New York's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. For food service workers who rely on tips, that amount is only $5.00. In some states, tipped workers make as little as $2.13 an hour. Check out this new video from New York City food service workers and members of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) who're raising awareness that the minimum wage needs to be raised.

An Unaccommodating Situation is a cross-post from Working America’s Dear David workplace advice column.

Question:

If you are under doctor direction not to return to a full schedule or work only half- or part-time, can HR say that you either come back full-time or not at all? I had surgery that my doctor said required me to work no more than part-time. The school let me work a part-time schedule though they didn’t let me teach the classes that would have been best for my students. They also lambasted me for it and think I should have come back right away. Now the district policy is full-time or nothing. No partial-time doctor’s notes will be accepted. Can they do this?

Dozens of students, community food activists and food industry workers came out for the “Real Food, Real Jobs” march and rally, held by UNITEHERE! Local 23 yesterday at the African American Civil War Memorial on U Street. 

More than 400 locked-out North Dakota American Crystal Sugar workers got some good news this week when the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled they were eligible to collect unemployment benefits. When the lockout began in August 2011, North Dakota Job Service ruled the workers were ineligible for the benefits.

A replacement worker at American Crystal Sugar Co.’s East Grand Forks, Minn., plant was seriously injured last month, suffering severe burns when he was hit with hot liquid that spewed from a tank, according to news reports.  

The company has been operating with replacement workers since it locked out its highly trained 1,300 member workforce in August 2011. The locked-out workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and worked at plants in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.

The partition that separates diners from the inner workings of the restaurant industry toppled for Saru Jayaraman shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Fekkak Mamdouh, one of the headwaiters of the restaurant housed on the top floor of the World Trade Center, approached Jayaraman seven months after the attacks. His former boss deemed him and his former crew “not experienced enough” to work in his new Times Square restaurant. Jayaraman, a 27-year-old organizer of immigrant women, took up the case to advocate for the displaced workers, organized protests and won—most of the workers were awarded the good jobs their former boss promised.

Today the nation’s top Hispanic civil rights groups, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), all came out in support of the global boycott of Hyatt hotels.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) has reached two new tentative agreements with AT&T divisions with some 40,000 CWA members.   

Details of a tentative four-year agreement are being sent to CWA members who work for AT&T Mobility in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The workers are customer service representatives, technicians and retail store workers. Also, the union announced a tentative agreement with AT&T West with about 18,000 CWA members at AT&T operations in California and Nevada.

Nissan technician Betty Jones sent this message to working family activists today:

I’m a technician at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., and I’m proud to work there. I want our company to succeed, and I never give anything less than my best.
And that’s one of the reasons my co-workers and I are organizing for a voice on the job. We believe that by organizing collectively we can work together with Nissan to make the company and our community better.

One group of workers at Boeing’s Pacific Northwest facilities voted to accept the company’s latest contract offer, while a second voted to reject the deal and to authorize a strike if necessary, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 announced Tuesday.