Jessica Biel Throws Shade, Meryl Streep, Mila Kunis & More
Jessica Biel Throws Shade, Meryl Streep, Mila Kunis & More
Alyssa Milano and Ady Barkan attend the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest on Wednesday.
...
Alyssa Milano and Ady Barkan attend the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest on Wednesday.
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New Website Holds US Companies Accountable for Backing Trump
New Website Holds US Companies Accountable for Backing Trump
"Major corporations stand to profit from Trump's hateful agenda. That's why we call them Backers of Hate," the website states.
..."Major corporations stand to profit from Trump's hateful agenda. That's why we call them Backers of Hate," the website states.
A new campaign, Corporate Backers of Hate is looking to expose the role some U.S. corporations are playing in profiting from the abuses suffered by the communities of color under the Trump administration.
Read full article here.
38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the ballot Nov. 6. Thirty-eight leaders from Apex, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham...
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the ballot Nov. 6. Thirty-eight leaders from Apex, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Hillsborough, Holly Springs, Morrisville, Raleigh, Chatham County, Orange County and Wake County governments have signed a letter criticizing the amendments’ “potentially damaging impact.” The letter was released Thursday by Local Progress and Common Cause NC.”
Read the full article here.
Activist Group Takes Out TV Ad Calling for Trump to Keep Yellen
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second term. The ad ran during "Fox & Friends," a...
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second term. The ad ran during "Fox & Friends," a morning show the president watches and often reacts to on Twitter.
Read the full article here.
Fed’s Mester Calls Case for Gradual Rate Increases ‘Compelling’
Fed’s Mester Calls Case for Gradual Rate Increases ‘Compelling’
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said there’s a “compelling” case for gradually raising interest rates, with the U.S. economy approaching the central bank’s targets on...
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said there’s a “compelling” case for gradually raising interest rates, with the U.S. economy approaching the central bank’s targets on employment and inflation.
“Policy has to be forward-looking,” Mester told reporters Thursday following a speech in Lexington, Kentucky. “If you have a forecast and inflation is moving up to your target and you’re at full employment, then it seems like a gradual increase from a very low interest rate is pretty compelling to me. Pre-emptiveness is important.”
She declined to say precisely when she believed rate increases would be necessary.
The policy-making Federal Open Market Committee will meet Sept. 20-21 to decide whether to lift the target range for its benchmark rate. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said last week the case for an increase had “strengthened in recent months.”
Investors see a roughly one-in-four probability that the Fed will act later this month, based on pricing in federal futures funds contracts.
Too Low for Too Long
Mester, who votes this year on the FOMC, said the Fed must take seriously the risk to financial stability caused by keeping rates low for too long, although she said she didn’t think the central bank was currently “behind the curve.” Nor did she see signs of financial instability already in the economy.
In her speech, Mester rejected the argument made to a number of Fed officials last week by a coalition of community activists that continued low interest rates are needed to extend the benefits of economic recovery to disadvantaged minorities.
“I do not believe that at this point in the business cycle, the current very low level of interest rates is an effective solution to these longer-run issues,” she said.
Eleven Fed governors and regional presidents, including Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, met with organizers from the Center for Popular Democracy’s “Fed Up” campaign on the sidelines of the annual policy retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, hosted by the Kansas City Fed.
The U.S. central bank has kept rates on hold through five meetings this year following a rate hike in December that was the first in nearly a decade.
By Christopher Condon
Source
Laid-Off Workers Demand Severance Pay From Equity Firms Behind Toys "R" Us Bankruptcy
Laid-Off Workers Demand Severance Pay From Equity Firms Behind Toys "R" Us Bankruptcy
Today we bring you a conversation with Debbie Beard, an assistant manager at Babies "R" Us in Phoenix, Arizona, and Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for...
Today we bring you a conversation with Debbie Beard, an assistant manager at Babies "R" Us in Phoenix, Arizona, and Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy. They discuss how leveraged buyout of Toys "R" Us hurt tens of thousands of retail workers and how a new campaign is fighting back to demand justice for these employees.
Read the full article here.
How Cities and States are Taking the Lead on Immigration Reform
How Cities and States are Taking the Lead on Immigration Reform
As attacks on immigrants grow more vocal and more galling this election season, it can be easy to feel sickened and lose hope. Across the country, millions of hard-working immigrants are trapped...
As attacks on immigrants grow more vocal and more galling this election season, it can be easy to feel sickened and lose hope. Across the country, millions of hard-working immigrants are trapped in a painful limbo, confined to the shadows, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, and unable to fully participate in society.
Federal efforts to support immigrants are stalled, with repeated failures to pass an immigration bill. The most promising pro-immigrant policy in years — President Obama’s executive order shielding immigrant parents and children from deportation — was turned back with a deadlock at the Supreme Court.
But if you zoom in to states and cities, the picture couldn’t be more different. When it comes to promoting immigrant inclusion and equality, they are buzzing hives of innovation, generating a variety of policies that benefit everyone by promoting dignity, inclusion and access to justice for the immigrants who drive their economies and enrich their communities.
As of this year, more than a dozen cities provide a form of municipal identification to all residents regardless of their immigration status. Without such a proof of identity, immigrants are unable to access vital services needed for daily life, such as opening a bank account, seeing a doctor at a hospital, or even collecting a package from the post office. New Haven became the first city to introduce municipal IDs in 2007, and many of the country’s largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have followed. New York City has issued close to a million municipal ID cards, clearly demonstrating their value to a broad swath of New Yorkers.
Sixteen states also have laws — known as DREAM Acts — that offer undocumented residents access to the same tuition rates as U.S. citizens at state colleges and universities. In Texas, nearly 25,000 students annually take advantage of the state’s DREAM Act, a law passed with the backing of Republican Governor Rick Perry.
States and cities have also helped curb the worst excesses of harsh and ineffective federal deportation policies. Since 2011, more than a dozen jurisdictions have passed laws limiting collaboration between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Knowing that detained immigrants often lack access to legal help, a number of cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago are exploring programs to provide meaningful representation to immigrants. In New York City, the country’s first access to counsel initiative has helped its clients be an astounding 1,000 percent more likely to win their immigration cases than those who lack representation.
With fears that the divisive rhetoric unleashed during this campaign cycle could persist well into the future, even more localities need to take action to welcome immigrants and to value their tremendous contributions. Sadly, there is no guarantee that a long-overdue immigration reform package will be passed by the next president, whoever wins November 8. Cities and states must lead the way.
In recent years, cities and states have led the way in defending and expanding the rights of workers, with the passage of paid sick days, higher minimum wages and fair scheduling laws in municipalities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York City, as well as states like California, Connecticut and Oregon.
They have a similar role — and responsibility — to play in protecting immigrants. Immigrants to this country have made the United States more vibrant and prosperous. Rather than turning a blind eye to the millions in this country denied fundamental benefits and services, we must work hard to realize the highest ideals of our country and to promote a better future for our immigrants and for all.
By Andrew Friedman
Source
Should Chicago Spend Money on a Police Academy?
Should Chicago Spend Money on a Police Academy?
Chicago spends 39 percent of its municipal budget on policing, while New York spends just eight percent and Los Angeles spends 26 percent, says the Center for Popular Democracy. This means the...
Chicago spends 39 percent of its municipal budget on policing, while New York spends just eight percent and Los Angeles spends 26 percent, says the Center for Popular Democracy. This means the city has less funds for things like schools and social services.
Read the full article here.
Report: Starbucks falls short on vow to make workers' schedules more fair
Despite a public pledge last year to ease scheduling burdens for its baristas, Starbucks has fallen short of its commitment on a number of fronts, according to a new report released Wednesday...
Despite a public pledge last year to ease scheduling burdens for its baristas, Starbucks has fallen short of its commitment on a number of fronts, according to a new report released Wednesday based on interviews with the coffee chain’s workers across the country.
The report, titled “The Grind: Striving for Scheduling Fairness at Starbucks” (PDF), said Starbucks baristas across the country were still complaining that they often don’t receive their work schedules soon enough before shifts and that they are under pressure to avoid taking sick days.
The New York-based advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy produced the report, which cited survey data collected from more than 200 Starbucks baristas in 37 states and compiled by Coworker.org, an online platform that supports workplace rights.
“More than six months after Starbucks publicly recommitted to scheduling policies and mandated ten days’ notice, the scheduling issues they sought to address still persist in their frontline stores,” the report said.
After a New York Times investigation in August 2014 highlighted the scheduling travails of a Starbucks worker and single mother named Janette Navarro, the company announced that it would strive to improve work schedules for its employees, whom the company calls “partners.” The workers’ survey cited in Wednesday’s report was conducted in March this year.
“Taking care of our partners is a responsibility I take very personally,” Cliff Burrows, a high-level Starbucks executive, said in an internal company email at the time, according to the New York Times and other news outlets. Burrows was quoted as saying the company would work to aid “stability and consistency” in the schedules of its more than 130,000 baristas.
Burrows pledged then that the company would improve its scheduling software to make it easier on employees to plan their lives.
But the directive has only partially trickled down to the company's more than 12,000 U.S. locations, Wednesday's report says.
“They’ve made some improvements, but they’ve been minor,” said Carrie Gleason, co-author of the report. “A fair workweek at Starbucks exists in some stores,” she said, but “the issue is inconsistency.”
Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment on the report's findings before the time of publication.
The report said many baristas noted a high incidence of so-called “clopening” shifts, in which a person closes and opens in consecutive shifts, often leaving a span of only a few hours in which to return home before working again.
Last year Starbucks' Burrows pledged an end to the dreaded clopening shifts, saying “district managers must help store managers problem-solve issues specific to individual stores to make this happen.”
But the report indicated that such shifts were still widespread, with nearly a quarter of workers regularly getting them.
“I feel that baristas should have a minimum of 10 hours in between shifts. Everyone should have a fair chance to get home, settled, and be able to sleep for eight hours before having to get up for another shift," the survey report quoted an Illinois Starbucks worker as saying.
But the majority of workers who do clopening shifts are able to get fewer than seven hours of sleep, the report said.
“Because I was frequently scheduled for clopening shifts, I got just four or five hours of sleep a night. I was doing all I could to get ahead, but Starbucks’ scheduling practices made me question whether that was possible,” said Ciara Moran, a former Starbucks barista wrote in a petition she launched with Coworker.org, asking for further scheduling reforms.
The report released Wednesday said that 48 percent of surveyed Starbucks workers said they received their work schedules a week or less in advance, and that 40 percent reported they had experienced pressure to avoid taking sick days.
"Employees say that it can be extremely difficult to take sick days because they face pressure to work while sick, fear negative consequences or are forced to find their own replacement," the report said.
The report suggested that the experiences of individual workers varied considerably, depending on store locations and personnel.
“Many of us have different experiences at Starbucks, depending on our manager,” Moran said, asking others to support the cause “for consistent protections across the company, starting with healthy schedules across the board.”
“On a corporate level there isn’t that level of accountability. They’re not looking whether their polices are going far enough,” Gleason said. “For Starbucks, it can be a model for the industry for how to deliver a sustainable workweek.”
“I think they need to engage their workforce in a different way,” she said.
Source: Al Jazeera America
Restaurant group preps for fight against Ariz. minimum wage boost
Restaurant group preps for fight against Ariz. minimum wage boost
PHOENIX -- The head of the state's restaurant industry is gearing up to convince voters to quash an initiative that would boost the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
Steve Chucri...
PHOENIX -- The head of the state's restaurant industry is gearing up to convince voters to quash an initiative that would boost the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
Steve Chucri, president of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association, said Wednesday the campaign against the measure will be based on showing them how much wages in Arizona have gone up since voters enacted the first minimum wage law in 2006.
Prior to that, Arizona employers had to pay only what was mandated in federal law, which was $5.15 an hour. The ballot measure pushed that to $6.75, with a requirement for annual adjustments based on inflation.
That has pushed the current state minimum to $8.05.
"The public will say, 'Enough's enough,'" Chucri said. And he said polls done for the industry in the spring show people believe that $12 is "too much."
The comments come as Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families is planning to submit its petitions for the $12 wage plus required paid leave today to the secretary of state's office.
Spokeswoman Suzanne Wilson said organizers have collected more than 250,000 signatures. That is 100,000 more than are needed to qualify for the ballot.
But Chucri said he's not convinced his organization will even have to fight the battle in November. He questioned whether petition circulators, both volunteer and paid, were careful to ensure that those who signed are qualified to vote in the state.
Arizona has become the latest battleground over what can be considered a living wage.
Several states have enacted their own laws, often through legislation. Most recently, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a measure that will take that state's minimum, now $10 an hour, up to $15 by 2022 for large employers; small companies will get another year to comply.
Chucri said part of the campaign against the ballot measure will be to remind voters here that Arizona already has a minimum wage that's higher than what federal law requires.
And that same law requires annual revision. Chucri pointed out that has meant a boost every year except for two when the rate of inflation was too small for even a nickel more, the bare minimum adjustment.
The difference, though, is not great: That $8.05 an hour is just 80 cents more than the federal minimum.
What Chucri also faces is that $8.05, assuming it's a family's sole source of income, translates out to $16,744 a year.
For a single person, the federal government considers anything below $11,880 a year to be living in poverty. That figure is $16,020 for a family of two and $20,160 for a family of three.
That's part of what has driven similar living wage efforts elsewhere in the country. But Chucri said the idea of a $12 minimum won't sell here.
"That is too high of a wage for a place like Arizona,'' he said.
Chucri said part of the campaign against the ballot measure will be the argument that higher wages mean fewer jobs.
"Restaurateurs are going to survive,'' he said. But what they will do, Chucri said, is simply hire fewer people.
He pointed out the push toward automation already is underway.
At Panera Bread, customers place their orders through computer screens and then can pick up what they want. And even at more traditional sit-down place like Applebee's, orders can be placed through tablets at each table.
Chucri conceded, though, that is happening even in places where the minimum wage is not going up. What approval of this measure would do, he said, is hasten the day.
"I don't think it's a matter of 'if,' '' Chucri said. "It's a matter of 'when.' ''
He would not say how much his group and other business organizations intend to spend to kill the measure.
The most recent campaign finance reports show campaign organizers have raised more than $342,000. Virtually all of that comes from Living United for Change in Arizona. But Tomas Robles, former executive director of LUCHA, said much of that is from a grant to the organization from The Center for Popular Democracy, an organization involved in efforts to establish a $15 minimum wage nationally.
Another $25,000 came from The Fairness Project which has its own efforts to push higher minimum wages on a state-by-state basis.
By Howard Fischer
Source
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