How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion...
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion each year, comes in different forms. An employer could keep customer tips instead of paying them out to workers, force employees to work off the clock without compensation, or illegally deduct the cost of uniforms or work tools from employees’ paycheck.
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Activists to Protest at Regional Feds Ahead of Jobs Data
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve...
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve district banks Thursday, intending to highlight elevated unemployment among minority communities and urging officials not to raise interest rates any time soon.
Fed officials have indicated they plan to lift their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero, where it has been since late 2008, sometime this year if the economy continues to strengthen as expected.
The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January.
“The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
The activists are planning actions outside the regional Fed banks of New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, N.C. (home to a branch of the Richmond Fed) and Dallas.
The Labor Department releases its February employment report on Friday.
Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said she and other community leaders have been frustrated by what they see as an opaque process for selecting the next Dallas Fed president. The current chief, Richard Fisher, is set to step down March 19.
Ms. Moeller said instead of getting a meeting with members of the Dallas Fed’s board of directors, which is in charge of the search, she and her delegation met with the bank’s general counsel in a session she described as not very helpful.
“This has been a comedy of pass the buck,” she said. “We don’t have a candidate—we’re just trying to talk processes.”
The Dallas Fed said it had recently met with the following groups regarding the search for a new bank president: Texas AFL-CIO, Texas Organizing Project, Jobs With Justice, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Workers Defense Project, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Harris County Central Labor Council and American Federation of Teachers.
“We had a productive conversation with representatives from these groups,” said James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed. “We were interested in hearing their views on the selection of a new Dallas Fed president, and hope we were able to provide useful information to them, as well.”
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Fed Up Coalition, the umbrella groups coordinating the protests, expressed dismay at the lack of transparency in the selection of Patrick Harker as the new Philadelphia Fed President.
“Despite repeated requests from community, consumer, labor and academic organizations and public officials within the region, the Philadelphia Fed refused to create any mechanisms for engagement with the public,” said Kendra Brooks of Action United in Philadelphia.
“Instead, the process was entirely opaque: nobody outside of the Federal Reserve knew who the candidates were or what the criteria were for selection. This process did a disservice to the Federal Reserve System and the people of the Philadelphia region.”
The Philadelphia Fed said in response: “Several of our staff members did meet with members from Action United to hear their concerns. The Philadelphia Fed also provided them the opportunity to provide names of potential candidates to our executive search firm.”
The same group of activists showed up at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium last summer and held a meeting with Janet Yellen at the Fed in November.
Last week, Ms. Yellen met with a group of conservative activists who argued the Fed’s low-rate policies were hurting rather than boosting employment.
The Great Recession has brought increased political scrutiny on the Fed, with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians calling for various changes in the central bank’s governance.
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Low-paid earners at risk for theft
Times Union - March 21, 2014, Letter to the Editor by The Rev. Sam Trumbore - Hard-working employees are often at a significant disadvantage when dealing with their employers.
Employees...
Times Union - March 21, 2014, Letter to the Editor by The Rev. Sam Trumbore - Hard-working employees are often at a significant disadvantage when dealing with their employers.
Employees sometimes don’t know that they are not being paid according to the law. Overtime is often not given appropriately. Employers liquidate their businesses without paying their workers.
A 2009 National Employment Law Project study determined workers in New York City lose $1 billion per year due to wage theft. A recent survey of fast-food workers in New York City found that 84 percent suffered some form of wage theft over the previous year.
That was supposed to be fixed with the Wage Theft Protection Act that went into effect in 2011. The problem now is that when a worker files a claim, it can take years to resolve it. Employers often appeal settlements, which takes even longer.
The state Department of Labor just does not have the required number of investigators to enforce labor law in a timely fashion. More than 14,000 cases were waiting resolution in 2013, cases that could take as long as five years to complete.
This is a very unfair hardship on low-income workers who need those wages to put food on the table and pay the rent and utilities.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature need to add funding to the Department of Labor to increase the number of investigators and judges working on these cases and decrease this backlog. The working people of New York need the assurance that employers will treat them fairly. The growing backlog of cases is not sending this message.
The Rev. Sam TrumboreMinister, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
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Maria Gallagher, Ana Maria Archila and the amazing power of everyday people raising their voice
Maria Gallagher, Ana Maria Archila and the amazing power of everyday people raising their voice
Maria Gallagher, a 23-year-old woman from New York, had never told anyone about the time she was sexually assaulted before she blurted it out to a United States senator, Republican Jeff Flake of...
Maria Gallagher, a 23-year-old woman from New York, had never told anyone about the time she was sexually assaulted before she blurted it out to a United States senator, Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona, with millions watching on live national television.
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Yellen Meets with Activists Seeking Fed Reforms
Associated Press - November 14, 2014, by Martin Crutsinger - A coalition of community groups and labor unions are "fed up" with the Federal Reserve.
More than two dozen activists...
Associated Press - November 14, 2014, by Martin Crutsinger - A coalition of community groups and labor unions are "fed up" with the Federal Reserve.
More than two dozen activists demonstrated outside the Fed and then met with Chair Janet Yellen on Friday as part of a new campaign seeking policy reforms and a commitment to keep interest rates low until good jobs are plentiful for all workers. Although the labor market has steadily strengthened this year, wages have remained stagnant.
During the hour-long discussion with Yellen and three other Fed board members, coalition representatives discussed problems their communities were facing with high unemployment and weak wage growth.
Ady Barkan, one of the organizers of "Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Strong Economy," said Yellen and the other Fed officials listened but made no commitments about future Fed policy.
"It was a very good conversation," said Barkan, an attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy in Brooklyn. "They listened very intently, and they asked meaningful follow-up questions."
Fed officials confirmed that the meeting took place but declined to comment on the issues raised at the meeting.
The Fed's outreach to community activists was the latest move by Yellen to focus attention on lingering problems from the Great Recession. Wearing green tee-shirts with the phrase "What Recovery?" the group had protested outside of the Fed's headquarters on Constitution Avenue under the watchful eye of nine Fed security officers.
Members of the group, some of whom had demonstrated at a central bank gathering in August in Jackson Hole, Wyoming said it was important that Fed officials not be swayed by arguments that it needs to move quickly to raise interest rates to make sure inflation does not become a threat.
"The banks are the ones that crashed the economy ... but they're the ones who got the bonuses and the bailouts while workers and homeowners like me were left to drown," said Jean Andre, 48, of New York, who said he was having a tough time finding full-time work.
In addition to Yellen, the Fed officials who took part in the meeting were Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and Fed board members Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard.
Members of the coalition said about half of the meeting was taken up by their members telling stories about the difficulty in finding jobs, particularly in disadvantaged groups and communities dealing with unemployment much higher than the 5.8 percent national average.
The Fed officials also were presented a petition signed by 5,000 people around the country urging the central bank to keep interest rates low until the country reaches full employment.
The group also pushed for a more open process in the selection of presidents of the Fed's 12 regional banks. They say the current process is too secretive and dominated by officials from banks and other businesses with little input from the public. The regional presidents, along with Fed board members in Washington, participate in the deliberations to set interest rates.
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Meet The Foreclosed Grandmas Facing Federal Charges For Protesting ‘Too Big To Jail’
Seven women were arraigned Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on federal charges of “unlawful entry” stemming from last month’s homeowner sit-ins at the Department of Justice and a lawfirm called...
Seven women were arraigned Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on federal charges of “unlawful entry” stemming from last month’s homeowner sit-ins at the Department of Justice and a lawfirm called Covington and Burling. Protesters targeted Covington for its revolving-door relationship with a government that’s failed to prosecute Wall Street. When Lanny Breuer stepped down as head of DOJ’s criminal division this winter after Frontline revealed him as the primary culprit in the government’s apparent ‘too big to jail’ approach to foreclosure fraud, Covington provided him a new professional home. It’s also provided a moniker for the group formally charged on Tuesday: the “Covington Seven.”
The women face one of three different legal paths, their attorney Mark Goldstone told ThinkProgress. The charges bear a maximum penalty of six months jail time and/or a $1,250 fine. While a small fine is more likely to be the outcome, Goldstone said, that would come with a conviction on their permanent records. The women might be able to escape conviction provided they are not re-arrested and they do not return to Covington and Burling premises.
After their arraignment, members of the Covington Seven told ThinkProgress why they’d gotten involved.
Sherry Hernandez of Los Angeles told me her Countrywide mortgage ballooned after just four months, with her monthly payments jumping by $800. Her family decided to get a different loan and get out of the suddenly-unaffordable Countrywide mortgage, since they knew they had notarized paperwork showing their loan did not carry penalties for paying it back early. “But they held us to this prepayment penalty we didn’t agree to,” Hernandez said, which “raised our payment trying to get out of the predatory loan by $75,000 more.” Countrywide was the largest subprime lender, and implicated in much of the ugliest financial conduct of the housing bubble and bust. Yet a few years after it was bought by Bank of America, a firm called PennyMac sprang up, run almost entirely by Countrywide alumni. The Hernandezes sued Countrywide successfully, but meanwhile the second loan they’d taken out to replace the predatory one had been sold off…to PennyMac. “PennyMac has foreclosed,” Hernandez said. (PennyMac declined to comment on an individual case, citing privacy laws.)
Asked what she wanted to her message to be on the day she attended the sit-in, Hernandez chuckled. “Oh I have the perfect line. It’s the line they used on us when our hands were cuffed behind our backs, the seven little grandmas: ‘If you don’t arrest them, they’ll just do it again.’”
Deborah Castillo of St. Louis came home from voting on Election Day of 2012 to find an eviction notice on her front door. Castillo, 60, had seemed well positioned for her financial future just a few years earlier, with a good handle on her own mortgage and an investment property nearly paid off. “I had a two-family flat that was $3,000 from being paid for,” Castillo said, “but I had to refinance that in 2005 to help pay for the medical bills for my son, who’s schizophrenic.”
“That was my so-called nest egg, that was our security. And so I had to refinance that, unfortunately with Countrywide.” The same year, Castillo’s daughter contracted bacterial meningitis, and Castillo took 9 months away from her phone company job to care for her daughter. When the balloon payment hit, Castillo couldn’t keep up. Her husband lost his job amid the economic downturn, compounding their struggles. Just a few years on from nearly owning their “nest egg” rental property, Castillo found herself drawing down retirement savings to make ends meet.
And then, in the middle of the loan modification process, US Bank foreclosed on the Castillo family home. “[They] sat on the paperwork,” Castillo told ThinkProgress. The bank refused to accept payments while the modification was pending, yet charged Castillo penalties for missed payments. “Their lack of processing my document on time allowed them to put me in foreclosure,” she said. With eviction pending, Fannie Mae sought and won a $17,000 judgment against Castillo “for being in my home illegally.” (A representative of US Bank officially declined to comment, citing policy against discussing ongoing litigation.)
Castillo is clear-eyed about the culprits in her case. “Something can happen to you in life, no matter what, that can cause you to get into a bind,” Castillo said. “But US Bank, they’re not losing.” Thanks to bailouts, “there was no reason for the banks to settle or work with people, because the government guaranteed that they would win, that they would not be left holding the bag.” And now, with the initial crisis that sparked the government aid to the financial sector, no one in Washington was doubling back to address the paperwork rigmarole that the bailed-out companies used to boot the Castillos from their home. That’s how Castillo ended up getting handcuffed in the Covington and Burling lobby. “We wanted to get someone’s attention. And unfortunately, doing it the legal way through the court is not getting their attention,” she said.
“I worked my ass off to help [President Obama] get elected,” said Castillo, whose volunteer work for the 2008 campaign earned her the photo-op at right. “And now I want him to work his ass off to keep not only me in my home, but everybody else. Because he didn’t get there on his own. I don’t think he’s forgotten, but he needs to put his foot up somebody’s ass and make them remember, we helped put them there.”
Castillo, Hernandez, and the other five, whose stories reflect the same themes of deception and bullying, have to choose how to respond to the unlawful entry charges prior to a July court date. But whichever path each decides to walk, they’ll face more punishment than any of the companies involved in these wrongful foreclosures have faced. “The charges are much harsher for those that sit in front of a doorway than those who steal billions of dollars, force people out of their homes, wreck the economy, and wreck people’s lives,” Goldstone, their lawyer, said. “It demonstrates there’s two systems of justice.”
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Calling all mayors: This is what police reform should look like
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has been a wake-up call for many Americans, shining a spotlight on what many...
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has been a wake-up call for many Americans, shining a spotlight on what many communities of color already knew—our policing and criminal justice systems are infused with systemic racial bias.
Thanks to the relentless work of community advocates, the aggressive police tactics that routinely threaten the lives and safety of people of color have garnered unprecedented national attention.
This attention, however, is no guarantee of real change. In fact, one year after Michael Brown’s killing, police shootings and protests continue in Ferguson, Missouri.
Despite the growing body of evidence on the nature and extent of the problem, the path towards meaningful reform has not been clear, leaving many local leaders at a loss as to how to move forward.
But the actions of local government—mayors in particular—couldn’t be more important. Channeling the current momentum into transformative change will require leadership across local, regional, and federal levels, but mayors are in a unique position to be the vanguard, taking trailblazing steps towards transforming how police departments interact with their communities.
While some have bemoaned a lack of consensus around a roadmap to police reform, those on the ground—community members, organizers, elected officials, police officers and chiefs—raise the concepts of accountability, oversight, community respect, and limiting the scope of policing again and again. Our organizations spent close to a year collecting success stories and insight from communities across the country, from Los Angeles to Cleveland to Baltimore, to create a toolkit for advocates working to end police violence. We identified several common principles that all mayors can—and should—put in place to establish sustainable, community-centered and controlled policing.
Several of these principles have received national attention, such as demilitarizing police departments, providing police recruits with training in racial bias, de-escalation, and conflict mediation, and making police more accountable to communities through civilian oversight bodies and independent investigations of alleged police misconduct. Thanks to the commitment of a proactive mayor, this kind of community accountability is already being put in place in Newark, which just approved a progressive Civilian Complaint Review Board that provides landmark community oversight in a city with a long history of police brutality.
Mayors should also institute policies that scale back over-policing, especially for minor ‘broken-windows’ offenses that criminalize too many communities and burden already-impoverished households with exorbitant fees and fines. Ferguson’s court system became an infamous example, but routine targeting of and profiteering off of low-income communities of color is pervasive throughout the country. Local governments must not only fix broken municipal court systems but should also scale back the tide of criminalization through decriminalizing offenses that have nothing to do with public safety. With the strong support of the mayor, the Minneapolis City Council recently decriminalized two non-violent offenses—spitting and lurking—which had been used to racially profile.
The last piece of the puzzle may be politically controversial, but is absolutely fundamental to transforming our broken systems of policing and criminal justice and supporting safer and stronger communities. Local governments cannot continue to pour ever-increasing sums into city police budgets, while ignoring the most basic needs of residents living in over-policed areas: better schools, job opportunities, access to healthy food, affordable housing, and public transportation. Neighborhoods most afflicted by aggressive policing and high incarceration rates also have high levels of poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation. In many urban neighborhoods where millions of dollars are spent to lock up residents, the education infrastructure and larger social net are completely crippled. Investments to build up vulnerable communities need to be viewed as part of a comprehensive public safety strategy.
Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called for a Department of Justice investigation of the city’s police department only after tragedy struck and the community rose up in protest. It is time for the mayors of this country to instead take a proactive Mayoral Pledge to End Police Violenceto heal the wounds of broken policing and criminal justice policies before another devastating police killing.
Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink. Friedman is the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
Source: The Hill
At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons
At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons
"Jamie Dimon, in the past two years, 22 people have died in detention centers that you finance," said Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy. "JPMorgan Chase has to divest from...
"Jamie Dimon, in the past two years, 22 people have died in detention centers that you finance," said Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy. "JPMorgan Chase has to divest from private prisons and detention centers. You can no longer say you aren't aware of this issue!"
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Volatile Schedules Exacerbate Inequality
New York Times - July 23, 2014, by Carrie Gleason - Across the economy, workers are either employed for too few hours or far too many in an ever-changing workweek that demands 24/7 availability,...
New York Times - July 23, 2014, by Carrie Gleason - Across the economy, workers are either employed for too few hours or far too many in an ever-changing workweek that demands 24/7 availability, without guarantees of equal treatment or employee input.
The volatile work schedules of today erode earning potential, push workers out of the work force, and exacerbate inequality, especially for women and workers of color who are more likely to work part-time jobs. For a fair paycheck, these workers need wages and hours with dignity.
Workers, especially women, are coming together to say we need a voice in how much and when we work — so we can raise our families and join the middle class. Tiffany Beroid, who worked at Walmart, and Melody Pabon, who works at the clothing store Zara, both had fluctuating part-time schedules that made it impossible to keep their kids in stable childcare and plan their own schooling.
Ms. Beroid dropped out of school for a semester because Walmart cut her hours when she requested a new schedule. Ms. Pabon took her son out of formal childcare because her part-time job didn’t pay enough to cover the cost. Ms. Beroid and Ms. Pabon are part of the movement to restore a fair workweek, organizing at their jobs and sharing their stories on Capitol Hill at the introduction of the federal Schedules that Work Act.
This legislation would set standards for low-wage occupations. It would require two weeks notice of schedule changes, notification of minimum work hours and extra pay for on-call shifts or for workers who are sent home early. It would also give workers the right to request reasonable scheduling accommodations for serious health conditions, caregiving responsibilities and school.
While companies have a choice in how they schedule employees, the personal stories we've heard show that we can’t count on companies to do the right thing on their own. Along with the federal legislation, a new bill in San Francisco would provide new protections for part-time workers.
These proposals would create a new baseline of legal protections to ensure equity in the hours we work.
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230,000+ Progressives Urge DSCC Not to Fund Any Senate Dems Who Help Confirm Gorsuch
230,000+ Progressives Urge DSCC Not to Fund Any Senate Dems Who Help Confirm Gorsuch
WASHINGTON - Progressive leaders delivered more than 230,000 petition signatures Monday urging the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to publicly announce that it will not allocate campaign...
WASHINGTON - Progressive leaders delivered more than 230,000 petition signatures Monday urging the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to publicly announce that it will not allocate campaign funds to Sens. Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly or any other Democratic senator who votes for or strikes a deal to advance the confirmation of right-wing extremist Neil Gorsuch...
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