Home-care workers, who now number close to 2 million people, have been exempted from federal labor law since 1974. And although many states, including California, Illinois and Maryland, have rules guaranteeing home-care workers minimum wage, overtime, or both, 29 states do not offer these protections.

Unions say they'll shut down Spain for 24 hours Thursday in a general strike against government attempts to abolish labor laws that gave workers four decades of ironclad job security. The unions hope to force Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to scotch new laws that make it easier for employers to fire, transfer and change job descriptions of their workers. Foreign investors and Spanish businesses claim that the old laws are the main reason that Spain has Europe's highest jobless rate--23%.

A 15-year-old Amish boy and his family are in a legal tug of war with federal child labor watchdogs. The dispute involves Daniel Mark Smucker's work around heavy presses in a harness factory, as well as other work by Amish children. "We believe that forced idleness in this age to be detrimental to our long-standing Amish way of raising our children and teaching them to become good productive citizens," Christ K.

Factories making products in China and elsewhere for Nike Inc., Levi Strauss & Co. and five other companies violated labor laws, ranging from inadequate pay to failure to provide proper hearing protection, an industry-supported group said. A contractor for Nike in China paid its workers less than the minimum wage of 31 cents an hour, and a contractor for Liz Claiborne Inc. in China failed to register workers ages 16 to 18, the Fair Labor Assn. said in a report released Wednesday in Washington.

Ten years ago this week, I was awakened by a phone tip that California labor department inspectors were about to free scores of Thai slave workers from a garment factory in El Monte. "Did you say slaves?" I asked my informant in disbelief, as I hurriedly dressed to go to the site. The Smithsonian Institution in 1998 made this case a part of its exhibit on U.S. sweatshops, calling it a low point in the sad history of U.S. exploitation of undocumented laborers.

As someone who has lobbied members of the state Legislature to increase funding for more personnel in the Department of Industrial Relations, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and the Bureau of Field Enforcement, I wish to point out that the most severe declines in personnel and labor law enforcement took place during the administrations of former Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson ["Study Cites Drop in Enforcement of Labor Laws," June 30]. These two law-and-order Republicans were anything but, when it came to enforcing labor laws.

John H. Fanning, a leading expert on the nation's labor laws who served for 25 years on the National Labor Relations Board and was its chairman for four, died Saturday at Georgetown University Hospital of kidney failure. He was 73. In his five terms on the NLRB, Fanning participated in more than 25,000 rulings on unfair labor practices. Although a registered Democrat, he was appointed to the board by Republican President Dwight D.

The Times' Nov. 23 editorial, "Clueless candidates," which criticized Newt Gingrich for his call to loosen child labor laws and allow kids to work as janitors at their schools, prompted reader Mike Gallagher to write the following defense of the former House speaker's proposal: "I can only assume that the editor did not work as a child, unlike the children of most small-business owners. I've never known a working kid who didn't have time for homework, so long as there wasn't a long transportation requirement.

It isn't just that some of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination occasionally seem divorced from modern reality; it's that they're determined to re-fight battles that most of us thought had ended roughly a century ago. A case in point is newly inaugurated front-runner Newt Gingrich, who in a talk Monday at Harvard University denigrated federal child labor laws that date back to the 1930s. "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said.

Promising “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America,” Newt Gingrich said Friday that he would fire school janitors and pay students to clean schools instead. Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House challenged laws that prevent children from working certain jobs before their mid-teens. Gingrich blames “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization" for “crippling” children.

The Fresh & Easy grocery chain has to fix what it calls a nonexistent problem, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill banning the sale of alcoholic beverages at self-service checkout stands. Brown, just before midnight Sunday, approved a proposal that forces the British-owned chain, with more than 125 stores in California, to shift from an all-automated format to one that has at least one clerk on hand to check a purchaser's age before ringing up sales of beer and wine. The bill was one of 466 signed by the governor since the Legislature recessed for the year Sept.

Residents of other states who work for California companies are protected by the state's overtime laws during business trips here, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Thursday. Employment lawyers predicted that the ruling would reduce business travel to the state and trigger hundreds of lawsuits against California companies in the coming days. Firms now typically pay employees in accordance with the labor laws of the states in which they live. The court said the ruling would protect Californians from being replaced by less-expensive temporary workers from out of state.

Her story had been lost amid dusty records that were long ago stashed in deep storage and forgotten. Forgotten until a retired federal agent, researching the history of Chicago law enforcement, stumbled upon a mention that, in the 1890s, she had become a police officer in Chicago. The date caught his attention. A female police officer in the 1890s? Now, after three years of research, Rick Barrett, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and an amateur historian, says he has found definitive evidence that Marie Owens was not only the first policewoman in Chicago, but also the first known female officer in the United States.

Tenet Healthcare Corp. has been sued by a union that claims it understaffs its hospitals and violates California labor laws by failing to pay for work breaks. Tenet spokesman Harry Anderson said the Santa Barbara-based company "absolutely rejects" the allegations. The United Nurses Assn. of California/Union of Health Care Professionals is in negotiations at two hospitals, and the suit appears to be "an attempt to try this in the courts," he said.

Hong Kong's Beijing-approved council flexed its muscles in a fierce showdown with unions Wednesday by suspending a series of laws on labor rights. Clashing head-on with labor unions, members of the Provisional Legislative Council suspended four of seven laws enacted just before China took back the 156-year-old British colony from London on July 1.

Summer is the peak season for educational internships of all kinds — paid and unpaid. For small businesses, the unpaid ones are gaining in popularity. Designer Raven Kauffman, owner of Raven Kauffman Couture in downtown Los Angeles, is seeking an unpaid intern, her first time offering a formal summer internship since launching the high-end handbag business almost three years ago. "I believe in offering internships because I was an intern," said Kauffman, who updated Rolodexes, made coffee and learned the business as an intern in the mid-1990s.