Campaign News

Bloomberg News - November 15, 2014, by Jeff Kearns & Christopher Condon -Labor and community organizers meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen challenged officials who are ready to raise interest rates to first come visit the poorest neighborhoods with them before saying that the economy has recovered.

Kati Sipp, one of about two dozen activists meeting Yellen, said at a press conference yesterday in front of the central bank in Washington that she would show Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser “what life is like in this economy” for his city’s unemployed.

“Clearly Charles Plosser hasn’t been coming out the way that I work,” said Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families. “I work on 60th Street in West Philadelphia in a storefront office, and every single day someone or a couple of people come in to my office because they are looking for work.”

A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Fed declined to comment.

Members of the group met with Yellen and Fed governors Stanley Fischer, Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard. The coalition of 20 community groups, labor unions and religious leaders from around the U.S. wants the Fed to hear the concerns of ordinary Americans as it prepares to raise rates. It’s part of wider public pressure, including from lawmakers of both parties, who want more accountability and transparency from the central bank.

The Fed has been criticized by Democratic and Republican groups over its rescue of big Wall Street banks in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and over subsequent steps to support the economy through zero interest rates and massive bond purchases.

Yellen Meeting

The group meeting with Yellen and her colleagues yesterday included individuals struggling to find work despite the improving economic picture in the U.S., Ady Barkan, senior staff attorney at the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy, one of the organizers of the meeting, said in an interview.

“They all listened very intently and asked questions,” Barkan said of Yellen and the three governors. “They were very interested in hearing about the personal stories of the folks we brought.”

Those included Reginald Rounds, a resident of Ferguson, Missouri, near St. Louis, where protests erupted after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by police in August. The predominantly black town became a symbol of racial inequality and militarized policing as armored trucks and tear-gas canisters rolled through the suburban community after the shooting.

‘Sky-High’

Barkan said Rounds told the Fed officials that “sky-high unemployment” in the St. Louis area had contributed to “desperation” in the town.

Another speaker was Shemethia Butler, an unemployed woman from Washington. She recounted for Yellen how she was laid off from a job that offered no paid sick days after becoming ill and missing time at work, Barkan said.

Barkan said he had agreed with Fed officials not to recount how Yellen and the governors responded.

Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on the meeting.

The jobless rate has fallen to 5.8 percent from a 26-year high of 10 percent in October 2009. Interest rates have been held near zero since December 2008, and most Fed officials project that they will raise borrowing costs sometime in 2015.

Still, millions of Americans can find only part-time work, and average hourly wages have risen at about a 2 percent pace for the last five years, barely outpacing inflation.

Big Banks

“The economy is not working for the vast majority of people,” Barkan told reporters before the meeting in front of the central bank headquarters facing the National Mall. “It’s too important of an institution to be controlled and dominated by big banks and corporations rather than the public.”

In addition to low rates to help the unemployed, the groups are pushing for a more open and transparent search process for regional bank presidents that includes more community input. Barkan said the group asked Yellen for support in arranging meetings with each regional Fed president.

While formal changes to the process of selecting regional Fed leaders would require legislation, Barkan said the Fed board of governors held significant informal influence over the process.

“I’m sure they could change the process if they wanted to,” he said.

Plosser, Fisher

Plosser and Richard Fisher of Dallas both plan to retire next year and the “Fed Up” coalition wants more public input in naming their successors. Both banks have said they have hired executive search firms to find candidates.

Regional bank chiefs are picked by their respective boards, which are typically composed mostly of banking and business executives. Philadelphia’s nine-member board includes Comcast Corp. Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis.

Both presidents have cast dissenting votes this year against the Fed’s policy, and have been among officials favoring raising rates sooner to prevent inflation and financial-instability pressures from building.

“It’s important that real people are also representing the public and Federal Reserve policy making,” Sipp said. “We want publication of the names that are under consideration so that we know who they are, that it’s not just a puff of white smoke and suddenly we have a new” president.

Search Firms

The Philadelphia Fed has hired executive search firm Korn/Ferry International and said yesterday that the Los Angeles-based company has set up an e-mail address -- PhiladelphiaFedPresident@KornFerry.com -- to receive inquiries.

The Dallas Fed announced two days ago that it hired Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. to seek a replacement for Fisher.

Economist Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, told reporters yesterday that the Fed’s willingness to arrange the meeting was “incredibly encouraging” because the central bank “is one of the most important institutions in the world but few Americans know it.”

While the unemployment rate has declined to a six-year low, there remains “too large a gap between today and a healthy economy,” he said, adding that stakes are highest for disadvantaged groups, including African-Americans. Their unemployment rate tends to be twice as high as the broader U.S. level both “in good times and in bad,” Bivens said.

The rate was 10.9 percent in October, and rose to a 26-year high of 16.9 percent in March 2010, Labor Department data show. The rate for whites was 4.8 percent last month.

Wider Inequality

Yellen, a labor market economist for most of her three-decade career in government and academia, has shown concern for people who aren’t fully benefiting from a stronger economy. Last month, in a speech in Boston, she questioned whether widening inequality is “compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history.”

Since becoming chair in February, Yellen has focused attention on those who have been left behind after five years of economic expansion. In March, she told a community development conference in Chicago the Fed hadn’t done enough to combat unemployment and cited local residents who have struggled with joblessness.

In August, the Center for Popular Democracy brought low-wage workers to the Fed’s annual monetary policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they spoke briefly with Yellen on the sidelines of the event and met with Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who also wants to raise rates sooner.

The activists arrived at the Fed wearing the same shirts that they wore when they gathered in the lobby of the Jackson Lake Lodge during the symposium: bright green T-shirts emblazoned with the question “What Recovery?”

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Bill Moyers - July 24, 2014, by Neha Tara Mehta - Besides struggling to make ends meet because of low wages, millions of part-time workers in America also face uncertainty over when they will be called in to work. Irregular schedules and last-minute notice make it hard for these workers to find other work, go to school and make arrangements for child care or caring for aging parents.

As The New York Times reported last week:

About 27.4 million Americans work part time. The number of those part-timers who would prefer to work full time has nearly doubled since 2007, to 7.5 million. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 47 percent of part-time hourly workers ages 26 to 32 receive a week or less of advance notice for their schedule.

In a study of the data, two University of Chicago professors found that employers dictated the work schedules for about half of young adults, without their input. For part-time workers, schedules on average fluctuated from 17 to 28 hours a week.

“Frontline managers face pressure to keep costs down, but they really don’t have much control over wages or benefits,” said Susan J. Lambert, a University of Chicago professor who interpreted the data. “What they have control over is employee hours.”

According to the National Women’s Law Center, food service workers experience a 70 percent average variation of work hours every month. For retail workers, the variation is 50 percent and for janitors and housekeepers, it’s 40 percent.

Lawmakers across the country are beginning to notice how irregular schedules complicate the lives of part-time workers, and are taking measures to address the problem. Employees of federal agencies now have the right to request work schedule flexibilities. Workers in San Francisco and Vermont can ask for a more flexible or predictable work schedule. In a report released in June, New York City comptroller Scott M. Stringer made a case for a legislation that would give employees the chance to make such requests “without fear of reprisal.”

Congress is swinging into action on this issue as well. On Tuesday, Representatives George Miller and Rosa DeLauro introduced the Schedules That Work Act. Miller admits that the bill may meet with opposition, but thinks that it will highlight “often callous scheduling practices.”

The Guardian reports that another version of the bill is brewing in the Senate:

Senators Tom Harkin and Elizabeth Warren are co-sponsoring of the Senate’s version of the bill. Carrie Gleason, co-founder of Retail Action Project, said [that] Warren will introduce the Senate version in upcoming weeks.

A single mom working two jobs should know if her hours are being canceled before she arranges for daycare and drives halfway across town to show up at work,” said Warren. “This is about some basic fairness in work scheduling so that both employees and employers have more certainty and can get the job done.”

Although some businesses are saying the bills would represent government overreach, the clothing store Zara has already promised to start giving its part-time employees two weeks notice on their work schedules.

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Democrats in Congress are pushing the Federal Reserve to emphasize diversity when filling top policymaking roles.

In a new letter sent to Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, the lawmakers noted that the overwhelming majority of top central bank positions are filled by white men, and they urged a rapid change.

“The importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country cannot be overstated,” they wrote. “When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Pacific Americans, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.”

The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), garnered signatures from 11 senators and 116 House Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic presidential contender, signed the letter, as did every Democrat in the Congressional Black Caucus.

Hillary Clinton jumped into the fray as well, issuing a statement Thursday echoing that message and calling for reforms at the Fed to limit Wall Street input.

"Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms -- like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks -- are long overdue," said a campaign spokesperson.

The members called for the Fed to consider a range of factors when filling upcoming vacancies, including a candidate's ethnicity, economic and professional background.

They note that while unemployment has fallen sharply over the last several months, minority groups still fall behind. White unemployment is 4.3 percent, Hispanic unemployment is 6.1 percent, and black unemployment is 8.8 percent.

The lawmakers noted that every member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which sets the nation’s interest rate policy, is white.

In response to the lawmaker critique, the Fed said it was committing to boosting diversity, and touted its recent efforts along those lines.

"We have focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experiences," said a Fed spokesperson. "By law, we consider the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers. We also are aiming to increase ethnic and gender diversity. "

Thursday’s letter is the latest in a growing leftward push to influence the Fed, as liberals view the central bank as disproportionately influenced by input from Wall Street. With the economy on the mend and the Fed eyeing upcoming interest rate increases, they argue that too many Americans lower on the economic scale are not yet feeling those economic gains and need more support from the central bank.

Yellen was previously asked about diversity at the Fed at a congressional hearing earlier this year, and she committed to look into the matter.

Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More

A top priority for the lawmakers is ensuring increased diversity at the 12 regional Fed banks scattered across the country. Those banks occupy five rotating seats on the FOMC. But their boards are mostly filled by commercial banks, which directly back each institution.

Democrats have said for years that the arrangement ensures that the financial sector enjoys a prime seat in communicating with the Fed. Thursday’s letter noted that no regional bank head is black or Latino, and no African-American has ever helmed a regional Fed bank in the organization's 100-year history.

By Peter Schroeder

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Star-Ledger - September 5, 2013 - When a stomach bug flattens your family, should it cost a day’s pay? Does flu season put you in fear of losing your job? For more than 1.2 million New Jersey workers without paid sick days, catching a cold means choosing between their health and their job.

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is calling for nearly all city businesses to guarantee time off for illness. His proposal, requiring companies with 10 or more workers to offer five paid sick days a year, goes to the city council next week, he told the New York Times. He says it’s a matter of “basic dignity for working families.”

Fulop puts himself smartly in front of this nationwide trend. Letting sick workers stay home is good for their health — not to mention their co-workers’, or the customers’. Do you want a sniffling, sneezing waiter serving lunch because he’ll be fired if he stays home?

In 1992, half the nation’s workers got paid sick time. Twenty years later, it’s 61 percent, even as wages and paid vacation are shrinking. Connecticut adopted paid sick leave in 2011. Massachusetts is debating it. New York City made it law in June. If Jersey City adopts Fulop’s plan — and it should — it would build momentum to expand the benefit statewide.

In May, Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt (D-Camden) introduceda bill requiring employers to offer at least 40 paid sick hours a year. It hasn’t moved.

Predictably, businesses bristled, citing cost. But the opposition doesn’t add up: On average, paid sick time accounts for less than 1 percent of private-sector payrolls, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And Fulop is sensitive to those worries: Small Jersey City employers would have to provide only unpaid sick time.

Paid sick leave is more than a public health concern. It’s economic justice. Increasingly, full-time jobs are difficult to find, and workers shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their paycheck. That was the rationale, too, when New Jersey enacted paid family leave in 2008.

Sick time should be a universal right.

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