Discussion
Similar problems to the case presented on South Texas College have tasked policy analyst to question the legitimacy of government intervention on the issue of overtime compensation. Similarly, the perceived market failure surrounding the topic policy analyst have been entrusted to use their technical skills to “predict and access” the consequences of alternative policies related to this issue. The following sections within this document discuss how policy analyst have shaped the formulation of this policy and its effect on public stakeholders.
Social Setting Leading to Overtime Pay The issue of overtime pay in our current social setting results from the same public ideology of wage theft that was part of the great depression era. Although the economic and social setting of the U.S. is arguably in far better condition
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Author Greg IP, describes real pay as the amount an individual makes in monetary terms after accounting for inflation. The logic behind this theory is that “the more a worker produces for his employer, the more he’ll earn” (Ip, 2013, p. 58). Greg Ip, provides an example of this theory and its dilemma in his book titled The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World. Greg Ip, states that “someone with a backhoe can dig more than someone with a shovel”, therefore it may be expected that the employee who produces more is compensated respectively (Ip, 2013, p. 58). However, the employment world does not always guarantee that the highly productive employee will benefit more than the employee with less productivity and often it is the “employer” who gains the capital profitability in this employment agreement and other times it is even the consumer of the product or
...lley, W. H., Jennings, K. M., Wolters, R. S., & Mathis, R. L. (2012). Employment & Labor Relations. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
1.“If, for example, students were not ultimately rewarded for spending their early adulthoods pursuing undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees, or if the hardest-working and most productive workers were paid the same as the median worker, then citizens would have little incentive to develop expertise, to exert effort, or to excel in their work.”
Imagine having to clock out mid-shift to prevent getting paid overtime, but not leaving for another hour or two. Having to punch out for break but work through it, or having a paid vacation taken away as if it never existed? Situations relative to these are reality and are classified as wage theft, defined by the wage theft website as “a variety of infractions that occur when workers do not receive their legally or contractually promised wages” (Wage Theft). The public is generally uneducated of the concept of wage theft and the effects it has on our society, let alone what can be done about it. The Wage Theft Prevention Act, an act established in 2011 by the state of New York, provides laws protecting working citizens, and is an act that should be effective nationwide. As a country, we support the terms “freedom”, “equality”, and “rights”; however, we need to focus on the working citizens of the United States and ensure equal rights for everyone.
Sklar, H., Laryssa, M., & Wefald, S. (2001). Raise the floor: Wages and policies that work for all
Members of organized labor and Unions sacrificed much in the strive for higher wages. Workers were paid very poorly and did not make enough money to fully support themselves and their families. For example in modern times, citizens in New York City hold protests to raise hourly wages to a minimum of fifteen dollars an hour. Throughout time Union and labor workers have been paid poorly. Document A clearly shows evidence that although efforts were made, hours and wages were not changing as they should of been. Although the impact to change hour and wages didn't Chanel as much, it does not mean a great deal of effort was not made.
The article The Gender Gap in Wages insights the issue about the wage gap in the early 21st century, observing that is not actual discrimination in the workplace, but rather the type of work and time put into it that changes the wages between male and female workers. June O’Neill gives sufficient statistical data that is focused on work experience and how productivity in the home is a result of the wage gap. Her claim introduces a great amount of statistical data that shows the reader the reasons for a wage gap to exist. She is knowledgeable about the subject and is straight-forward about her point. O’ Neill’s argument is justifiable meanwhile, it can be argued that her neutrality on the wage gap does not give a specific reason as to how this
Then came the question, should the employer be the one responsible for providing health insurance. While everyone on the panel could agree that our health care system in 2008 was broken, most seemed opposed to the alternative solution of universal healthcare. There is an incentive to the company to offer health insurance to a human being that may receive the opportunity to receive health insurance from another company. However, taking health insurance responsibility away from the employer and making it the government’s responsibility would increase availability and possibly eliminate freedom of
In many nations, the relationship between labor and production has often been a tense one. On one side of the equation, businesses have insisted on greater productivity at lower costs. On the other side, labor (most often in the form of labor unions) has insisted that increased productivity can be best be achieved if the workers have a reasonable “living” wage and job security (Howard 2002).
In his work, Marx presents the amount of power exchange-values impose upon the economy, as he states “As use-values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange-values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use-values” (Marx 54). It is with this analysis that Marx is able to present the link between labor and the productions that result from a worker 's dedication. As a result, it becomes evident that exchange-values possess an extraordinary amount of influence with regards to the worth of an object and a worker’s salary. However, this worth changes with time and depends on the usefulness of the product. This is especially made evident when analyzing the twenty-first century business world. In 2015 a report by Sorensen was published, discussing the role of exchange-values in the American economic-system. Thus, demonstrating the neglect of use-values, while highlighting the power of exchange-value as Sorensen writes, “Most
This paper discusses Adam Smith's and David Ricardo's view on the labor theory of value. It includes a discussion of the validity of the arguments they present in relation to social and Economic contexts. To the pursuance of this objective, the paper has explored five published articles available both in the internet and as hand copies.
4Internet. “Differences in Economic Characteristics Account for Most of the Measured Gender Pay Gap”. The American Workplace, 1998. www.nationalparternship.org/workandfamily/workplace.htm
Producing goods or services are dictated not by employees but by their employers. If profits exist, employers are the ones that benefit more so than the regular worker. “Even when working people experience absolute gains in their standard of living, their position, relative to that of capitalists, deteriorates.” (Rinehart, Pg. 14). The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Hard work wears down the employee leaving them frustrated in their spare time. Workers are estranged from the products they produce. At the end of the day, they get paid for a day’s work but they have no control over the final product that was produced or sold. To them, productivity does not equal satisfaction. The products are left behind for the employer to sell and make a profit. In discussions with many relatives and friends that have worked on an assembly line, they knew they would not be ...
Most will agree that knowledge is the ‘key’ resource in this post-industrial economy. The challenge for many companies is developing an organization that creates and cultivates knowledge and learning. Pay plays a significant role in shaping workplace behavior. Most of the traditional pay systems reward the job the individual performs rather than the skills he/she brings to the job. The system is not being able to reward the things the company needs and this presents a barrier. The trend has moved away from pay for the value of the job, service and seniority. It is being replaced with paying for skills, knowledge, competency, performance and productivity, all which can be delivered through different invitations, from changes to base pay to introducing gainsharing.
Today in the United States, men make more than women in various sectors, including education and other trades favoring women workers. The gap gets bigger when comparing the wages earned by men to those of women in jobs favoring men workers such as construction or other physically demanding jobs. Women are less likely to work those jobs, therefor; men have the advantage of having more experience and get paid better. In addition, employers would rather hire a man instead of a woman because they believe that a man will be able to sustain the difficulty of the job and work longer hours which crate a disadvantage for women because they are unable to gain experience and become skilled in that certain field. Gender pay gap based on this information is explained as the result of the discrimination of employers toward the feminine sex in terms of pay, which discourage them to work certain jobs leading to create a bigger gap due to the lack of
On the other hand, there is an argument that education has a direct effect on an employee’s earnings through its...