Campaign News

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said Wednesday that he doesn’t see much inflationary pressure building, arguing that means the central banks has the “luxury” of keeping rates low to help boost continued job growth.

The comments came at a meeting between Kashkari and black community activists in Minneapolis, Minn. to discuss economic disparities between black and white communities. “When I look at the data, I don’t see much inflationary pressure, so we have the luxury of taking time to let the economy keep creating jobs,” Kashkari said to the group. “Everybody at the Fed wants the job market to keep healing and we would love to see more people getting back to work.”

Kashkari isn’t a member this year of Fed’s interest-rate setting committee, which has kept rates near zero since the financial crisis. Since raising its benchmark federal-funds rate to between 0.5% and 0.25% at the end of 2015, the central banks has held rates steady. Its next meeting is Sept. 20-21.

The event was organized by Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, part of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition, which advocates for keeping interest rates low to help boost employment in low-income communities.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

By SHAYNDI RAICE

Source

New York Times - July 18, 2014, By Steven Greenhouse - A worker at an apparel store at Woodbury Common, an outlet mall north of New York City, said that even though some part-time employees clamored for more hours, the store had hired more part-timers and cut many workers’ hours to 10 a week from 20.

As soon as a nurse in Illinois arrived for her scheduled 3-to-11 p.m. shift one Christmas Day, hospital officials told her to go home because the patient “census” was low. They also ordered her to remain on call for the next four hours — all unpaid.

An employee at a specialty store in California said his 25-hour-a-week job with wildly fluctuating hours wasn’t enough to live on. But when he asked the store to schedule him between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. so he could find a second job, the store cut him to 12 hours a week.

These are among the experiences related by New York Times readers in more than 440 responses to an article published in Wednesday’s paper about a fledgling movement in which some states and cities are seeking to limit the harshest effects of increasingly unpredictable and on-call work schedules. Many readers voiced dismay with the volatility of Americans’ work schedules and the inability of many part-timers to cobble together enough hours to support their families.

In a comment that was the most highly recommended by others — 307 of them — a reader going by “pedigrees” wrote that workers were often reviled for not working hard enough or not being educated enough. “How can they work more jobs or commit to a degree program if they don’t know what their work schedule will be next week, much less next month?” the reader wrote. “It’s long past time for some certainty for workers. They drive the economy.”

Some readers were shocked by the story of Mary Coleman, who, after an hourlong bus commute, arrived for her scheduled shift at a Popeyes in Milwaukee only to be told to go home without clocking in because the store already had enough employees working. She wasn’t paid for the day.

“What happened to Ms. Coleman should be criminal,” wrote “JenD” of New Jersey in the second-most-recommended comment. “These types of stories sound like they were written by Charles Dickens in the mid-19th century.”

A reader from South Dakota, “JDT,” wrote that he was baffled as to why so many employers created turmoil for their workers by assigning them a different schedule every week, making it hard to juggle their jobs with child care or college.

“As a small-business owner for over 30 years, I have always been able to provide my part-time employees with a firm, steady and predictable schedule,” JDT wrote. “My employees are a vital and important asset. I treat them right, and they do their best for me. It’s so easy ... Why can’t big business run by M.B.A.s and highly compensated executives figure that out?”

JDT, whose name is Jim D. Taylor, runs a combined law and real estate firm in Mitchell, S.D. In a follow-up interview, he said: “In a small business, if you’ve scheduled someone to work, there should always be enough to do — you don’t send them home. I don’t know why big business is any different.”

“Why is it so hard to schedule someone for regular shifts?” Mr. Taylor asked.

A reader calling himself “Polish Ladies Cleaning Service” wrote that in the housecleaning business, it was “a particularly devilish problem” to maintain predictable schedules for employees. “If a client cancels and there’s no work, there’s no work,” he wrote. “We try to let everyone know ASAP, of course, but there are times when clients do cancel literally at the very last minute!”

In a follow-up interview, David Chou, the spokesman for Polish Ladies Cleaning Service, a company based in Brooklyn, told of a woman with a $19,000-a-month apartment who failed to confirm a housecleaning appointment scheduled for that day. So the company had to tell the scheduled housekeeper she was not needed that morning.

“We try to reschedule the ladies with other clients if that’s possible, but probably about half the times that’s not possible,” Mr. Chou said.

“Mary,” a reader from Atlanta, said it was understandable why so many employers relied on part-time workers. “We do still have issues with supply and demand that make it difficult for some businesses to hire full time (e.g., retail brick-and-mortar stores struggling with seasonal slowdowns and competition from Internet stores),” she wrote.

“How is it so many, and Obama, believe that workers have the right to tell their employer what hours they will work?” she added. “I’m thinking many here need to go to Europe or some other country. See how that works for you. Our government has no right to dictate, only to protect workers from abuse, and part-time is not abuse.”

One reader, a sales employee at an Apple store, complained in a letter that her work schedule varied every week, although she praised Apple’s medical, dental and vision benefits, even for part-timers. In a follow-up interview she said she was essentially required to be available anytime from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week — she has designated Wednesday as her day off.

“Having to give them that much availability, it means you’re at their mercy,” she said, noting that her husband works Monday through Friday. “You don’t know until the schedule comes out what your life will look like.”

Courtney Moore, a cashier at a Walmart in Cincinnati, said in an interview that she had been assigned about 40 hours a week until she told store management in June that she would begin taking college classes most mornings and some afternoons. She said she asked her manager to put her on the late shift, but to her dismay, the store reduced her to 15 hours a week.

“They said they need someone they could call whenever they need help — and they said I’m not that person,” Ms. Moore said. She said she would prefer being a dedicated full-time employee at Walmart but had to take a second job at McDonald’s instead.

A middle-aged New Yorker who lost his teaching job of two decades because of a budget squeeze in his school district said he had applied for retail jobs and was shocked by what he found.

“You had to be available every minute of every day, knowing you would be scheduled for no more than 29 hours per week and knowing there would be no normalcy to your schedule,” he wrote. “I told the person I would like to be scheduled for the same days every week so I could try to get another job to try to make ends meet. She immediately said, ‘Well, that will end our conversation right here. You have to be available every day for us.’

“I asked, ‘Even though I’m trying to get another job?’ ‘Yes.’ Then she just stared at me and asked me to leave. What kind of company does this? What kind of company will not even let you get another job?”

Source

Public records requests made to 10 publicly funded Boston charter schools have been thwarted by demands for fees totaling $91,440 from seven of the schools, according to Russ Davis, director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice and a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.

The requests for information were made on behalf of the MEJA, a coalition of labor, faith and social justice organizations, and concerned whether information on parents of charter school students was provided to two pro-charter advocacy organizations.

“The demands for absurdly high fees to comply with our requests underscore an appalling lack of transparency on the part of these publicly funded Commonwealth charter schools,” said Davis.

This issue underscores problems that would be addressed in a public records access bill that Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the State House News Service may come to the floor for a vote next week.

Kyle Serrette, the director of education justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, who has issued similar requests to both public school districts and to charter schools in other states, said that schools typically charge very little or no money to respond to public information requests.

“Exorbitant requests for fees like this by large school companies limit transparency and reduce public trust in these schools,” Serrette said.

MATCH Charter Public Middle School demanded the most for the information: $36,015 (click here to see letter). Roxbury Preparatory Charter School quoted the second-highest fee estimate, $12,500. To date, Boston Renaissance Charter Public School and Boston Preparatory Charter Public School have failed to respond.

UP Academy Dorchester, an in-district Horace Mann charter school, was the only one to respond with the information requested, providing its student records policy free of charge and stating that it has not engaged in any of the actions for which information was requested.

“These fee estimates from seven of the eight schools that responded are exorbitant and beyond our capacity to pay,” said Davis. “These charges violate the spirit and letter of our public records law.”

The MEJA requests were made in an attempt to determine the relationship between these Boston charter schools and two charter advocacy organizations —Families for Excellent Schools and the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. Specifically, the coalition is trying to determine whether the schools had any contracts with these groups, any policies related to providing outside groups with contact information for students’ families, and any record of providing these two outside groups with that contact information.

“We were concerned about reports that the charter schools may have been giving these corporate-backed, pro-charter organizations parent contact information so that parents could be enlisted to lobby on behalf of the charter school agenda,” said Davis. “If that has been going on, we believe the public has a right to know. Charter schools are publicly funded. We do not believe that public funds should be used to persuade parents to lobby on behalf of the private charter school industry.”

Families for Excellent Schools is a New York-based organization that supports Unify Boston and Great Schools Massachusetts, both of which are pro-charter advocacy groups. FES has received millions of dollars from corporate foundation groups, including the Broad Foundations and the Walton Family Foundation.

 

This chart indicates when the charter schools queried responded to the request for information, which was made in a letter dated Aug. 20, 2015. It also lists the fee estimate from each school and the name of the law firm, if any, that responded to the request.

 

School Response Date Records Produced Fee Estimate Firm Boston Collegiate Charter 21-Aug-15   $7,250 Krokidas & Bluestein KIPP Academy Boston Elementary and Middle 28-Aug-15   $9,560 Krokidas & Bluestein Brooke Roslindale Charter 28-Aug-15   $7,500 Krokidas & Bluestein Neighborhood House Charter 28-Aug-15   $8,615 Krokidas & Bluestein Excel Academy - East Boston 28-Aug-15   $10,000 Krokidas & Bluestein UP Academy Charter - Horace Mann 01-Sep-15 04-Sep-15 $0 None Roxbury Preparatory Charter 22-Sep-15   $12,500 None Match Charter Public Middle 25-Sep-15   $36,015 Krokidas & Bluestein Boston Renaissance Charter Public         Boston Preparatory Charter Public        

 

Excerpts from guidance from the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office on what fees may be charged for providing public records:

“In the interest of open government, all records custodians are strongly urged to waive the fees associated with access to public records, but are not required to do so under the law.” “A records custodian may charge and recover a fee for the time he or she spends searching, redacting, photocopying and refiling a record. The hourly rate may not be greater than the prorated hourly wage of the lowest paid employee who is capable of performing the task. A records custodian may not recover fees associated with record organization.”

Public Records Request made by the service Muckrock on behalf of MEJA on Aug. 20.

Dear Records Officer:

Pursuant to Massachusetts Public Records Act § 66-10 et seq., I am writing to request the following records:

Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, a/k/a Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, if applicable. Copies of any policies relating to the transmission of student records to a third party, promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any school policies relating specifically to the disclosure of student “directory information” to third parties promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent School Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc. in the previous two years, if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association in the previous two years, if applicable.

Source: Massachusetts Teachers Association

 President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard Clarida, a Treasury official in the administration of President George W. Bush, for the Fed’s second-ranking job.

Read the full article here.