Labor

While each month shows a little more progress than the one before, February’s jobs report stated the national unemployment rate is still 8.3 percent. With 12.8 million Americans unemployed, it’s clear Congress still has a lot of work to do. According to a recent World Bank study, the United States dropped two ranks, from eleventh to thirteenth, in the “starting a business” category, which gauges how easy or difficult it is for businesses to get up and running. 

For true economic recovery to take root, the U.S. has to be competitive in the global market. American businesses should be incentivized to succeed, and we must do away with regulations that will drive jobs overseas.

I am working hard to ensure not only that job creators have the stability to expand their businesses and hire new workers, but also that entrepreneurs have the capital and confidence to take on the risk of starting a new business.

There is an old saying among divorce attorneys that you know you’ve struck a fair deal when both sides are angry. We need to apply that principle to completing a transportation reauthorization before the end of the 112th Congress. So far, we have the anger part right.

This highway bill is about three important goals: jobs, jobs, jobs. When the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 was passed, our nation was nine years into the depth of a depression. National defense and job creation motivated lawmakers to put aside their differences. Now, we are in a similar predicament and it is time for saner heads to prevail.

On February 14, President Obama quietly signed into law the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which will provide $63.6 billion for the agency’s programs between 2012-2015. The House had passed the bill on February 3, and three days later the Senate voted for the conference agreement. 157 House Democrats and 18 Senate Democrats opposed the bill, while Hill Republicans supported the bill only after forcing the adoption of controversial provisions that will make it more difficult for airline and railroad workers to form unions.

After 5 years of uncertainty and 23 short-term extensions, there’s no question that a long-term solution to FAA funding was overdue. There’s also no question that the unprecedented inclusion of the anti-union provisions in the legislation demonstrates the GOP’s determination to destroy unions. As its labor critics have stated, the bill is a compromise in name only, and the President should have vetoed it.

Recently, increasing attention has been paid to Apple’s manufacturing operations overseas -- the company now make almost all of its products outside of the United States. It is inspiring to see innovators such as the late Steve Jobs create an incredible business success story. However, Apple’s offshore factories also highlight the effects government mandates can have on a company’s decision to “outsource” part of their operations and hire workers in other countries as opposed to here in the U.S. 

Unlike Apple, many businesses are unable to move overseas to cut costs, and still choose to create jobs within our borders. We must consider new ways to treat these truly local American businesses that directly serve consumers. Imposing costly mandates on these companies will not drive them offshore, but out of business altogether. Unfortunately, President Obama’s health care law will do just that.

We are thinking of the men and women who took a risk to start, build, and staff the millions of service industry establishments across this nation. From hotels and motels, to restaurants and retail stores, these businesses and their workers are punished by mandates because they provide services directly to U.S. consumers -- something that cannot be “offshored” to reduce costs. Neither a good night’s sleep for a weary traveler nor a hot cup of coffee on the way to work can be imported.

Last year, restaurants welcomed and served more than 70 million Americans celebrating Valentine’s Day, the nation’s second most popular holiday for the industry. Unfortunately, under the federal minimum wage for tipped employers, millions of restaurant workers, including waitresses and servers, are only making $2.13 per hour, a mere $4,430 per year.

This year, the National Restaurant Association is forecasting a record-breaking $635 billion in revenue for 2012 – all while the tipped minimum wage has resulted in staggeringly low wages and poverty among tipped employees in the restaurant industry.

In 2007, Congress raised the overall federal minimum wage to $7.25 but relinquished the opportunity to raise the tipped minimum wage under political pressure by the restaurant industry. This missed opportunity to address the tipped minimum wage has ultimately disproportionately affected women. More than five million women help to generate these records in revenue, but suffer from poverty wages primarily because the federal tipped minimum wage has been frozen since 1991.

As founder and CEO of Paycom, one of the largest payroll companies in the United States, I bring a unique and credible voice to the recent and ongoing payroll tax extension debate in Congress. My company provides payroll services for over 11,000 businesses across the nation and processes several million payroll checks every month. This gives me a unique perspective on the challenges facing American businesses.
 
Most importantly, I have no opinion about whether or not the payroll tax cuts should be extended. Those decisions are for our elected representatives to make, if they can be convinced to make them. However, I do have two important questions. Do the members of the House and Senate know enough about how payroll works to understand the way in which their stifling indecision and last-minute changes are unnecessarily adding costs to American businesses, creating anxiety for American workers and adding complexity to our tax system? If they do, shame on them. If they do not, why not ask payroll experts before arbitrarily choosing two months as a timeframe for a decision that impacts Americans’ paychecks?

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will hold a hearing on the President’s recess appointments to the NLRB – the latest of
a series of wasteful, politically motivated hearings attacking the board since the GOP assumed control of the House in January 2011.

Even in these days of hyper partisanship, it is rare for a party to engage in such rank hypocrisy as has the GOP on the NLRB. Republican criticism of the board falls into three categories: the legitimacy of Obama’s recess appointments, the supposedly biased nature of his nominees, and the NLRB’s “activist agenda” that has enraged the right-wing.

Since 1935, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has administered the federal labor relations law protecting the rights of private sector workers to form unions. The board also promotes the interests of employers by establishing a regulatory environment that rewards cooperative behaviors in the workplace. With his recess appointments to the board, President Obama safeguarded workers and employers alike from the legal limbo that would have resulted had the board being forced to shut down.

In the New Process Steel case, the Supreme Court said that the board needs three members to make decisions, and decisions issued with only two members have no legal effect. The board formerly consisted of three members, but one of those members, Craig Becker, held a recess appointment that expired at the end of 2011. As a result, President Obama’s appointments were necessary to prevent the collapse of board processes and protect employees’ rights on the job. Employers should support these appointments because uncertainty and delay do not benefit anyone — business or workers.

Over the course of the last three years, President Obama has waged a rhetorical campaign against special interests and their influence in Washington DC, while at the same time spearheading an effort to deliver unprecedented giveaways to his largest and most influential campaign contributor, labor bosses.

The heads of unions have been the most frequent visitors to the White House and they have openly bragged about having access to
administration officials every day of the week, including weekends. They have also candidly spoken about using administrative agencies full of unelected bureaucrats to create policies that they have been unable to move forward in the Congress due to their lack of popularity with workers and business owners.

Of the roughly 17.5 million working-age people in the United States living with a disability, nearly 70 percent receive disability benefits. A recent study revealed that 12 percent of all federal spending goes to supporting this population—$357 billion in 2008. Just 33 percent of working-age people with disabilities are employed, compared to 73 percent of those with no disability. This costly system is failing both people with disabilities and taxpayers.

The federal government began offering Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits to older workers no longer able to work because of long-term impairments in 1956. The nation has since expanded SSDI coverage and launched additional programs to support Americans living with significant disabilities. This support system, however, has failed to keep up with the changing needs of Americans or the realities of current economic times. Despite the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities, as a group, are falling further behind their peers without disabilities and are becoming more—not less—dependent on government programs.