Campaign News

The New American - May 9th, 2013 - On Wednesday the New York City Council voted 45-3 to pass the New York City Earned Sick Time Act, a bill that will require employers with more than 20 employees to provide five paid sick days to each of them every year while mandating that those employees using their sick days can’t be fired. The law would become effective on January 1, 2014, and companies with more than 15 employees would be required to comply with the law starting in 2015.

Even if Mayor Bloomberg vetoes the bill, the council will likely override it, making the law effective anyway. This will impact the employers of more than one million employees who currently have no paid sick days provided for them. The costs to be borne by those employers weren't provided in any public announcements.

The AFL/CIO explained why such legislation was needed:

In addition to the potential loss of wages for working families, the lack of paid sick days forces many people to go to work when they are contagious and [make] co-workers and customers sick.

No paid sick time also decreases [the] productivity for workers who show up unable to perform to their normal level of ability.

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) was joyous over the vote, calling it “a historic agreement to give over one million New Yorkers the right to take paid days off from work to care for themselves or a sick family member. The new legislation represents a major step forward for workers’ rights.” The CPD was joined by Make the Road New York; 32 BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union; NYC City Council’s Progressive Caucus; the Working Families Party; A Better Balance; and the NY Paid Sick Leave Coalition.

Bill Lipton of the Working Families Party was equally ecstatic: "This is a sweet victory. It provides economic security for New Yorkers, and a shot in the arm for the paid sick days movement across the country."

The bill was first introduced by council member Gale Brewer, a permanent politician and long-time progressive political activist, back in July 2009 but went nowhere for nearly four years, owing to resistance by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn’s change to allow a vote coincided nicely with her announcement in March to run to succeed Mayor Bloomberg.

Brewer exulted in the victory:

After 4 years of non-stop advocacy and coalition building, I want to thank the Paid Sick Days Coalition members and my Council colleagues with all my heart for support [of my bill] and never giving up.

I also extend my thanks to Speaker Quinn and her staff for their contributions to this legislation….

The argument over [paid sick leave] was always about common sense and fairness. I believe this law enshrines the principle that American exceptionalism is not just about large profits and small elites, but a workplace that is safe, fair and respectful of the lives of workers.

Approximately one million New Yorkers will now have the fundamental right to a paid day off when they or a family member falls ill, and no worker will be fired if they must stay home. This is a tremendous accomplishment of which all fair-minded New Yorkers can be proud.

Four major cities have already passed paid sick leave laws — Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. — while similar measures are being considered in 20 others. On the national level, two other progressives, Sen. Tom Harken (D-Iowa) and Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.), are pushing the Healthy Families Act, which proposes essentially the same thing as Brewer’s bill: seven paid sick days each year required to be paid for by employers with more than 15 employees. The National Partnership for Women & Families outlined the benefits of such national legislation:

• Paid sick days provide families with economic security;

• Providing paid sick days is cost effective to employers;

• Paid sick days reduce community contagion;

• Paid sick days can decrease health care costs.

Each of these assumptions can be rebutted successfully, but none does it better than Ayn Rand, who always asked “At whose expense?” and Henry Hazlitt in his book Economics in One Lesson, which also asked about the unseen consequences of such meddling. The "broken window fallacy" is also helpful in understanding what progressives refuse to see: Someone must pay for such mandates, usually someone silent or impotent, without enough political influence to stop such “progress” — usually the taxpayers or employers unlucky enough to have a successful business large enough to be included in the mandate.

Some of the unseen consequences would naturally include higher employment costs to the business owners, as these are, in effect, pay raises to employees. The business owners' higher costs would be reflected in higher prices to consumers, which would likely reduce competitive advantage in a market niche. More likely, however, owners will discover that they can’t afford all the people working for them and will be forced to reduce their payrolls through terminations or attrition. That will increase social costs, as those no longer working will start receiving unemployment benefits provided by the state.

In the longer run, however, making employers less competitive will shrink rather than expand the general economy. Some will not hire new workers. Others may decide to retire, deciding that it’s no longer worth the effort, as government becomes more and more intrusive. Still others may choose to move out of the city, or the state, to more tax-friendly environments, further reducing the city’s economic output.

The biggest cost of all, however, is the continued and growing acceptance of government intervention as a way to solve perceived social “problems” and giving progressives more opportunities to expand the power and reach of government

Perhaps the best rebuttal is to review the bill of rights of another country, well-known to historians, which also had a progressive agenda very similar to that of Quinn, Brewer, and the AFL/CIO. It stated:

Citizens … have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality….

Citizens … have the right to rest and leisure … the reduction of the working day to seven hours … [and] the institution of annual vacations with full pay….

Citizens … have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work … ensured by the extensive development of social insurance for workers and employees. [Emphasis added.]

These are, of course, the rights enshrined in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

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Before Senator Jeff Flake shocked the world by requesting an FBI investigation into sexual assault claims made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Friday, the Arizona Republican was confronted in an elevator by two protestors who attempted to convince him to call for the probe. The scene was caught on video by people in the hallway, and may have ultimately tipped the scales in Flake’s determining whether to make his pitch to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Read the full article here.

El Diario - June 16, 2014 by Juan Matossian - Nueva York - Ante la inoperancia del Congreso para aprobar una reforma migratoria federal, legisladores neoyorquinos presentaron el lunes una propuesta para conceder la ciudanía estatal a los casi 2.7 millones de indocumentados del estado de Nueva York.

El proyecto de ley “New York is Home” (Nueva York es el hogar) concedería a los indocumentados neoyorquinos gran parte de los derechos que otorga la ciudadanía federal. Entre ellos, la posibilidad de tramitar una licencia para manejar, de obtener licencia profesional para trabajar, solicitar ayudas para estudiar en la universidad, acceder a cuidado de salud a través del Medicaid estatal, o de votar en las elecciones municipales y estatales.

“El estado debe de reconocer las contribuciones que hacen los residentes no ciudadanos que cumplen las reglas, trabajan aquí y pagan sus impuestos”, dijo el senador estatalGustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), que introdujo la medida en la legislatura estatal junto al asambleísta Karim Camara (D–Brooklyn). “La inclusión de los inmigrantes en nuestro sistema político y económico nos beneficiaría, mientras su exclusión nos perjudica a todos”.

Si la ley es aprobada, los indocumentados deberían cumplir una serie de requisitos para ser elegibles para la ciudadanía estatal. Los principales serían tener una prueba de identidad, demostrar que se ha residido al menos tres años en el estado y que se han pagado los impuestos durante ese tiempo, y un compromiso de cumplir las leyes neoyorquinas y la constitución estatal.

Las posibilidades de que la propuesta salga adelante son escasas, después que Albany ha rechazado o ni siquiera ha querido votar medidas menos ambiciosas de ayuda para los inmigrantes, como el DREAM Act o la licencia de manejar para indocumentados. Además, la legislatura estatal cierra su curso legislativo esta misma semana, por lo que la ley no podrá ser votada hasta el otoño.

El otro gran objetivo que persiguen los impulsores de la propuesta, que está respaldada por una gran coalición de organizaciones pro inmigrantes como Make the Road New York o Hispanic Federation, es que otros estados también presenten sus planes paralelos y seguir metiendo presión al Congreso para que vote la reforma migratoria.

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When Russell Miller worked at Abercrombie, one of his days each week had to be an on-call day.  He wouldn’t know if he’d have to show up to work until an hour in advance.

“You had to block out that time period as if you were working,” he says. One store he worked at was 45 minutes from his house. “We had to be ready to be there on time. With all the regulations about what we wear, how we look and how we present ourselves, I had to get fully ready for my shift and ready to walk out the door at the time I made the phone call to find out if they were even going to need me or not.”

For Miller,  this was more than an inconvenience.

“Having a second job wouldn’t work at a time when I was scheduled for an on-call shift. If they scheduled me for an on-call shift and they didn’t call me, that was real money lost and real time opportunity lost.”

On-call scheduling “means you have to put your life on hold,” says Rachel Laforest, director of the Retail Action Project, a division of the Retail Wholesale and Department Stores Union. “It becomes very difficult to lead full lives, so for example, if I’m a parent and I have to figure out arranging for child care, it’s impossible for me to do that” with such short notice, she says.

There isn’t good national data on the prevalence of on-call scheduling, but regional surveys suggest it’s widespread and not limited to retail, says Stephanie Luce, professor of labor studies at CUNY.  “We see it in fast food, airlines, beauty services,  domestic services, child care services," she says. "Smaller studies seem to suggest this practice really picked up after the recession, however, over the past couple of years, there’s been a real push back.”

After New York’s attorney general suggested Abercrombie and 12 other companies were potentially violating New York law through the practice, Abercrombie announced it would work to discontinue the practice.

The company responded on August fifth “...we understand – and share – the attorney general’s concerns about call-in shift scheduling. The attorney general’s letter helped focus our ongoing internal discussions about how to create a stable and predictable work environment as possible for our employees.”

Gap Inc. told Marketplace: “Each of our brands have made a commitment to evaluate their practices and determine where we may be able to improve scheduling stability for our employees, while continuing to drive productivity in stores.”

Gap also says it’s working on a pilot project with University of California, Hastings College of the Law “to examine workplace scheduling and productivity. Led by recognized expert professor Joan Williams, the goal of the Gap Hourly Scheduling Initiative is to use research and data to create solutions that will be sustainable and can be implemented across our company’s entire footprint and fleet."

Under pressure from a lawsuit, Victoria’s Secret discontinued on-call scheduling earlier this year. 

To the extent firms are reconsidering the practice, the reasons are both technological and monetary.  

On-call scheduling resulted from pressure to restrict the ratio of hours to sales and an attempt to more nimbly adapt to changes in demand, says University of Chicago associate professor Susan Lambert. It also results in companies “overhiring,” using many part time workers instead of fewer full time workers.  But Lambert says “the costs of managing this way do not enter the balance sheets of firms.”  Employees who work irregularly, for example, may not always be up to speed with the latest changes to the store or the layout, she says. 

“From a very engineering standpoint,...[on-call scheduling]  may look efficient but when you look on front lines of firms, you see all the opportunities costs there are in terms of people walking out because they can’t find something or can’t get help.”  

Another factor is technology. 

“New technologies give us now the ability to predict very well variations in demand,” Lambert says.

Companies don’t need to keep workers on hold; they can figure out pretty well whether they need to have someone show up to work far in advance of two hours before the shift starts, she says. Companies are so good at predicting demand that they tried to "overoptimize" down to the minute, keeping workers on call to cover even slight changes in demand.   

“You don’t need to do that micro-management,” she says. “Retailers are learning that."

So it may be, she says, that workers and firms are finding on-call scheduling is a headache for everyone.

Here are the responses from the 13 companies the New York attorney general wrote warnings to:

Ann Inc.: "Staffing guidelines do not include the practice of on-call shifts." 

Gap Inc.:  "Each of our brands have made a commitment to evaluate their practices and determine where we may be able to improve scheduling stability for our employees, while continuing to drive productivity in stores.  As part of our commitment to more sustainable scheduling practices, we are working on a pilot project with Gap Brand and UC Hastings College of Law to examine workplace scheduling and productivity."

J.C. Penney Co: "We do not utilize on-call scheduling, and JCPenney has always maintained a policy against the practice."

Sears Holdings Corp: "Sears Holdings does not use on-call scheduling for store associates. That said, we will fully cooperate with the New York Attorney General’s office’s requests."

Target Corp: "Target does not use on-call scheduling."

TJX Cos: "We don’t use on-call shifts at TJX and it hasn’t been our practice, i.e. nothing new since April." 

Williams-Sonoma Inc: "We actually discontinued [on-call scheduling] for the entire country."

Burlington Stores Inc., Crocs Inc., J. Crew Group Inc. and Urban Outfitters Inc. did not return requests for comment. 

Source: Marketplace