Minimum wage going up
Minimum wage going up
Voters have decided it’s time to give Colorado’s minimum-wage workers a long-overdue raise.
Amendment 70, a measure that would increase Colorado’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, was...
Voters have decided it’s time to give Colorado’s minimum-wage workers a long-overdue raise.
Amendment 70, a measure that would increase Colorado’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, was passing by a 10-percent margin. Minimum wage in the state is now $8.31 an hour.
With 25 of 64 counties reporting, the vote-count as of this posting was 55 percent yes to 45 percent no.
In a crowded, jubilant second-floor conference room at the Westin Downtown, a group of minimum wage earners, business owners and advocates celebrated.
“Amendment is going to help our local economy,” said Edwin Zoe, proprietor of restaurant Zoe Ma Ma. “When low income workers do well, we all do well.”
The amendment alters the state constitution to increase the minimum wage by yearly 90-cent increments until it reaches $12 in 2020. In 2020, it will be fixed at $12, except for yearly adjustments to account for inflation.
Who pushed it over the finish line?
Supporters of the increase coalesced in mid-2016 into a group called Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, a coalition of unions, economic justice advocates and progressive policy analysts. Many of them had been part of an informal consortium of anti-poverty groups called The Everyone Economy that came together to strategize about raising the minimum wage back in February 2014. Partnering with Democratic legislators, they advocated for a pair of bills in the 2015 legislative session to help low-wage workers. One would have allowed municipalities to set their own minimums, and the other would have created a ballot measure to reach a $12.50 per hour minimum by 2020. Republicans killed both bills in the Senate.
Democrats floated another bill in 2016 to allow cities to set their own minimum wages, which met the same fate as its predecessors. After that, Everyone Economy members decided they had no recourse but to pursue a ballot measure themselves and formed Colorado Families for a Fair Wage.
What does it mean that it passed?
The work is just beginning for Colorado labor unions and low-wage worker advocates. Most CFFW members acknowledge that $12 per hour is not in fact a living wage for workers with families in some parts of Colorado. Most estimates put a living wage for a single parent of two children in Denver at around $30 per hour. But advocates also believe that the current $8.31 per hour is inexcusable, and any more than $12 was not politically viable this time around.
But for some, the increase means a change in their lives. April Medina currently makes $11 per hour in assisted living. She works 60-70 hours per week, leaving very little time to spend with her four children. She brought her 9-year-old daughter, Jasmine, to the Westin Downtown to celebrate Amendment 70’s passage.
Medina said she was thrilled by the news.
“I’m excited to go to some basketball games,” Medina said.
How much firepower was against it?
Keep Colorado Working had a slower start raising funds, but raised $1.7 million in the last reporting period. It has spent just under $1.4 million as of the most recent campaign finance filings, primarily on television advertising and consultants. About half of its funds ($650,000) come from the Alexandria, Virginia-based Workforce Fairness Institute. It has also gotten $525,000 from Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution, a committee that has donated hefty sums to pro-fracking campaigns and to a 2013 effort to recall legislators who had passed gun-control legislation.
CCFW outraised its rivals almost 3 to 1, raising about $5.3 million in donations, much of it from out-of-state groups like its largest donor, the Center for Popular Democracy, which has kicked in over $1 million. Its second-largest donor is the Palo Alto-based Fairness Project, which has contributed over $960,000 to CFFW and is also supporting minimum wage ballot measures in Maine, Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Keep Colorado Working wants to make sure you know that some of CFFW’s donors are not from Colorado. Virtually all of its communications use the terms “wealthy out of state special interests” liberally.
According to the most recent campaign finance filings, CFFW has spent $4.6 million on television and digital advertising, outreach efforts like canvassing and hosting events, mailers, polling and research.
By Eliza Carter
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Meet the Activists Who Want to Make the Fed Listen to Workers for a Change
Vox - August 22, 2014, by Dylan Matthews - The Jackson Hole conference, an annual retreat in Wyoming...
Vox - August 22, 2014, by Dylan Matthews - The Jackson Hole conference, an annual retreat in Wyoming organized by the Kansas City Fed, is usually frequented by central bankers, private sector economists, and academics. It's not usually frequented by everyday workers.
This year was differrent. A group of community activists traveled to the conference to urge policymakers to not do what an increasing number of voices in the Fed system and in the financial sector have been urging them to do: raise interest rates.
"They need to stimulate the economy," says Kendra Brooks, a former bank manager from Philadelphia who's been unemployed for about a year. "Increasing the interest rate here isn't going to help the people without jobs. It's going to put us further into debt."
"I want to at least get our voices heard before they make their decisions,"Tyrone Raino, who recently took a job requiring a 40 mile commute from his home in Minneapolis, says.
Brooks and Raino are both members of local community organizing groups — Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and Action United in Philadelphia, respectively — which have, with the Center for Popular Democracy, come together to try to do something that hasn't really been done before: grassroots lobbying of the Fed. And they're being heard.
According to the Center's senior attorney, Ady Barkan, the group met with Kansas Fed chief Esther George for two hours, and spoke to Fed chair Janet Yellen, Chicago Fed chief Charles Evans, and Minneapolis Fed chief Narayana Kocherlakota. The last three are sympathetic to Brooks and Raino's perspective — Raino called Kocherlakota "one of the voices in the Federal Reserve system who understands the economy is far from recovery for most of us" in an article for MinnPost — George has expressed support for raising interest rates. For people trying to lobby a generally unlobbied institution, that's an impressive start.
To some extent, the Fed is designed to be impervious to outside pressure like this. Many economists believe that central bank independence — that is, having a central bank that is not directly controlled by legislatures or other democratically elected officials — is crucial to effective monetary policy. In 1993, future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his Harvard colleague Alberto Alesina authored a hugely influential paper arguing that countries with more independent banks have less variable prices and lower inflation overall. While that finding was controversial, the view that month-to-month policy decisions by the Fed should not be influenced by politicians — what Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer has called"instrument independence" — is widely accepted.
But Barkan argues that the independence the Fed currently enjoys is one-sided. "There are 108 board members across the 12 regional banks," he notes. "Under the law, 72 of them are supposed to represent the public interest and 36 are supposed to represent banking and financial interests. But of the 108, 97 are from financial institutions or corporations. Only 9 are from nonprofits, and even those are from major, wealthy nonprofits. Only 2 of the 108 board members represent labor organizations and workers."
"This desire for Fed independence really only goes in one direction," he concludes. "It's a desire for insulation from the needs of regular people."
Barkan, Brooks, and Raino avoid endorsing specific proposals for the Fed to get tougher on unemployment, like setting a nominal GDP target or abolishing paper money or allowing "helicopter drops." The emphasis is more on convincing the Fed that there is still a problem — that the labor market still has slack.
While some in the Fed worry that people are getting too many raises, Barkan argues that wage growth is still too slow — and that the labor market won't be healthy until it's significantly higher. "Real rising wages will represent tightening of the labor markets, and that's what you want to pull the long-term unemployed back into the market, and vulnerable workers back into the market," he says. "It's only once the labor market tightens that you can help vulnerable communities get out of this long recession."
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"Fed Up" to Bankers in Jackson Hole: Help Working People
"Fed Up" to Bankers in Jackson Hole: Help Working People
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – The nation's most powerful bankers are descending on Jackson Hole this week for the Federal Reserve's annual economic symposium, and they'll be met by a coalition of labor and...
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – The nation's most powerful bankers are descending on Jackson Hole this week for the Federal Reserve's annual economic symposium, and they'll be met by a coalition of labor and policy groups who want a say in how the economy is mapped out.
Shawn Sebastian, co-director of the Fed Up Campaign, says the biggest decision facing the Trump administration is who to pick for Fed chair.
Read the full article here.
The United Cities of America: What Seattle's Minimum-Wage Deal Means
The Atlantic - May 2, 2014, by Eric Liu - On Wednesday, a Senate filibuster blocked...
The Atlantic - May 2, 2014, by Eric Liu - On Wednesday, a Senate filibuster blocked President Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10. Then on Thursday, Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle announced a business-labor deal to raise the city minimum wage to $15.
Procedurally, these two things had nothing to do with each other. Substantively, Seattle’s action is a direct result of the Senate’s inaction—and it portends the acceleration of two trends in public policy today: a growing willingness to reckon with radical inequality and wage stagnation, and the emergence of networked localism as a strategy for political action.
Let’s first unpack what happened in Seattle. The mayor appointed a committee of citizens to develop a proposal for $15. I was a member of that task force, which included union leaders and businesspeople and nonprofit heads and chamber-of-commerce chiefs. We gathered data. We commissioned studies. We held a big public symposium. Negotiations were complex and often heated and the committee missed its deadline, but we eventually got a deal that won the support of 21 of 24 members.
The grassroots “$15 Now” activists who helped propel a socialist to the city council and helped put this issue on the map last year are unsatisfied with the number of years and the accommodations. They aim to go to the ballot directly with a plan that’s closer to, well, $15 now. And the city council still must vote to enact this or any plan, and may come under pressure to amend it many ways.
The deal is nobody’s picture of perfect. It’s a compromise. It phases in minimum-wage hikes so that an employer has to get to $15 in three years (for businesses with more than 500 employees), four years (same, but offering healthcare), or seven years (for businesses with fewer than 500). The under-500 businesses also get several years to count a portion of worker tips and healthcare toward the wage requirements.
But pull back from the substantive details and the process hoops ahead. This is, as the vice president might say, a big f-ing deal. It’s not just the $15 figure, which sets the floor higher than in any other city or state. It’s the fact that a broad coalition with significant business support made it happen.
That makes this deal a model for other cities—and further evidence that norms are changing. It suggests that it’s becoming less acceptable in America to run a business in a way that relies on poverty wages. It’s becoming less acceptable to suggest that the go-to remedy for the pain of working people should be tax cuts for the wealthy. And though a minimum-wage increase is not an innovative tool, its revival is part of a widening repertoire of policy ideas for closing the opportunity gap.
We brought in leaders and experts from Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York—all cities that have raised the wage or taken steps to.
Perhaps more significantly, Seattle’s action shows we’re entering a new age of bypass. Washington is stuck and will be for the foreseeable future. So it falls increasingly to cities to act—and in increasingly coordinated ways. As the Seattle task force explored possible pathways to $15, we brought in elected leaders and experts from San Jose, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York, all cities that have raised the wage or taken steps to. We all shared tactics, policy proposals, lessons, and language.
Groups like Local Progress have emerged to link up politicians and policy entrepreneurs from disparate cities, not just on wages but also on criminal-justice reform, immigrant rights, voting rights, climate change, and other issues. The cities of the United States are beginning to web up into an archipelago of policy experimentation and problem-solving.
This networked localism is distinct from the mere downward distribution of national political dollars to local campaigns. It’s also distinct from the Koch brothers’ strategy of creating wholly owned political subsidiaries in small towns to push agendas. And it’s not just about having mayors who are skillful, important as that is. Networked localism is a form of citizenship from the middle out and the bottom up, where residents decide to act together and to learn in real time from their counterparts in other places.
Thus far, perhaps owing to the progressive tilt of big cities, networked localism seems to be practiced mainly by progressives. That may place a political limit on its ultimate reach. Another limit, of course, is structural: On most issues, even well-woven webs of cities cannot do what a well-run national government can. A $15 wage will directly benefit tens of thousands of low-income workers in my city. It does nothing for millions of others in my country.
Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that Seattle’s $15 moment is a sign of a shift in self-government. The last century rewarded political leaders like TR or LBJ who knew how to centralize the local into the national. This century may belong to those who can decentralize the national—but into a new kind of national. Call it the United Cities of America.
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Why Dianne Feinstein’s shutdown vote helps her re-election
Why Dianne Feinstein’s shutdown vote helps her re-election
Feinstein’s stand has earned her the approval, if not full-fledged embrace, of activists.
“She came right on the Dream Act and that’s really important,” said Center for Popular Democracy’s...
Feinstein’s stand has earned her the approval, if not full-fledged embrace, of activists.
“She came right on the Dream Act and that’s really important,” said Center for Popular Democracy’s Ady Barkan, who was among the activists leading a Jan. 3 rally at Feinstein’s Los Angeles office to press her on the issue.
Read the full article here.
OPPOSING A MINIMUM WAGE HIKE COULD COST THE GOP THE SENATE
OPPOSING A MINIMUM WAGE HIKE COULD COST THE GOP THE SENATE
Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on less than $15 an hour, our economy’s tilt toward low-paying jobs has become a...
Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on less than $15 an hour, our economy’s tilt toward low-paying jobs has become a top economic issue this year.
Now, as GOP leaders fret that Donald Trump may drag down Republican incumbents, turning more U.S. Senate races into toss-ups, the Republican majority’s stonewalling of any action to raise the federal minimum wage could cost the party control of Congress.
New polling shows that close to 70 percent of voters in key swing states want an increase in the federal minimum wage—and that 60 percent or more support a $15 minimum wage in six of the seven states polled.
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Even more, the polling shows that candidates’ positions on raising pay could play a pivotal role in this year’s electoral battles for control of the U.S. Senate. The results show that the incumbent Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose critical support—and even their seats—over opposition to raising wages for working people.
In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Democratic challengers Katie McGinty, Russ Feingold and Governor Maggie Hassan strengthened their leads over incumbent Republican Senators Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson and Kelly Ayotte when voters were made aware of the senators’ opposition to raising the minimum wage.
And in Arizona, Missouri and North Carolina, Democratic challengers Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, Jason Kander and Deborah Ross pulled ahead of Senators John McCain, Roy Blunt and Richard Burr, flipping those contests on their heads, when voters learned of the senators’ track records opposing raises.
For example, in Arizona—where John McCain has just emerged from his toughest re-election primary ever—a 43-43 tie turns into a 44-38 lead for Kirkpatrick once voters hear about McCain’s opposition to raising pay.
The polling comes as the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Working Families Organization and other grassroots groups in seven states begin to mobilize voters.
The coalition plans to engage in canvassing, hold candidate forums and wage debate protests, among other actions, to educate and energize voters around candidates’ positions on the raising the minimum wage.
While Donald Trump, who has been all over the map on the minimum wage, has announced he now supports an increase to $10, most Republicans in Congress remain opposed.
Leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s firm LuntzGlobal has warned minimum wage opponents, “If you’re fighting against the minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are OK with raising the minimum wage.”
Farm workers pick vegetables on a farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on August 31. Paul Sonn writes that Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose their seats over opposition to raising wages.
While Congress has refused to act, over the past three and a half years, more than 50 states, cities and counties, as well as individual companies, have stepped forward to approve minimum wage increases, delivering raises to 17 million workers.
And 10 million of those workers are in states or cities that have approved phased-in $15 minimum wages, raising pay for more than one in three workers in California and New York and beginning to reverse decades of growing pay inequality.
Historically, raising the minimum wage enjoyed the same bipartisan backing in Congress that it does with voters. But over the past 20 years, increasing polarization in Washington and the growing role of money in politics have led many Republicans to abandon their support.
As a result, the federal minimum wage today remains frozen at just $7.25 an hour. And taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab, as low-wage workers in the seven states just polled must rely on $150 billion per year in public assistance to make up for their inadequate paychecks.
Candidates’ positions on the minimum wage have made a difference in close U.S. senate races before. Ten years ago, in Missouri and Montana, Democrats Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester successfully used their support for a higher minimum wage to highlight the difference between them and their opponents, Republican Senators Jim Talent and Conrad Burns, who both opposed raising the wage.
McCaskill and Tester rode the issue to an Election Day victory, helping to break a logjam in Congress and delivering the first federal minimum wage increase in 10 years in 2007.
With the public demanding action to boost pay, the Republican majority and individual candidates this fall face a clear choice: stop standing in the way of a long overdue federal minimum wage increase—or risk their political future.
By Paul K. Sonn
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80 Arrested in DC Protesting GOP Health Care Bill
80 Arrested in DC Protesting GOP Health Care Bill
Capitol Police arrested 80 people protesting the Republican health care bill in Washington, DC, reports CNN. Over 100 protesters from across the United States gathered outside GOP lawmakers’...
Capitol Police arrested 80 people protesting the Republican health care bill in Washington, DC, reports CNN. Over 100 protesters from across the United States gathered outside GOP lawmakers’ offices on July 10 to try to stop the Republican bill—dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA)—that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare).
Read the full article here.
Toys 'R' Us owners will hand out $20 million severance to employees
Toys 'R' Us owners will hand out $20 million severance to employees
The fund was set up following negotiations between the private equity firms and various public interest groups that organized the employees, including Organization United for Respect, Private...
The fund was set up following negotiations between the private equity firms and various public interest groups that organized the employees, including Organization United for Respect, Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Center for Popular Democracy. "This Fund begins to ensure the hard-working people who spent their lives building Toys 'R' Us and making children happy are not left out in the cold," said Marilyn Muniz, a New York-based Toys "R" employee for nearly 20 years.
Read the full article here.
Echen a los codiciosos buitres residenciales
Echen a los codiciosos buitres residenciales
Para los estadounidenses y, en particular, las personas de color, la propiedad de vivienda es una fuerza económica estabilizadora y esencial desde hace tiempo. Ofrece la oportunidad de que las...
Para los estadounidenses y, en particular, las personas de color, la propiedad de vivienda es una fuerza económica estabilizadora y esencial desde hace tiempo. Ofrece la oportunidad de que las familias aumenten su seguridad económica en el trascurso de las décadas.
Por eso la crisis de ejecuciones hipotecarias fue tan difícil, en especial para los latinos y las personas de raza negra. Significó que su patrimonio, en ocasiones acumulado por varias generaciones, desapareció casi instantáneamente.
Ambos recordamos claramente las difíciles conversaciones que tuvimos con vecinos que pasaban apuros durante el caos. Aquí en Nueva York, como en todas partes, a pesar de que las personas de color no constituían la mayoría de los propietarios de vivienda, se veían afectadas por las ejecuciones hipotecarias con mayor frecuencia. Eso significó que al perder su patrimonio, más y más de ellos se fueron de la ciudad y nuestros vecindarios cambiaron.
Desafortunadamente, aún estamos viendo los efectos. Una purga lenta que se viene produciendo desde hace años a medida que la ciudad se aburguesa se ha facilitado por las ejecuciones hipotecarias y alquileres cada vez más altos, con los que más familias han dejado de ser propietarias para pasar a ser inquilinas. Muchas familias trabajadoras que han perdido su vivienda ahora además tienen dificultad para alquilar, debido al costo en aumento en el mercado.
Wall Street ha encontrado un socio inverosímil en estos desalojos: el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano de Estados Unidos (HUD por su sigla en inglés). En todo el país, cientos de miles enfrentan ejecuciones hipotecarias. A pesar de la misión de HUD de “crear comunidades sólidas y sostenibles que incluyan a todos, con viviendas económicas y de calidad”, el departamento ha operado un programa que vende decenas de miles de hogares muy descontados a especuladores de Wall Street.
Cuando los fondos de especulación y firmas inversionistas privadas adquieren estos préstamos, por lo general fuerzan a los propietarios a dejar su vivienda —por medio de ejecuciones hipotecarias o ventas al descubierto (que no cubren las obligaciones hipotecarias) — y luego convierten las residencias en caras propiedades para alquilar, lo que hace que aumenten los precios en todo el vecindario.
En un extraño vuelco del destino, Blackstone Group, una de las más grandes firmas privadas de inversión en el mundo, ahora también es el mayor propietario de casas unifamiliares en alquiler en Estados Unidos. Entonces, Blackstone no solo está desalojando a familias de sus casas; también está sacando a familias trabajadoras de sus vecindarios.
Sin embargo, la práctica continúa. En tan solo los últimos seis meses, HUD ha vendido más de 7,000 préstamos a fondos de especulación y firmas privadas de inversión.
HUD ha programado otra venta masiva de hipotecas afectadas para el 18 de mayo.
HUD, dirigido por el secretario Julián Castro, debe revertir su curso antes de que sea demasiado tarde. Debe poner un alto a esta venta en subasta de viviendas a Wall Street. En vez, debe colaborar con el gobierno de la ciudad de Nueva York y partes interesadas en la comunidad para poner estos préstamos afectados en manos de entidades sin fines de lucro u otros compradores impulsados por una misión, quienes ayudarán a las familias a conservar sus casas.
No se trata simplemente de ilusas propuestas por liberales. Cada vez hay más instituciones financieras dedicadas al desarrollo comunitario que han conseguido capital y están listas y dispuestas a adquirir estos préstamos hipotecarios en mora y colaborar con familias en apuros.
Usan la reducción del monto principal debido para ayudar a modificar los préstamos afectados y hacer que los pagos sean más costeables. Cuando es realmente imposible evitar las ejecuciones hipotecarias, estas entidades sin fines de lucro formulan planes para la disposición de las propiedades que toman en cuenta las necesidades de vivienda económica de la comunidad que las rodea.
Estos préstamos hipotecarios en mora están vinculados con los propietarios y las viviendas en apuros en nuestros vecindarios. Vender nuestro inventario residencial a los propios depredadores que los pusieron en esta situación no solo demuestra poca visión de futuro, sino que daña nuestras comunidades irreparablemente.
Los especuladores de Wall Street se enriquecieron creando la crisis de vivienda que causó estragos en nuestras comunidades. No se debe permitir que vuelvan a enriquecerse aprovechándose de los restos de los vecindarios que ya han destrozado.
By Ana Maria Archila Y Jonathan Westin
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Scarlett Johansson recauda medio millón para Puerto Rico
Scarlett Johansson recauda medio millón para Puerto Rico
Las compañías Marvel y Disney donaron todos los costos de producción al igual que una aportación económica de $350,000 dólares los cuales estarán destinados a la ayuda a Puerto Rico organizados...
Las compañías Marvel y Disney donaron todos los costos de producción al igual que una aportación económica de $350,000 dólares los cuales estarán destinados a la ayuda a Puerto Rico organizados por el Hurricane María Community Recovery Fund.
Read the full article here.
6 days ago
6 days ago