Friday, September 4, 2015
As His Term Wanes, Obama Champions Workers’ Rights
WASHINGTON — With little fanfare, the Obama administration has been pursuing an aggressive campaign to restore protections for workers that have been eroded by business activism, conservative governance and the evolution of the economy in recent decades.
In the last two months alone, the administration has introduced a series of regulatory changes. Among them: a rule that would make millions more Americans eligible for extra overtime pay, and guidelines suggesting that many employers are misclassifying workers as contractors and therefore depriving them of basic workplace protections. That is an issue central to the growth of so-called gig economy companies like Uber.
A little more than a week ago, a federal appeals panel affirmed an earlier regulation granting nearly two million previously exempted home care workers minimum wage and overtime protections. And on Thursday, President Obama’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board pushed through an important ruling that makes it easier for employees ofcontractors and franchises to bargain collectively with the corporations that have sway over their operations.
“These moves constitute the most impressive and, in my view, laudable attempt to update labor and employment law in many decades,” said Benjamin I. Sachs, a professor at Harvard
Law School and a former assistant general counsel for the Service Employees International Union. The goal, he said, is to “keep pace with changes in the structure of the labor market
and the way work is organized.”
In one sense, Mr. Obama foreshadowed these efforts as a candidate in 2008, when he suggested that, if elected, he would aim to be a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. “Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” he told a newspaper editorial board in Nevada. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”
Once in office, Mr. Obama delivered on that implied promise in a few critical ways, particularly his signature health care legislation. But throughout much of his first term, he disappointed supporters with his inability to pursue a larger progressive agenda and with what they saw as an insufficient focus on the balance of power between workers and their employers.
Labor unions complained that he failed to throw his energy behind a measure that would have made it easier for workers to organize by requiring employers to recognize a union once a majority of workers had signed cards, rather than allowing employers to insist on a secret ballot election.
Liberals criticized the pace at which Mr. Obama put judges on the federal bench, including the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has enormous influence over federal regulations. And they complained that he failed to move quickly in placing appointees at agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, which went without two of its three Democratic members until well into the second year of his presidency.
“They were very weak on getting people into their positions in the first term,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research and advocacy group. “They lost many years of potential fruitful activity.” (The White House says that the president was prompt in naming appointees, whose nominations then became bogged down in the Senate.)
After spending several months in 2011 on a failed effort to negotiate a deficit-cutting “grand bargain” with the new House Republican majority, however, Mr. Obama did an apparent about-face, deciding that he would use every tool available to enact what he considered to be a bold pro-worker agenda on his own.
“Perhaps the most substantively important speech of the Obama presidency was the Osawatomie speech in 2011,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former communications director and senior adviser to the president, referring to a speech that December in Kansas. “It was a set of marching orders to the entire government that increasing income inequality and declining economic mobility are the key challenge of our time. Given the congressional gridlock, the president pushed us very hard to pull every lever possible.”
Since he has not been able to advance legislation through the Republican-controlled Congress, Mr. Obama has failed to achieve a number of important goals, most notably raising the federal minimum wage. And many of the recent actions could be undone by a future administration.
At the same time, the economic and political forces pushing in the other direction have proved extremely difficult to overcome. From 1979 until 2009, the hourly wage for the typical worker grew about 10 percent after adjusting for inflation, falling far behind the increase in productivity, a measure that wages once closely tracked. After the Great Recession, the median wage fell for a few years and then made up little ground through 2014.
Meanwhile, critics abound across the ideological spectrum.
Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who served as Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director in 2011 and 2012, said that calling the Obama economic agenda pro-worker “misses the forest for the trees — or perhaps, more precisely, misses the trees for a few stray weeds.”
In an email, Mr. Cass said that “increasingly onerous employment regulation is driving employers to avoid employment relationships altogether, which benefits no one.”
Liberals and union supporters, while applauding Mr. Obama’s record in the narrow realm of labor rights, complain that he has undercut workers with his efforts to promote global trade agreements and balanced budgets.
“As long as the budget deal the administration negotiated continues to restrict domestic discretionary spending,” the Department of Labor’s ability to enforce the laws guaranteeing workers a minimum wage and overtime pay “and fight misclassification will be severely limited,” Ross Eisenbrey, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute who was one of the architects of the overtime regulation, said in an email.
Still, there is little doubt that the Obama administration has become more ambitious in pursuing worker rights during the president’s second term.
Consider the home health care decision. The Labor Department wrote the original rule exempting home care professionals employed by staffing agencies from minimum wage and overtime protections in 1975, back when very few home care workers of that sort existed. In recent decades, however, the field has exploded, turning what was once a small exemption into a yawning regulatory gap at the heart of the service economy.
The Clinton administration proposed closing the exemption three times, but the proposals were never made final. Mr. Obama’s Labor Department pushed through new rules in 2013, but they stuck only after a protracted legal fight. After the home care industry challenged the rule and a Federal District Court struck it down, it took a three-judge panel on the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to revive it. Obama helped make that decision possible back in 2013, when he appointed two of the three judges.
In many cases, the administration and its appointees have understood themselves to be not merely updating laws and regulations to reflect current economic realities, but also explicitly undoing what they considered to be efforts of Republican administrations to put workers at a disadvantage.
“The overtime provision was intended in no small measure to correct a regulation from the Bush era that took leverage from workers and gave it to employers — by design,” said Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez. “We were restoring what was a time-honored economic and social compact, which is that as we have productivity and profitability in this country, that is shared between business and workers.”
Last week’s ruling by the labor board, which changed the standard for when a corporation may be designated a joint employer of workers hired by its contractors and franchisees, followed a similar logic.
For decades before the mid-1980s, the N.L.R.B. considered a corporation to be a joint employer, and therefore liable for violations of workers’ rights, as long as it enjoyed a fair amount of control over working conditions at facilities run or staffed by a contractor or franchisee. It didn’t really matter whether the control was hands-on or arm’s-length.
In 1984, the Reagan-era N.L.R.B. began to sharply tighten the standard. On Thursday, voting 3 to 2 along partisan lines, the board tossed out the Reagan era rule, arguing that it was essentially returning to what had existed before.
Taken together with other key regulatory actions and executive orders — an N.L.R.B. rule that effectively sped up the process for holding elections on whether to form a union and Mr. Obama’s order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 — the effect has been to significantly alter the tilt of federal law.
“We’re really digging out of a 40-year hole,” Mr. Mishel said. “The Clinton years were ones where they more triangulated between business and workers rather than weigh in on the side of workers.”
Mr. Obama has long seen himself as working to empower the economically marginal, as steadfast in his commitment to labor protections as President Reagan was in rolling them back.
That self-image dates all the way back to one of his first jobs after college, as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. “Those are the folks he worked with,” said Gerald Kellman, the organizer and labor activist who hired him back then. “He feels strongly about this stuff.”
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Cree woman from Alberta crowned Mrs. Universe 2015
An aboriginal woman from Alberta has won an international pageant for married women.
Ashley Burnham, 25, was crowned Mrs. Universe 2015 in Minsk, Belarus, on Saturday, becoming the first aboriginal woman to win the title.
Burnham is from the Enoch Cree Nation west of Edmonton and is an actress, model and motivational speaker.
As a former finalist in the 2013 Miss Universe Canada contest, when she was then Ashley Callingbull, she noted that she grew up in poor conditions and faced difficulties in childhood that she finds difficult to talk about.
Her Facebook bio says by the time she reached the age of 10, she had consecutively won all Enoch’s princess crowns.
Burnham appears in Blackstone, a television show that airs on APTN, Showcase and on Maori Television in New Zealand.
“I’m really overwhelmed right now,” Callingbull told the CBC in an interview. “My phone is blowing up. Everything is blowing up. I love it.”
The Mrs. Universe 2015 Facebook page says the topic for this year’s event was “Domestic Violence and Reflection Over Children.”
Burnham said in her bio for the 2013 Miss Universe Canada contest that she never had the perfect childhood everyone dreams of.
“I had an incredibly difficult childhood and was raised mainly by my mother and grandparents,” she said in the bio. “My mother as strong as she is, raised me to be grateful for what I have and showed me all the love in the world.”
“Things that occurred in my childhood were incredibly painful and it is very hard to discuss. It was difficult to grow up the way I did, but it made me appreciate everything I have and most importantly made me the strong woman I am today.”
Burnham was also chosen as Miss Canada for the Miss Friendship International Pageant held in Hubei, China in September, 2010, and represented Canada at the Queen of the World Final held in Germany 2010.
She also represented Canada at Miss Humanity International in Barbados in October 2011.
Burnham graduated from the television program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton and is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree focusing on drama and acting/television.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
German chancellor Angela Merkel worried right-wing violence towards refugees could split Germany
A quarter of a century ago, a string of racist outrages in Germany cast a shadow over the nation's historic unification, which ended the Cold War divide.
A new dramatic rise in right-wing violence, largely in the eastern part of the nation triggered by a surge in the number of refugees entering the country, threatens to mar events planned to mark the 25th anniversary of unification in October.
Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated on Monday her concern that extreme right-wing attacks could open up a new split in Germany.
"I don't intend to make an east-west conflict," she said, refusing to be drawn at her annual press conference as to whether anti-foreigner sentiments were pronounced in the east.
Referring to the recent attacks, Ms Merkel said the "full force of the law" would be felt by those who insulted, attacked or used arson to target newcomers to the country.
The overwhelming majority of Germans have welcomed the refugees, which are expected to top 800,000 this year – almost 1 per cent of the total population.
However, the series of anti-foreigner rallies, arson attacks on asylum shelters and random street violence in the nation's former communist half have also underlined the threat that xenophobia could emerge as a new dividing line between the eastern and western parts of the nation.
While Ms Merkel has retained her high popularity ratings in Germany, her comments underline the political risks she faces as concerns grow about the costs of handling the asylum seekers as well as the threat of reigniting east-west tensions in the country.
While the east might represent just 17 per cent of the country's total population, it was the scene last year of almost half the number of racially inspired acts of violence, according to official data.
There were more than 200 attacks on asylum centres during the first half of the year. Since then, the number of attacks on refugee homes — often daubed with swastikas — has accelerated to become almost daily events.
Some have been in the western part of the nation but the majority have been staged in the east, which was ruled by a Moscow-communist dictatorship for more than four decades.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Bomb in Bangkok 17-08-2015
It’s a great booming date as being a truck driver. Based on facts NPR compiled from the people Census Bureau, truck driving will be currently your most popular career within 29 states. It’s not It truck driving is often a particularly sought immediately after employment path, however. Rather, That is easily individual It is view able AND pays decently. Unlike the plethora of additional jobs The item have declined in recent years, truck driving possesses remained immune on the forces That have elbowed out additional lines regarding work. in the past decades, computers, cash equipment AND ALSO self-serve pumps have largely replaced secretaries, Bank tellers AND gas station attendants, respectively. Door-to-door deliveries, towards the other hand, are not able to be outsourced to help another country, whilst prolonged haul driving has yet in order to always be automated. Yet truck drivers could be next inside line towards endangered jobs list. Google, Uber AND ALSO Tesla usually are many working from self-driving vehicles, delivery throughout the person The idea make long-haul journeys. if entrepreneurs succeed at automating cross-country deliveries, your would not lone always be an boon regarding solutions That ship items – self-driving trucks don’t be asked to stop for long mandatory breaks immediately after spending hours towards road – but in addition intended for road safety. on the all of us alone up to help 4,000 lives each year are usually lost within crashes inside large trucks (driver error will be almost always for you to blame).
http://topsharevideo.blogspot.com/2015/08/bomb-in-bangkok-kills-at-least-16_17.html
Monday, August 17, 2015
'Her star will continue to shine bright': Morgan Freeman speaks out on ruthless sidewalk slaying of his granddaughter
Morgan Freeman has spoken out on the horrific slaying of his step-granddaughter on a Manhattan street.
E'Dena Hines, 33, granddaughter of the Hollywood legend's first wife, was found unresponsive with stab wounds to her torso in the Washington Heights area of New York City just before 3:00 a.m. on Sunday.
'The world will never know her artistry and talent, and how much she had to offer,' Freeman told DailyMail.com in a statement Sunday afternoon. 'Her friends and family were fortunate enough to have known what she meant as a person.
Heartbroken: E'Dena Hines, 33, granddaughter of the Hollywood legend's first wife, was found unresponsive with stab wounds to her torso in the Washington Heights area of New York City just before 3:00 a.m. on Sunday.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Court orders Zari to take DNA test for new born
The court though a Ugandan based law firm known as Web Advocates and Solicitors has drafted a letter ordering Zari to take paternity tests so as to prove the true father to the child.
King Lawrence claims the baby belongs to him and doesn’t want her to be raised in the hands of someone who didn’t father her hence, asks Zari without failure to take paternity tests and prove the baby indeed belongs to Tanzanian Abdul Nasib.
However, the letter says Zari should take three paternity tests, one in Uganda, another in South Africa and the last in USA of which King Lawrence will meet all the costs involved in the proceedings. Meanwhile, the couple (Zari & Diamond) doesn’t seem really bothered but the letter calls for action within 7 working days before taking legal action against her.
The letter that has so far gone viral has made very many doubt Diamond Platnumz’s paternity for princess Latifah and could have drawn attention especially on Diamond’s side though he pays almost no attention to such news. See letter below:
Saturday, August 15, 2015
'Relax with me!' Kylie Jenner wears cut-away swimsuit as she sends a postcard from paradise to her Instagram fans
She had been relishing a relaxing Mexican holiday in honour of her recent 18th birthday.
And Kylie Jenner seems to be overflowing with confidence as she celebrates her milestone moment.
On Friday, the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star shared yet another sexy snap of her stunning bikini body while teasing her fans by writing, 'relax w meee.'
Friday, August 14, 2015
Top 10 Countries With Maximum Rape Crimes
Rape is a particularly complex crime to analyse, in several parts of the world, it is very rarely reported. Women in some countries are much less likely to have their complaint recorded, due to the extreme social stigma cast on women who have been raped, or subjected to violence or the fear of being disowned by their families.
Rape and other sexual assaults statistics are commonly available in advanced countries, and are becoming more common. Large numbers of rapes go unreported throughout the world. Here, we’ve presented the statistics for 10 renowned countries with maximum rape crimes. You would be amazed to see that the most developed countries like America, Canada, Sweden and United Kingdom are the most immersed in this crime. About 36% of women globally have experienced either physical or sexual intimate violence. In U.S. 83% of girls aged 12 to 16 have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools. In England, 1 out of 5 women (aged 16 to 59) experience some form of sexual violence. Following is a detailed list of countries with maximum rape crimes.
9. Zimbabwe
8. Australia
7. Canada
6. New Zealand
5. India
4. England and Wales
3. USA
2. Sweden
1. South Africa
Song Seung Heon disclosed he might go for sudden marriage with Crystal Liu
Korean star, Song Seung Heon (宋承憲) and Mainland China celebrity, Crystal Liu (劉亦菲) developed real feelings for each other after collaborating in The Third Way of Love (第三種愛情) movie and both admitted to the romance. Six days ago during the program, (演藝家中介), Seung Heon expressed that he actually disliked to announce the romance but no alternatives since everybody was aware. When asked if he will go for sudden marriage, Seung Heon replied there was a possibility and the feeling was marvellous if together with your loved one all the time.
However, Seung Heon disclosed he preferred low-key wedding such as Won Bin (元斌) and Lee Na Young (李娜英) and travelling only was alright too.
asian-enews
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Attackers in Bangladesh beat 13-year-old boy to death for allegedly stealing van
A 13-year-old boy in Bangladesh was brutally beaten to death after a group of attackers accused him of theft.
The 28-minute video that shows the teenager getting beaten to death has shocked the Internet, reports bdnews24.
Samiul Islam Rajon was beaten to death on July 8 on accusations of stealing a rickshaw van at Kumargaon of Sylhet Sadar Upazila.
In the video when the teen begged for water, he was mocked and told to "drink your sweat" by his attackers who can be heard discussing the idea of posting the video on Facebook so "everyone can see the fate of a thief".
The boy can be heard pleading, "Please don't beat me like this, I will die."
At one point, he was told to walk away and when he stood up, one attacked shouted, "His bones are okay. Beat him some more."
Samiul was a part-time vegetable seller who dropped out of school to help his impoverished family.
"My son is not a thief. Everyone knows it. I want justice for my child's murder," Samiul's mother Lubna Aktar said.
Locals caught one attacker, Muhith Alam, 22, while he was taking the body to dump in a microbus and turned him over to police.
The others accused are Alam’s brother Kamrul Islam, 24, Ali Haider, 34 and Moyna Mia, 45.
According to AFP via AsiaOne, Police said that the autopsy had revealed scores of injuries all over his body, including on the head and chest. He died due to internal bleeding.
"His body had at least 64 injuries including in the head." Junior home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said police had arrested two people in connection with the killing and were looking for four others.
"They will be arrested and given tough punishment," Kamal told reporters.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
80 Year Old Man Deosn’t Take A Bath in 60 Years
This is so crazy when there is a man on the planet doesn’t
take a bath in 60 years. I can’t imagine how he lives without washing at all.
While most of the people taking 2 bathes a day, this 80 year-old man forgets to
bath for 60 years. One of the amazing thing is that he doesn’t have any skin
disease at all. I guess although you wash him 10 or 20 times, but the dirty
skin will be going to stay still.
By looking at his skin, it is just so awkward and disturbing
and especially look at the picture on how he hold 4 cigarettes and smoked it at
a time.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Aisha Nabukera Wins Big in the Miss Uganda 2015-2016
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is
real.” Is a saying by Cormac McCarthy. Yes they remind us our past but the same
whites say “the past determines the future and a conclusion from that would be
“Nabukera’s future is real. Bright and beautiful” Following the tight
competition in the Miss Uganda beauty pageant with over 20 purely beautiful
girls, Aisha Nabukera managed to enter the last run of 10. Fine she missed the
big crown of being the over miss, and that’s the Miss Uganda crown but she at
least managed to get recognized out of the many. She was crowned Miss Rising
Woman in the just concluded Miss Uganda 2015-2016. The major title was taken by
fellow contestant, 23-year-old Nakiyaga Zahara Muhammed. Nakayiza is concluding
her studies at Makerere University and even the now former Miss, Leah was from
the same University and from this, allow me conclude “Makerere is the centre of
everything”… beauty, education, pappers, everything…
PHOTO OF THE WINNER | MISS UGANDA
Saturday, July 11, 2015
4 Celebrities with the Ugliest Feet
Are you fan of any celebrity? If you do you can check out
the pictures below and your idol celebrity might be in the list. We already
know there is no perfection in this world so we need to accept and live with
it. Good evidence to this matter is that by looking at these pictures below you
will understand that perfection is not existed. Even super-hot Hollywood stars
have these kind of awkward matter- what you see will shock you even more as
these ugly feet are attached to them
www.celebrityrevolt.com
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Tama cat known in Japan killed thousands of people attend mourning
A cat named Tama famous making people thousands join mourning and pray to the spirit realm ceremony yesterday after it died.
Tama the cat has been appointed as head of the train station Kishi station in western Japan in 2007
died on June 22 due to heart disease but just was cremated yesterday.
Great achievements of female cats 1 16-year-old heads it is always sitting at the fence tickets and many passengers and always loved. Cats that helped train station which is almost bankrupt and can get you a lot because it makes touristsCan get you a lot because it makes tourists and many interesting and turn the area, a popular station for guests.
Mitsunobu Kojima, president of Wakayama Electric Railway, said: "Thanks to strong Tama help and contribute to economic recovery in the region. She is like a God and it is my great honor to work with her. During Tama office income of 1.1 billion yen (8.9 million dollars). "
Tama the cat has been appointed as head of the train station Kishi station in western Japan in 2007
died on June 22 due to heart disease but just was cremated yesterday.
Great achievements of female cats 1 16-year-old heads it is always sitting at the fence tickets and many passengers and always loved. Cats that helped train station which is almost bankrupt and can get you a lot because it makes touristsCan get you a lot because it makes tourists and many interesting and turn the area, a popular station for guests.
Mitsunobu Kojima, president of Wakayama Electric Railway, said: "Thanks to strong Tama help and contribute to economic recovery in the region. She is like a God and it is my great honor to work with her. During Tama office income of 1.1 billion yen (8.9 million dollars). "
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