Public+Policy+-+Labor


 * Labor**

Labor Market of America, Future?

Labor issues in the United States have been a growing issue through the times of economic recession. Seen as a vicious cycle, labor has an arsenal of issues related to it including: health and safety, job migration, living wages, migrant workers, minimum wage, union reform, unemployment rate, and the hot issue of job discrimination. Reform of public policy occurs what seems like every time you blink on some sort of labor issue, but are the changes and additions to public policy making a difference? The two issues I will cover are workplace discrimination and unemployment rate. As these both have large implications on our economy.

Hot topics first, job and workplace discrimination. Public policy seeks to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disabilities, and age by employers. The Constitution however does not directly address discrimination in the private industry but has become subject under a growing number of federal and state statues. Included in these but not limited to the Nineteenth Century Civil Rights Act, American with Disabilities Act, Equal Pay Act, and Age Discrimination in Employment Act. As of recently, with the growing demand for jobs, age discrimination is on the minds of many policy makers. In recent cases in CA and UT an employee was trying to sue his employer for age discrimination but the states Supreme Courts implemented policy that held that because the employer employed fewer than 15 employees the employee could not sue for age discrimination. However, many state courts are now considering whether these smaller employers should fall subject to the state’s anti-discrimination statues, for public policy reasons, and be taken to trial for possible acts of discrimination. In similar recent cases individuals from MD and WA were allowed to sue employers with fewer than 15 employees for discriminatory terminations.

So who has their hands in implementing some consistent public policy? In the 110th congressional session, Representative John Lewis, a democrat from Georgia’s 5th district, proposed the Civil Rights Act of 2008 which had the support of most of the Democratic members. The bill was referred to five committees including: House Judiciary, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, House Education and Labor, House Transportation and Infrastructure, House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation. The bill was never reported by the committee and therefore there was no House vote, Senate vote, or Presidential signature. In the 111th congressional session a public policy pushes d a Supreme Court ruling to be reversed and a bill passed called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The bill was passed though a strait ticket vote by Congress. That is all democrats vote Aye for policy to be implemented that protects workers that are from an “under privileged” class or group and the Republicans vote Nay.

With unemployment raising throughout the country it is imperative that public policy be reformed to accommodate the harsh economic times. The unemployment has led too much of the migratory worker issues and overflow of workers in the job market. Many bills have been brought to congress over the last 2 months in response to employed workers pleas for relief. All of the bills I will discuss have not become laws yet and were only introduced and sent to committee in the 111th congressional session. I believe we will see some of these come back for vote in later sessions. The Unemployment assistance Act of 2009 was designed to allow unemployed individuals to exclude distributions from tax-favored accounts from gross income. His would allow the distribution of workers money that they earned and put into accounts for use at a later date. The workers Severance Tax Reduction Act of 2009 would allow tax payers to exclude up to $150,000 for separation from employment due to downsizing from gross income through 2010. The Unemployment Benefit Tax Suspension Act of 209 would suspend the taxation of unemployment compensation between December 31, 2009 and January 1, 2010. H.R. 656 was put forward to allow individuals over the age of 50 to tae distributions from their qualified retirement plans without being subject to the early distribution penalty of ten percent. The list goes on and on with these types of policy sitting at committee and not being voted on by congress. It might be a good thing that some of these bills did not go to the 111th session vote due to the partisan voting and political party struggle.

The party struggle created lots of havoc on some of these legitimate policies. Is unemployment as big of an issue as public policy is making it? Democrats and republican congressmen have shown some correspondence in the creation of some of these bills and have shown some correlation in their system of economic recovery, but the letters D and R after their names seems to be all that counts for anything when it comes time to implement some public policy. Some of the interesting studies I found pointed out the strong correlation between the United States unemployment rate and foreign-born workers in its labor force.

When will labor public policy solve the issues associated with discrimination and unemployment? Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t believe there will ever be a solution that makes the majority of US citizens happy. Discrimination will continue in the workforce, but at what point does reverse discrimination take place? Will policy put forth by congressman be taken seriously without bias party implications? Without reason and collaboration between citizens the policy will never flow up the political framework the way it was designed. As the Constitution states, “We the people...” that is as in one unified body, are governed because we want to be governed, and the only power that the government has is the power that the unified American “We” give/gave it. So I say it is time to end this cycle of acclimation and push forward with new old America. Pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and build a true democracy that our forefathers had envisioned.

Jordan Faust