The right to equal pay – Women in North Carolina are paid $7,000 per year less than men - simply for being women. This would be an important first step in making sure that hard work pays off and ensuring that workers earn enough to fuel job and economic growth in their local communities. House Bill 115 and Senate Bill 220 would adjust the minimum wage based on increases in the cost of living. While food and energy costs continue to rise, the current minimum wage of $7.25 just isn’t enough to make ends meet. But a full-time minimum-wage worker in North Carolina earns about $3,000 less per year than the federal poverty threshold for a family of three. The right to a living wage – Working full-time and year-round should be enough to keep a worker out of poverty. This would go a long way in curbing this crime wave. House Bill 826 would make it easier for workers to bring complaints when employers cheat them out of wages and would hold unscrupulous employers accountable through increased penalties. The right to be paid for the work you do – “Wage theft” occurs when workers are underpaid or not paid at all for their work, and it happens every day in North Carolina. Here are the key components of what such a Workers’ Bill of Rights would include (along with some bills from the current North Carolina General Assembly that would – if enacted – help make those components a reality): Their ideas form the basis of a “Workers’ Bill of Rights.” Recently, attorneys and advocates of the North Carolina Justice Center’s Workers’ Rights Project asked workers across the state to imagine what laws they would enact to make North Carolina better for workers and, by extension, businesses. Workers are the driving force behind economic growth, so what’s good for North Carolina’s workers is also good for North Carolina’s businesses.
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