Monday, September 05, 2016

Happy Labor Day!

St. Augustine was built with both slave and free labor. Spanish archives contain receipts for the wages paid to some of the African-American workers on the Castillo de San Marco.

To this day, too many workers in St. Augustine are underpaid and badly need free democratic trade unions. Some employers pay employees under the table, pay less than the minimum wage, committing wage theft and even brag that they will fire and blacklist employees who talk about forming a union. Once upon a time, one such energumen even did so on the St. Augustine Record's former "Talk of the Town" website. Truly shameful people.

As a former lawyer for American workers, former law clerk to the incomparable U.S. Department of Labor Chief Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Nahum Litt (1979-1995) and the late USDOL ALJ Charles P. Rippey, former counsel to the AFL-CIO Occupational Health Legal Rights Foundation, former Legal Counsel for Constitutional Rights to the Government Accountability Project and former private practitioner, I was part of championing real justice for American workers. We need more of that, and less flummery, dupery and nincompoopery, like that emitted by fraudfeasing wage theft artist DONALD J. TRUMP, who says American workers are overpaid.

As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome!"

1 comment:

Warren Celli said...

"To this day, too many workers in St. Augustine are underpaid and badly need free democratic trade unions."

They need an honest government that has not been hijacked.

http://saintaugdog.com/sadarticles/vacuumandbarfissue.html