Santorum Hearts Sweatshops

This has me incensed. Sen. Santorum (R-PA) has introduced a bill that allows expansion of sweatshops, attacks workers' overtime benefits, and undermines state minumum wage laws, all at once!

"That's impossible," you say. "How could someone be so detached that he would want to screw over the American worker while claiming to be helping?"

Well, I don't have the answer to that, but I do have a place to find details on this bill, which, while it proposes to raise the mimium wage by $1.10, is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing (pdf file).

1) Santorum wants to do ban states from requiring a guaranteed wage for employees who receive tips, like waitresses and bartenders. As if waitresses and bartenders need more financial uncertainty added to their lives... and what about valets? What about the coat check girl? Are they supposed to just survive on tips, too? This is insane.

2) The bill also abolishes the 40 hour work week. Instead moving to an 80 hour, two week schedule. And here's where that makes a difference. Currently, if I work 50 hours one week, and 30 hours the next week, I still make 10 hours of overtime, for the 10 hours over 40 that I worked the first week. under this new bill, I wouldn't make any overtime, because my hours would add up to 80 hours over the course of the two week period. This means that employers could eff around with workers' schedules, driving them hard in the busy weeks and cutting them back in the slower weeks, because the incentive for the regularly scheduled week (i.e. overtime) would be gone, or at least totally hampered.

3) And finally, the wonderful senator from Pennsylvania (though he doesn't actually live there... ever.) has proposed that businesses with revenues less that $1 million be exempted from that little minimum wage increase I mentioned above. According to Labor Blog, this means that, while 1.2 million workers would receive the minimum wage benefit, another 6.8 million workers would lose minimum wage protection entirely. Pretty sweet plan.

And additionally, businesses with revenues below $7 million would be exempted from fines under a set of health, safety, pension, and other labor laws.

Sounds like the promotion of sweatshops to me.

Atrios is campaiging today to flood the good Senator's offices with calls about this issue. He's got all the numbers posted HERE. So if you have five minutes, give em a call to ask about this issue.

And be sure to check in on Labor Blog's coverage of this issue HERE.