Labour laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, or uncomfortably/dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging or underpaid. Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits. The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. The U.S. Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors."
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
Justice for Janitors (JfJ) is a social movement organization that fights for the rights of janitors across the US and Canada. It was started on June 15, 1990, in response to the low wages and minimal health-care coverage that janitors received. Justice for Janitors includes more than 225,000 janitors in at least 29 cities in the United States and at least four cities in Canada. Members fight for better wages, better conditions, improved healthcare, and full-time opportunities.
Community unionism, also known as reciprocal unionism, refers to the formation of alliances between unions and non-labour groups in order to achieve common goals. These unions seek to organize the employed, unemployed, and underemployed. They press for change in the workplace and beyond, organizing around issues such as welfare reform, health care, jobs, housing, and immigration. Individual issues at work are seen as being a part of broader societal problems which they seek to address. Unlike trade unions, community union membership is not based on the workplace- it is based on common identities and issues. Alliances forged between unions and other groups may have a primary identity based on affiliations of religion, ethnic group, gender, disability, environmentalism, neighborhood residence, or sexuality.
Worker centers are non-profit community-based mediating organizations that organize and provide support to communities of low wage workers who are not already members of a collective bargaining organization or have been legally excluded from coverage by U.S. labor laws. Many worker centers in the United States focus on immigrant and low-wage workers in sectors such as restaurant, construction, day labor and agriculture.
Ruth Milkman is an American sociologist of labor and labor movements. She is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the director of research at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Between 1988 and 2009 Milkman taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
Bruce Nissen is a professor emeritus of labor studies and director of research at the Center for Labor Research and Studies (CLRS) at Florida International University (FIU). He also formerly directed that university's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (RISEP).
Kimberly Ann Bobo is an American religious and workers' rights activist, and current executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), a non-partisan advocacy coalition based in Richmond, Virginia. Bobo is a nationally known promoter of social justice who leads VICPP's advocacy, outreach, and development work. She wrote a book on faith-based organizing entitled Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing.
The Chinese Staff and Worker's Association (CSWA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan workers' rights organization based in New York City which educates and organizes workers in the United States so that they may improve their working conditions. It primarily assists workers in restaurants, the garment and construction industries, although it is active among workers in a variety of professions. The organization serves workers from all backgrounds, most of its members are Chinese and most of its efforts directed at employers in Chinatown.
Community Change, formerly the Center for Community Change (CCC), is a progressive community organizing group active in the United States. It was founded in 1968 in response to civil rights concerns of the 1960s and to honor Robert F. Kennedy. The organization's stated mission is "to build the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change their communities and public policies for the better."
Lucy Randolph Mason was a 20th-century American labor activist and suffragist. She was involved in the union movement, the consumer movement and the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century.
The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC) is a not-for-profit organization and worker center with affiliates in a number of cities across the United States. Its mission is to improve wages and working conditions for the nation's low wage restaurant workforce. Its tactics and strategy have drawn fire from business groups and restaurant industry lobbyists.
The University of Miami Justice for Janitors campaign was a nine-week strike by custodial workers at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, which lasted from February 28, 2006 to May 3, 2006.
Wage theft is the failing to paying of wages or providing of employee benefits rightfully owed to an employee by contract or law. It can be conducted by employers in various ways, among them failing to pay overtime; violating minimum-wage laws; the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, illegal deductions in pay; forcing employees to work "off the clock", not paying annual leave or holiday entitlements, or simply not paying an employee at all.
David Rolf is an American labor leader, writer, and speaker. He was the Founding President of Seattle-based Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents health care workers, and formerly served as international vice president of SEIU. He is the author of The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America about the movement by low-wage workers to earn a higher minimum wage, and A Roadmap to Rebuilding Worker Power. Rolf was a founder of the Fair Work Center in Seattle, Working Washington, The Workers Lab in Oakland, and the SEIU 775 Benefits Group.
Sarumathi "Saru" Jayaraman is an American attorney, author, and activist from Los Angeles, California. She is an advocate for fair wages for restaurant workers and other service workers in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11th, she co-founded the non-profit public service organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. And in 2013 she founded a new organization to work on these issues, called One Fair Wage. Jayaraman is a recipient of the Ashoka fellowship in 2013 and the Soros Equality Fellowship in 2020.
Make the Road New York (MRNY) is the largest progressive grassroots immigrant-led organization in New York state. The organization works on issues of workers' rights; immigrant and civil rights; environmental and housing justice; justice for transgender, gender nonconforming, intersex, and queer (TGNCIQ) people; and educational justice. It has over 23,000 members and five community centers in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, and Westchester County.
The Worker Standards Board, Wage Board or Industry Committee aims to improve wages and working conditions for all workers within a specific industry. When implemented along with other regional labor policies, such as paid family leave, the Worker Standards Board is a useful alternative or supplement to a collective bargaining agreement and a formal labor union, when the situation does not support a union.
Farmworkers in the United States have unique demographics, wages, working conditions, organizing, and environmental aspects. According to The National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health in Agricultural Safety, there are approximately 2,112,626 full-time workers were employed in production agriculture in the US in 2019 and approximately 1.4 to 2.1 million hired crop workers are employed annually on crop farms in the US. A study by the USDA found the average age of a farmworker to be 33. In 2017, the Department of Labor and Statistics found the median wage to be $23,730 a year, or $11.42 per hour.
