Campaign News

The Washington Post - December 5, 2013 - The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Federal Housing Finance Agency, asking it to disclose efforts to stop municipalities from using eminent domain to bail out underwater homeowners and make its dealings with the financial industry more transparent.

The ACLU, Center for Popular Democracy and other nonprofits filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the agency Thursday in federal court in San Francisco.Richmond, Calif., was the first city to officially codify the divisive foreclosure fighting plan, which has drawn zealous opposition from Wall Street and Washington. Two lawsuits challenging the use of eminent domain have been thrown out, but will likely be refiled. The city has not yet used eminent domain to seize a mortgage.Irvington, N.J., is moving forward with the strategy, and the city council in Newark took its first steps toward moving forward with a plan Wednesday. Yonkers, N.Y., is considering it, but other places have scrapped the idea because of opposition from banks or legal hurdles.The agency said in August it may initiate legal challenges against municipalities that want to use eminent domain to fight foreclosures and could direct regulated entities to stop doing business in those places. The nonprofits said most of the cities exploring the use of eminent domain have been besieged by foreclosures and have predominantly low-income, minority populations.The nonprofits filed freedom of information requests with the agency in October, seeking communication between agency leadership and representatives of the banking, mortgage and financial industry, and records of meetings between the agency and financiers, among other requests.FHFA acknowledged, but did not complete, the requests, according to the lawsuit, so the groups sued. The nonprofits are asking for the documents to be procured on an expedited basis.“The FHFA has taken an aggressive stance on this issue in a way that has harmed minority communities. The public deserves to know why,” said Linda Lye, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in a statement.A FHFA spokeswoman said the agency is not commenting on the lawsuit.By using eminent domain, municipalities can circumvent mortgage contracts, acquire loans from bondholders, write them down and give them back to the bondholders with reduced principals. According to Cornell University law professor Robert C. Hockett, who devised the plan, only government has the power to forcibly sidestep mortgage contracts.The tactic only works with so-called private label security mortgages, or ones that are not backed by the federal government.FHFA oversees government-backed loans owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They cannot be seized by eminent domain.The lawsuit said one of the agency’s “statutory mandates is to help the housing market recover,” and threatening to sue municipalities that try to use eminent domain conflicts with that obligation.“By threatening legal action,” the suit said, the agency “effectively blocks the communities hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis from pursuing one potentially effective solution on behalf of their residents.”The suit also said the agency’s threats to deny credit to communities raises Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act concerns.Members of the financial industry have said they fear using eminent domain could be a slippery slope, and penalizes people who save and invest in mortgage-backed securities.In Washington, Texas Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling and Calif. Republican Rep. John Campbell proposed legislation that would bar the federal government from backing mortgages in places that use eminent domain to seize mortgages. SIFMA, a group that represents security firms, banks and asset managers and 11 other groups sent a letter to Congress opposing the use of eminent domain.Last month, 10 members of Congress sent a letter asking the head of FHFA to rescind its threat to sue places that use eminent domain.Source

EASTON, Pa.—The orders came in fast during a recent Friday lunchtime rush at a Sheetz Inc. convenience store here. Behind the counter, Alexis Cooper layered tomatoes on two sandwiches, refilled a container of onions and swirled a peanut-butter milkshake.

Six weeks into her job at Sheetz, Ms. Cooper easily distinguishes the beep of the deep fryer from the boop of the convenience store’s order-taking system and knows to have a pepperoni roll ready for a regular who shows up around noon.

Ms. Cooper, 20 years old, is something of a rarity in the realm of fast-food and retail work: a full-time employee.

At a time when many chains are shifting workers to part-time, the Altoona, Pa.-based Sheetz is making a big bet on full-time hires, who now comprise 53% of the company’s 17,000-person workforce. Leaders at the convenience store-and-gas-station chain say having full-time workers behind the register results in better customer service, lower turnover and a more engaged workforce—all of which, executives say, will lead to higher sales and profits.

Nearly 5.7 million workers said they were working part-time last year because they couldn’t get more hours or find full-time work, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics survey data. About 65% of store employees in the retail sector work part-time, according to an analysis by search and consulting firm Korn Ferry Hay Group. Companies reason that keeping staff to 30 hours or fewer a week curbs labor costs and allows firms to act nimbly, adjusting staffing to match customer demand.

Sheetz, and others like beauty retailer Bluemercury Inc., acknowledge that full-timers might cost more at first, but say they are more reliable—27% of full-time hourly workers leave their jobs per year, versus 68.7% of part-timers, according to the Korn Ferry report. Lower employee turnover saves on training and hiring costs, those employers say, and some report their customers spend more when full-timers take orders and ring up purchases.

“This is a moment where some employers at least are taking stock of whether they’ve gone down the labor flexibility path a little too far,” says Susan Lambert, a University of Chicago professor who studies hourly work.

Full-time workers are the “glue” that holds businesses together, Ms. Lambert’s research has found. They help coordinate tasks and anticipate business needs, and are often more committed. These employees are more likely to go the extra mile on the job, such as tracking down an item online for a customer.

For customers, a full-time employee “gives them the same face every day. It builds a different feeling than the robot behind the counter,” says Sheetz Chief Executive Joe Sheetz.

On employee surveys, Sheetz’s full-time workers tend to report more commitment and willingness to put in extra effort than part-timers do. That engagement correlates with higher customer-service marks, says Stephanie Doliveira, Sheetz’s human-resources vice president.

Less than a quarter of Sheetz’s full-time staff leaves each year; for part-timers, 83% leave. Overall voluntary turnover at the company is down two percentage points from last year, saving $925,000 in recruiting and training, Ms. Doliveira says. Starting sales associates make $9 to $11 per hour and are eligible for paid time off; those working more than 30 hours per week get access to health insurance.

At Buffalo Wings & Rings, a restaurant with 50 locations in the U.S., full-timers ring up 6% higher sales per hour on average and have far lower rates of absenteeism than part-timers do,  according to CEO Nader Masadeh. The eatery has doubled its share of full-time workers since 2013, with about 37% of employees working full-time. The company’s training costs have fallen 25% as a result, according to Mr. Masadeh.

Churn among part-time workers prompted &pizza, a 14-store chain in the Washington, D.C., area, to halt new restaurant openings for a while, says CEO Michael Lastoria. Managers noticed that customers gave low ratings to new stores where inexperienced, often part-time, workers comprised 95% of staff. Some 31% of &pizza staff now workfull-time, up from 15% in 2014, and the chain is set to open seven additional stores this year, Mr. Lastoria says.

Having more full-time workers requires managers to adjust. Sheetz’s store managers initially resisted adding more full-timers when the company launched the initiative in the summer of 2014, Ms. Doliveira says. Used to having a big bench of part-time workers to call upon, they worried about being caught short when employees called in sick. Managers are also figuring out how to plan shifts now that more workers have vacation time.

Moving to full-time has come with health insurance and an extra $50 or so each week for Tammy Shepard, a salesperson at a Sheetz in Statesville, N.C. “It gives you a sense of security, which is a huge thing,” she says.

Full-time private industry workers make $25.44 an hour in wages and salaries, as compared with $13.29 for part-time workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There’s a real penalty that workers pay for working part-time,” says Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at left-leaning advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy.

The promise of a 40-hour work week was what spurred Ms. Cooper to apply to Sheetz, though she holds down another part-time job managing a nearby pub. Logging just 14 hours a week there has made it tricky to stay on top of everything, such as the new beers on the menu.

“It stinks when you don’t know certain things,” she says.

By RACHEL FEINTZEIG

Source

Times Union – August 7, 2013, by Jimmy Vielkind - Immigrant advocacy groups say it remains difficult to get access to government services in languages other than English — nearly two years after Gov. Andrew Cuomo decreed that written and oral interpretation would be available the state’s six most-spoken foreign languages.

Cuomo signed an executive order that took effect last October mandating state officials to offer language assistance for speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, French Creole, Russian and Chinese. But the order’s scope was necessarily limited to state agencies, even though state-funded services like food stamps, driver’s licenses and unemployment benefits are administered by New York City or other counties.

The groups — including Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities at the University at Albany — visited government offices and surveyed people with limited English proficiency to develop a measure of compliance. In a report released earlier this week, they found that less than half the people who needed language assistance were able to receive it.

According to Nisha Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy, the survey found 63 percent of citizens using state-operated facilities that are explicitly covered by the order were not successful in their quest to gain language assistance.

“The governor’s team has been very engaged on implementation, and we’re sympathetic to the challenges of getting an entire state apparatus to change,” said Agarwal. “That said, the results are by no means satisfactory, and we were quite disappointed that the state took the position that county-run agencies for state services were not within the ambit of the order. We feel it’s a pretty big gap.”

The Cuomo administration responded by saying that all covered state agencies are in compliance with this executive order

“This report paints an inaccurate picture of reality by relying on visits to county-run agencies that by law fall outside the executive order,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi. “Everyone should have the same access to their government, and we encourage counties to follow the state’s lead.”

Source

Scores of protesters, gathered for a march organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action in partnership with Tax March, converged on West Virginia Thursday from ten different states.

Watch the video and read the article here.