Source: http://www.todaysworkplace.org/category/compensation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 14:45:26+00:00

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Emery appealed his case to the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, which found that his his injury was job-related and hindered his ability to work.
This post originally appeared on inthesetimes.com on June 13, 2016. Reprinted with permission.
Stephen Franklin, former labor and workplace reporter for theChicago Tribune, is ethnic news director for the Community Media Workshop in Chicago. He is the author of Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans(2002), and has reported throughout the United States and the Middle East. He can be reached via e-mail atfreedomwrites@hotmail.com.
According to Good Jobs First, an organization that promotes accountability in economic development, several states allow corporations to literally pocket their employees’ tax payments. Rather than having those taxes go towards public services, the companies withhold money from their workers’ paychecks and just keep it, never remitting it to the state, under the guise of a job creation program.
Republican Governor Tom Corbett is deciding whether or not to sign legislation that would require some workers to pay taxes to their bosses. Yes, you read that right. The bill, which would allow companies that hire at least 250 new workers in the state to keep 95-percent of the workers’ withheld income tax, is an effort to to recruit Oracle to the state.
Your taxes would get withheld by your boss like normal, but they would then keep them and spend it on private jets or monogrammed bathroom fixtures or whatever instead of turning them over to the state–turning your tax dollars over to the state being the whole reason they were ostensibly “withheld” in the first place.
“These deals typify corporate socialism, in which business gains are privatized and costs socialized,” wrote Reuters David Cay Johnson. “Leaders in both parties embrace these giveaways because they draw campaign donations from corporate interests and votes from people who do not understand that they are subsidizing huge companies.” The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center listed a host of reasons that Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) should reject the law, including its effect on state revenue and its loopholes that will allow companies to collect their workers’ tax payments even if they create no new jobs.
This post originally appeared in ThinkProgress’s Wonk Room on October 24, 2012. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Pat Garofalo is an Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Pat’s work has also appeared in The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, the Washington Examiner, and In These Times. He has been a guest on MSNBC and Al-Jazeera television, as well as many radio shows. Pat graduated from Brandeis University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Brandeis Hoot, Brandeis’ community newspaper, and worked for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life.
In Kirby v. Immoos, 113 Cal.Rptr.3d 370, the Court of Appeal held that an employee not prevailing on a meal-rest claim (or, even one who settled the claims) could be subject to paying the employer’s attorneys’ fees under Cal. Lab. §218.5, which provides for two-way fee shifting. The consequences of this decision, had it been allowed to stand, would have been disastrous – no employee could risk paying an employer’s attorneys’ fees to pursue claims arising from meal/rest period violations. The plaintiff’s claims might amount to $5,000 and the employer’s fees might amount to 100X that much or more – amounts that would bankrupt the average, hourly, non-exempt worker. Since the California Supreme Court and California Legislature have repeatedly emphasized the importance of promoting wage/hour litigation under the Labor Code (see, e.g., Murphy v. Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. (2007) 40 Cal.4th 1094), the Court of Appeal’s wage/hour claim-killing decision seemed out of line.
As we noted in Murphy, “[m]eal and rest periods have long been viewed as part of the remedial worker protection framework,” and low-wage workers are the “likeliest to suffer violations of section 226.7.” (Murphy, supra, 40 Cal.4th at pp. 1105, 1113-1114.) In giving no indication that section 218.5 applies to meal or rest break claims when it enacted section 226.7, the Legislature could reasonably have concluded that meritorious section 226.7 claims may be deterred if workers, especially low-wage workers, had to weigh the value of an “additional hour of pay” remedy if their claims succeed against the risk of liability for a significant fee award if their claims fail. In light of the statutory text and the legislative history of section 218.5 and section 226.7, we conclude that section 218.5’s two-way fee-shifting provision does not apply to section 226.7 claims alleging the failure to provide statutorily mandated meal and rest periods.
However, the Court left for another day the battle over whether one-way fee-shifting for employees is available for meal/rest claims in suits where they are alleged alongside overtime and minimum wage claims (Slip.Op. at p. 18) –i.e. in most cases where these claims are alleged. This battle – the sequel to Kirby v. Immoos– will most likely be where the rubber meets the road. In the meantime, employees and their advocates should continue to seek attorneys’ fees for meal-rest claims alleged alongside overtime and minimum wage claims under §1194. We will also continue to seek fees under Cal. Code Civil Procedure §1021.5, which allows fee-shifting in certain cases brought to vindicate the public interest – like meal/rest litigation so often does.
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