Signature gathering begins for $12 minimum wage initiative
Signature gathering begins for $12 minimum wage initiative
PHOENIX (AP) - A group advocating for worker’s rights is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Arizona that would increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, at the same time...
PHOENIX (AP) - A group advocating for worker’s rights is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Arizona that would increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, at the same time Republican lawmakers are proposing their own ballot measure that would give the Legislature sole authority to set the wage in the state.
The fight over Arizona’s minimum wage has grown amid widespread worker frustration over sluggish wage growth that has fueled presidential campaigns and led to legislative battles on both sides of the country - California and New York lawmakers are poised to pass bills lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years.
The Fair Wages and Healthy Families Initiative incrementally increases minimum wage in Arizona to $12 per hour by 2020 and requires employers to provide earned paid sick time.
The initiative campaign has less than four months to collect more than 150,000 valid signatures necessary to get on the November ballot. Arizona’s current minimum wage is set at $8.05 per hour and is increased annually based on inflation.
Campaign manager Tomas Robles said his group has worked with people on both sides of the issues to find a compromise that offers workers a livable wage without putting too much of a burden on employers.
“We feel that this wage increase is that happy medium that protects small business and helps workers who can’t pay their rent at the end of the month even though they work full time,” he said.
The campaign committee has received backing from the Latino rights organization Living United for Change and the Center for Popular Democracy, a social and economic justice advocacy organization, Robles said. The campaign aims to collect more than 250,000 signatures using a combination of paid and volunteer petitioners to ensure they can get on the ballot.
At the same time, Arizona Republicans have proposed to increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2020 with annual adjustments based on inflation - in a bid to stymie an increase in wages they say small businesses could not handle.
“This offering is kind of a counter-balance to the insane socialism we hear in other quarters,” said Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, during a committee hearing in March.
It would also prevent cities, towns and counties from setting their own minimum wage, which Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has said would “drive our economy off a cliff.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed the measure on a 5-3 party-line vote. It will now undergo a standard review before going to a Senate vote. If passed, House Concurrent Resolution 2014 could go before voters this November.
If both measures end up on the ballot and both pass, the initiative with greatest number of “yes” votes would win.
By RYAN VAN VELZER
Source
The next labor fight is over when you work, not how much you make
Washington Post - 05-08-2015 - If there’s one labor issue that’s come to the forefront of political agendas over the past few years, it’s the minimum wage: Cities and states around the country...
Washington Post - 05-08-2015 - If there’s one labor issue that’s come to the forefront of political agendas over the past few years, it’s the minimum wage: Cities and states around the country are taking action to boost worker pay, as federal efforts seem doomed to fail.
But a new wave of reform is already in the works. Instead of how much you earn, it addresses when you work -- pushing back against the longstanding corporate trend toward timing shifts exactly when labor is needed, sometimes in tiny increments, or at the very last minute. That practice, nicknamed “just-in-time” scheduling, can wreak havoc on the lives of workers who can’t plan around work obligations that might pop up at any time.
Right now, community groups and unions in Washington D.C. are formulating a bill that will address the problem of schedules that can be both shifting and inflexible. The legislation hasn’t been hammered out yet, but the labor-backed group Jobs with Justice says it will likely include a requirement that employers provide workers with notice of their schedules a few weeks ahead of time, and that additional hours go to existing employees, rather than spreading them across a large workforce.
“The one thing we’re finding overwhelmingly is that people aren’t getting enough hours to make ends meet,” says Ari Schwartz, a campaign organizer at D.C. Jobs with Justice, which is now tabulating the results of a survey of hundreds of hourly workers in the city on scheduling issues. “People aren’t getting their schedules with enough time to plan childcare and the rest of the things in their lives.”
When a proposal reaches the D.C. Council in the coming months, Washington won’t be the first: Following the passage of landmark legislation in San Francisco, bills have been offered in Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut, California, New York, Michigan and Oregon. Along with new proposals to expand paid sick day legislation, they are a bid to give employees more control over how they spend their time.
“These scheduling reforms are getting really popular, because it makes no sense that for example you’re required to be available to work by your employer and you’re not picked for that time,” says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “People who don’t suffer these abuses already understand what it’s like to juggle work and family, so people really identify with that as being a problem.”
Carrots and sticks
Twenty years ago, schedules weren’t as much of a problem. Working in retail, especially, tended to be a solid 9 to 5 job.
But then retail hours grew longer. And then came computerized scheduling, which allowed employers to best fit staffing to demand. Here’s what that looks like in practice: Handing out schedules based on what times of day or the month you expect the most business, splitting up hours across a large workforce that’s available on a moment’s notice and sometimes sending people home if traffic is slow.
That helps companies optimize their labor costs, but it wreaks havoc on the lives of low-wage workers, who don’t know how much they’re going to make from week to week, and often can’t schedule anything else around work.
One worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is still employed there, has worked in the hot food prep section of the Whole Foods at 14th and P streets in Washington for 12 years. She liked it; the pay wasn’t bad, and the people were friendly. She worked consistently from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and took a second job as a nanny in the afternoons, which added around $300 a week to her income — more money to send home to her father in El Salvador, and to support her daughter in college in Tennessee.
But then, a new manager cut back hours; some people left and weren’t replaced. The schedule posted on the wall started to shift the worker’s days off, or tell her to come in from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. instead. Usually she got a week’s notice, but once in a while she’d come to work and the schedule had already changed, so she’d have to go back home. After that happened on too many days, she had to drop the afternoon job. So once again, she was just squeaking by.
“She would come and say ‘I really need you to cover this shift,’ and it is what it is,” the worker says in Spanish, through a translator. “Lots of us have lost lots of jobs.”
It’s been better over the past few months, she says. And that’s not by accident: As public complaints surfaced about Whole Foods’ scheduling practices, the company rolled out a new system that allows employees to see their schedules for two weeks in advance and prevents managers from changing them at the last minute or scheduling “clopenings”-- both closing the store and opening it in the morning -- without an employee’s consent. The policy has been in place nationwide since early April, spokesman Michael Silverman says.
Whole Foods isn’t alone. Walmart has also introduced a system of “open shifts,” which allows workers to pick their own hours. Starbucks curbed some of its practices in the wake of a New York Times article last year that described their effect on one barista. The Gap is working with the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco to set up pilot projects around the country that would measure the impact of giving employees stable schedules and more hours. Many companies haven’t taken into account how much their scheduling practices are actually costing them in the form of employee turnover, professor Joan Williams says.
“If you don’t count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models."
— Professor Joan Williams, Hastings College of Law
“If you don’t count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models," says Williams. "Our hypothesis is that if you provide people with more stable schedules, you’ll see lower turnover [and] absenteeism and higher worker engagement.”
In time, the business case may grow clear enough that more companies move toward stable schedules on their own. But Williams says legislative efforts are needed as well: A recent national survey found that 41 percent of early-career, hourly workers get their schedules less than a week in advance. In a survey of retail and restaurant workers in Washington, Jobs with Justice found that employers like Forever21 and Chipotle are among the worst offenders. (Forever21 did not respond to a request for comment. Chipotle says it publishes schedules four days in advance, with shifts lasting seven hours on average.)
And now, there’s legislation to benchmark against. Last year, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction to pass comprehensive scheduling reform, with a set of companion bills that require “formula retailers” (i.e., large chains) to give workers two weeks notice of their schedules, pay workers for the shifts when they’re on call and give hours to current employees instead of hiring more, among other provisions. The law went into effect in January, but won’t be enforced until July.
Meanwhile, scheduling legislation is in the works around the country. National groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Womens Law Center are helping to build coalitions where scheduling reforms could prove politically palatable, in places like New York — where the union-backed Retail Action Project has been advocating for “just hours” for years — and Minnesota, where the AFL-CIO-affiliated Working America has been building support among non-union members for measures that would benefit all workers.
Scheduling legislation even exists on the federal level. A federal bill introduced in Congress last summer would require employers to make schedule accommodations for health or childcare needs, unless there is a “bona fide business reason” for denying it. Yet another bill, proposed last month, would prevent employers from firing workers for requesting a schedule change.
But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the scheduling reform movement. A Maryland bill failed this year, in the face of employer opposition. And though there isn’t even a bill yet in Washington, businesses are voicing skepticism.
“Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes DC less attractive to businesses, than I’m concerned about that."
— Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce
“Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes DC less attractive to businesses, than I’m concerned about that,” said Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. “The D.C. chamber is concerned about any restrictions on free enterprise.”
It’s perhaps more concerning to employers than even raising the minimum wage: That’s just extra cost. Scheduling, by contrast, impacts the very core of how they’ve learned to do business.
Making it real
Laws, of course, are only as good as their enforcers. And scheduling laws, with their far-reaching impact, could be particularly difficult to follow up on.
Just ask unions, which already have many of the proposed scheduling rules in their contracts. Making sure employers stick to them is a big job, even though union dues pay for far more inspectors — in the form of business agents and shop stewards — than city and state governments ever will.
“The union has this exact set of provisions in its contracts, and they are extremely important for making sure that if you have the seniority you can get the fullest work week possible,” says John Boardman, president of UNITE-HERE Local 25, which represents 6,500 mostly hotel workers in the D.C. area. “But it also takes a very, very strong enforcement mechanism in order to make these provisions of the contract viable and living.”
Jobs with Justice already knows this. A few years ago, D.C. passed laws requiring employers to pay for a minimum of 4 hours in a shift, even if a worker was sent home early, and to pay an extra hour’s worth of wages for every “split shift” (with a long break in the middle) that an employee works. In its survey, Jobs with Justice found that workers were sent home early and asked to work split shifts just as much as they were in 2010, when another survey was done, suggesting the laws hadn’t had much effect.
That’s why they’re hoping the city will put more resources into enforcement, in the form of inspectors and people to process claims. But it’s also going to have to involve a massive education campaign to make workers aware they even have these new rights.
"It is easier to enforce these things when you have a union contract and a grievance procedure, and a shop steward and union infrastructure to back that up,” says Schwartz. “But we can’t keep relying on that as our only model. Because there’s so many workers in the growing retail and restaurant sectors that need those protections, too.”
Source: The Washington Post
Mortgage Settlement Report Finds Banks Reluctant To Reduce Principal, Despite Promises
The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according...
The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according to a report released Thursday by the court-appointed monitor of the settlement, in the first nine months after the $25 billion deal was struck, fewer than 50,000 people received the most coveted form of relief: reduction of principal owed on a first mortgage.
Meanwhile, more than three times as many borrowers -- 169,000 -- agreed to a short sale, which requires they leave the property, according to the report.
Banks still have time to meet their obligations under the settlement, which requires that 30 percent of total relief come in the form of first mortgage principal reduction. But housing advocates say the limited progress so far -- just 14 percent of aid has gone to write down loan balances -- suggests that banks are avoiding, or at least delaying, their obligation to provide meaningful relief as they promised under the deal.
"The numbers are hugely out of whack," said Dan Petegorsky, a spokesman for a group called Campaign for a Fair Settlement. "In some cases banks are five or six times as likely to kick someone out of their house than they are to forgive their debt."
The fear, said Petegorsky and other advocates, is that with each passing month, more homeowners who could have been helped will fall into foreclosure. More than 4 million families have lost their homes since 2007, when the subprime housing market collapsed.
Under the mortgage settlement, reached last March with state and federal authorities, the five settling banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial -- agreed to resolve widespread mortgage fraud and mismanagement allegations. The deal also sought to close the book on the "robo-signing" scandal, in which bank representatives allegedly forged documents and signatures in order to speed foreclosures through the pipeline. (The deal is separate from an $8.5 billion legal agreement reached in January between 11 mortgage companies and two federal bank regulators over similar "servicing" abuse claims.)
The court appointed Joseph Smith, a former North Carolina banking commissioner, to oversee the $25 billion settlement. His report is based on data reported from the banks. Smith has not yet confirmed the data, he said.
Even so, his report offers a detailed state-by-state look at where the banks are directing the relief, and what options they are choosing to do so. All told, 550,000 people have received some sort of assistance valued at $45 billion, according to the report. (Because banks can claim different dollar credits for different activities, that figure does not mean they have exceeded what they promised under the settlement.)
In an interview, Smith said that while the banks are clearly favoring short sales over other forms of relief, he thinks they will ultimately forgive enough first mortgage principal debt to meet their obligations. As an example, he cited Ally Financial, the smallest of the settling institutions, which he certified had met its targets.
Smith said he believed that the "vast majority" of relief offered so far, which includes aid like interest reductions and forbearance agreements as well as principal reductions and short sales, has helped homeowners.
He said the banks still have work to do to meet the other major goal of the agreement: reforming how they manage the accounts of troubled borrowers. As of Oct 2., banks were supposed to have met 304 different standards or face financial penalties for failing to do so. Although he declined to discuss how widespread persistent problems might be, Smith noted in his report that his office had received 5,700 complaints from consumers in all states, along with 600 submissions from professionals. Complaints are on the rise, he said, though it isn't clear whether the jump is the result of the increased visibility of his office.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of the New York Attorney General, which had key roles in shaping the mortgage settlement, did not return requests for comment. In a statement, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the report "marks a major milestone in our efforts to assist struggling homeowners."
“We have already surpassed our initial expectations and the settlement is testament to the fact that large-scale principal reduction can be used an important tool in our efforts to prevent foreclosures without incurring negative results," he said.
Under the deal, banks typically get more credit for meeting their obligations for offering principal reduction than they do for other types of aid, such as interest rate reductions or short sales. But in banking circles, principal reduction has remained the most controversial option. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under orders from Federal Housing Finance Administration acting director Edward DeMarco, have refused to permit principal reduction in most instances on their loans. Banks then can only offer these kinds of write-downs on the relatively small pool of loans they own themselves, or convince investors who bought shares of loan pools in the years before or after the housing collapse to go along. This difficulty could explain why banks appear to be lagging on principal-reduction offers.
Another possible explanation: not every borrower wants, nor would qualify for, a reduction in principal. For some, short sales are the best option. Under these agreements, the bank sells the house but doesn't hold the borrower financially accountable for the difference between the sale price and what is owed.
Even so, principal forgiveness on a first mortgage is clearly the most desirable option for most borrowers, said Elizabeth Lynch, an attorney at MFY Legal Services, which offers free legal aid in New York City. "It's the modification of the first loan that saves the home," she said.
According to Lynch, that isn't happening often enough. Instead, when banks do offer principal reduction, it most often comes on a second mortgage, also sometimes called a home equity loan, according to Smith's report. Bank of America, for example, reported it had extinguished -- forgiven the entire principal amount -- of 141,000 second mortgages, compared to just 21,000 first mortgages.
Lynch recently argued in a New York Times op-ed that eliminating a small second mortgage, though sometimes helpful, doesn't help the vast majority of borrowers struggling to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.
Bank of America, which has a financial obligation under the settlement roughly equal to that of the four other banks combined, said in a statement that by forgiving a second mortgage, "a reasonable payment through modification may be more attainable." Even so, the bank acknowledged, "foreclosure activities likely would have continued" in instances where a foreclosure proceeding on the first mortgage was already underway. In other words, the bank acknowledged that it can claim credit for meeting obligations under the mortgage settlement for forgiving a loan that likely never would have been paid off anyway, and in instances that do not help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
Homeowner advocates said the report also indicates that the five settling banks are targeting the most valuable loans for principal reduction, rather than those in low-income communities. The average amount of first mortgage principal reduction granted was nearly $130,000 -- just $40,000 or so less than the median home sale price for January in the U.S.
At Bank of America, first-lien forgiveness averaged $160,000 of first mortgage principal reduction per loan. Does that large figure mean that the bank has favored borrowers in high-cost areas like Southern California or New York? Does it suggest that the bank is more likely to forgive the debt on an expensive home than on one in a downtrodden area like Detroit or Cleveland, where home prices often don't climb above $50,000?
Smith said he hasn't vetted the data yet, but for homeowner advocates, not knowing the answer to those questions is the biggest frustration.
"We want greater transparency on these numbers," Lynch said. "We don't know what they are doing."
Source:
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.
Source
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
Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
Immigrant rights demonstrators find locked doors at Bank of American HQ
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte Monday but found the doors locked as they attempted to enter the building. A...
A group of about a dozen activists tried to deliver a list of demands at Bank of American Headquarters in Charlotte Monday but found the doors locked as they attempted to enter the building. A security guard accepted a letter from the group.
It was part of the grassroots fight to shield Mecklenburg County’s estimated 54,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Read full article here.
150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide have agreed to donate 10 percent of their proceeds to WCK’s Puerto Rico aid...
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide have agreed to donate 10 percent of their proceeds to WCK’s Puerto Rico aid and to a new culinary school in Haiti.
Read the full article here.
Extraordinary organizing effort to assist undocumented immigrants impacted by the #FlintWaterCrisis needs YOUR help
Art Reyes III is Director of Training and Leadership Development at Center for Popular Democracy. He along with the Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative and a powerful group of organizers...
Art Reyes III is Director of Training and Leadership Development at Center for Popular Democracy. He along with the Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative and a powerful group of organizers from around the country are working in Flint to be sure undocumented immigrants in Flint are getting the help they need in the midst of the water crisis there. The need is real. Many undocumented people are not getting the information they need and still more are too afraid of being detained to go to water distribution sites. It’s a legitimate fear as the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reported to detaining people in grocery stores and other areas around Flint:
Juani Olivares, says there are roughly a thousand undocumented immigrants in Flint – and many have spent years hiding from authorities to avoid deportation.
“Water was being delivered,” she says, “and they (immigrants) were not opening the door. Because that is the one rule. Do not open the door.”
Let’s face it, undocumented immigrants aren’t paranoid: The government really does want to get them.
Juani Oliveras works with the Genesee County Hispanic/Latino Collaborative. She says rumors are flying about sporadic raids at grocery stores.
“That’s another reason why people are not getting the water,” she says.
What’s worse is that many of these folks are still boiling water before drinking it because that’s what they have been told to do in the past when e. colicontaminated the city’s drinking water. In the case of lead contamination, however, it’s exactly the WRONG thing to do because it concentrates the lead even further.
This past Wednesday, Reyes and other organizers held a training for lead canvassers in Flint, setting the stage for what they hope will become regular daily canvasses until the water issue is resolved.
I spoke with Reyes after the organizing meeting to get a better understanding of what they are hoping to accomplish. He told me that there is currently no infrastructure in place to do what needs to be done in the undocumented community so they are literally building it as they go. He told me that there are an estimated 1,000 undocumented people in Flint. The goals of his group are fourfold:
First, they want to educate people about the water situation to ensure they know what precautions to take and what things to avoid (like boiling the water.)
Second, they want to make sure people are getting the water, water filters, and other necessary items that they need to stay healthy. The state has already been neglected this marginalized population and the poisoning of Flint’s drinking water is making things much, much worse.
Third, they are collecting stories from people. Unless the stories of those who are impacted are lifted up and heard, there will be nothing to stop this from happening again.
Fourth, they are trying to create a database of undocumented immigrants so that they can continue to work with them as needed until the crisis is over. This one is very difficult. The idea of getting into any database is, of course, the greatest fear of people here without documentation.
Finally, they are working to build a database of partners and volunteers who can help them with their effort.
How can you help? There are several ways. First, you can donate money. The Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative has set up a fundraising page HERE.
Second, you can volunteer your time and resources to the effort. This will be an ongoing project and they will need assistance for the foreseeable future. Spanish-speaking volunteers are in particularly high demand. They also need things like storage and organizing spaces, trainers, printing, and all of the things that go along with a long-term effort like this. Click HERE to volunteer.
Third, you can donate water.
Finally, educate yourself about the issue. A good starting point is this essay by Art Reyes titled, “I Grew Up in Flint. Here’s Why Governor Snyder Must Resign. “.
One of the groups assisting with this effort is a small non-governmental agency (NGO) called Crossing Water. The group is headed up by social worker Michael Hood who has brought together around 150 social workers from around the country along with several hundred other volunteers and donors. They have already put up several billboards around Flint in both English and Spanish letting people know not to boil the water. They have plans for more billboards, including trailer mounted billboards that they can drive around Flint. They are also using donations to pay for public service announcements on television and radio. They’ve created videos on how to properly install and use water filters and teaching new parents not to use tap water to mix with baby formula. They have recruited plumbers to help replace lead-containing plumbing. This single group is making a huge difference.
Please do what you can to help with this important outreach effort. There are literally lives on the line, including the lives of babies and children.
Source: Eclecta Blog
NYT Misses the Story on the Fed and African American Unemployment
CEPR - March 3, 2015 - The NYT...
CEPR - March 3, 2015 - The NYT examined the impact the Fed has on unemployment among African Americans and came up with the bizarre conclusion that the Fed can't do much:
"The Fed has a hammer, and, as the saying goes, not all problems are nails."
This conclusion is bizarre, because the data are very clear; efforts to reduce the overall unemployment rate disproportionately help African Americans and Hispanics. As a rule of thumb, the African American unemployment rate is roughly twice the unemployment rate and the unemployment rate for African American teens is roughly six times the white unemployment rates. (The unemployment rate for Hispanics is generally 1.5 times the white unemployment rate.)
In keeping with this rule of thumb, the unemployment rate for whites in January was 4.9 percent. It was 10.3 percent for African Americans and 29.7 percent for African American teens. Here's what the longer term picture looks like.
If we could get back to 2000 levels of unemployment, when the unemployment rate for whites bottomed out at 3.4 percent, we might see something like the 7.0 percent unemployment rate for blacks overall and 20.0 percent we saw for black teens back in April of 2000.
Alternatively, to flip it over and talk about employment rates, the percentage of black teens that was employed peaked at 31.7 percent in 2000, more than 50 percent higher than the 19.6 percent figure for last month. Does anyone really want to say that increasing the probability that black teens will have a job by 50 percent doesn't make a difference?
There is a separate issue as to whether it would be possible to get down to 4.0 percent unemployment without triggering spiraling inflation. This is an arguable point. But it is worth noting that those who say it is not possible to have 4.0 percent unemployment today also said that it was not possible back in 2000.
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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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7 days ago
7 days ago