Campaign News

Kansas City Star - March 5, 2015, by Diane Stafford - When Andrew Kling dug into an economic research project, he was shocked to find there were more payday loan shops in Missouri than there were Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Starbucks locations combined.

“In a time when Wall Street is reporting record profits, many low-income people are feeling the pain,” said Kling, communication manager for Communities Creating Opportunity.

His social justice organization, better known as CCO, held a rally Thursday in front of a small strip center at 63rd Street and Troost Avenue that houses a payday loan company and a fast-food restaurant.

“It’s an appropriate site for releasing our report,” he said.

CCO is seeking support for a “covenant for a moral economy” that among other things asks the Federal Reserve to pay attention to those at the bottom of the economic ladder when it considers raising interest rates this year.

Kling said CCO is concerned that the unemployed and underemployed are being victimized by predatory lending practices, and they’re getting no help because of “political gridlock” and employers that have kept “wages dangerously low.”

The Rev. Stan Runnels, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 11 East 40th St. in Kansas City and a CCO participant, said a moral economy would include “wages that cover the costs of raising a family, where everyone has access to affordable credit in their communities.”

The rally also was planned to focus on racial inequality in the Kansas City area, where unemployment among blacks is 12.6 percent, compared with 5 percent for whites.

Kling said CCO research also found that from 2000 to 2014, the median wage for workers in Kansas was basically flat and the median wage in Missouri declined 2.5 percent.

Source

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article12522674.html#storylink=cpy Source

ThinkProgress - June 27, 2013, by Bryce Covert - In an early morning session on Thursday, the New York City Council voted to override a veto from Mayor Michael Bloomberg on paid sick days legislation. The bill, which now becomes law, requires any company with more than 15 employees to provide five days of paid leave a year and any company with fewer employees to offer five days of unpaid leave. This means that more than 1 million New York City workers will now have access to paid sick leave who didn’t have it before.

New York City joins four other cities — Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; Washington, DC; and Portland, Oregon — and the state of Connecticut in the group of places that have mandated paid sick days. However, New York’s legislation is not as strong as that in the other cities, which require companies with five or more employees to offer paid leave.

The city’s law will be implemented over a slow timeline, not taking effect until 2014 and only applying to companies with more than 20 employees for the first year and a half.

Despite initial concerns from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the objections raised by Mayor Bloomberg that the bill will put too large a cost burden on businesses, studies of laws in other places show either a neutral or positive effect. A recent audit of Washington, DC’s law found no negative impact on businesses, while a study of San Francisco found little negative impact and strong support among businesses and another of Connecticut found a small cost with big potential upsides. In fact, San Francisco’s law was found to have spurred job growth.

Even with these laws in place around the country, most workers don’t have access to paid leave. Forty percent of private workers and 80 percent of low-income workers can’t take a paid day off if they or their family members get sick.

Meanwhile, a rash of preemption bills, which bar cities and localities from enacting paid sick days legislation, have also been implemented across the country, the latest of which was signed into law by Florida Governor Rick Scott (R). They have also cropped up in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Mississippi. These bills have been sponsored by big businesses and local chambers of commerce and are part of a national effort backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing group that coordinates conservative laws across states.

Source

Lo cierto es que pese a la mejora económica la tasa de desempleo de latinos (6.8%) y negros (9.1%)  es más elevada que la de los blancos (4.6%) y asiáticos (4%) y muchos de ellos trabajan por sueldos muy bajos. Muchos de ellos, como Rubio no sienten la recuperación. “Yo paso por los bares y los veo llenos incluso los lunes pero no todos podemos hacer eso, yo no”, explica.

Su inquietud por los más desfavorecidos le ha llevado a integrarse en la asociación comunitaria Make the Road para ayudar a los trabajadores, muchos de ellos latinos, de forma diferente a como lo hacía en su país. Desde hoy está en Jackson Hole, Wyoming, donde se reunen economistas de todo el mundo y representantes de bancos centrales para hablar de política monetaria. Rubio forma parte de un grupo de trabajadores y asociaciones de base de todo el país, en las que hay representación latina, que quieren convencer a la Reserva Federal de que no suba las tasas de interés. Su argumento es que si se quedan bajas como ahora “ayudarán a mejorar las condiciones laborales y crear más empleo”.

Rubio dice que la recuperación no ha llegado a los trabajadores como ella y que por eso no es momento de empezar a subir unas tasas que reconoce que están históricamente bajas(0%-0.25% desde diciembre de 2008) para estimular el crecimiento durante la reciente Gran Recesión.

“Lo que decide la Fed nos atañe a todos”, explica con convicción Rubio antes de hablar de la fuerte desigualdad laboral que hay y el hecho de que apenas hay inflación, motivo por el que no debería haber prisa por subir tasas o como dicen los economistas, normalizarlas. El programa de Jackson Hole y la lista de asistentes se hace público por el organizador de este encuentro anual, la Reserva Federal de Kansas City, hoy mismo pero ya se sabe que la presidenta de la Fed, Janet Yellen, no va a asistir. Rubio espera estar en algunas reuniones con parte de los asistentes.

“Uno piensa que no les van a ver pero ha veces que hay que pedir y abrir un caminito”, dice.

De hecho, Rubio, junto con otros trabajadores y activistas, ya se reunió este mismo mes con el presidente de la Reserva Federal de Nueva York, William Dudley. Según esta hondureña les dio la razón cuando se planteó la existencia de una desigualdad laboral y que no hay empleo para todos. Dudley dijo que dada la situación económica fuera de las fronteras la necesidad de subir las tasas es ahora “menos imperiosa”.

Ady Barkan, abogado del Centro de Democracia Popular que está impulsando la campaña “Fed Up” y estas peticiones ante la Reserva, explica que es necesario que las autoridades monetarias “presten atención a los trabajadores”.

“La economía no se ha recuperado, hay mucho desempleo entre negros y latinos, subempleo, baja participación en el mercado laboral y apenas hay subidas de salarios”, resume Barkan. Este abogado cree que la economía necesita tasas bajas para que las empresas sigan invirtiendo de forma barata y que haya préstamos asequibles que reactiven el consumo de todos.

Lo cierto es que las empresas tienen cash y algunos tipos de préstamos como los hipotecarios no han remontado lo esperado. “No obstante, si las tasas suben la situación será peor”, explica Barkan,  “porque las empresas tendrán más motivos para quedarse sentadas en sus montañas de cash si tienen rendimiento de ellas y por que para invertir necesitan una inflación que no hay, ni habrá si suben tasas”.

“La economía tiene que calentarse un poco más”, dice. Barkan admite que las tasas bajas no son suficientes y que sería bueno que el Congreso hiciera algo además de subir el salario mínimo.

Representantes de la campaña de Fed Up ya se han reunido con Yellen y presidentes de otras reservas como la de Kansas, San Francisco y Atlanta entre otras, miembros de la Federal.

Dean Baker co director del Center for Economic and Policy Research de Washington publicaba recientemente que la subida “reducirá ingresos y oportunidades para quienes menos tienen”, una posición que también comparte el nobel de economía, Joseph Stiglitz. 

¿Cuál es la misión de la Reserva Federal?

La Reserva Federal o Fed es uno de los reguladores de la banca y la autoridad que tiene en sus manos la política monetaria, es decir, regula la cantidad de dinero en circulación. ¿Su misión? Asegurarse de que se creen las condiciones de crédito y monetarias para conseguir el máximo empleo, precios estables (ni inflación ni deflación) y tasas de interés a largo plazo moderadas.

¿Cómo funcionan las tasas?

La Reserva Federal sube las tasas de interés a corto plazo, el dinero que se prestan los bancos entre sí, para retirar dinero del mercado y evitar las subidas de precios o inflación. Cuando las baja es porque los precios están bajos y falla el consumo. Al bajarlas se pone más dinero en circulación lo que, en teoría, animando la economía. Estas tasas a corto terminan reflejándose en las de largo plazo que son las que se usan en hipotecas y otros préstamos que se usan para comprar e invertir. Cuanto más se invierte y más crece la economía más y mejor trabajo se crea.

Source: La Raza

The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project: Good for Families, Good for Employers, and Good for All New Yorkers

Each year, thousands of New Yorkers — parents, siblings, employers, workers and students — face detention and the possibility of deportation without the assistance of legal counsel. These New Yorkers are isolated from their loved ones and confront the possibility of long-term and, in some cases, permanent separation from their communities.

This analysis demonstrates that New York State can dramatically reduce the emotional and economic cost of the detention and deportation system by providing high-quality legal counsel for detained immigrants who are facing deportation through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). For an annual investment of $7.4 million – or 78-cents per personal income taxpayer per year – NYIFUP would help ensure that deportation proceedings reflect our fundamental values, providing a measure of fairness for immigrant New Yorkers.

Download the report here.

Executive Summary

Each year, thousands of New Yorkers— parents, siblings, employers, workers and students — face detention and the possibility of deportation without the assistance of legal counsel. These New Yorkers are isolated from their loved ones and confront the possibility of long-term and, in some cases, permanent separation from their communities.

This system of detention and deportation calls our collective commitment to due process into question. Immigration proceedings share many of the same features as criminal proceedings, with immigrant New Yorkers risking their liberty and extended separation from their families and communities. Yet, unlike criminal proceedings, immigration proceedings lack basic safeguards to guarantee fairness. Most strikingly, because New Yorkers have no guaranteed access to counsel in immigration proceedings, thousands face trained government attorneys in these high-stakes proceedings every year without the benefit of legal assistance. This leads to detentions that continue for months or years longer than necessary and deportations of New Yorkers who have viable legal claims to remain in the communities they call home.

But these are not the only costs. Current policies and practices are also costly in economic terms, resulting in significant annual outlays. Needlessly long detentions and avoidable deportations burden Empire State employers, New York State government, immigrant families and, ultimately, New Yorkers as a whole.

This analysis demonstrates that New York State can dramatically reduce these costs by providing highquality legal counsel for detained immigrants who are facing deportation through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). For an annual investment of $7.4 million – or 78-cents per personal income taxpayer per year – NYIFUP would help ensure that deportation proceedings reflect our fundamental values, providing a measure of fairness for immigrant New Yorkers.

The program would generate nearly $1.9 million in annual savings to New York State by reducing spending on public health insurance programs and foster care services and capturing tax revenues that would otherwise be lost. In addition, NYIFUP would produce $4 million in savings for Empire State employers each year, by preventing turnover-related costs stemming from detentions and deportations. Taken together, these savings offset the majority of the investment needed to establish the program.

-New York State employers pay an estimated $9.1 million in turnover-related costs annually as they are forced to replace detained or deported employees. NYIFUP would save employers $4 million in such costs each year.-The detention or deportation of a parent makes it difficult for some students to complete school, limiting their long-term earning potential, increasing reliance on public health insurance programs and decreasing tax revenues. Over 10 years of the NYIFUP program, this would translate into $3.1 million in annualized costs to the state each year. NYIFUP would save New York over $1.3 million in such costs each year.-Detentions and deportations cost New York’s State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) about $685,000 each year. NYIFUP would save the state over $310,000 per year in such costs.-The state pays over $562,000 a year to provide foster care for the children of detained or deported New Yorkers. NYIFUP would reduce these costs by over $263,000 each year.

Few investments have the potential to yield such far-reaching returns. We urge New York State to seize the opportunity to create a first-in-the-nation, statewide system of universal representation for individuals who are detained and facing deportation. Doing so will produce $5.9 million in savings each year to New York State and employers, ensure that the system lives up to our most closely-held ideals and help to keep Empire State families whole.