13th Dec 2007
Spirituality at Work Roundup
This is apparently the legal edition of the Spirituality at Work Roundup.
Fourth Amendment I’ve read a fair amount about violations of the fourth amendment related to immigration raids of late. The articles I’ve read report experiences similar to this one:
“I was interrogated and detained for hours just because federal agents thought I was breaking immigration laws,” said Pasqual Talamantes, a UFCW meatpacking worker from Grand Island,
Neb. “They were handcuffing us and holding guns. I told them I was a citizen, born here in the United States, and they did not believe me.”
Bosses Can Sue Workers The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of an employer who had sued a former employee. It gets fairly confusing in a “who sued whom?” way, so I’ll quote the summary:
In 1998, Cleveland resident Tammy Greer-Burger filed a sexual harassment suit against Laszlo Temesi, her former employer. The jury ruled in favor of Temesi, who turned around and filed suit against Greer-Burger to recover his costs defending the sexual harassment suit and for punitive damages for “malicious prosecution.”
Think of how the threat of being sued by your employer might stop you from reporting discrimination.
Counter-Regulatory Regulators It’s not a good time for workers’ rights (see above and the difficulty of making the Employee Free Choice Act, which would guarantee that workers have the right to form a union, into a law) and much of that has to do with counter-regulatory regulators in charge.
The power of unions have taken a nosedive over the years. The union I was a member of in the telecommunications industry was full of its own self-importance, full of sound and fury, throwing its weight around like it had real power, but such posturing signified next to nothing. It was totally toothless and utterly beholden to the corporation itself.
I’m pretty much disappointed in the current state of many unions. I hear stories like you tell a lot. But I’m not willing to give up the belief that they can work….