The Public Welfare
Foundation has made a grant of $125,000 for an initiative spearheaded by the
National Employment Law Project to monitor and enforce workplace standards for
contract service workers such as janitors, security guards, groundskeepers, food
service personnel and parking attendants. The plan, known as the Workplace
Investment Partnership, aims to fill an enforcement gap created by the
increasingly common practice among American companies of outsourcing low-wage
service jobs to contractors.
"The Workforce Investment Partnership (WIP)
will create a mechanism to ensure that workers who provide contracted services
for some of the richest companies in America are paid a living wage, provided
employer-based health insurance and afforded the protections of state and
federal workers' rights laws and international human rights guarantees," says
Catherine K. Ruckelshaus, litigation director of the National Employment Law
Project, a founder of the Partnership initiative.
"Workforce Investment
Partnership certification will become the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’
for companies wishing to publicize their commitment to the rights of workers in
these low-wage sectors," says Ruckelshaus. Eventually, she says,
scrutiny of contractors providing service workers to other firms could "raise
the workplace standards for all workers in what is now largely an underground
economy."
At its Feb. 1 meeting, the Board of Directors of the Public
Welfare Foundation approved the $125,000 grant under its new Workers' Rights
Program, which seeks to improve wages and basic job protections and rights for
low-income workers. The grant is intended as major seed money for
the Partnership. Other foundations and corporate partners are
expected to supply the remaining start-up costs.
According to Ruckelshaus, the Partnership initiative
will encourage major American companies that are large employers of
contractor-supplied service personnel to agree to hire only contractors that
have been certified by the Partnership for guaranteeing basic workplace
standards for fair wages and working conditions.
Ruckelshaus believes that companies will see the advantage of
embracing the plan on grounds it will enhance their reputations as good
corporate citizens and help alleviate their financial and legal risks of litigation over labor standards. And, she says, as the
demand for certified "responsible contractors" grows, contractors themselves
will realize that earning a certification will give them competitive business
advantages over labor brokers who cannot pass rigorous inspections and
monitoring.
In time, the
initiative is designed to become self-sustaining. Participating
corporations will be asked to contribute a small fraction of their expenditures
for contracted labor to the Partnership to
cover monitoring and enforcement costs.
