News & Articles

“I think the person running the country should be smarter than I am. We’ve just lived through the alternative, and it was only good for the liquor industry.” Andy Borowitz, political satirist, in his 2022 book Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber.

Mr. Borowitz was talking about Trump in his first term. Now we are living through another round of incompetent, fact-free, ego driven mismanagement. Only this time the damage being done is much more severe and comprehensive. 

We can get overwhelmed and numbed by the constant flood of ridiculous bluster, outrageous lies and bad decisions. So in an attempt to be more positive, this article talks about some other news stories you may have missed in the avalanche of absurdities.

An economic justice bill of rights

Once again Democratic legislators have proposed an “Economic Justice Bill of Rights” to address economic and employment problems facing many Wisconsinites. The proposal is a vision for improving the lives of people and thus boosting the overall economy.  

The Economic Justice Bill of Rights proposal declares that people have a right to a list economic opportunities including:

• A living wage job

• Adequately funded public education

• Affordable child care 

• The right to join, or organize, a union and bargain collectively

• Affordable, accessible, comprehensive high-quality health care

• A clean, sustainable environment 

• Decent, sustainable community infrastructures including safe, affordable housing, transportation, and broadband

• Access to capital, investments, financial institutions and secure retirement programs

• A fair, restorative and equitable justice system

• Recreation and participation in community and civic life

• Life, self-determination, and freedom from oppression.

This is essentially President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” updated and modernized from 1935. 

Needless to say, this legislation is going nowhere in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature. They prefer the social and economic standards of the 1870s. 

Wage theft

Wage theft occurs when an employer doesn’t pay an employee the pay or benefits earned. For workers it is a costly crime, but it gets little attention. Every year, millions of workers are victims of wage theft. From 2017 to 2020, $3 billion dollars was recovered in stolen wages and this was a small fraction of the total amount stolen.

There are a variety of ways employers steal from their employees. The most common is not paying minimum wages or overtime for working over 40 hours in a week. Other examples of wage theft are:

Withholding tips

Withholding the final paycheck after an employee quits

 Asking for, or requiring, unpaid work (working off the clock)

Requiring work during unpaid breaks

Asking you to make work-related purchases without reimbursement (tools or uniforms)

I would add all the work people do (often voluntarily) calling, texting or checking emails outside work hours. For many people the standard of a 40-hour work week is dead. 

A very common wage theft tactic is claiming a worker is “management” or an “independent contractor” rather than a regular employee. This “misclassification” allows employers to avoid  payroll taxes but cheats employees out of overtime, Social Security contributions and eligibility for unemployment compensation or workers compensation.

Wage theft is most prevalent with minimum wage jobs and disproportionately affects women, minorities and immigrants. A 2009 survey found that 26% of low-wage workers experienced wage theft. The National Employment Law Project says this statistic is a “very conservative estimate.”

Republicans constantly prate about the high rates of crime in America (which is not true). It is a favorite fear mongering tactic at election time. But enforcing the law for crimes like wage theft, consumer fraud, violations of environmental laws, medical billing fraud or insider stock trading is not on their agenda. Law enforcement is only for little people, not people who steal with a fountain pen. 

More freedom to avoid employer responsibilities

The U.S. Supreme Court recently made a ruling affecting workers in Superior, Wisconsin. It involved a religious non-profit organization not having to contribute to unemployment compensation for its secular employees. The court ruled that this was an infringement on religious freedom.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Catholic Charities Bureau in Superior doesn’t have to pay unemployment tax. News reports say Catholic Charities had been paying the tax for more than 5O years but had recently decided to stop. They claim the state wrongfully denied a religious exemption from paying the state the unemployment tax. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of the state. The Wisconsin court said that, despite Catholic Charities’ religious mission statement, it’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular.” 

Catholic Charities is a nonprofit organization connected to the Catholic church. They provide a variety of social services to help disabled, elderly and people needing in-home assistance.  Usually they do this work under contract from county or state social services agencies. They hire nurses, home health aides, housekeepers, social workers, office assistants and managers. 

Essentially Catholic Charities is a business providing services just like other nonprofit organizations and businesses. The work they do is not religious in nature. It is my understanding that they are prohibited from any religious proselytizing while providing services. 

According to the “City Journal” (a New York City publication from the conservative Manhattan Institute), Catholic Charities nationally “has become over the last three decades an arm of the welfare state, with 65 percent of its $2.3 billion annual budget flowing from government sources” with “little that is explicitly religious, or even values-laden, about most of the services its 1,400 member agencies and 46,000 paid employees provide.” 

For decades conservative judges have been distorting the meaning of the First Amendment to create wholly new interpretations of religious freedom. The common thread of these rulings is that individual religious freedom can override necessary employment, equal rights, public accommodation and public health laws. I wrote about this in “Abusing religious freedom,” Duluth Reader, Jan. 7, 2021.

The Supreme Court’s latest ruling is continuing this distorted notion of religious freedom. Religious freedom does not grant a right to impose your religious dogma on others or to avoid your responsibilities to society. Religious freedom should never be used to justify harm to others, discrimination or avoiding an organization’s responsibilities as an employer.

Where is the Christian charity in denying unemployment benefits to your employees? 

Catholic Charities should be ashamed.