Two lawmakers seek to exempt minor-leaguers from minimum wage, overtime law. Peoria Chiefs and other minor-league baseball players would be excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act guaranteeing a federal minimum wage and overtime pay under a measure introduced in Congress.

Currently, according to a recent lawsuit, pay for most minor leaguers violates federal law unless players are on two-way contracts (with major-league and minor-league pay levels), often $3,000-$7,000 yearly for five-month seasons with 50-70-hour workweeks. Minor leaguers’ pay has risen by 75 percent in the last 40 years, however, inflation has gone up 400 percent.

U.S. Reps. Cheri Bustos (D-Moline) and Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, on July 1 introduced, HR5580 to “exempt minor league players from certain federal wage and overtime requirements, putting them on equal footing with workers in a dozen other unique industries,” they said.

“If the law is not clarified, the costs to support local teams would likely increase dramatically and usher in significant cuts across the league, threatening the primary pathway to the majors and putting teams at risk,” they added. “The impact on teams could also have a significant, negative economic impact on businesses and workers that rely on minor league baseball.”

The Office and Professional Employees International Union represents baseball’s minor-league umpires; the Major League Baseball Players Association represents big leaguers. Maybe it’s time for the minor league players to unionize, too.

Working women win big twice at U.S. Supreme Court as justices on June 27 handed down their last rulings until October. The court voted 5-3 in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstadt to throw out Texas’ massive restrictions on freedom of choice in reproductive rights, by invalidating its law that, as a practical matter, closed down more than half of the already few abortion clinics in the nation’s second most-populous state.

The ruling made it clear that similar laws elsewhere, against clinics or against other disfavored groups, would run afoul of the law.

The second big win upheld the Obama administration’s Labor Department rules giving hundreds of thousands of home health care workers the right to earn at least the minimum wage and overtime pay. A massive majority of such workers are women, minority or both.

DOL and the workers won in lower courts against the home health care industry. But the lobby took Home Care Association v. Weil to the High Court. It argued the justices should take the case in their next term, starting in October. Without comment, the justices declined. That  “no” leaves DOL’s rules – and the prospect of better wages – intact.

“We are very pleased” that the DOL’s rules stand, said AFSCME President Lee Saunders, whose union represents tens of thousands of home health care workers. ”That decision upholds the Department of Labor’s rule applying Fair Labor Standards Act protections to the more than two million home care workers throughout the nation.

Minnesota nurses’ strike part of forced walkout in three states. A week-long strike by 5,000 nurses against hospitals in the Twin Cities drew national attention for the issues they raised, but it’s actually half of a 10,000-nurse forced walkout in three states, organized by their union, National Nurses United.

A key issue in the walkout against Allina Health Systems is the hospital chain’s demand that its nurses virtually give up their health insurance. Quality of patient care is also a top cause.

“To see this many nurses on the outside, you know something is wrong on the inside,” United labor and delivery nurse Christine Hicks said.

Patient safety and quality care are crucial for the other 5,000 NNU member nurses in Massachusetts and California, the union said.

At Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis, retired physician Dr. Ray Scallen, 90, who worked 60 years there, joined the nurses on the picket line, saying, “I’m supporting these nurses 1,000 percent. They’re the heart and soul of the hospital. Anything I can do to help them, I will.”

News Guild targets predatory hedge fund. The News Guild is launching an on-line campaign, accompanied by demonstrations around the country, against a hedge fund that, in so many words, devours newspapers.

“We’re declaring war,” said News Guild-CWA President Bernie Lunzer. “A few years ago a secretive Wall Street hedge fund called Alden Global Capital bought up Digital First Media (DFM), the company that employs nearly 900 people at 12 papers, in units that once had at least 1,000 more Guild-CWA members. Some members haven’t seen raises in 10 years and many have lost their jobs, all while Wall Street vulture hedge fund Alden enriches the coffers of a privileged few by plundering the 200 newspapers it owns … gutting news coverage in those communities.”

There will be a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #AldenExposed.

“This is no easy campaign,” Lunzer added. “Hedge funds are notoriously unaccountable and secretive, and this one is especially so. But we have to take this fight on, and fight it in a highly visible way until our basic demands are met. We know that every newspaper publisher is going to be watching, and we’ll make sure they hear about it.”

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper