“Not since the explosive years of the civil rights movement and the hard-fought debut of government-supported health care for the elderly and poor have so many big things -- love them or hate them -- been done so quickly.

“Gridlock? It may feel that way. But that's not the story of the 111th Congress -- not the story history will remember.”

“I am pleased that the Department of Labor has taken another step to expose hidden fees contained in America’s 401(k) plans.  While families are making difficult choices to put something away for their retirement, it is essential that they know how fees may be eating away at their savings and potentially delaying their retirement plans.”

“Until now, even if workers were given abundant retirement plan investment information they did not always receive it in a user-friendly format. The new rule for 401(k)-type retirement plans will provide workers with tools to easily match up one investment option with another.”

“Rep. George Miller (D-Cali.), who led the effort in Congress to raise the minimum wage in 2007, is taking issue with Republican candidates' recent statements that the federal policy should be rolled back and hasn't helped improve the economic position of the country.

“‘Well, it [their statements] sort of shows two things," Miller told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. ‘One, how clearly they're captive of the billionaire boys club, and two, how disconnected they are from working people in this country, who are trying to get [ahead for] for their families.’

“Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller attracted national attention on Monday for saying that the federal minimum wage should be abolished. ‘That is not within the scope of the powers that are given to the federal government,’ he told ABC News. Late last week, Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon was quoted as saying, in vague terms, that she'd be open to the idea of adjusting the federal minimum wage laws. West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese, who has long advocated that it be abolished, also said the federal law ‘hasn't worked’.”

"When a national debate is over giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, and these people think that it's people working at the minimum wage that's holding people back, it's an outrage." 

For now, some feel torn between public health and protecting their jobs. Nationwide, 84% of workers said they felt pressured to come to work sick because of the recession, according to a September poll by Vancouver-based Angus Reid Strategies. The poll also showed that 69% of workers had not been offered vaccines or other precautions from employers.

One in six workers say they or a family member have been fired, suspended, punished or threatened for staying home sick or caring for a sick relative, according to a survey last year by the Washington, D.C.-based Public Welfare Foundation. Many large employers, such as Disney and Wal-Mart, dock workers disciplinary points for staying home even when they are ill.

"We are seeing more and more stories of workers who are infected with the virus but can't afford to stay home because they don't have paid sick leave," Miller said. "This puts both their co-workers and their customers at risk -- and could cost their employers money in lost productivity."

Some employers say paid sick leave saves them money in the long run.

"If they're sick and they're getting other employees sick, that's just going to impact our employees more," said April Boduc, a spokeswoman for San Diego-based Sempra Energy, which gives employees 10 paid sick days a year and allows them to bank unused days and donate vacation days to sick co-workers.

The unemployment rate for 16 to 19-year-olds hit 25.9% in September, the highest rate recorded since at least 1948 (the earliest data the Labor Department supplies).

Lately, their plight hasn’t been falling on deaf ears. The House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing earlier this week to address low unemployment among young people.

“Indeed, because of the horrible economy, younger workers are now competing with more experienced workers for positions traditionally [in] the domain of the young and less experienced,” Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat and the committee chairman, said according to prepared remarks. “Until the economy as a whole turns around, younger workers will continue to be hit the hardest.”

At least things don’t appear to be getting worse for the 20-somethings lately. The unemployment rate for 20 to 24-year-olds dropped to a still-high 14.9% in September. It’s the second month the group’s unemployment rate decreased.

Some small employers say that it’s difficult to get a handle on exactly what they pay in fees, and that it often requires digging through documents or calling the various parties involved.

Gordon Maccani, chief executive of Digital Telecommunications Corp., in Van Nuys, Calif., says he thought he was paying only $3,600 a year to a third-party recordkeeper to manage his company’s 15-year-old 401(k) plan, which has about $920,000 in assets and 38 participants.

But Mr. Maccani says he recently started reviewing his annual plan statements from Transamerica Retirement Services and noticed there’s an array of other fees paid out of assets, including a 1.2% “contract asset fee,” $8,500 in “charges and fees” and about $1,400 in partner distribution fees. He originally didn’t get a clear answer, he says, when he called the company to inquire. But Transamerica called Mr. Maccani and gave him a comprehensive fee breakdown after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. The company is a unit of Transamerica Life Insurance Co., owned by Aegon NV, a multinational Dutch insurance firm.

Transamerica’s recently provided breakdown shows Digital Telecommunications’ 401(k) plan actually paid about $16,300 in fees last year.

• Three-quarters of those who will benefit from this wage increase are 20 years old or older.
• More than half are families with yearly incomes of less than $35,000.
• Over sixty percent of them are women, and over 400,000 of them are single parents with kids under 18. And over two million children will benefit from this boost in their parents’ wages.
  

If the story of the janitors and groundskeepers at the Carnegie Science Center weren't true, it would seem as if the advocates of the Employee Free Choice Act were making it up.

Those 10 people work for the same employer as the 50 people who clean the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History and the Carnegie Libraries. Yet, because of a quirk of history dating to a time when the individual museums were run as if they were separate organizations, the janitorial staffs at the museums and libraries are unionized. The cleaners at the Science Center are not….

The pay is $7.85 an hour. He is without medical insurance and is not granted days off with pay for sick time or vacation….

The janitors at the Oakland museums and the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh make $10 to $14 an hour and are awarded full benefits, including health insurance, vacation time and sick days, according to Gabe Morgan from the union that represents them.

The recession is affecting artists, dancers and musicians everywhere, including the Bay Area, but hope is on the way. A House committee in Washington is examining how communities everywhere are being affected. $50 million has been set aside to give a boost to the arts and entertainment industry. The arts are big business generating 5.7 million jobs and $166 billion in economic activity each year. The House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by Congressman George Miller (D) of Concord, was told artists are unemployed and need their share of the stimulus package.

Anxious readers who had lost their jobs wanted to know how they could apply for the subsidy, which will cover 65 percent of laid-off workers' COBRA health insurance premiums if they choose to continue their health insurance under their former employer's plan. The reason for their concern is no mystery: The federal law known as COBRA that permits them to extend their health insurance also requires them to pay 100 percent of the premium, plus an administrative fee of 2 percent. For people trying to get by on an unemployment insurance check of around $325 a week, shelling out $1,000 or more a month for health insurance is often not feasible. Even a helping hand of 65 percent doesn't make COBRA cheap, but for some the subsidy will at least make coverage affordable.

The economic stimulus package signed into law last month seeks to address the high costs by subsidizing COBRA premiums for unemployed workers. Under the federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, laid-off workers can continue their former employer's health coverage for up to 18 months, but only if they pay the entire premium, plus a 2% administrative fee. Average COBRA premiums exceed $400 a month for individuals, and more than $1,000 a month for families.

The stimulus package will subsidize 65% of COBRA premiums for employees who were laid off between Sept. 1 and the end of this year. If you delayed signing up for COBRA coverage when you lost your job, you have 60 days to re-enroll after you receive a notice from your employer.

The Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday, July 15 to examine the U.S. Department of Labor’s record of enforcing the nation’s wage and hour laws. The Government Accountability Office will highlight the results of two separate investigations requested by Chairman George Miller into the Labor Department’s failures to fully investigate and properly address violations of the law. Seventy years ago last month, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act into law. The law has provided generations of Americans with basic rights to minimum wages, overtime pay, and a ban on oppressive child labor. However, critics say that the Bush administration has failed to protect workers from a growing problem of “wage theft” by adopting weak approaches to enforcement and reducing funding and staffing levels of the Wage and Hour Division, the agency responsible for investigating complaints of wage, hour, and child labor violations.