Wages..

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

In a ruling that could change the workplace status of people across the state, the California Supreme Court made it harder Monday for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors.
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The court said wage and hour laws were adopted to enable people to earn a subsistence standard of living and to protect workers' health and safety. The laws also shield the public from having to assume financial responsibility for workers earning substandard wages or working in unhealthy or unsafe conditions, the court noted.

According to the California Labor Commissioner's website, the misclassification of workers as independent contractors costs the state roughly $7 billion in lost payroll taxes each year.

Arizona lawmakers pulled an all-nighter to enact a budget Thursday that provides big raises for many of the state's striking teachers, and Gov. Doug Ducey signed the teacher funding part while the House continued debating the rest of the state's the $10.4-billion budget plan.

The Senate passed the teacher raise legislation just before dawn and the Republican governor immediately signed off on education funding that will give teachers a 9% raise in the fall and 5% in each of the coming two years. The raises will cost about $300 million in the coming year alone.