The Anti-worker Sam Alito. A scary record.

1. Retirement and pension case.
This is important to retiring workers. In DiGiacomo v. Teamsters Pension Trust Fund [pdf file], the 3rd Circuit Court found that a Teamsters driver, who had worked from 1960 to 1971 and then from 1978 onwards, should be duly credited for the time he worked before 1971 in calculating his pension. (The judges, most of them, based their decision on an interpretation of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) which bars a forfeiture of benefits due to a break in service.)
Sam Alito wrote a lone dissent that would sacrifice the worker's retirement to deny him the credit of his earlier 11 years of work – by virtue of Alito's anti-worker interpretation of the ERISA law.
Note. The above was written up first by NathanNewman, who I will link to below. This post is written in words close to Newman's writing, not my own original. I'm reposting NN's examples here, to get ahead of Monday's hearings.
3. Safety Protections for Workers
In RNS Services. v. Secretary of Labor, filed in 1997, the court found that a mining services company in its coal processing plant was jeopardizing worker safety under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act.
The company tried to claim it should not be covered by the mining safety law, seeking to exclude its coal processing plant from application of the law. The Court rejected the company's claim and held the plant needed to comply with the MSHA safety provisions.
Alito voted in dissent to hold the facility exempt from the safety regulations.
These are only a handful of examples from NathanNewman's catalog at dailykos of Alito's positions [and seen also here at Newman's own site].
The Yale law school "Alito Project" reviewed decisions by Alito and concluded,
The dominant theme of Judge Alito’s procedural jurisprudence, then, is his willingness to place limits on litigants’ ability to pursue their claims in court. Judge Alito has permitted individuals to be deprived of property or liberty without actual notice or a prior hearing.
Bush's regulators would gut every safety regulation on the books, and Alito is one to interpret the law to let it happen.
This is the wrong time to elevate a judge with a callous disregard for workers' earned rights.
KEYWORDS: Alito, Samuel Alito
Sign up for a Complimentary Member Account... Join the community! It's fast. And it'll allow you to take advantage of all this site's great features!
| < An integrated approach to helping East Africa: microlending and more! | Saving My Family History and Remembering the Holocaust: The Tale of a Synagogue > |



