Campaign News

03.01.2016

NEW YORK – Looks like Walgreens needs some first aid of its own. 

Thousands of people across the country chose the drugstore chain as the 'worst employer' among eight of America's most recognizable brands such as Whole Foods and Pizza Hut.

Walgreens emerged as the winner of the first-ever Worst Employer Pageant, an online contest launched in January by Center for Popular Democracy Action to highlight the poor treatment of workers by large employers. Walgreens won 68 percent of the votes against CVS. About 4,700 total votes were cast in the online contest. (A link can be found here.)

This should come as no surprise since the drugstore chain has been accused of a slew of labor issues. CEO Stefano Pessina earns 540 times the median worker pay, while cashiers are paid a mere $9 per hour on average – or just under $18,000 every year. The company also “promotes” hourly employees to salaried positions that often involve longer hours and no chance at overtime – resulting in overall wages that can be lower hour by hour.

The Worst Employer Pageant looked at eight companies in four categories that Americans use regularly – banks, supermarkets, drug stores, and pizza chains – examining metrics such as a poor CEO to median worker pay ratio, employee lawsuits, and failure to pay minimum wage and overtime. Other companies nominated included Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Sam’s Club, Whole Foods, CVS, Papa John’s, and Yum! Brands, owner of Pizza Hut.

Ranking behind Walgreens were Papa John’s and Sam’s Club, both of whom have also been accused of a variety of labor violations. Papa John’s has paid millions in settlements to delivery and other workers who were cheated out of their wages, while Sam’s Club was charged with a $151 million lawsuit for forcing employees to work off-the-clock.

JoEllen Chernow, Director of Economic Justice at CPD Action, released the following statement:

“Walgreens needs a dose of its own medicine when it comes to how it treats its workers – and people are taking notice. The votes of thousands are testament to the fact that a company’s morals are no longer a side issue – they increasingly define where Americans eat, shop, and spend their leisure time. Walgreens and other bad actors should take this so-called “award” as a sign that their labor policies are due for a checkup. Consumers are watching and will continue to make their voices heard until all employees get a fair share.”

www.cpdaction.org

CPDAction and sister organization Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda. 

Contact:

Asya Pikovsky, apikovsky@populardemocracy.org, 207-522-2442

Anita Jain, ajain@populardemocracy.org, 347-636-9761

Bill Moyers - May 5, 2014, by Joshua Holland - Charter school operators want to have it both ways. When they’re answering critics of school privatization, they say charter schools are public — they use public funds and provide students with a tuition-free education. But when it comes to transparency, they insist they have the same rights to privacy as any other private enterprise.

But a report released Monday by Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy — two groups that oppose school privatization – presents evidence that inadequate oversight of the charter school industry hurts both kids and taxpayers.

Sabrina Joy Stevens, executive director of Integrity in Education, told BillMoyers.com, “Our report shows that over $100 million has been lost to fraud and abuse in the charter industry, because there is virtually no proactive oversight system in place to thwart unscrupulous or incompetent charter operators before they cheat the public.” The actual amount of fraud and abuse the report uncovered totaled $136 million, and that was just in the 15 states they studied.

Diane Ravitch on school privatization.

According to the study, fraud and mismanagement of charter schools fall into six categories:

Charter operators using public funds illegally — outright embezzlement

Using tax dollars to illegally support other, non-educational businesses

Mismanagement that put children in potential danger

Charters illegally taking public dollars for services they didn’t provide

Charter operators inflating their enrollment numbers to boost revenues

General mismanagement of public funds

The report looks at problems in each of the 15 states it covers, with dozens of case studies. In some instances, charter operators used tax dollars to prop up side businesses like restaurants and health food stores — even a failing apartment complex.

The report’s authors note that, “where there is little oversight, and lots of public dollars available, there are incentives for ethically challenged charter operators to charge for services that were never provided.” They cite the example of the Cato School of Reason Charter School in California, which, despite its libertarian name, collected millions of tax dollars by registering students who actually attended private schools in the area.

Perhaps the most troubling examples of mismanagement were those the report says actually put kids in danger:

Many of the cases involved charter schools neglecting to ensure a safe environment for their students. For example, Ohio’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Richard A. Ross, was forced to shut down two charter schools, The Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Boys Charter School and The Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Girls Charter School, because, according to Ross, “They did not ensure the safety of the students, they did not adequately feed the students, they did not accurately track the students and they were not educating the students well. It is unacceptable and intolerable that a sponsor and school would do such a poor job. It is an educational travesty.”

Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy aren’t the first to warn of problems plaguing an under-regulated industry fueled by billions of tax dollars. A 2010 report to Congress by the Department of Education’s Inspector General’s office warned of the agency’s “concern about vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools” in light of “a steady increase in the number of charter school complaints.” It blamed regulators’ failure “to provide adequate oversight needed to ensure that Federal funds [were] properly used and accounted for.”

Read the full report for the watchdogs’ recommendations for how policymakers could strengthen oversight and bring real transparency to the charter school industry.

Source

PHOENIX, ARIZONA — On Arizona’s primary day this April, voters in Maricopa County waited five hours in the hot sun to cast a ballot, because the county slashed the number of polling places from 200 to 60. Some people gave up and left without voting; some fainted in the desert heat. Polling places ran out of ballots.

After the dust settled, angry voters, candidates, and political parties filed a slew of lawsuits against the state, leading to court settlements and a promise that no voter will have to wait longer than half an hour this fall.

“The primary fiasco was a huge wakeup call,” said Samantha Pstross with the Arizona Advocacy Network.

But elected officials and voting rights advocates fear the situation could be just as bad or worse on Tuesday.

“We are not ready for what I presume will be one of the largest turnouts in Arizona history,” Maricopa County supervisor Steve Gallardo told ThinkProgress. “Everyone is banking on a large number of vote-by-mail ballots. But this is not an ordinary election. We have a record number of new Latino voters. We see lots of excitement out there. We need to be prepared to handle this, but we’re already seeing problems.”

“We are not ready for what I presume will be one of the largest turnouts in Arizona history.”

Gallardo cited troubles that have already plagued the county during early voting, when turnout is usually much lighter than on Election Day itself.

On Friday, the final day of in-person early voting, voters in Tempe waited more than three hours to cast a ballot. Among them was Bob Davis, who arrived around 1:15 p.m. with his four-year-old daughter. Though he was told it would be a two-hour wait, he didn’t cast a ballot until nearly 5 p.m.

“I watched like 20 people leave the line who couldn’t wait,” he told ThinkProgress. “I knew the chance of them coming back and trying again was negligible. I felt really upset.”

Davis noted that there is a ballot measure before Arizona voters this year that would raise the minimum wage from just over 8 dollars an hour to 12 by the year 2020. He said he worries those the measure would impact most will not be able to have a say in its passage.

“If you make only 8.05 an hour, your ability to stand in line for four hours is minimal,” he said. “This is actual voter suppression.”

In Glendale, another Phoenix suburb, an understaffed site with insufficient equipment forced voters to wait more than two hours earlier this week.

“It’s discouraging,” Gallardo said. “No one should have to stand in long lines. It becomes a voting barrier. Some folks don’t have the opportunity to wait. Some are elderly and physically can’t stand that long, others only have a short lunch break from work when they can vote. So if you let long lines occur, you are disenfranchising voters.”

Maricopa County had 724 polling places for the 2012 general election. This year, they will have the exact same number, despite adding more than 90,000 more voters to the rolls. Many of those precincts’ polling places are located in the same building, meaning there will be only 640 separate locations.

“What is scary is what could happen on Election Day,” said Pstross. “If there are long lines, people will be disenfranchised left and right.”

Ever-changing laws fuel voter confusion

Arizona smashed its Latino voter registration record in the final weeks of the 2016 election, adding 150,000 new voters to the rolls. The state also led the nation in Latino early voting. Latino residents cast an unprecedented 13 percent of the votes, up from just 8 percent in 2008. Organizers credit Donald Trump for some of this participation spike, noting that his disparagement of immigrants and promises of mass deportations have mobilized Latinos who previously avoided electoral politics.

But as community advocacy groups like Bazta Arpaio, the Arizona Advocacy Network, LUCHA, and others hit the streets of Phoenix in the campaign’s final days, some fear an avalanche of last-minute court cases and legal changes could confuse and disenfranchise the voters they have worked so hard to engage.

This year alone, Arizona mailed out incorrect information about where to vote and mistranslated one of the ballot propositions on thousands of Spanish-language ballots. The state also allowed the final day of voter registration to fall on a federal holiday, leaving thousands of voters unable to register in time.

Then, on Friday night, a federal appeals court temporarily enjoined Arizona’s new law that made it a felony for anyone other than a relative or caretaker to pick up and mail in a voter’s absentee ballot. On Saturday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision and gave Arizona its blessing to enforce the ballot collection ban.

The back-and-forth left organizers scrambling.

Ben Laughlin, an organizer with the “Bazta Arpaio” campaign to unseat the controversial county sheriff Joe Arpaio, got the news of the ruling just before dispatching a small army of canvassers to knock on doors across the city.

“It causes a lot of confusion,” Laughlin told ThinkProgress. “For months we haven’t been collecting ballots because of the ban. Yesterday, we started collecting ballots. Now we’re not. It was a sweet 24 hour window.”

Bazta Arpaio blasted out this message on Friday night: “This weekend, when a volunteer comes to your door, you can have them turn in your ballot with confidence.” Less than a day later, the group had to abandon those plans.

A mother and her two sons hit the streets of West Phoenix with the Bazta Arpaio campaign. CREDIT: Alice Ollstein

Across the city, Asya Pikovsky with the Center for Popular Democracy scrambled to inform dozens of volunteers about the legal development.

“We got on the phone the second the decision came out and told every single person,” she told ThinkProgress on Saturday. “Our canvassers are following the decision to the letter.”

But other advocates expressed fears that some people could accidentally violate the newly-restored law if they did not get the news in time.

“No one should be considered a felon for helping someone else vote — especially someone who would have no other way to get to the polls,” Pstross said.

She fears even those following the law could face unlawful harassment from poll watchers, who have been instructed to follow and photograph those turning in multiple ballots.

“We’re worried that, say, someone who works at a retirement home could show up with 50 to 100 ballots,” she said. “They’re a legitimate caretaker, but even if they’re totally within the law, a crazy person could challenge and intimidate them.”

Sheriffs and vigilantes

Concerns about intimidation by poll-watchers were elevated Saturday, when a federal court declined to put a halt to plans by Trump’s campaign, the Arizona GOP, and a group run by Trump ally Roger Stone to patrol minority-heavy precincts, film those who they suspect of voter fraud, and question people exiting the polls about which candidate they supported.

“It is Plaintiff’s burden to illustrate that these activities are likely to intimidate, threaten, or coerce voters,” the court ruled. “The evidence…has failed to do so.”

But officials and voting rights advocates in Arizona are not just worried about intimidation from such volunteers — They are also sounding the alarm about the potential presence of the county sheriffs at the polls on Election Day.

The Maricopa County Recorder’s office, which administers the election, plans to call in sheriffs if there are any disputes at the polls, even though the head of the department is currently on trial for criminal contempt and racial profiling. Sheriffs have already been summoned to early voting sites, including one incident this week in which voters were upset about turned away at 4:30 p.m. because the polls were supposed to be open until 5 p.m.

“This should be an exciting time for voters — not a time of anxiety or fear.”

Voting rights advocates and elected officials said that having the same sheriffs who conducted immigration raids patrol the polls will intimidate Latino voters. Some groups have called on the Justice Department to send monitors to oversee the sheriffs’ activities, while others are demanding the County Recorder use a different law enforcement agency on Election Day.

“We have a sheriff that has divided and polarized this county and created distrust between the community and the sheriff’s office,” Gallardo said. “It’s time to distance ourselves from the sheriffs’ office and use other agencies like Phoenix Police that actually have credibility with the public. The sheriffs should not be involved in this election.”

“This should be an exciting time for voters — not a time of anxiety or fear,” added Alex Gomez, Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Empowerment. “On Election Day, the story should be about Arizonans proudly casting their ballots — not voters scared off from the polls.”

By Alice Miranda Ollstein

Source

Shawn Sebastian, Policy Analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy, released the following statement on behalf of the Fed Up campaign: 

“The Fed Up campaign has been saying for more than a year that the economy is too weak to warrant interest rate hikes. Although the stock market was performing well and Wall Street was reaping major profits, the real economy has seen stagnant wages and insufficient job growth.

“The past week’s events vindicate our argument. The economy is too weak, and the performance of the stock market is not a legitimate basis for making interest rate decisions. Just as the market inflated itself over previous months, and witnessed a “correction” recently, it will likely continue to fluctuate in the months ahead. Fed officials who pointed to an inflated stock market as a justification to raise interest rates have been proven wrong: the health of the economy should be measured by the labor market, not the stock market, and the labor market is far from recovered.

“The Fed must continue focusing on the fundamentals: building a labor market that works for all communities, and that features rising wages and good jobs for everybody who wants to work. Creating genuine full employment is the Fed’s mandate, and the past few days vindicate the message that the Fed Up campaign’s worker leaders and economists have said all along: this economy is far too weak for the Fed to intentionally slow it down.”

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The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.