Campaign News

Today, Center for Popular Democracy launches the first-ever Worst Employer Pageant asking America to help crown the nation’s worst employer based on how abominably it treats its employees. By pitting the two worst employers within four different sector against each other, the site asks visitors to cast their votes in each of the following categories – banks, supermarkets, drug stores, and pizza chains.

The Worst Employer Pageant has gathered extensive information on the companies, allowing voters to make their decisions based on such bad behaviors as a poor CEO to median worker pay ratio, failure to pay minimum wage and overtime, worker lawsuits against companies, or forcing workers to work through breaks, among other egregious practices.

“America’s most recognizable brands are some of our biggest employers and we want to highlight their poor treatment of employees,” said JoEllen Chernow, Director of Economic Justice at Center for Popular Democracy. “Consumers are no longer just judging companies on how much they like their products or the efficiency of their services. In 2016, customers care about how companies treat their workers full stop. Yup, it’s a thing.”

The companies nominated for becoming the Worst Employer are:

·       Bank of America

·        Wells Fargo

·       Sam’s Club

·       Whole Foods

·       CVS

·       Walgreens

·       Papa John’s

·       Yum! Brands, Inc. (Pizza Hut)

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www.populardemocracy.org

The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A coalition of New York-based advocates on Tuesday launched a national campaign to press large retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last-minute scheduling, which allows companies to assign shifts to workers with only a few hours’ notice.

The campaign follows recent agreements by several large retailers with New York’s attorney general to end the practice in that state.

The Center for Popular Democracy, the Rockefeller Foundation and the online organization Purpose are calling for scheduling at least two weeks in advance, eliminating on-call assignments that leave employees scrambling for child care, unable to hold second jobs and with uncertain paychecks.

“Already major employers are responding to mounting public pressure to deliver more stable work schedules to their front-line employees,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the center’s Fair Workweek Initiative. “This movement is about a greater voice in how much and when we work — predictable and stable hours, more input and the opportunity to work enough hours to make ends meet.”

They say three in five American workers — about 75 million people — are paid hourly, with recent job growth mainly in low-wage jobs, often part-time and subject to last-minute scheduling practices.

The Workshift campaign, formed by Purpose and the Rockefeller Foundation last year, says employer software aimed at savings and efficiency is behind the growth in last-minute worker scheduling with broad consequences. Those include lower pay, higher job turnover and unhealthy series of changing or extended shifts with little rest.

“For too long, hourly workers at retail chains, fast food companies and other businesses have been squeezed by companies who employ unfair scheduling practices to maximize their profits at the expense of their workers,” said Jose Martinez Diaz, Workshift campaign director. The organization is asking people to sign its online petition for predictable scheduling.

In December, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Pier 1 Imports had agreed to end on-call shifts at stores nationally, posting schedules at least 10 to 14 days in advance.

His office had sent letters to 14 retailers questioning the practice and citing possible violations of New York’s requirement to pay hourly staff for at least four hours when they report for work.

Retailers that have agreed to stop included Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret. Other companies contacted say they weren’t using on-call scheduling.

In April, attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia sent letters to retailers with outlets in their states expressing concerns about on-call scheduling. Companies included American Eagle, Aeropostale, Payless, Disney, Coach, PacSun, Forever 21, Vans, Justice Just for Girls, BCBG Maxazria, Tilly’s Inc., David’s Tea, Zumiez, Uniqlo and Carter’s.

The states were California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island.

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN

Source

Donald Trump’s upset election, I’ve had a unique and odd experience, one peculiar to D.C. I’ve participated in a number of events — conferences, dinners, panels — that were planned before the election and predicated on a different outcome. To say the mood is somber at these events is an understatement.

What has been particularly discordant is to hear policy types, myself included, discuss what we need to do going forward. These include ideas to prolong the economic recovery and help ensure that it reaches more people. Also, there’s a recession out there somewhere, and we’re not ready for it, so good ideas abound regarding preparations that Congress should undertake now while the sun’s still shining. Other ideas include some of the best parts of Hillary Clinton’s agenda, including ways to help people balance work and family, pay for college, improve the Affordable Care Act, and to push back on economic discrimination by race and gender.

When I hear myself and my colleagues make these arguments, I feel as if we’re leading a parade but have neglected to turn around and see the thin crowd that’s following us.

That is, of course, an exaggeration. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 1 percent and counting. But those of us in the facts business must at least consider how little our work seemed to penetrate in the months leading up to the election.

Already, many of us progressives have dusted ourselves off and gone right back to work, promulgating more facts and policy arguments. That’s necessary and increasingly important, as the Trump team is generating policies that sound good but are wasteful and inefficient. We’re used to playing such defense, and we’re good at it.

But if that’s all we do, we’ll be failing the people whom we’re here to help. The problem isn’t that the facts aren’t out there; it’s that they don’t seem to be gaining much traction. Moreover, there is no way an $18.7 trillion economy can be successfully managed if facts are on the run. We either solve this problem or watch our country deteriorate.

So how do we find and successfully navigate the road back to Factville?

We can gain an important hint by looking at what hasn’t worked. Many in the real media (as opposed to the “alt-right”) responded, often admirably, with fact checking, even in real time, as during the presidential debates. But listen to what Major Garrett, from CBS news, said about this on the Diane Rehm radio show the other day, incisively summarizing his experiences on the campaign trail:

“Any fact-checking I did … was prima facie evidence that I was biased and that I was wrong. Fact checking Trump was proof not that he was wrong but that he was right and that anyone who would raise a question about the underlying relationship about what he said and the facts was biased and therefore legitimately disregarded … It wasn’t as if there was a conversation about this; it wasn’t as if facts were litigated back and forth. The very raising of a question about the factual basis of a Trump assertion was proof that you were wrong and biased and that was the atmosphere that I found myself existing in as a reporter and to call it challenging would be an understatement.”

The institution of the establishment media is, in other words, not trusted by partisans who can point and click to countless other places to find “facts” that meet their priors. It’s a brilliant opposition strategy: when the act of fact-checking itself signals to partisans that you’re biased, that’s checkmate against evidence.

Next, ask yourself who benefits from the absence of evidence-based analysis? Examples are useful here. I can show, using the work of the think-tankers I’ve mentioned thus far that the social insurance programs of Medicare and Social Security are highly efficient and effective in boosting the welfare of retirees, and that there are no such private systems that would be nearly as effective. I can show the same societal-wide net benefits for the Affordable Care Act and the anti-poverty safety net. Same for countercyclical policy to offset recessions. Same for public education, from quality preschool to affordable college.

Every one of these programs is a “public good” and thus adds to the role of the government and requires ample funding provided through tax revenue. So, if you’re someone who wants to keep more of your pretax income, you must discredit such programs and the government that provides them.

I see this play unfolding as we speak: One, discredit the facts so nobody knows what works and what doesn’t. Two, pass a massive tax cut that delivers the goods to the top few percent. Three, argue, based on #1 above, that the tax cuts will generate enough growth to pay for themselves. Four, when they fail to do so and the debt starts going through the roof, throw up your hands and say you’ve got to cut the “entitlements.”

I don’t profess to know how to break this chain, but I do know this: Bringing the best ideas to fruition, where “best” means those that promote the greatest social welfare, does not depend solely on logic, numbers and the best arguments.

First, both the media and allegedly centrist policy organizations need to retire the idea that pairing fact-based analysis with unfounded bias is balanced reporting. Why should there be a debate on whether trickle-down tax cuts can double the growth rate and pay for themselves? And, yet, I’m called upon to have that debate weekly. If they can get you arguing over the wrong questions, they’ve already won.

At the very least, the media should mitigate the damage by making debates more representative of the state of knowledge on an issue — meaning, as John Oliver has pointed out, that climate change debates should generally feature 97 scientists explaining that it’s real and a problem for every three people who deny that reality.

Second, we in the think tank world need to reach beyond the choir both in our policy and our communications. I can name many think tanks that work with great energy and notable successes on the problem of poverty. I cannot say the same for the problem of helping displaced manufacturing workers.

Third, we must call it like we see it with much more intensity. I wonder if one reason the progressive base wasn’t out in force was in part because we failed to explain the stakes in clear, powerful language, naming names and directly confronting falsehoods and racism.

Fourth, and relatedly, we need to be more proactive in working with and supporting advocates and social movements. The Fight For $15, the Fed Up Campaign and Black Lives Matter are examples in recent years of people coming together to pressure politicians to act. They’ve been successful because they haven’t stopped at the facts; instead, they take the facts and integrate them with people-power and a compelling moral message.

I’m sure there are more and better ideas to reestablish facts and evidence-based policy to their necessary perch. Like I said, I’m no expert in this space: When my colleagues and I were in graduate school, we studied facts, not how to reinject them into the debate. But unless we do so and couple them with progressive political movements, I fear we may make no progress.

By Jared Bernstein

Source

Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal group that has been cajoling the Fed to hold off on raising interest rates. Some researchers, for example, argue that “core inflation” – which strips out food and energy prices and is often used by bankers as their preferred gauge – may be less relevant in a world where futures contracts, global shipping and worldwide trade help even out retail level price swings for some of those goods.

Some analysts have also said that globalization has been a factor in holding down U.S. wages and prices even at times of solid growth.

When the Fed met in June, US oil prices had recovered to over $60 a barrel, and there had been a belief that we’d seen the lows.

Inflation has been a concern for the Fed, as it has been running well below its 2 percent goal and some signs have indicated that it may fall further. London Business School professor Lucrezia Reichlin is the discussant. Yet the theory is still a useful framework to think about monetary policy. This year central bankers, finance ministers, academics and financial market participants will chewing over why inflation is so low, whether this is unsafe and what they can do about it. Investors have cut the probability of a move at that gathering to 28 percent Tuesday from 48 percent on August 18 based on trading in fed funds futures.

They confront a big disparity between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China.

China’s stock market is swooning and its economy slowing.

Goldman Sachs economists wrote Wednesday that they “expect liftoff in December, and see the recent market sell-off as another argument against a hike in September“.

U.S. counterparts will experience both advantages and disadvantages if their currencies behave according to textbooks and their currencies weaken against the dollar if the Fed raises rates.

Dudley said a final decision would reflect how the market acts over the next few weeks, as well as the end-of-montheconomic data.

The absence of Yellen and Draghi has lowered expectations for a major policy announcements at Jackson Hole.

The official roster of attendees at the invitation-only event included Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and Fed governors Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell, and presidents from eight of the 12 regional Fed banks. “So you look around the world and ask who can take up the slack, and really the answer is nobody”, said Kevin Logan, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities, in New York.

The opening session at 10 a.m. Eastern will examine a paper on “Inflation dynamics though firms’ pricing behavior” by Simon Gilchrist, a professor at Boston University and Egon Zakrajsek, an associate director for monetary affairs at the Fed Board of governors.

The vice chairman is considered extra inclined than Yellen to boost charges prior to later, so his statements might make clear how the talk contained in the central financial institution might transpire when officers meet September 16 and 17.

Source: Rapid News Network