Sunday, August 11, 2013

AMA Lavabit LLC...



My Fellow Users,
I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.

Update
References


Welcome to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Section 14(c) Advisor

This Advisor provides guidance on Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which authorizes employers, after receiving a certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD), to pay special minimum wages—wages less than the federal minimum wage—to workers who have disabilities for the work being performed. The certificate also allows the payment of wages that are less than the prevailing wage to workers who have disabilities for the work being performed on contracts subject to the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA) and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (PCA). The Regulations applicable to FLSA Section 14(c) are contained at 29 CFR Part 525.
Under FLSA Section 14(c), a worker who has a disability for the job being performed is one whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by a physical or mental disability, including those relating to age or injury. Disabilities that may affect productive capacity include blindness, mental illness, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, alcoholism, and drug addiction. The following, taken by themselves, are not considered to be disabilities for purposes of paying special minimum wages: educational disabilities, chronic unemployment, receipt of welfare benefits, nonattendance at school, juvenile delinquency, and correctional parole or probation.
The FLSA 14(c) Advisor helps employers of workers with disabilities, employees with disabilities, and their family members understand the circumstances under which an employer may pay wage rates that are less than the applicable Federal minimum wage. However, the Advisor does not include every possible situation. No conclusion should be drawn from the fact that a subject or an illustration may not be addressed.
For a general overview of the major provisions of FLSA Section 14(c), please read Fact Sheet No. 39The Employment of Workers with Disabilities at Special Minimum Wages. For detailed information about FLSA Section 14(c), please proceed with the Advisor by selecting continue.
The FLSA Section 14(c) Advisor is one of a series of elaws (Employment Laws Assistance for Workers and Small Businesses) Advisors developed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to help employers and employees understand their rights and responsibilities under federal employment laws. To view the entire list of elaws Advisors please visit the elaws website. To learn more about DOL’s efforts to promote and achieve compliance with labor standards in place to protect and enhance the welfare of the nation’s workforce, visit the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) website.
A national charity whose executives earn six-figure salaries used a legal loophole to pay disabled workers as little as three and four cents an hour, according to documents obtained exclusively by NBC News.
An NBC News investigation recently revealed that Goodwill Industries, which is among the non-profit groups permitted to pay disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a federal law known as Section 14 (c), had paid workers as little as 22 cents an hour.
Now newly obtained federal documents show that at least 13 Goodwill franchises in 10 states paid 140 workers even less.
According to Department of Labor filings acquired via the Freedom of Information Act, two Goodwill franchises in Fort Worth, Texas paid 51 employees less than 10 cents an hour in 2011, with 14 earning just four cents an hour for tasks described as “assembly.”
Franchises in Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Virginia also paid employees 21 cents or less between 2008 and 2011, according to the documents. One franchise in Fairfield, Ohio paid a worker just three cents an hour for hanging clothes in 2008.
“The results of your FOIA request reinforce that people with disabilities are devalued in this situation and the operators of these programs are not keeping pace with the times,” said Clyde Terry of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the White House and Congress on disability policy.
“This may have been appropriate in the 1930s,” said Terry, “but in this day and age with the advances of technology, health care and education, is this the best we can do?”
A spokesperson for Goodwill International Industries countered that it was "misleading" to "cherrypick" low wages, calling them "extraordinary situations."
Section 14 (c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938, allows employers to obtain special minimum wage certificates from the Department of Labor. The certificates give employers the right to pay disabled workers according to their abilities, with no bottom limit to the wage.
Most, but not all, special wage certificates are held by non-profit organizations like Goodwill that then set up their own so-called "sheltered workshops" for disabled employees, where participants typically perform manual tasks like hanging clothes.
The non-profits use “time studies” to calculate the salaries of Section 14 (c) workers. With a stopwatch, staff members time how long it takes a disabled worker to complete a task. That time is compared with how long it would take a person without a disability to do the same task. The non-profit then applies a formula to calculate a rate of pay, which may be equal to or less than minimum wage. The tests are repeated every six months, and wages can rise or fall.
The non-profit certificate holders can also place employees in outside, for-profit workplaces including restaurants, retail stores, hospitals and even Internal Revenue Service centers. Between the sheltered workshops and the outside businesses, more than 216,000 workers are eligible to earn less than minimum wage because of Section 14 (c), though many end up earning the full federal minimum wage of $7.25 or more.
Goodwill’s figures show that the non-profit currently has 69 local franchises employing 7,300 workers eligible to be paid less than minimum wage. NBC News obtained a range of filings from 2008 to 2012 for 89 different franchises.
According to Goodwill’s figures, nationally the average hourly wage for those Section 14 (c) employees is $7.47 an hour.
"The low wages you have referenced are extraordinary situations," said Goodwill Industries International spokesperson Lauren Lawson. “For example, sometimes an employee will work for a few minutes but then stop producing for the rest of the shift because of an emotional or behavioral issue. Unlike a typical employer, Goodwill does not dismiss an employee in such situations.”
Dan Buron, executive director of Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Michigan, which paid a worker six cents an hour in 2010, said the organization’s work program is meant to “provid[e] the most significantly disabled individuals in our community with work that will either lead to competitive employment; or for those where this may not be possible, to enjoy the many personal, social and economic benefits of working.”
Buron also said that in January 2013, Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Michigan “established a floor wage of $1.85 for all participants” in its program.
A spokesperson for Goodwill of Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, which paid one worker in Marinette, Wisc. 16 cents an hour and another 19 cents in 2010, said the organization currently has one program participant “with significant and multiple disabilities” who makes 19 cents per hour.
“The person attends very few hours and cannot work without close, one-on-one supervision from staff to complete any task,” said the spokesperson, who noted that some participants earn more than the minimum wage, including one who is paid $9.38 per hour.
The CEO of the Hagerstown, Maryland Goodwill, which paid a “hand packager” 15 cents in 2011, said the wage was appropriate.  “For the person in question, the pay rate was accurate for his/her productivity on the work we were doing then and for the amount of it that we had,” said Craig MacLean in an emailed statement. “The same rationale applies to the person on the same document … who was being compensated for his/her production at $8.24 because of vastly greater skill and dexterity.”
The National Council on Disability’s Terry said he was unsurprised by the wages revealed in the documents, and called for an end to the “sheltered workshops” that pay subminimum wages.
“We want to support people with disabilities to find integrated employment so they can fully participate in community life, contribute to their company’s bottom line, and have a full life,” said Terry, who chairs the council’s Subminimum Wage and Supported Employment committee. “It’s time these sheltered workshops be phased out.”
In an earlier interview with NBC News, Goodwill International CEO Jim Gibbons defended time studies and the Section 14 (c) approach. He said that for many people who make less than minimum wage, the experience of work is more important than the pay.
“It’s typically not about their livelihood. It’s about their fulfillment. It’s about being a part of something. And it’s probably a small part of the overall program,” he said.
In the same interview, Gibbons also defended the compensation earned by some Goodwill executives. His salary and deferred compensation totaled $729,000 in 2011, while the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California earned $1.1 million and the top executive in Portland, Oregon earned more than $500,000.
“These leaders are having a great impact in terms of new solutions, in terms of innovation, and in terms of job creation,“ said Gibbons.
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Workers paid just pennies an hour in America in 2013...


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