The incredible story of how “civil rights plus full employment equals freedom"
The incredible story of how “civil rights plus full employment equals freedom"
Washington, D.C.'s think tanks produce a tsunami of studies, reports and manifestos. Most of it has a readership that, outside of wonks and reporters, could be counted on the fingers of one hand...
Washington, D.C.'s think tanks produce a tsunami of studies, reports and manifestos. Most of it has a readership that, outside of wonks and reporters, could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
It truly matters that this not be the fate of a new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Fed Up, and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Read the full article here.
Fed Officials Warn Congress Against Rethinking Bank’s Design
Fed Officials Warn Congress Against Rethinking Bank’s Design
Two regional Federal Reserve presidents defended the public-private structure of the U.S. central bank in prepared testimony they’re scheduled to deliver before lawmakers on Wednesday, saying it...
Two regional Federal Reserve presidents defended the public-private structure of the U.S. central bank in prepared testimony they’re scheduled to deliver before lawmakers on Wednesday, saying it helps guard monetary policy from political interference.
“The Fed’s public-private structure supports monetary policy independence by ensuring a measure of apolitical leadership,” Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond Fed, said in the text obtained by Bloomberg. Lacker and Esther George, head of the Kansas City Fed, are set to appear before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee in Washington.
George said the Fed’s structure, created by Congress in 1913, “recognized the public’s distrust of concentrated power and greater confidence in decentralized institutions.”
The hearing, before the House Financial Services sub-committee on monetary policy and trade, will examine the governance of Federal Reserve banks and how it relates to the conduct of monetary policy and economic performance.
Calls for Fed reform have resonated in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton joining calls for structural changes within the central bank and more diversity in the ranks of its leadership.
Fed Up
A coalition of pro-labor activists, known as Fed Up, published a paper in August, co-authored by former Fed economist Andrew Levin, arguing that the Fed should be transformed into a fully public institution, in line with central banks in most developed countries. Fed Up has been leading calls for the Fed to make its own ranks more diverse.
A separate study by Brookings Institution fellow Aaron Klein in August found that of 134 people who have served as regional Fed presidents since 1913, none were African American or Latino, and only six have been women.
“Our record in this regard, like that of many other organizations, shows a combination of substantial progress and areas where more can be done,” Lacker said on Fed diversity.
The Fed system’s Washington-based Board of Governors, appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate, is considered a public agency. Its 12 regional reserve banks, however, are structured legally as private corporations owned by commercial banks in their districts. Their chiefs are appointed by non-bankers on their respective boards of directors, subject to a veto by the Board of Governors.
By Christopher Condon
Source
Business Notes: Maryland Among Locations That Could Host 2026 World Cup Games
Business Notes: Maryland Among Locations That Could Host 2026 World Cup Games
“Elected officials across the country are paying close attention to how Amazon and other corporations have responded to Seattle’s efforts to confront their affordable housing and homelessness...
“Elected officials across the country are paying close attention to how Amazon and other corporations have responded to Seattle’s efforts to confront their affordable housing and homelessness crisis,” Sarah Johnson, director of Local Progress, a national association of progressive elected municipal officials, told the Times.
Read the full article here.
Chris Hemsworth suits up on the Midtown set of Marvel’s “Avengers”
Chris Hemsworth suits up on the Midtown set of Marvel’s “Avengers”
Proceeds benefit the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund at the Center for Popular Democracy.“I want those audience members to know this is not just doing a star-studded event...
Proceeds benefit the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund at the Center for Popular Democracy.“I want those audience members to know this is not just doing a star-studded event. This is coming together to do something that matters,” Leon said. “As artists we’re always looking in the mirror. It’s incumbent upon us to make our world the way we want to make it.”
Read the full article here.
Report Says Minnesota's Job Boom Has Skipped Minorities
Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal - March 6, 2015, by Mark Riley - Minnesota's unemployment rate for black job-seekers is four times the rate for whites, according to a new report that calls...
Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal - March 6, 2015, by Mark Riley - Minnesota's unemployment rate for black job-seekers is four times the rate for whites, according to a new report that calls on the Federal Reserve to keep rates low until the job market recovers for minorities.
WCCO has a story on the report, released by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy, and talks with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change Executive Director Anthony Newby. "We're told that Minnesota is one of the best places in the country to live if you want a job, and that's true if you're a white person," he said.
Statewide, the unemployment rate for African Americans is 11.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for whites.
You can download a PDF of the the full report here.
The numbers highlight some of the same criticisms leveled at a recent Atlantic piece about the " Miracle of Minneapolis". That article focused on the economic might and resiliency of the market, but didn't include racial breakdowns — something that was immediately called out by the Washington Post and others
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Behind the Business Attire, Many Bank Workers Earn Poverty Wages
The Committee for Better Banks (CBB), a Communications Workers of America (CWA)-affiliated community and labor coalition, was created in 2013 to put an end to that. Cassaundra Plummer, a Maryland-...
The Committee for Better Banks (CBB), a Communications Workers of America (CWA)-affiliated community and labor coalition, was created in 2013 to put an end to that. Cassaundra Plummer, a Maryland-based CBB member currently employed as a bank teller at TD Bank, told In These Times, “A lot of the issues within the banks are not discussed, they’re kept really quiet. As a young woman, I always thought that working at a bank was more of a prestigious job than retail. Once I actually got into banking, I realized that it’s not a whole lot different.”
The CBB, which has grown from eight lead members in April to approximately 60 in six different states today, with thousands more either engaged through petition signing or attending rallies. CBB is hoping to expand and create a critical mass of organized workers by bringing these issues out in the open.
A study released by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) early this month shored up CBB claims, finding that 30.4% of the 1.7 million retail banking employees across the country—more than 500,000 workers—are paid less than $15 an hour. Nearly three-quarters of low-wage bank workers are bank tellers, 84.3% of which are women.
Another report, published by the UC Berkeley Labor Center last year, found that these low-wages led 31% of bank teller families toward enrolling in public assistance programs (compared to 25 percent of the entire workforce). “The cost of public benefits to families of bank tellers is nearly $900 million per year,” says the report.
Though it was labeled an “occupational winner” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its 84% throughout its growth in the 1970s, the introduction and proliferation of automated teller machines helped put the brakes on that, leading to a projected 1% growth over the next decade. As Timothy Noah noted for Slate in 2010, banks tellers earn “slightly less than [they] did in 1970,” putting the job at the center of wage stagnation that has become common-place throughout the middle class, especially within the context of expectations of higher productivity.
CEO compensation and executive pay indeed remain at worrying heights. The NELP report found that CEOs of Wells Fargo and Bank of America made amounts equal to more than 500 times the annual earnings of an average bank teller. Stephen Lerner, the architect of SEIU’s famed Justice for Janitors campaign, summed up the wealth disparity among bankers at the top and bottom of the pay brackets in a 2010 New Labor Forum article, writing, “We could increase pay by $2.00 per hour and provide employer-paid health insurance for over 550,000 tellers with just 3.6 percent of the bonuses paid out to executives.”
“The constant focus on making more forces the people working in the bank to take on more work, but we’re being paid the same amount,” says Plummer. “We’re not expecting to become wealthy off of entry-level positions. But the corporations make a lot of money off of the things that we do—the sales goals, and all that we have to do to create wealth for the bank. It should be reciprocated back to the employees.”
By shifting traditional banking services toward automation, low-wage bank workers such as bank tellers and personal bankers have also become the frontline for pushing financial products on to customers in an effort to increase profits. The pressure of sales quotas imposed by management and executives at the top keeps low-wage bank workers under more scrutiny than ever before. Customer service employees in retail banks must not only attempt to hook patrons onto core retail banking services like checking and savings accounts, but must also resort to hawking mortgages and credit cards in ways CBB organizers say can be predatory. Tellers risk termination if they fail to meet quotas for such products.
“Wells Fargo creates an environment of hostility and humiliation. Multiple times I witnessed management behaving in a condescending fashion to those who did not meet ‘goals’ even though their customer service was excellent. Wells no longer cares about customer service or the best interest of their customers; they are only looking to push products and most of the time they are unnecessary products,” one bank employee told the Committee of Better Banks when they surveyed 5,000 workers for the aforementioned study at the group’s conception.
According an April 2015 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, since 2011, 17 different lawsuits across the top five banks in the country (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and US Bank) have been settled for nearly $46 billion, “highlighting a range of alleged illegal and unethical business practices.”
A 2013 Los Angeles Times investigation reported that the pressure of sales goals, which increase U.S retail banks’ profits, has led some bank workers to commit fraud, forging signatures, opening secret checking accounts with fees attached, or even credit lines for customers in order to keep up with their sales goals. This has led to lawsuits from customers and even cities decrying the rigid and unfair sales culture fostered by the banking industry. When these practices become public, banks fire employees and managers in alleged attempts to uphold ethical finance.
But as Khalid Taha, one of the first Committee members in California, currently employed at Wells Fargo in San Diego, describes it, the “impossible” sales goals come from the top and workers ultimately have no other option. “They fire the entry level employees which is us, but if you think about it, yes we are responsible for it, but we are also victims,” says Taha. “We have to keep our jobs, pay our rent. We have no way but to go a little bit shady when we deal with our customers because the company wants to meet their quota. They don’t care how.”
Beyond low pay, CBB has been working to connect these pressurized work environments to their detrimental effects on the economy caused by the bank’s business practices.
The top four retail banks in the country (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo), part of the too-big-to-fail banking institutions that some, like presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, have called to be broken up, now collectively possess assets equivalent to 45% of the U.S economy, a slight increase than what it was in 2008 before that year’s financial crisis.
Lerner, who is currently advising CBB as a fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, told In These Times, “This campaign is different from many union campaigns that say ‘our sole goal is winning better conditions for workers.’ Those campaigns are important, [but] in this case we’re saying that you can’t win better conditions for workers unless you reform the industry—and you can’t reform the industry unless workers are helping reform it.”
At an April 2015 rally in Minnesota where they delivered 11,000 signatures on a petition calling for an end to sales goals, the Committee for Better Banks released a proposed bill of rights for bank workers. One of the planks of the bill addresses what they say is community suffering at the hands of banks: “We must eliminate unreasonable sales goals or performance metrics that force us to push unnecessary products on our customers. We are here for our neighbors—for the child who opens his first savings account, for the newlywed couple planning ahead to retirement, for the senior citizen opening a credit card. We want to be honest brokers of your financial security, and that means an end to pressure tactics that only serve to line shareholders’ pockets.”
“We’re at the very beginning of a baby-steps campaign to build working support for the idea that we need to do two things, and that come simultaneously: We need to address how bank workers unfairly—low pay, etc., but we need to connect with how the finance industry behaves is bad for the overall economy,” Lerner says.
In 2010, Lerner was launching SEIU’s new plan to organize bank workers. Mike Elk described that effort as emanating from his realization that banks influenced the rest of labor organizing through its close connections to the pensions and investment banks that intertwined with financial decisions made not only by workers but their communities, as well.
At the time, fellow journalist Steve Early told Elk, “[Successful organizing] require[s] a long-term commitment that few unions are willing to make, even when dealing with a strategic multinational target that’s not going away.” Lerner left SEIU later that year under disputed circumstances, and his work organizing bank employees was abandoned by the union.
CEO and President of union-owned Amalgamated Bank, Keith Mestrich announced in early August that the bank’s employees would be making at least $15 an hour under their new collective bargaining agreement. He told Buzzfeed, “We think it’s the right thing for our bank to do, and frankly we think it’s the right thing for all banks to do. … If any industry in this country can afford to set a new minimum for its workers, it’s the banking industry.”
But in the rest of the nonunionized retail banking industry, CBB, like the Fight for 15 and OUR Walmart, will be agitating for improvements.
“It was a little bit scary at the beginning, but we have to do it. If we don’t talk then the banks will do whatever they want to do,” says Taha.
Source: In These Times
As the federal government fails the people of Puerto Rico, local governments and states must step up
As the federal government fails the people of Puerto Rico, local governments and states must step up
Given the likelihood that even more Puerto Ricans will resettle on the mainland the Center for Popular Democracy and Local Progress have published a policy guide, the first of its kind, offering a...
Given the likelihood that even more Puerto Ricans will resettle on the mainland the Center for Popular Democracy and Local Progress have published a policy guide, the first of its kind, offering a roadmap for cities and states to address the immediate needs of their new constituents.
Read the full article here.
Aloha State Welcomes Same-Day Voter Registration
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 30, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy
(973) 464-9224; tjhelm@...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973) 464-9224; tjhelm@populardemocracy.org
Hawaii Passes Same-Day Voter Registration in Move to Expand Electorate and Make Voting More Accessible Hawaii to Become 13th State Plus District of Columbia to Allow SDR(HONOLULU) – Both houses of the Hawaii legislature passed Same Day Registration (SDR) yesterday. The bill, HB2590, known locally as “Late Registration” will allow Hawaiians who missed the state’s 30-day voter registration deadline to register and vote during the state’s early voting period or on Election Day. The bill passed with 34 Ayes in the Senate, 40 Ayes in the House, and now goes to Governor Neil Abercrombie for his signature.
SDR is a proven means of increasing voter participation. States with SDR led the nation in voter turnout by 10 percentage points in the 2012 presidential election. It will help boost voting rates in Hawaii, the state with the lowest voter turnout rate in the country.
Today’s vote is the culmination of a long, multi-year effort. Led by Hawaii Common Cause, the legislative campaign was supported by a number of organizations representing Hawaii voters, including Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), the Center for Popular Democracy’s state partner organization in Hawaii.
“The Center for Popular Democracy congratulates the people of the Aloha State for taking the next steps toward a more inclusive, popular democracy,” said Katrina Gamble, Director of Civic Engagement and Politics at the Center for Popular Democracy.
“Hawaii’s adoption of Same Day Registration sets out a clear alternative to the voter suppression policies enacted by reactionary legislatures in states like Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. This will serve as a boon to efforts to expand the electorate across the country,” added Gamble.
“Arcane, outdated voting rules fall most heavily on young people, low-income citizens, and people of color – those with the lowest registration rate. Same Day Registration helps level the playing field for them by offering a major new opportunity to register to vote and participate in elections,” said Steven Carbó, Director of Voting Rights and Democracy Initiatives at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Over half a million eligible citizens didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election in Hawaii. Many were just not registered to vote. Allowing voter registration on Election Day will give citizens a second chance to meet their civic duty and vote.
Language Access - The Report
Language Access in New York State: A Snapshot from a Community Perspective
The state government provides New Yorkers with a multitude of services and benefits necessary for their survival...
The state government provides New Yorkers with a multitude of services and benefits necessary for their survival and success: nutritional supports, health benefits, unemployment insurance and driver’s licenses, to name but a few. In order for these services to be equally accessible to all of the diverse residents of the state, it is essential that government agencies be linguistically accessible, providing interpretation and translation services for the over 2 million individuals in New York State who are limited English proficient (LEP). This report assesses the state of language access in New York, particularly access to state benefits that are critically important to low-income New Yorkers, such as public benefits, unemployment, police protection, etc. It examines the degree to which government agencies that administer state benefits programs and services are providing LEP New Yorkers with language assistance services required under a patchwork of federal, state and county-level policies.
Read the full report here.
Executive SummaryThe state government provides New Yorkers with a multitude of services and benefits necessary for their survival and success: nutritional supports, health benefits, unemployment insurance and driver’s licenses, to name but a few. In order for these services to be equally accessible to all of the diverse residents of the state, it is essential that government agencies be linguistically accessible, providing interpretation and translation services for the over 2 million individuals in New York State who are limited English proficient (LEP). This report assesses the state of language access in New York, particularly access to state benefits that are critically important to low-income New Yorkers, such as public benefits, unemployment, police protection, etc. It examines the degree to which government agencies that administer state benefits programs and services are providing LEP New Yorkers with language assistance services required under a patchwork of federal, state and county-level policies.
This report is the outgrowth of years of advocacy and months of research and analysis conducted by Make the Road NY (MRNY), the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and three additional partner organizations across the state: the Center for the Elimination of Health Disparities (CEMHD) at SUNY Albany, Multicultural Association of Medical Interpreters (MAMI) in Central New York and the International Institute of Buffalo.
This study also grows from the experiences of the thousands of LEP New Yorkers with whom CPD, MRNY and our partners have worked in recent years. Their consistent reports concerning the barriers created by the lack of competent, consistent interpretation and translation have informed this research, and their continuing efforts to overcome and eliminate these obstacles have inspired this work. In recent years, CPD, MRNY and other members of the broader New York State Language Access Coalition have advocated for policy changes that guarantee language assistance for LEP New Yorkers in private and public settings. At the local level, the Language Access Coalition has successfully advocated for Executive Order 120 in New York City and Executive Order 10 in Suffolk County, which require local agencies to provide language assistance services to the LEP community members they serve.
In 2011, these efforts culminated with Governor Cuomo signing Executive Order 26, a statewide order which requires all state agencies with direct public contact to translate vital documents into the top six languages spoken by LEP individuals in New York State, provide interpretation services for all New Yorkers in their primary language, develop a language access plan and designate a language access coordinator.
With Executive Order 26, the Cuomo administration not only took a tremendously important step towards guaranteeing access to government services for LEP New Yorkers, it also demonstrated national leadership on this issue. New York State’s language access policy is the first of its kind. And at a time when other states across the nation were implementing regressive, anti-immigrant measures, New York demonstrated a better way forward. The administration’s commitment to language access, demonstrated by its consistent engagement with advocates in the years preceding the issuance of the Executive Order and in the months since its enactment, stands as a compelling example of how public policy can support the immigrant communities that have been powerful drivers of local economies across the state and strengthen New York as a whole.
However, the ultimate measure of the success of government and advocacy efforts is whether all LEP New Yorkers who interact with government agencies are provided with the interpretation and translation services to which they are entitled. Our findings, outlined below, suggest that this is not the case and that there is still much to be done to ensure that such New Yorkers receive competent, consistent language assistance services. In particular, during the course of our research, we have learned that many state benefits programs and services are administered by county- or locally-run entities that may not fall within the ambit of the Governor’s Executive Order 26, and may not be in jurisdictions with a county or local executive order. Access to language services and, thus, to the essential public services and benefits to which they are linked remains patchy and work must continue to be done with all levels of government—state and local—to ensure equity.
A New Law Is Letting Uber Drivers Unionize
A New Law Is Letting Uber Drivers Unionize
After ride-hailing companies descended on Seattle and began slashing drivers’ pay, the City Council stepped in with a novel solution.
As the gig economy grows, companies like Airbnb and...
After ride-hailing companies descended on Seattle and began slashing drivers’ pay, the City Council stepped in with a novel solution.
As the gig economy grows, companies like Airbnb and Uber are challenging cities by reshaping entire industries, often harming workers in the process. The challenge for progressive-minded legislators has been that existing regulations have often proven inadequate. Recently, however, local policymakers have begun proposing innovative ways to cope with the changes.
In Seattle, this battle has played out around ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft. When the companies were first legalized in the city in 2014, they presented themselves as a needed transport service that let drivers make money outside of the rigid regulations imposed on the taxi industry. Those claims lost credibility over the next year, however, as Uber drivers’ pay was slashed from $2 per mile to about $1.20 per mile. As cuts deepened, drivers found it increasingly hard to make an income—and many taxi firms found it almost impossible to compete.
We clearly needed a solution. Although collective bargaining had never been tried in the gig economy, a Seattle labor lawyer named Dmitri Iglitzin who’d been mulling the possibility for years approached me with a groundbreaking idea: Rather than tinkering around the edges with new regulations, why not let for-hire drivers unionize and set their own terms?
The premise was intriguing: If Uber and Lyft are going to claim that drivers are independent contractors, then let’s take them at their word and insist that drivers be allowed to negotiate the terms of their contract with these multibillion-dollar companies. While federal law preempts localities from encouraging unionization for private-sector employees, independent contractors are exempt. We believe this means that cities can allow drivers the right to collectively bargain to negotiate a better quality of life and a more reliable transportation service, in a way that regulations cannot.
The timing couldn’t have been better. In the year after Uber and Lyft first began operation, the narrative in Seattle had shifted: The companies, once seen as upstart innovators, came to be seen as major corporations intent on asserting power to the detriment of workers.
Uber and Lyft drivers had already set up an association of app-based drivers through the Teamsters, which represented taxi drivers in Seattle. United, they were starting to raise their voices. They organized rallies and protests highlighting their struggles and testified at City Hall about their limited pay, long hours, and arbitrary deactivation. Growing popular outrage turned up the heat.
Surprisingly, even as criticism rose, both Uber and Lyft did little to fight back. It wasn’t because the companies didn’t have the will or capacity. Only a year earlier, in 2014, they had put up a major fight after the Seattle City Council proposed placing a cap on for-hire vehicles.
This time though, it was clear that they could not win over public opinion. As driver earnings spiraled downward, it was hard for anybody to deny that there was a problem with the companies’ treatment of their workers—and that something needed to be done about it.
Rather than tinkering around the edges with new regulations, why not let for-hire drivers unionize and set their own terms?
In December 2015, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a law letting Uber and Lyft drivers bargain collectively and establish a process for binding arbitration. In coming months, we will finalize the rules and determine which union or association can represent drivers, who can then vote on whether they want to be represented or not. The US Chamber of Commerce is already suing, hoping that the courts determine that federal law preempts the Seattle law.
Even though contract negotiations are months away, the idea has already caught on in other cities and states. New York and Cincinnati are considering regulations that would expand collective bargaining rights to some gig-economy workers. And in California a similar law was introduced in the State Assembly (although it’s been withdrawn for the moment).
The on-demand economy is delivering important new benefits to consumers. But if we are going to build a more equitable society, we’ll need rules of the road to ensure workers are treated with dignity. Cities have a powerful role in realizing that vision.
By MIKE O'BRIEN
Source
5 days ago
5 days ago