Floor Supervisor Case Summary

The United States Department of Labor (DOL) has a mission to protect the welfare of wage earners, job seekers, and retirees. They also improve working conditions and ensure work-related benefits and rights. The DOL has many laws and reregulation’s protecting workers that range from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets standards for wages and overtime pay, to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which focuses on workplace safety and health. With the wide range that the DOL has employees can feel that they have standards in place to ensure fair pay, fair treatment, and a safe environment to work in. Without the enforcement of the DOL corporations are left to establish pay and safety standards internally. In a business atmosphere where the importance of profit is often placed before the employees, an environment without laws and regulations can be dangerous. An example can be seen in other countries where labor laws are not in place compassion and common sense also seem to be absent. In these areas workers, many times children often works long hours for little pay. Sadly it has been shown that when corporations are unregulated the importance for the fair treatment of employees takes a less important role.

Ehrenreich displays her hate for management to portray the demeaning of working class employees by employers. During her experiment, Ehrenreich gains a sense of the inhuman conditions working class employees have to go through. She recalls on her first day how there is no break room at Jerry’s. She continues to explain how “For six to eight hours in a row, you never sit except to pee” (364). Ehrenreich explains the working conditions a working class employee is put through when applying to a minimum wage job. Today, it is illegal

Workers might engage in unsafe work practices which other workers might copy thinking it was normal

Employers should not treat their employees as a potential criminal. At the end of the book, it said, “Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.” (238). When Barbara worked at Key West, Florida, the employer said they heard

Dexter Roberts and Pete Engardio in “Secrets, Lies, and Sweatshops,” writes about the various struggles that the United States has with production factories overseas. Wal-Mart claims they have rules for the sweatshops to follow but China still violates the labor laws by hiring consultants to give tips to sneak around auditors. The American people enjoy their everyday items at a low price, which Wal-Mart demands to the sweatshops. The sweatshops are struggling to provide these low price items to Wal-Mart and keep their working conditions humane. Roberts and Engardio explain in the article how companies that have overseas production are attempting to provide the managers and employees with skills to make the overtime required more effective.

Employees are asked to work long hours and take on more duties, yet pay continues to decrease. Many employees opt to replace established employees with new workers, in an effort to save money, and this is only one way in which a person may be penalized for doing nothing wrong.

Businesses are continuously growing over time as technology advances and people find better and more efficient ways of production. With the expansion of a business, companies need more laborers and workers to help make their company successful. However, instead of hiring more people, business owners forced workers to work long shifts with very minimal pay. While muckrakers brought much attention to

All employees they were not allowed to take off without prior management approval.             Also, there is no labor union for accountants. However, she begins talking to her co-            workers during lunch breaks and sometimes during regular work hours, encouraging             them to organize and form a union to “protect ourselves”.

Appellee violates the federal fair labor standard acts by designating an employee as a “manager” who is entitled to overtime pay when that employee’s primary job responsibilities do not require supervising other employees or exercising independent judgment, but do require day to day maintenance activities as well as retail sales.

The work conditions were unusually intolerable and would make a reasonable employee feel compelled to

The new factory introduced a new concept of mass production attracting and recruiting young and unmarried women to offer human capital despite the challenging working environment in the system. The challenges related to prolonged working hours, strict moral regulations as well as risky working environment (Kessler-Harris 127). The owners of the factories introduced supervision systems based on a paternal perspective with every girl working in the industry expected to attend mass in the local church. Women were equally not presented with a choice on the place to work with selection resulting from a random form where number of working hours ranged between eleven and fourteen hours. Since the companies engaged in mass production and women worked for long hours, they had no choice but to engage in the use of heavy machinery in a noisy and hot environment. The deteriorating working conditions for women led to organization of strikes from the women workers gaining support from the media and despite the failure of the strikes, they paved way towards equal employment opportunities for both genders in the

But, as a matter of demonstrable moral fact, business owners do not have a duty to sacrifice their interests for the sake of their employees, and they should not be forced to do so. The owner of a business, having built

Table 1 demonstrates that there is substantial violation overtime pay with significant portion of 41% of workers work overtime did not obtained any overtime compensation (Ye, Gindling & Li, 2015). There is approximately 29% workers (12% of all workers) who work overtime did not receive overtime pay. While more than 40% workers (17% of all workers) earn less than 1.5 times hourly minimum wage, likewise almost 70% of workers paid lower than legally required 1.5 times regular wage for overtime. A legally mandated overtime wage are not received by high fraction of workers of all gender, education and age. Apart from that, there are high proportion of employees in firms with owners from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and foreign countries get their overtime

c. From page 452 number 14-35 Several years ago Walmart instituted a new employee scheduling system that makes it more difficult for its employees to know for sure what hours they would be working. Basically, the store supervisor calls them at the last minute if there's and opening that day. Based on what you read in this chapter, is the new system ethical? Why or why not? Is it fair? What would you do if you were a Walmart employee?

3. How valid is the company’s argument that the labor agreement with maintenance employees is “beyond the scope of this grievance”?