Campaign News

Wall Street Journal - December 11, 2014, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A group of left-leaning activists is taking aim at the process for selecting the presidents of the Federal Reserve‘s 12 regional banks, saying it lacks sufficient transparency and public input.

Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher have announced they will retire next year and both district banks are conducting searches for successors. The two men have been critics of the central bank’s prolonged low-rates policies, saying they aren’t doing very much to boost employment or growth.

Federal law dictates the process for choosing the regional presidents. They are picked by a subset of the banks’ boards of directors, with approval from the Fed’s Washington-based board of governors. The regional bank boards include bankers, business executives and some community representatives, but directors from banks supervised by the Fed don’t have a vote in hiring the banks’ presidents.

Commercial banks that are members of the Fed system own the stock of their district’s reserve bank and elect most of its directors. Remaining directors are appointed by the Fed board in Washington.

The activist group, led by the Center for Popular Democracy, a national nonprofit organization, said it is in talks with the Dallas Fed about increasing transparency in its selection process and is planning a march in Philadelphia from Constitution Hall to the Philadelphia Fed on Monday. Members of the group plan to hold a press conference outside the regional Fed bank like the one they held in Washington in November, at which community members and leaders will tell some of their stories.

The appointments are “too important to be done behind closed doors, too important to be dominated by financial and corporate interests,” said Ady Barkan, a staff attorney at the center.

“We are concerned there is not going to be enough community and public engagement,” Mr. Barkan said. “Corporate and financial elites already have tremendous influence over monetary policy and interest rates. The Fed should also listen to the tens of millions of working families who are not experiencing a recovery.”

The Fed board, the Dallas Fed and the Philadelphia Fed declined to comment.

In response to the activists’ concerns, voiced during a conversation with Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen in November, the central bank has just published a new list of “frequently asked questions” about the regional president selection process.

Kendra Brooks, a member of Action United in Philadelphia, a community organizing group, said she and others have met with some officials at the Philadelphia Fed, but have yet to be granted a meeting they’ve requested with Mr. Plosser or received an answer to their offer to take top officials around local communities.

“We’re hoping we can push them a little harder about allowing a meeting or taking a tour of their communities,” said Ms. Brooks.

Her story is an all-too-familiar one in the Great Recession of 2007-09. Having lost a 15-year job as a program director at Easter Seals, a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities, Ms. Brooks, 42 years old, said it took her a year and a half to find work again—and she now makes just half what she used to. She also lost her home to a foreclosure.

Fed governors are appointed by the U.S. president, subject to Senate confirmation. They all are voting members of the central bank’s powerful policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

The New York Fed president is the vice chairman of the FOMC and a permanent voting member. The other 11 presidents vote on a rotating basis. The presidents run the regional Fed banks, which supervise the private banks in their districts. The presidents also move markets and influence Fed policy through their public remarks.

The center organized activists to appear at the Kansas City Fed’s exclusive annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in August. They argued the Fed should not start raising its benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero until the labor market improves more.

U.S. unemployment has fallen to 5.8%, historically elevated but much lower than postrecession peaks. Some policy makers worry that number masks pockets of weakness including a large number of workers who are only working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs.

Many investors and top Fed officials expect the first rate increase in the middle of next year.

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*For Planning Purposes Only*

Contact: Ricardo A. Ramírez, rramirez@populardemocracy.org, 202-464-7376 

Congress will reintroduce the “Schedules that Work Act,” which has increased support, reflecting a growing traction among leading legislators including Senators Warren, Murray, Baldwin, Murphy, Schumer, Brown and Franken and Representatives DeLauro and Scott.

The Center for Popular Democracy released the following statement:

“The Schedules that Work Act is path-breaking legislation in the national movement to update workplace protections with common sense solutions for the challenges faced by the majority of Americans who are working by the hour,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy. “The introduction of this bill comes amid a growing national movement of working people in states and cities across the country who are declaring that their time counts. Working Americans increasingly struggle with unpredictable hours that change week to week and have too little say in the schedules that have become a moving target. In twelve states, legislators have responded to the needs of working families by introducing fair workweek legislation, including in cities like Albuquerque, Minneapolis, and Washington DC. As political momentum grows for these new labor standards, employers are also facing increasing pressure to reform their scheduling practices with major retailers – like Victoria’s Secret and the GAP - facing scrutiny regarding their use of unpaid on-call shifts.”

"As a night student with two jobs, having to learn about my schedule with only a week’s notice is hard,” said Ciera Moran, a Starbucks worker in New Haven, Connecticut who is working with Make the Road Connecticut. “Often I get very little sleep, and sometimes I have to scramble to get enough hours and make ends meet. A fair workweek means that I get the advance notice I need to pay my bills, get an education, and plan my future. I deserve a fair workweek and I know that the only way we get it is if workers come together and speak out."

 "Across the country, parents working hourly jobs, particularly women, are increasingly struggling to balance their families with the chaos of unpredictable work schedules they can't control," said Anthony Newby, executive director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change in Minnesota. “Here in Minneapolis, we are organizing to pass citywide fair scheduling policies before the end of the year. As this week’s event will show, our families are energized and won’t back down until we obtain a workweek we can count on.”

 As the Schedules That Work Act moves through Congress, state and municipal campaigns are taking off across the country. On Wednesday, 200 workers with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and other labor and community groups will march to City Hall in Minneapolis to release a report highlighting the scheduling crisis in Minneapolis and the need for policy solutions. They will be unveiling groundbreaking new data about the effect of unpredictable scheduling in Minneapolis neighborhoods.

Workers involved with CPD’s community partners and the Fair Workweek Initiative in Minneapolis, Albuquerque and across the country are available to talk to the media. Interested reporters can request an interview by writing an email to press@populardemocracy.org.

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The Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI), a collaborative effort anchored by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), is bringing together leading worker, community and policy organizations across the country to raise industry standards and develop, drive and win policy solutions that achieve a workweek working families can count on.

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.

Gawker - December 2, 2013, by Hamilton Nolan - Last week, voters in SeaTac, Washington voted to raise the minimum wage for airport workers to $15 an hour. California recently approved a statewide minimum wage of $10. As low wage workers increasingly voice their frustration with their shitty lot in life, it's time to raise the minimum wage— everywhere.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. If one were to work full time for 50 weeks a year at that wage, one would make $14,500, which is below the poverty line for a household of two. Add to that the fact that most minimum wage workers cannot get full time hours, and the fact that many of them are supporting families (only 12% of workers earning under $10 an hour are teenagers, contrary to popular stereotypes), and the self-evidently ludicrous nature of our national standard becomes clear.

The common argument against raising the minimum wage is that it would cause employers to cut back on hiring. Not so. The economist Arindrajit Dube wrote this weekend about the latest research into this topic, which finds that fears of job loss have been greatly overstated:

In my work with T. William Lester and Michael Reich, we use nearly two decades' worth of data and compare all bordering areas in the United States to show that while higher minimum wages raise earnings of low-wage workers, they do not have a detectable impact on employment. Our estimates — published in 2010 in the Review of Economics and Statistics — suggest that a hypothetical 10 percent increase in the minimum wage affects employment in the restaurant or retail industries, by much less than 1 percent; the change is in fact statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Dube estimates that a 10% rise in the minimum wage would reduce overall poverty by 2%. That's nice. It's also evidence that we need the minimum wage to rise by much more than 10% (which would only bring it up to about $8 an hour). A $10 minimum wage would offer a full time worker a salary of $20,000 a year—a shitty salary, but enough to raise a household of three over the official poverty line, at least. A $15 minimum wage would mean a $30,000 annual salary. Of course, the vagaries of hourly work and ever-shifting schedules would mean that annual take-home pay would probably fall well under those figures.

Later this week, fast food workers across the nation will stage a one day walkout as part of their ongoing quest to shame employers into raising their wages. Shame will not work, except as a tool for motivating political will. If low wage workers in dead end jobs are ever to gain some small measure of economic security, their wages will have to be raised by law. Ten dollars an hour is a good starting point. But that should be seen as a stopgap humanitarian measure meant to be temporary, until support can be gathered for another raise, or at least for a law indexing minimum wage to inflation.

Minimum wage earners are sometimes dismissed as people too lazy to find a better job. But a land of opportunity in which there is a higher-paying job available for everyone who works hard is a childish fantasy. With a different shuffle of the deck of fate, any one of us could be earning minimum wage. The question is not "How much do those people deserve?" The question is: How much would you accept to do that job?

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Mint Press News – August 27, 2013, by Katie Rucke -

Newark, N.J.’s refusal to detain undocumented immigrants for minor offenses could serve as an olive branch to the immigrant community.

As of last month, the Newark, New Jersey police department is no longer taking orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants who have been picked up for minor criminal offenses such as shoplifting or vandalism.

The policy was signed into law by Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio on July 24.

Newark may be the first and only law enforcement agency in New Jersey no longer to honor detainer requests from ICE, but it’s far from the only police department in the country to have done so. Police departments in Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Chicago, New York City and New Orleans have also implemented policies stating they won’t honor ICE detainer requests.

The policy change was applauded by civil rights and faith leaders, who say the detainers — which allow law enforcement to hold in custody for up to 48 hours, without a warrant, those whose immigration status is in question — discourage communities of immigrants and law enforcement officials from having a cooperative relationship.

Immigrant-rights advocates said they view the new police protocol as an olive branch to undocumented people living in the U.S., who may be hesitant to cooperate with police officers who are investigating crimes in the community for fear they may be deported. New Jersey reportedly has one of the largest immigrant populations in the nation.

“Law enforcement officials across the country have recognized that local police officers should not be in the business of federal immigration enforcement,” said Udi Ofer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, which advocated for the policy shift.

“With this new policy in place, the Newark Police Department has made it clear that all residents, regardless of their immigration status, are safe to cooperate with the police,” Ofer continued in the release. “This policy ensures that if you’re a victim of a crime, or have witnessed a crime, you can contact the police without having to fear deportation. This will make all Newarkers safer.”

Emily Tucker is an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. She said the group was “thrilled that Newark is standing in solidarity with immigrant families by rejecting all future collaboration with the federal deportation apparatus.

“Spending local tax dollars to take parents away from their children and workers away from their jobs is both morally wrong and bad for the economy,” Tucker said. “We hope the Newark policy will serve as a model for the rest of New Jersey, and for cities around the country who don’t want local resources being spent to help ICE meet its arbitrary enforcement quotas.”

New Jersey to New Orleans to Los Angeles

The New York Times recently published an editorial applauding those cities that have announced they will no longer be cooperating with ICE’s detainer requests and encouraged other cities to follow suit.

“The federal dragnet that makes little distinction between tamale sellers and dangerous criminals — greatly expanded by the use of local law enforcement officials across the country — has been ensnaring record numbers of minor offenders,” the editorial board wrote. “This melding of local crime fighting and immigration enforcement has led to unjust imprisonment, policing abuses, racial profiling and paralyzing fear in immigrant communities.

“The damage to public safety is measurable; a recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that Latinos, both immigrants and native-born, often shun the police and are reluctant to cooperate with criminal investigations. Combating domestic violence, sexual abuse and gang-related crimes becomes far more difficult when local cops are de facto federal agents.”

Amy Gottlieb, director of the American Friends Service Committee, said she hoped other law enforcement agencies would implement similar policies, adding that “any detainer policy where people are aware that the police department is acting in support of the immigrant community is going to be helpful for police and immigrant relations.”

While Newark officers will no longer hold persons in an immigration detention center for committing a minor-level offense, the Newark Police Department will still report information to ICE after arresting an individual and also will continue to share fingerprint information with federal investigators.

“If we arrest somebody for a disorderly persons offense and we get a detainer request, we’re not going to hold them in our cell block,” DeMaio said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten a detainer request on a guy with a misdemeanor,” adding that the department received a total of eight detainer requests in 2012.

Helpful or harmful to a city’s crime fighters?

While California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has said he would sign legislation limiting who state and local law enforcement officials can hold for deportation, and while Connecticut’s legislature unanimously passed similar legislation, not everyone thinks the policy is a good idea.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, for example, called the policy “another in a long line of missteps” by his opponent, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), saying the new policy will only lead to an increase in crime.

“We’re sending a signal,” he said, that “you can come to the country illegally, you can shoplift, you can vandalize but it’s alright. We’re going to make sure you’re safe. It’s a great message to our kids.”

Kevin Griffs, a spokesman for the Booker campaign, said Lonegan’s understanding of the policy was inaccurate and explained that “all serious offenders obviously go to the county jail, and ultimately, the mayor’s thinking was that this was going to improve relations between the police department and the immigrant community and help the Newark Police Department catch more of the real bad guys.”

ICE officials have declined to comment on the policy change.

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