Neel Kashkari Named Next Minneapolis Fed President
Neel Kashkari, a former financier who managed the U.S. Treasury’s $700 billion rescue of banks in the 2008 crisis, was named the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
...Neel Kashkari, a former financier who managed the U.S. Treasury’s $700 billion rescue of banks in the 2008 crisis, was named the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Kashkari’s resume includes stops at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co., and a failed run for governor of California last year. At the Treasury, he was Secretary Henry Paulson’s key aide in overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Kashkari will take over from Narayana Kocherlakota on January 1, 2016, according to a statement Tuesday from the Minneapolis Fed.
“He has a little bit of all the pieces you’d want in a Fed president,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut.
As head of one of 12 regional Fed banks, Kashkari will join the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s policy making panel. The Fed is weighing ending a seven-year era of near-zero interest rates, with investors betting it will move next month. Kashkari is not scheduled to vote on policy decisions until 2017. Kocherlakota, as is customary for outgoing FOMC members, will not attend the December meeting.
QE ‘Morphine’
Kocherlakota is one of the Fed’s most dovish policy makers who has argued it should keep rates on hold into next year. Kashkari has offered observations on monetary policy via his twitter feed, without spelling out whether he would favor raising rates or delaying liftoff in the current climate. In an April 2013 comment he likened the Bank of Japan’s asset purchase program to “morphine. makes u feel better but doesn’t cure.”
“I don’t think we know that much” about Kashkari’s views on monetary policy, said Angel Ubide, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “My experience with people who get appointed is whatever they thought before and what they do later doesn’t necessarily correlate.”
Kashkari, 42, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He began his career as an aerospace engineer at TRW Inc. in Redondo Beach, California.
Goldman Sachs
Kashkari’s appointment places another ex-Goldman Sachs banker at the helm of a regional Fed bank. Robert Steven Kaplan at the Dallas Fed and New York’s William C. Dudley are Goldman alums. Philadelphia Fed chief Patrick Harker previously served as a trustee at Goldman Sachs Trust and as a member of the board of managers of Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Partners Registered Fund.
“We’re disappointed that yet another former Goldman Sachs insider has been elevated to a regional president position,” said Jordan Haedtler at the Center for Popular Democracy in Washington.
Such appointments need “more transparency and public input,” said Haedtler, who’s deputy campaign manager at Fed Up, a national coalition that’s calling for changes at the central bank and wants to keep rates low to boost employment.
Kashkari worked at Goldman in the early 2000s before accepting a post at the Treasury in 2006. He joined Pimco, then led by bond fund manager Bill Gross, in 2009 to help oversee an expansion into equities, an attempt to reduce the firm’s heavy dependence on the fixed-income market. When he left in 2013, the company’s equity unit had attracted $10 billion in assets, or less than 1 percent of the firm’s total assets at the time.
Bank Bailout
TARP, approved by Congress in October 2008, remains one of the more controversial measures taken during the financial crisis. It authorized the government to purchase up to $700 billion in troubled assets from financial institutions, in an effort to bolster global credit markets. The government ultimately used $475 billion, including $250 billion to stabilize banks, $82 billion to bail out auto makers and $70 billion to save insurer American International Group Inc., according to the Treasury’s website.
“Mr. Kashkari is an influential leader whose combined experience in the public and private sectors makes him the ideal candidate to head the Minneapolis Fed,” said MayKao Hang, incoming chair of the Minneapolis Fed’s board of directors and co-chair of the search committee.
Kashkari, a Republican, was defeated by incumbent California Governor Jerry Brown in November 2014, getting 43 percent of the vote to Brown’s 57 percent.
Presidents of the 12 regional Fed banks are appointed by a portion of their respective boards of directors, subject to the approval of the Fed Board in Washington. Reserve bank boards typically consist of nine members, including three bankers. The banking members are excluded under Dodd-Frank from participating in the selection of presidents.
Source: Bloomberg Business
AIDS Activists Among #KillRepeal Protests and Arrests in DC - Video
AIDS Activists Among #KillRepeal Protests and Arrests in DC - Video
Republican Senators recently failed in their efforts to repeal and replace the nation’s current health care plan, but AIDS activists say the battle is not over. So they joined hundreds of health...
Republican Senators recently failed in their efforts to repeal and replace the nation’s current health care plan, but AIDS activists say the battle is not over. So they joined hundreds of health care workers, advocates and other people with preexisting conditions as they occupied the offices of all Republican U.S. senators to send them the message to “Kill the Bill,” “Kill Repeal” and “Protect Our Care.”
The massive manifestation of civil disobedience was held Wednesday afternoon, July 19, following a town hall meeting about health care held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. As images and videos of the actions were shared on social media, it was reported that arrests were being made. On July 10, about 80 people were arrested while protesting the Senate health care bill in DC.
Watch the video and read the full article here.
Rally calling for immigration reform include scores of undocumented immigrants
Penn Live – August 5, 2013, by Ivy DeJesus - Close to 100 protesters rallied on Monday within ear shot of a political event in Harrisburg headlined by House Speaker John Boehner and...
Penn Live – August 5, 2013, by Ivy DeJesus - Close to 100 protesters rallied on Monday within ear shot of a political event in Harrisburg headlined by House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Scott Perry (PA-4) to demand immigration reform.
Chanting in English and Spanish, protesters made their way from the City Island parking lot up to the path leading to Metro Bank Park where the Republican lawmakers held a fundraiser.
Protesters carried placards and shouted in unison a string of chants, including: “Serve the needy, not the greedy,” and “Move Boehner, get out of the way. You’re not welcome in Pa.”
The rally was organized by a coalition of advocacy groups, among them Keystone Progress, Pennsylvanians United for Immigration Reform, Center for Popular Democracy and Central PA Area Labor Federation. The majority of participants drove in from other parts of the state or were bused in.
As House members return to their districts for August recess, representatives of the coalition said they intended to take their messages to lawmakers’ local offices.
Perry’s 4th congressional district encompasses York County and parts of Dauphin County.
Hiro Nishikawa, one of the protesters, said that the long-simmering debate is finally getting widespread public attention.
Nishikawa said immigration policy continues to be dictated by outdated laws, including the 1996 law that mandates detention and apprehension of undocumented immigrants who have any prior police records. The law has led to approximately 400,000 undocumented immigrants being detained under the Obama Administration.
“People recognize things are messed up,” Nishikawa said. “The huge concern is the fairness of the law. It needs to be changed.”
Amid widespread calls for an immigration policy overhaul, a deeply divided Congress has been unable to advance any comprehensive reform. President Obama has used his executive power to push some laws that provide pathways to citizenship, including an amnesty program for qualified young people. In spite of a bipartisan Senate bill approved in June, Washington insiders are largely in agreement that the House is not likely to agree on a major bill this year.“We are entrenched in the culture that is America..we are part of the people that are here.” – Jorge Salazar
Rally participants represented a diverse group of people, including church and labor groups, immigrants from a number of countries, and even undocumented immigrants.
Carmen Guerrero, a community organizer from outside Philadelphia, said lawmakers have not given the immigration issue the urgency it deserves.
“The law is broken,” Guerrero said in Spanish. She came from Mexico 13 years ago. “This is a country of immigrants. It’s a country where immigration has to keep moving forward with its law. It’s been too long without reform. It has been reformed but only to attack the immigrant community, to suppress the community.”
Guerrero said that U.S. immigration policy is so cumbersome, many immigrants prefer to sidestep the system and enter the country illegally. She said most countries face daunting obstacles for legal entry, including excessively long waiting periods.
“The opportunity to come here legally is too small,” she said. “At the end of the day, we rather break the law. There is no realization to be able to come legally and be part of society, as we should.”
Guerrero, a single mother of three who has worked two full-time jobs back to back as a hotel housekeeper and restaurant dishwasher, says she pays taxes and is in no way taking jobs away from citizens.
“We are the landscapers, the service, the dishwashsers at the restaurants and hotels,” she said. “I don’t think a professional would want those jobs.” -Jorge Salazar
Another undocumented immigrant, Jorge Salazar acknowledged that it would be difficult to process 11 million undocumented immigrants through the immigration system, but that in the end, it would not burden taxpayers.
“It’s not going to be costly,” he said. “We are going to pay for it. Immigration is one of the few government programs funded by the applicants.”
Salazar’s family arrived from Bolivia 23 years ago, but due to a series of legal mistakes, his family found itself staying put once their visa expired.
Salazar said he considers himself a part of the American society; he said he works and goes to school and is an active member of his community. He traveled to Harrisburg from his Philadelphia suburb home.
He said he and his family were concerned that they were risking deportation by being vocally and actively involved in calling for immigration reform.
“The reality is we have to do this,” he said. “People need to know that we are your neighbors, we are next to you in school, we are next to you in church. All my friends are American citizens. We are entrenched in the culture that is America..we are part of the people that are here.”
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Chicago Activists Organize Against Massive Police Training Academy to Be Built As Schools Close
Chicago Activists Organize Against Massive Police Training Academy to Be Built As Schools Close
The city’s 2018 budget plan includes a $27.4 million investment in police reform and commitments to hire hundreds of new law enforcement officers. According to a report by the Center for Popular...
The city’s 2018 budget plan includes a $27.4 million investment in police reform and commitments to hire hundreds of new law enforcement officers. According to a report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives, and Black Youth Project 100, Chicago spent 38 percent of its general fund expenditures on policing last year, and has the second-largest police force in the nation.
Read the full article here.
I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the first time. I ended my week in rage after learning that Flake, R-Ariz., would...
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the first time. I ended my week in rage after learning that Flake, R-Ariz., would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Dem lawmakers hear demands for ‘reparations’; but let’s call it THIS so nobody gets ‘uncomfortable’
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the...
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the black community reparations for “systematic discrimination in law enforcement.”
“Thinking about decriminalization with reparations—the idea is we that have extracted literally millions of dollars from communities, we have destroyed families,” said Marbre Shahly-Butts, deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, during her address at the State Innovation Exchange in Washington, D.C. “Mass incarceration has led to the destruction of communities across the country. We can track which communities, like we have that data.”
“And so if we’re going to be decriminalizing things like marijuana, all of the profit from that should go back to the folks we’ve extracted it from,” she continued.
The focus of state legislators should be “state budgets and then reparations,” Shahly-Butts said.
“‘Reparations’ makes people kind of uncomfortable, so we can call it ‘reinvestment’ if you want to. Use whatever language makes you happy inside,” she said.
Fellow panelist Dante Barry, executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, also recommended some type of “reinvestment” to help black youth and said New York City would be better off investing $100 million in the black community rather than hiring more police.
“In terms of response around black youth unemployment, it gets back to this whole piece around reinvestment,” Barry said. “What would you do with $100 million? How would we better use that money to provide jobs for unemployed youth, to provide housing, to have mental health access. … It’s really about how do we rethink some of our budgetary needs and how we’re putting power behind the way that we can really incorporate reinvestment in communities.”
If there were one policy he would want state legislators to prioritize, Barry said it would be a ban on all guns on campus.
Source: Biz Pac Review
How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly celebrated America’s history of welcoming immigrants and their contributions to...
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly celebrated America’s history of welcoming immigrants and their contributions to our country. But Mr. Obama’s legacy on immigration is mixed. He has both deported more people than any prior president and acted in America’s best traditions by letting the Dreamers - undocumented youth brought to the United States as children – emerge from the shadows. There is one final step that President Obama can, and should, take to cement his legacy on the side of history we know is in his heart.
Most immigrant families in the United States are mixed status, meaning most have children who are citizens and immigrant parents, including Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs). The incoming administration’s promise to deport 2-3 million people with legal infractions threatens to rip these American families apart, because the threshold for deporting legal permanent residents is so low. Experts argue that this 2-3 million number cannot be reached without deporting people for minor offenses, such as traffic tickets. This is why I recently joined 60 local elected officials from across the country in asking President Obama to grant a blanket pardon to legal immigrants who have minor infractions and pose no threat to the country. He can prevent the breakup of these American families.
Pardoning this group of immigrants fits with the president’s recent actions on criminal justice and immigration. His clemency initiative and Deferred Arrival for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program seek to fix the broken criminal justice and immigrant systems that harm American families.
Having already designated Legal Permanent Residents with minor convictions as low priorities for deportation, President Obama could protect these American families further with a presidential pardon.
Some will object, arguing that America is a country of law and order. We agree, and support the deportation of those posing a risk to our community. We also support the American belief that punishment should fit the crime. Someone who had a minor infraction such as shoplifting or excessive traffic violations as a teenager could be eligible for deportation 20 years later as a responsible adult with children who are citizens. These deportations make no sense, and hurt families and children without enhancing the wellbeing of the country.
The group making this request, Local Progress, is composed of local elected officials that know, work with, live in, represent, and are part immigrant communities. We know that deportations cripple families and harm neighborhoods and the economy. We also know that the American Dream lives in our communities and that the country benefits from these newcomers and their children. Pardoning this group would prevent the unnecessary breakup of our American families, and allow parents to stay where they belong, raising their children in the communities they have helped build.
Watching President Obama’s farewell speech, I could not help but think about the many families in my Brooklyn district that have lost a family member to deportation. The effects are harsh. When a father gets deported, the family loses income and can lose their apartment. The education of children can be disrupted, and those remaining long to be with their missing family member. For the children – citizens, immigrants, or both – it is a hurt that does not go away. It is a step the U.S. government should not take lightly, or for symbolic political reasons.
I stand with my fellow elected officials to ask President Obama to grant these pardons. I also call on my fellow New Yorkers to call the president’s office and tell him to grant clemency to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who stand to lose under President Trump. Before he leaves office, President Obama can help cement his legacy with such a pardon. He has the power, and should use it, as other presidents have done in the past. There is still time.
By Carlos Menchaca
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Massive Fraud In PA Charter Schools Under Corbett's Leadership
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania? Maybe more teachers, more textbooks, better classrooms? Well, forget about it...
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania? Maybe more teachers, more textbooks, better classrooms? Well, forget about it, because at least that much is in the pockets of corrupt charter school operators.
The waste and fraud in Pennsylvania charter schools is even worse than I thought. It was bad enough when Nicholas Trombetta created a nice pyramid to skim off millions in public education money to fund his own fun, but it seems he was more the rule than the exception.
Philly.com:
The instances of fraud cited in the new report include cases where charter officials were indicted or pleaded guilty and instances uncovered in state audits.
Examples include Nicholas Trombetta, founder and former CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, who is awaiting federal trial in Pittsburgh on charges that he diverted $8 million in school funds for personal use.
The tally also includes $6.3 million that federal prosecutors allege Dorothy June Brown defrauded from the four Philadelphia-area charters she founded.
But the authors give special attention to another recent case involving a city charter: New Media Technology Charter School in the city's Stenton section. The former CEO and founding board president went to federal prison in 2012 after admitting they stole $522,000 in taxpayer money to prop up a restaurant, a health-food store, and a private school they controlled, and for defrauding a bank.
From 2005 to 2009, when the crimes were occurring, third-party auditors hired by New Media failed to spot the fraudulent payments.
"Fraud detection in Pennsylvania charter schools should not be dependent upon parent complaints, media exposés, and whistle-blowers," the authors wrote. Rather, they urged, the system should be proactive and use forensic accounting methods.
But that would mean Tom Corbett couldn't make his sweet deals with the charter operators! Perish the thought.
What we have here is the sale of our public schools by Republicans to for-profit concerns who are perfectly content to take taxpayers' money to pad their own bottom lines while making sure our children 'isn't learning.'
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For Many Americans, the Great Recession Never Ended. Is the Fed About to Make It Worse?
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s...
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science, completing a series of related internships, and presenting original research across the country, Reid could not find a job in her field and, instead, pieces together a nine-hour-per-week tutoring job and a 20-hour-per-week cosmetology gig. The 25-year-old knows that an interest-rate hike will hurt her chances of finding the kinds of jobs for which she has trained, and earning the wage increase she so desperately needs.
A Fed decision to raise interest rates, expected sometime this year, amounts to a vote of confidence in the economy—a declaration that we have achieved the robust recovery we need. “We are close to where we want to be, and we now think that the economy cannot only tolerate but needs higher interest rates,” the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress during a July 15 policy briefing.
But for many millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive, and for them, a rate hike will be disastrous. It will put the brakes on an economy still trudging toward stability; stall progress on unemployment, especially for African-Americans; and slow wage growth even more for the vast majority of American workers.
The general argument for raising interest rates is that it will prevent wage costs from pushing up inflation. However, there is no data suggesting price instability; nor is there any indication that wages have risen enough to spur such inflation. For the overwhelming majority of American workers, wages have stagnated or even dropped over the past 35 years, even as CEOs have seen their compensation grow 937 percent. During the same period, wage gaps between white workers and workers of color have increased, and black unemployment is at the level of white unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the labor-force participation rate is less than 63 percent, the lowest in nearly four decades, suggesting that many Americans have simply given up looking for work.
Yellen has herself often urged the Fed to look at the broadest possible employment picture. Yet, during her recent congressional testimony, shedownplayed the Fed’s ability to address racial disparities, saying that the central bank does not “have the tools to be able to address the structure of unemployment across groups” and that “there isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do” about it. She cited, rightly, a range of other factors, including disparate educational attainment and skill levels, that contribute to economic and social disparities between racial groups. But she also glossed over the importance of the economic environment in shaping workers’ unequal chances.
One defining metric in shaping workers’ chances is the unemployment rate. A high unemployment rate facilitates racial discrimination. When there are too many qualified job candidates for every job, employers can arbitrarily limit their labor pool based on unnecessary educational requirements, irrelevant credit or background checks, or straightforward bias. A tight labor market, by contrast, makes it much harder for employers to succumb to prejudices and overlook qualified workers simply because of bias. When the number of job seekers matches the number of job vacancies, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, injured veterans, and formerly incarcerated workers finally get their due in the workforce.
The late 1990s, when unemployment was at about 4 percent, bear out this thesis. During that rosier era, black unemployment was 7.6 percent, and the ratio of black family income to white family income rose substantially.
As the guardian of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has a number of tools for encouraging a tight labor market, and one of those tools is to keep interest rates low. By keeping rates low, the Fed creates a hospitable environment for job growth by lowering the borrowing costs for consumer and business spending—including hiring new workers. By contrast, raising rates deliberately suppresses spending by consumers and businesses. In the process, it slows job growth, holds down wages, and unnecessarily maintains racial disparities.
With so many workers still struggling, there is no need to cut off this recovery prematurely. Inflation remains below the Fed’s already-low 2 percent target, unemployment and underemployment are too high, and wage growth and labor-force participation are too low. In fact, the Fed should be doing everything within its power to keep nudging the recovery forward for the workers still caught in the slipstream of the Great Recession.
The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates this week, nor when it meets again six weeks after that. It should not raise rates at all in 2015. Doing so would cause tremendous harm to the aspirations and lives of tens of millions of working families, and would disproportionately hurt African-Americans.
MyAsia Reid knows the difference that a full-employment economy can make. She is ready to participate in the economic recovery. And she will be watching as the Fed decides whether to hold to a strategy of strengthening the recovery or pursue a new strategy that jeopardizes her chances and her community.
Source: The Nation
NYC and Seattle seek 'fair workweek' legislation for fast-food workers
NYC and Seattle seek 'fair workweek' legislation for fast-food workers
Municipal leaders and labor activists nationwide who fought for a $15 minimum wage now want to serve up a “fair workweek” and steady hours for fast-food workers.
New York City Mayor Bill de...
Municipal leaders and labor activists nationwide who fought for a $15 minimum wage now want to serve up a “fair workweek” and steady hours for fast-food workers.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio set a plan in motion last week to give 65,000 hourly workers in the city's fast-food industry more stable work schedules by requiring a two-week notice for employee shift assignments. City Council members have vowed to introduce the legislation in the coming weeks.
In Seattle, the City Council on Monday gave its unanimous approval to a similar ordinance, which will affect well-known retail and food service establishments, as well as certain full-service restaurants. Mayor Ed Murray is scheduled to sign the ordinance into law by next week.
While supporters of such proposals – called “secure scheduling” in Seattle – say working families need protection against erratic work schedules, some retail organizations argue these concerns have been blown out of proportion. The Washington Retail Association said the Seattle ordinance would make work schedules less flexible.
“The effects of the law threaten to reduce available work hours for retail employees, reduce hiring opportunities and impose burdensome bookkeeping and fines on retailers deemed to be in violation of the law,” the retail association said in a news release.
Other business groups, however, don’t see the scheduling legislation as a major burden for employers. Mark Jaffe, chief executive officer of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, told AMI Newswire that the proposal is fair and that it wouldn’t cause fast-food eateries to go out of business.
“How hard is it to schedule people two weeks in advance?” he said.
A number of citywide initiatives, from affordable housing to reasonable transportation options, have helped New York City maintain a productive workforce, Jaffe said, and the Fair Workweek legislation would do the same. “We don’t believe it’s an unreasonable burden on the employer,” he said. “This is a no-brainer.”
The proposal was directed toward fast-food workers because that’s where most of the scheduling concerns originate, Jaffe said. Many of those employees need to map out their schedules in advance because they often work more than one job, he said.
The New York State Restaurant Association expressed concern about the proposed legislation but hopes it can work with city officials to reduce the burden to its members.
“It’s troubling that fast-food restaurants, which are really a local franchisee-run small business, have been singled out yet again when these restaurants are already being subjected to greater regulations than any other industry,” said the restaurant association’s chief executive officer, Melissa Fleischut, in a prepared statement. “Labor costs for quick-serve restaurants are skyrocketing, and under state law the hospitality industry is already subject to call-in pay and extra pay for a longer-than-10 spread of hours in a single day.”
In addition to providing employees a two-week notice on work schedules, the New York City proposal would force employers who make last-minute schedule changes to pay extra compensation to affected workers. The plan would also place restrictions on the practice of what’s called “clopening” – when an employee is required to work a closing shift followed by an opening shift.
“We will regulate that practice and require that there be at least 10 hours between a closing shift and an opening shift that a worker has to perform,” de Blasio said during a public announcement last week.
The mayor dismissed anticipated concerns about layoffs resulting from the proposal, saying that he heard the same rumblings when the city was moving to expand paid sick leave for workers. “Guess what happened?” de Blasio said. “This city has added 290,000 private-sector jobs.”
Jan Teague, chief executive officer of the Washington Retail Association, said in a prepared statement that the Seattle proposal could limit the ability of businesses to take part in the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program and make it more difficult for college students to find temporary jobs over the summer and during holidays.
Teague has also expressed concern that employers would end up paying higher “predictive pay” to workers in order to fill shifts resulting from a worker calling in sick or quitting abruptly.
“Any way you slice it, this ordinance will make the workplace less flexible to meet the needs of employees and employers,” Teague said during the debate over the Seattle measure. “Sadly, this ordinance will reduce the number of hours available for many retail and restaurant employees – and they cannot afford to see their incomes go down.”
In addition, she took issue with the idea of discouraging time allotments between shifts of less than 10 hours. Some workers want to have shifts close together during part of the week to free up time later for second jobs or helping to care for a family member, Teague said.
The National Retailers Association took a similar position. “Government intervention in the scheduling of employees through a one-size-fits-all approach intrudes on the employer-employee relationship and creates unnecessary mandates on how a business should operate,” the association said in a statement on its website.
Despite such concerns, the pro-worker advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy predicted that the victory for secure scheduling in Seattle would encourage other cities to follow suit.
“Those working in Seattle’s retail, restaurant and coffee chains will no longer have to turn their lives upside down just to earn enough hours to survive – and they will finally gain a greater voice in how much and when they work,” the center’s director of the Fair Workweek Initiative, Carrie Gleason, said in a prepared statement. “We can expect the vote in Seattle will inspire other cities to act.”
By Michael Carroll
Source
8 days ago
8 days ago