Month: October 2015

Enforcing labor laws equally

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One of the more frustrating things in politics is when politicians tout a policy as universal when, in fact, it is riddled with exceptions. The one I hear the most is describing the top income tax rate as the tax rate that rich people pay. We don’t tax “rich people’s income” at 39%, we only tax rich people’s income at 39% to the extent it’s over $413,200 and is not earned from municipal bonds and is not earned through capital gains or the sale of collectibles–which counts out most of the income rich people earn. It’s a sham, and both parties employ it.

But here’s another one that came to my attention today: minimum wage and overtime laws. We know already that these laws have some exemptions. Waiters and other tipped employees can make less than the minimum hourly wage. Professionals and managers may not be eligible for overtime. But until today, I didn’t know that home health care workers were guaranteed neither the minimum wage nor the overtime rate after forty hours per week.

As Lyle Dennison at SCOTUSblog writes:

For decades, the Labor Department had followed a policy that home-care workers were not eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay provisions of federal law.  Two years ago, it changed its mind, concluding that the home-care industry had changed markedly, with fewer patients being treated in nursing homes and hospitals and more receiving care at home.

There are problems with minimum wage laws. Set too high, they will crowd out jobs as it becomes cheaper to outsource or automate tasks. But if we have them, they should apply equally to all professions. For too long, we’ve allowed exceptions to labor laws for jobs filled by rich kids (corporate and government internships) and jobs created to serve rich people (home health care, caddies, waitstaff).

If the law is a good one, we should let it be enforced against all employees. If it’s a bad one, we should still enforce it so that people can see it’s negative impact and repeal it. Exceptions and waivers only serve to keep bad laws in force. They let the powerful and politically connected ignore the law while everyone else follows it and is disadvantaged. If the government insists on forcing a one-size-fits-all wage law on the country, then it should actually enforce it on the whole country, not just those without the power to avoid it. Bravo to President Obama’s Department of Labor (words I thought I’d never type!) for making enforcement of the laws slightly more equitable.

Victory Day!

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I originally published this post at a former group blog, The Closet Moderate, in 2013. I think it still holds up.

Summer is the best part of the year, to my mind, and August is one fine month.  There’s just one thing missing: a holiday.  The summer, for the non-astronomers among us, is bookended by two holidays: Memorial Day and Labor Day.  Between them, we have the glorious Fourth of July.  All good days.  Good times to leave work for a long weekend at the shore, the lake, the mountains, or wherever you go.  Good days to wave the flag, eat hot dogs, and blow something up.

But look at August: nary a holiday to be seen.  For the non-teachers among us, that means working all week long, which in high summer seems damned intolerable.  This is the twenty-first century, for Pete’s sake.  We spend the twentieth increasing our productivity to a fair-thee-well.  Now’s the time to decrease it.  George Jetson worked a two-hour week.  Surely, with all our computers and labor-saving devices, we can afford to lose eight hours one in the month.

So: V-J day.  Or Victory over Japan Day, to be formal.  The end of the bloodiest war, the most just war, the last total war America ever fought.  When the Japanese surrendered (August 15 their time, August 14 our time) the world was at peace for the first time in a sanguineous decade.  So, the holiday has something for everyone.  For the bellicose, it represents the triumph of American arms over our the most powerful, most wicked enemies we ever faced.  For the pacific, it represents a rebirth of peace, and a new beginning of freedom for the liberated nations (except the ones the Soviets occupied, but never mind that).  We could even leave off the “Japan” bit and call it Victory Day. Or Peace Day. Or Armistice Day, since the old Armistice Day has been swallowed up by Veterans Day in this country.  It would fit in with the patriotic season so well, you wouldn’t even need to change the red-white-and-blue bunting.

Unsafe Harbor

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I did not think my first post here would be on trans-Atlantic data privacy, but this morning I read that the European Court of Justice struck down the so-called “Safe Harbor” provisions that governed data privacy rights of the European customers of American companies. As the TechCrunch article explains:

The Safe Harbor executive decision dates back to 2000, and allows U.S. companies to self certify to provide “adequate protection” for the data of European users to comply with the European data protection directive, and with fundamental European rights such as the right to privacy (under Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights).

In a strange coincidence, my first published work was on this exact topic, back in 2004. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the U.S. and E.U. have different standards for what businesses can do with the personal information you provide them. In Europe, data privacy is governed by a directive issued in 1998 that harmonized privacy rules among the E.U. member-nations and forbade transfer of consumers’ data outside the E.U. into any country that had inadequate privacy protections. In the E.U., a consumer must explicitly grant a company permission to share his data. In the U.S., companies may share consumers’ data unless the consumer explicitly opts-out. (You’ve probably received a notice like this one from your credit card companies: that’s because of this issue.)

This difference in the laws, among other things, caused the problem of E.U. regulators saying that the U.S. did not have adequate data privacy protection. By agreeing to let American companies self-certify that they were in compliance with the U.S laws, they were essentially considered in in compliance with the E.U. directive, and cross-border trade was allowed to continue. A lawsuit against Facebook by an E.U. citizen opened a crack in this protection when Europe’s highest court ruled that the Safe Harbor could not prevent suits against companies that fall short of E.U. privacy rules.

Back in 2004, I argued that the U.S. should adopt data privacy rules closer to those of Europe. We didn’t, and the Safe Harbor has worked as a temporary solution ever since. That solution has seemingly crumbled, and regulators must either come up with another E.U.-wide solution that will pass judgment with the ECJ, or else leave U.S. companies to deal with the varying privacy laws of the 28 E.U. member-states, an expensive and time-consuming proposition.

Hello world!

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I made this website to showcase my writing, publishing things here and (hopefully) linking to things when they are published elsewhere. I’ve got some new material in the pipeline, and I will also be republishing things I’ve already written under various pen names and group blogs. I hope you enjoy the site!

-Kyle