Last year, under the direction of Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state Department of Labor held a series of hearings to explore ending the tipped wage credit—a law that allows employers of tipped workers to pay a lower base wage and count tips toward a worker’s minimum wage. At half a dozen hearings through June of 2018 to help determine whether or not to change the state's two-tiered wage system, the department heard from workers calling for a higher base wage, and from restaurant industry executives worried about added costs.

Photo by Jeff Kubina via Flickr/Wikimedia Commons. Social photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by Alex Wong/Getty Images. Politicians across America are getting serious about fighting for tipped workers in 2019. But they still face an uphill battle. Versions of several of those measures still appeared to be alive as of this month.

Federal employees at a protest over the latest government shutdown in Chicago on January 10. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty. Multiple lawsuits claiming the government violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by not paying workers on time have been filed in the wake of the shutdown, and the lawyers in those cases and experts expect a legal slam dunk for the workers.

Clarification: A previous version of this article didn't make clear that drug users in Scott County, Indiana were chipping in money for drugs and then sharing needles to inject. In 2015, Sarah Ziegenhorn moved back to her hometown of Iowa City to find the opioid crisis slowly creeping into her city and state.

The cost of car repairs might make your heart sink, but Chicago-area mechanics say they don’t get a fair deal from dealerships, either. On August 1, the nearly 2,000 members of Auto Mechanics Union Local 701 voted overwhelmingly to strike after rejecting a contract at the end of July. If the strike doesn’t produce the contract the union wants, many young mechanics could be facing tough decisions about their future.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference Wednesday to assure anxious residents that Chicago would remain a “sanctuary city”—meaning local law enforcement won’t help federal agents with President Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, a plan that just got a lot more real. “What we really need,” the alderman told local reporters “is less symbolism and more action.”.

Fontessa West walked to the front of the packed community center in Ward 8, quieting the room filled with dozens of mourners. She was there to share a few words about her son, Wesley West, who was fatally shot early last Saturday. “Someone killed my baby right where he came from,” she said. “He knows everybody, and everybody knows him.”.

When the #BBUM campaign garnered national attention in November, University administrators and students alike were caught off-guard by the raw emotion captured in 140 characters. And despite thousands of tweets, there isn’t one single answer to the question ‘what is being Black at the University of Michigan?’.

Law enforcement officials from the Washington area and across the country said Monday that there has been a recent increase in shootings in several major cities but that they haven’t pinpointed what’s causing the spike in violence. Officials from several cities, including the District, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore, met at the Newseum in the District to discuss the trend and possible solutions to the violence.

In November 2013, the University launched the latest in a series of major fundraising campaigns. This initiative, called Victors for Michigan, set the largest goal of any fundraising campaign launched by a public institution of higher education: $4 billion. The University has already brought in more than half of its goal, with about $2.7 billion already raised since the campaign started.