New workplace fines to kick in

New and larger Labor Department fines will kick in on Aug. 1 for everything from mine safety fraud to job safety violations.

The fines, mandated by a 2015 law, raise civil penalties for law-breaking by up to 150 percent, said Obama Administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Some of the fines, such as for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, had not risen in decades.

“Civil penalties should be a credible deterrent that influences behavior far and wide. Adjusting our penalties to keep pace with the cost of living can lead to significant benefits for workers and can level the playing field responsible employers who should not have to compete with those who don’t follow the law,” Perez said.

The new law imposes the higher fines for law-breaking, retroactive to last November. Agencies will publish “’catch up rules’ this summer to make up for lost time since the last adjustments,” DOL said. Prominent new fines include:

• OSHA’s maximum fines, last raised in 1990, will jump by 78 percent. The top penalty for serious violations will rise from $7,000 to $12,471. The maximum for willful or repeated violations goes from $70,000 to $124,709. Mine Safety and Health Act fines will also increase.

• Fines for violating the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act will increase from $1,100 to $1,894 each.

• All the fines under the Longshore Workers’ Compensation Act more than double, as do several of the fines under the Black Lung Benefits Act.

U.S. jobs report is stronger in June

The latest jobs report had very good news for the U.S. as a whole, but not so much for the nation's construction industry.

The U.S. Labor Department reported July 8 that the economy added 287,000 jobs in June, a sharp bounce back from the comparably wretched 11,000 new jobs now reported for May. A big factor in the improvement, says the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) "was the end of the Verizon strike which subtracted 37,000 jobs from the May growth number and added the same amount to June, but even adjusting for this effect the June growth figure is much stronger."

The jobs report continues to give President Obama bragging rights: the numbers mark the 76th straight month of private sector job growth, the longest streak on record.

The job gains in June were widely spread across sectors - except construction, which was flat. Health care added 38,500 jobs, retail added 29,400, while the government sector added 22,000, with 17,000 at the local government level. Manufacturing added 14,000 jobs with 13,000 of these in food manufacturing. Mining lost another 5,000 jobs.

The CEPR said the average hourly U.S. wage is 2.6 percent above its years-ago level. And the unemployment rate rose modestly in June to 4.9 percent