Moms Rising helps you tell the Department of Labor to hold fast against big corporate whining about changes to our overtime standards. The Department of Labor has proposed making corporations pay their workers time-and-a-half for any hours worked over 40 in a week if those workers make less than $50,400 annually; currently we only guarantee overtime for workers making less than $23,660 (which Tha Bush Mobb raised from its long-overdue-for-an-update figure of around $8,000, so let's give them credit for one of the literally-a-handful of good things they did). We asked for more, of course -- I've long held that we should triple the threshold Labor set in 2004 -- but you get more when you ask for more. Would it be too much to ask that we do not hear evidence-free assertions that stronger overtime protections would "kill jobs" and "put businesses out of business"? The worst it'll do to corporations is do what it's designed to do, which is force them to hire more people -- and that's a victory for all of us, not just the millions of workers who will be able to get overtime pay for the first time.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to include the Brunner Island coal plant in its new anti-smog rules, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Why would the state of Pennsylvania exclude the Brunner Island plant from anti-smog rules? The reasoning defies logic: Brunner Island hasn't updated its smog-reducing equipment like other coal plants across the state have, so it essentially gets a "grandfather" rule so it can keep operating. I guess our state government thinks no other coal corporations would delay installing modern equipment just so they can get grandfathered in, too! Those who promulgate war-on-coal hysteria need to answer this question: why do corporations who pollute our air deserve to continue operating? I mean, that's not very free market now, is it? Unless "free market" means "free from the people's will," or "free from the people's right to breathe clean air." Everyone deserves clean air, and that includes the folks in the vicinity of Brunner Island -- which is, actually, a lot more Pennsylvanians than you might think.
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