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That may be because more workers are temporary or part time these days. Or, it may be because of the shift to white collar jobs, as Ross Runkel, a professor of law at Oregon's Willamette University points out. "We no longer have a blue collar, rust belt, steel worker type of economy," he says. "People who are in white collar, information type jobs don't seem to think they need unions. They think they are independent. Maybe their pay is high. It's a cultural thing. Blue collar people belong to unions and white collar people don't." With all the complaints about unpaid overtime in the computer industry, it might be worth starting a union (and risk being labeled a rabble-rouser) just to steal back some free time.
Also at the top of the most-useful-laws list are statutes that prevent discrimination. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 says employers can't pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says you can't be fired, passed over for promotion, or otherwise penalized because of your race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. The Age Discrimination and Employment Act of 1967 affords those same protections for people based on age and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 looks after those with disabilities. In fact, the ADA requires employers to accommodate people with disabilities, by providing a phone amplifier, for example, for a worker with bad hearing.
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