Workers of the (finance) world unite – and unionize
Al Jazeera - December 3, 2013, by E. Tammy Kim - Adjacent to its lofty, glass-faced midtown headquarters, Bank of America operates a humble retail location for individuals and small...
Al Jazeera - December 3, 2013, by E. Tammy Kim - Adjacent to its lofty, glass-faced midtown headquarters, Bank of America operates a humble retail location for individuals and small businesses. The branch serves many customers who work in the Bank of America Tower —secretaries and tech support, analysts and executives. One such patron, a former investment banker raised by struggling immigrants but schooled in the Ivy League, recalled the disconnect between his sky-high office and the retail branch. “I wondered if they feel inferior,” he said of the bank tellers, who likely earned a fifth of his salary.
While employed by the same entity, retail bank workers are worlds apart from those in corporate or high finance. Yet for giant universal banks like Bank of America and Citibank, comprising retail, commercial and investment banking divisions — a model made possible by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 — the branch locations are a critical point of contact with ordinary Americans. And according to a new advocacy campaign, the underpaid workers in these branches may be the key to a more accountable banking system.
Today, kicking off a week of protests against big banks, the New Day New York Coalition will release a report documenting historic levels of inequality in Wall Street’s hometown. The paper reveals that the top 1 percent of income earners take home 40 percent of New York’s total income and that the city’s financial sector was responsible for approximately 45 percent of job losses (affecting some 26,000 workers) in the first half of this year. While bank CEOs receive astronomical compensation — JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon made $21 million in 2012 — 39 percent of bank tellers in New York State had to rely on public assistance to stay afloat.
Low pay, professional veneerRyan Filson, a 38-year-old assistant branch manager in New York, started out as a bank teller when he was 18. “The money I made back then is the same that they’re paying tellers now to start: $10! And the workload is so different. Tellers have a harder job today than I ever saw,” he said, referring to time-intensive verification practices for checks and deposits.
In 2010 the national median salary for tellers was $24,100, or just over $11 per hour. But tellers and other retail staff are often required to purchase suits and look the part of professional workers. They also face pressure to meet stringent quotas for referrals and sales of checking and savings accounts, credit cards, loans and mortgages while cultivating relationships with their customers.
“The three women (tellers) I work with all receive public assistance,” Filson said. (He asked that his real name not be used.) “I was shocked. (The head teller) shows up for work on time, she has a great personality, she works hard. (With welfare), you have the image of someone lazy collecting a check, so for me, that was eye opening.”
On the corporate side, back-office personnel are paid meager hourly wages, are routinely outsourced and subcontracted and are segregated from analysts and investment bankers in the same company. Large banks often treat support departments as a drain on resources rather than a crucial part of the business.
According to subcontracted back-office workers at a prominent New York bank, clerical, security and technology staff are paid $12 per hour, though their predecessors — direct employees of the corporation before a massive restructuring — were paid $16 to $20 per hour. In the third quarter of this year, the same bank reported earnings of nearly $1 billion. (Those interviewed asked that neither they nor their employer be identified.)
The money I made back then is the same that they’re paying tellers now to start: $10!Bank workers also cite job security and whistle-blower protections as pressing concerns. Twice in the recent past, Filson was subject to what he sees as retaliation for reporting suspicious transactions under the Bank Secrecy Act, a law meant to combat money laundering. The first time, his superiors transferred him to a different branch; the second time, his complaint was circulated widely.
“It made me think that during the mortgage crisis, there were probably people who saw things that didn’t seem quite right,” Filson said. “But even if they complained, it probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
Representatives of Wells Fargo and Bank of America would not respond to specific questions, and JPMorgan Chase and the American Bankers Association were unavailable for comment. But Bank of America spokeswoman Tara A. Burke told Al Jazeera in an email, “We work with each employee to support their career development and offer competitive compensation and benefits for employees. We also value their feedback and opinions and routinely create opportunities for ongoing dialogue.” Burke would neither confirm nor deny that entry-level tellers are paid $10 per hour, a rate advertised in the Wall Street Oasis Company Database.
A trade union for bankers?In countries such as South Africa, Australia and Argentina, employees of banks and insurance companies have pursued better pay and conditions through trade unions. The idea has floated around U.S. activist circles in recent years as well and may now be gaining real traction.
The Brazilian union CUT (Unified Workers’ Central) has provided seed money for organizing efforts in New York City, Miami and Orlando, home to Banco do Brasil branches and call centers. (Brazilian unions have also supported American automotive workers.) CUT president Vagner Freitas explained this transnational strategy at a union convention in September, saying, “We don’t have the bank workers in the U.S. organized, so we can’t organize workers around the world. A lot of them are in the U.S., and they have a great role to play.”
The Committee for Better Banks, which includes the Communication Workers of America union and the nonprofit Alliance for a Greater New York, has started reaching out to bank employees in the New York City area. By organizing a critical mass of retail and back-office workers, the campaign hopes to improve sector conditions and put people’s faces behind calls for accountability.
A finance-workers’ union could force employers to pay higher wages, empower tellers to refuse to sell high-interest credit cards and protect accountants who blow the whistle on creative bookkeeping — without fear of retaliation. The collective-bargaining process, moreover, would require banks to open their books to the union.
More than 500,000 employees in financial services worldwide have lost their jobs since 2008.“We want to create a (banking) system that’s sustainable in the long term. We need to have an actor that can make an intervention in society, and trade unions are an important actor to do that,” said Marcio Monzane, a former bank teller who now heads UNI Finance, a Brussels-based international union with 237 finance- and insurance-sector affiliates representing 3 million workers. UNI estimates that more than 500,000 employees in financial services worldwide have lost their jobs since 2008.
Despite the apparent message of recent settlements in the U.S. — $13 billion to be paid by JPMorgan Chase and $404 million by Bank of America — the big banks have, by and large, denied legal responsibility for the ongoing financial crisis. And a recent report on the finance sector by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that executives continue to prioritize profits and “career progression” over reputation and “adherence to ethical standards.”
Organizers behind the New York City effort are sober about the challenges ahead. “We want the campaign to develop further before commenting,” a representative of the Communication Workers of America wrote in an email.
Retail workers, investment bankers, hedge-fund analysts and Wall Street activists interviewed for this story were skeptical about the viability and direct impact of a finance union on industry practices. But many acknowledged the campaign’s political potential — its ability to rally the American public behind low-wage bank workers, as with janitors, security guards and now fast-food and Walmart employees.
Part of the difficulty in holding Wall Street accountable, experts say, is the scale and complexity of the global financial machine. By keeping the focus on low-wage bank workers, organizers aim to cut this machine down to size.
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Denver Receives $5 Million Challenge Grant To Promote Naturalization In The United States.
Denver Receives $5 Million Challenge Grant To Promote Naturalization In The United States.
The “America is Home” Initiative will be administered by the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA). Cities for Citizenship is co-chaired by Mayors Garcetti, Mayor Emanuel, and Mayor de...
The “America is Home” Initiative will be administered by the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA). Cities for Citizenship is co-chaired by Mayors Garcetti, Mayor Emanuel, and Mayor de Blasio of New York City. The Center for Popular Democracy is a member of the C4C Executive Committee, and Citi Community Development is the founding Corporate Partner. The C4C “America is Home” Initiative is offered in cooperation with the New Americans Campaign (NAC). NPNA and NAC are two leaders in the U.S. promoting naturalization and are well positioned to bring naturalization to scale and expand to new cities.
Read the full article here.
Prosecutors and Race Bias: Why the DOJ Needs to Act
Prosecutors are supposed to hold people accountable when they hurt other people—that’s part of the job. Yet for years prosecutors across the country have opted out of that responsibility when the...
Prosecutors are supposed to hold people accountable when they hurt other people—that’s part of the job. Yet for years prosecutors across the country have opted out of that responsibility when the perpetrator is a police officer.
Last year, police killed African Americans at a rate more than twice that of white people, according to the Guardian’s database, and African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34 at a rate five times that of white men in that age range. Our morgues were busy due to killings by police in 2015 -- 1,145 deaths among all races, according to the database.But our district attorneys’ offices were not nearly as busy: in 2015, they initiated just 18 prosecutions of police officers who killed civilians.
If local prosecutors won’t act, the federal government should find out why.
Chicago prosecutor Anita Alvarez waited almost a year before indicting the officer who killed Laquan McDonald, a young African-American man. She faced relentless pressure from organizers and communities in Chicago and brought charges only after a judge ordered the city to release the videotape of the killing that directly contradicted the officers’ versions of the shooting.
And the Chicago officer who killed Reika Boyd was acquitted after a botched prosecution by one of Alvarez’s attorneys who kept his job.
In Cleveland, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American youth, was shot and killed within two seconds of officers arriving on the scene. Prosecutor Tim McGinty oversaw a grand jury “investigation” that involved leaked “expert” reports justifying the shooting, presentation of evidence that Tamir kept a toy gun longer than he should have, and accusations that Tamir’s family protested the killing of their son because of money.
In the Bronx, New York City paid $3.9 million to the family of Ramarley Graham who was shot and killed by police while in his own home, but criminal charges against the officer were dismissed, and the officer is still on the job — with a raise.
The behavior of these prosecutors led many to believe that race bias played a role in their actions. Alvarez and McGinty were voted out of office, reflecting the community reaction against two elected prosecutors; but this does not resolve issues of potential race bias by prosecutors remaining in those offices or in offices of other local prosecutors around the country.
Judges, prosecutors, and former presidential advisors have acknowledged that race bias, deliberate or unintentional, has played a role in the incarceration of African Americans in unfairly disproportionate numbers. We know prosecutors can be drivers of racialized mass incarceration because they hold so much power in our current system of plea bargain justice.
The reality that African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people is at least in part a result of the discretionary decisions of prosecutors.
Under the circumstances, shouldn’t we ask if any kind of race bias led local prosecutors to defend police who kill instead of objectively investigating them? Given the other evidence of race bias in the system, doesn’t the miniscule number of prosecutions in killings that disproportionately affect the African-American community suggests a disturbing answer?
Until now, prosecutors have been exempt from virtually any scrutiny. It is time for that exemption to expire, and the Department of Justice has the authority and responsibility to act. The Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 authorize the attorney general to conduct investigations and file civil litigation to eliminate “a pattern or practice of discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, in connection with any law enforcement agency that receives financial assistance from DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.”
Law enforcement is defined as “all activities pertaining to crime prevention or reduction and enforcement of the criminal law.” Prosecutors, like police departments, receive millions of dollars in federal funding through Justice Assistance Grants and should be subject to the same scrutiny as the police.
Looking for the influence of race bias is not an accusation of racism. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigated the possible role of race bias in its own work without any intervention by the Justice Department. District Attorney Cyrus Vance was not accusing his staff of racism. He was willing to look for any impact race bias might have on carrying out justice. The Vera Institute examined the office’s work, from charging decisions to plea offers, and discovered evidence of racial bias that could not be explained by other factors.
Does this show that Manhattan DAs are racist? No, it points to an equally serious problem — racial bias exists systemically in ways prosecutors have not or will not recognize.
The impact of unconscious bias can be reduced and even eliminated by training to recognize it and using best practices to eliminate its influence. But if you don’t look for it, you won’t find it. And we need to remember that for those injured, killed, or incarcerated—and for their families, who are forced to bear the financial and emotional costs of incarceration—the difference between conscious and unconscious bias means nothing.
The killing of Michael Brown brought no indictment, but investigating the Ferguson police revealed some of the ugliest racist attitudes in America, leading to a Department of Justice lawsuit against the department.
How did it get that bad in Ferguson? For one thing, police knew the DAs wouldn’t hold them accountable for their behavior. We need prosecutors to do their jobs when police officers are the defendants. If they are reluctant to do it, a visit from the feds may help change their thinking.
The Department of Justice must step in and use its authority and power to ensure justice.
By Marbre Stahly-Butts and Jeffery Robinson
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These Activists Marched From Charlottesville To D.C. To Let Everyone Know That 'White Supremacy Is Real'
These Activists Marched From Charlottesville To D.C. To Let Everyone Know That 'White Supremacy Is Real'
We previously reported that a coalition of activists were planning a 10-day march from Charlottesville to D.C. called The March to Confront White Supremacy.
Well, the march has been...
We previously reported that a coalition of activists were planning a 10-day march from Charlottesville to D.C. called The March to Confront White Supremacy.
Well, the march has been successfully completed!
Read the full article here.
A Victory for Smarter, More Effective Policing
Huffington Post – September 9, 2013, by Brittny Saunders -
On August 22, the New York City Council took the final step toward enacting the Community Safety Act (CSA), overriding Mayor...
Huffington Post – September 9, 2013, by Brittny Saunders -
On August 22, the New York City Council took the final step toward enacting the Community Safety Act (CSA), overriding Mayor Bloomberg’s recent veto and striking a blow against stop-and-frisk and other discriminatory NYPD tactics. This is more than a win for those who have fought hardest for the CSA. It’s a victory for everyone who wants smarter and more effective policing — in NYC and beyond.
In June, the Council approved two CSA measures: the “End NYPD Discriminatory Profiling Bill,” which will expand and strengthen the ban on bias-based policing and the “NYPD Oversight Act,” which will create a new Inspector General to provide independent oversight of the Department. Despite the Mayor’s rejection of the bills and weeks of aggressive advocacy by the administration and its surrogates, the Council re-affirmed its decision recently.
The hard-won victory is due to the tireless efforts of Communities United for Police Reform — a coalition of base-building, legal and policy groups in the City — their allies in the Council and the countless New Yorkers who raised their voices in opposition to discriminatory policing. It also amounts to a repudiation of a set of policies and practices that the Bloomberg administration has vehemently defended, even in the face of statistical evidence undermining their claims and growing concern among members of the public.
The basic facts are undisputed. Under Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD officers have made over 4 million stops on the streets of the city. Over 80 percent of those stops have targeted black or Latino New Yorkers. And in nearly 9 out of 10 cases, there has been no accusation of wrong-doing — no arrest was made and no citation was issued. Where the Mayor and Commissioner Kelly have set themselves against the opinion of growing numbers of New Yorkers is on the legality of these stops. Both Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly have maintained that the city’s use of stop-and-frisk is consistent with what the law requires and that these stops are an essential means of keeping the city safe. Advocates, meanwhile, have challenged both the constitutionality and the effectiveness of these stops, arguing that they are neither responsible for the decline in the city’s crime rates nor particularly effective at removing weapons from the city’s streets. Just over a week ago, federal judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, agreed, declaring the NYPD’s racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional in her decision in Floyd v. City of NY.
The sheer volume of stops conducted, the magnitude of the city’s investment in these tactics and the intensity of Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment to them have, unfortunately, established New York City as a poster child for discriminatory policing. And to some degree, the persistence of such discriminatory tactics in New York — long an innovator in public policy — has legitimized these approaches. The administration’s failure to evolve in this respect has reinforced the message that both Bloomberg and Kelly have made fairly explicit: that it is impossible to preserve public safety while also respecting the rights of all residents. For over a decade, they have asserted through words and actions that even the most sophisticated police force in the nation is incapable of doing things differently. Even with billions in funding and what are purported to be the greatest public safety minds in the nation at its disposal, the Department has been unable to break with a shameful history of subjecting people of color and other historically marginalized groups to invidious forms of social control.
New York’s recent move to reject discriminatory policing, however, contains a lesson for elected leaders everywhere. Put simply, in the 21st century, outdated notions of government accountability must expand. The Bloomberg administration’s efforts to defend the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices are, perhaps, most instructive when understood as a failure to deal with this fact. Local leaders must, of course, safeguard the rights and attend to the needs of all constituents, regardless of their numbers. But in a city with large numbers of black, brown, immigrant, homeless and LGBTQ residents, the unsustainable nature of policies that subject members of these and other groups to regular surveillance, harassment and civil rights violations should have been exceedingly clear. Still, over the last ten years, the administration has missed countless opportunities to shift course because it has ignored a sizeable chunk of its constituents. It has overlooked, for example, how unjustified street stops undermine trust between the police force and the next generation of New Yorkers, a puzzling choice for an administration that claims to be interested in keeping the city safe over the long term.
With the Council’s most recent vote and implementation of the CSA imminent, the city is poised to set precedent for how large urban centers can both enforce the law and respect the constitutional rights of all residents. And the prospect of a new local executive makes this a particularly hopeful moment. If the upcoming election brings with it a mayor who aims to be a leader for all New Yorkers, the city may at long last step into the leadership role it should always have occupied, demonstrating what local government can produce when it holds itself accountable to all constituents.
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Progressive Activists Protest For A Cause You Should Hear More About, But Won't
More than a dozen community activists picketed the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this week,...
More than a dozen community activists picketed the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this week, protesting what they say is the bank president’s refusal to meet with them to discuss how Fed monetary policy affects real people.
The roughly 15 activists are members of ACTION United, an organization representing low-income people of color in Philadelphia. ACTION United is affiliated with the national Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups advocating Fed monetary policies that prioritize full employment and shared economic prosperity.
Fed Up and ACTION United planned Tuesday's protest because they say that Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker reneged on a promise to meet, and allow group members to give him a tour of low-income neighborhoods where they are active. The activists point to a video in which Harker appears to commit to the meeting in a conversation with ACTION United organizer Kendra Brooks at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in August.
When Brooks followed up, Theresa Singleton, the Philadelphia Fed’s vice president and community affairs officer, said in an email obtained by HuffPost that a meeting was not in the cards, because the bank is reluctant to work with “just one organization."
Instead, Singleton invited Brooks to Tuesday’s community development briefing for low- and moderate-income community stakeholders. Singleton also said Fed staff would “design and organize” their own community tour.
That response rankled Fed Up and ACTION United members. The Federal Reserve has a dozen regional banks, and the activists have met or have planned meetings with all of the regional Fed leaders except Philadelphia's since the campaign began in August 2014. They want a meeting -- and they want it to take place in an economically distressed community of color -- not in the Fed’s offices.
So they decided to pressure the Philadelphia Fed with a protest, featuring Fed Up’s trademark “What recovery?” signs and green "Whose Recovery?" T-shirts.
ACTION United also sent Brooks to the community development briefing, where she and several nonprofit executives and bankers who work with low- and moderate-income earners spoke with Harker and Singleton.
Brooks said she was mostly pleased with what she heard from Harker and other Fed officials, who she said sounded genuinely committed to researching the conditions in communities the Fed serves and finding ways to improve “economic autonomy” in the Philadelphia region.
“The outcome of the meeting was much better than we anticipated, but going in, we did not know the information that we knew coming out.” Brooks said. “We hope he will continue to keep the doors open for organizations like ours and our coalition. And that we will continue to be a part of that conversation and not excluded.”
But Brooks noted that the Fed officials did not discuss how monetary policy and the Fed’s adjustment of interest rates disproportionately affects low-income workers and communities of color.
For the Fed Up campaign, the exclusion of monetary policy reaffirms that nothing short of a meeting between Harker and activists will suffice.
“We appreciate and accept the invitation to discuss community development and research, but this is not a substitute for the promise President Harker made to Fed Up,” said Shawn Sebastian, a policy advocate and staff attorney for the Fed Up campaign. “President Harker promised to speak with working families in the black neighborhoods of Philadelphia about their experiences -- where unemployment is double white unemployment. Harker promised to discuss how his monetary policy decisions can build a true full employment economy that works for everyone.”
Philadelphia Fed spokeswoman Marilyn Wimp, in an email to HuffPost, didn't address a question about whether Harker reneged on his promise to meet with protesters. She instead pointed to Tuesday's briefing as evidence of Harker's interest in reaching out to diverse parts of the community.
But the list of the Tuesday briefing’s attendees reveals that Brooks was the only stakeholder from a group with a position on Fed interest rates.
Crafting monetary policy is a main responsibility of the Federal Reserve regional banks. Regional Fed presidents occupy five of the 12 seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, responsible for adjusting the Fed’s benchmark interest rates. Lately, they have accounted for half of the committee’s votes, because the Senate has failed to approve presidential nominees for two of the seven seats reserved for members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington.
The FOMC keeps its benchmark interest rates low when it is more concerned about full employment, and raises them to curb excessive inflation when the economy has grown enough to drive up prices.
Fed Up wants the central bank to maintain current low interest rates for the near term, which will allow economic demand to continue to grow, benefitting workers with more jobs and higher wages. The campaign applauded the Fed’s decision to leave rates unchanged in September.
But Fed Up leaders said they're worried about the Philadelphia Fed and the role its president may play in future monetary policy decisions. The Philadelphia region's previous Fed president, Charles Plosser, who left the post in March, was an outspoken inflation hawk.
Harker, who will serve a one-year term on the FOMC in 2017, was a member of the Philadelphia Fed board’s search committee for a new president, recusing himself once he became a candidate.
Harker’s views on monetary policy are not yet known. He is a former trustee of the Goldman Sachs Trust, which Sebastian and other Fed Up critics said they worry will make him more sympathetic to financial institutions' concerns about inflation.
Source: Huffington Post
Health Care Activists Protest at Senator's Offices in the Capitol - Photo
Health Care Activists Protest at Senator's Offices in the Capitol - Photo
Activists protest against the Republican health care repeal-and-replace legislation at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 19, 2017 in Washington...
Activists protest against the Republican health care repeal-and-replace legislation at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. Organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, Housing Works, National Nurses United and other organizations, dozens of people were arrested for protesting against the GOP attempts to end Obamacare.
See the photo here.
New York Plans $15-an-Hour Minimum Wage for Fast Food Workers
The labor protest movement that fast-food workers in New York City began nearly three years ago has led to higher wages for workers all across the country. On Wednesday, it paid off for the people...
The labor protest movement that fast-food workers in New York City began nearly three years ago has led to higher wages for workers all across the country. On Wednesday, it paid off for the people who started it.
A panel appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recommended on Wednesday that the minimum wage be raised for employees of fast-food chain restaurants throughout the state to $15 an hour over the next few years. Wages would be raised faster in New York City than in the rest of the state to account for the higher cost of living there.
The panel’s recommendations, which are expected to be put into effect by an order of the state’s acting commissioner of labor, represent a major triumph for the advocates who have rallied burger-flippers and fry cooks to demand pay that covers their basic needs. They argued that taxpayers were subsidizing the workforces of some multinational corporations, like McDonald’s, that were not paying enough to keep their workers from relying on food stamps and other welfare benefits.
The $15 wage would represent a raise of more than 70 percent for workers earning the state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour. Advocates for low-wage workers said they believed the mandate would quickly spur raises for employees in other industries across the state, and a jubilant Mr. Cuomo predicted that other states would follow his lead.
“When New York acts, the rest of the states follow,” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, citing the state’s passage of the law making same-sex marriagelegal. “We’ve always been different, always been first, always been the most progressive.”
The decision, announced in a conference room in Lower Manhattan, set off a raucous celebration by hundreds of workers and union leaders outside.
Flavia Cabral, 53, a grandmother from the Bronx who works part-time in a McDonald’s for $8.75 an hour, pointed out the scars where fry baskets had seared her forearms. “At least they listened to us,” she said, referring to the panel. “We’re breathing little by little.”
Bill Lipton, state director of the Working Families Party, called the decision a victory for the “99-percenters.” Mr. Lipton, who has campaigned for better pay for low-wage workers for years, said, “There’s clearly a new standard for the minimum wage, and it’s actually a living wage for the first time in many, many decades.”
The decision comes on the heels of similar increases in minimum wages in other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to raise the county’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, matching a move the Los Angeles City Council made in June.
But a more complicated political terrain in New York forced Mr. Cuomo to take a different route.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has demanded a higher minimum wage in the city to account for its higher cost of living. But neither he nor the City Council has the power to set wages citywide.
When lawmakers in Albany balked at the idea, Mr. Cuomo convened a board to look at wages in the fast-food industry, which is one of the biggest employers of low-wage workers in the state, with about 180,000 employees.
After hearing testimony from dozens of fast-food workers, the board members decided the state should mandate that fast-food chains pay more. Advocates often pointed to the giant pay packages the chains gave to their top executives.
The board’s decision removed the last significant hurdle to raising wages, since the acting labor commissioner, Mario Musolino, who must act on the recommendation, is widely expected to accept it.
The board said the first wage increase should come by Dec. 31, taking the minimum in the city to $10.50 and in the rest of the state to $9.75. The wage in the city would then rise in increments of $1.50 annually for the next three years, until it reaches $15 at the end of 2018. In the rest of the state, the hourly wage would rise each year, reaching $15 on July 1, 2021.
The mandate should apply to all workers in fast-food restaurants that are part of chains with at least 30 outlets, the board said. They defined fast food as food and drinks served at counters where customers pay before eating and can take their food with them if they choose.
The restaurant industry has chafed at these decisions. “We continue to say that we think it’s unfair that they singled out a single segment of our industry,” Melissa Fleischut, the executive director of the New York State Restaurant Association, said.
McDonald’s, a multinational corporation that paid its chief executive more than $7.5 million last year, said in April that it would raise the minimum wage it pays workers in company-owned stores to $9.90 by July 1 and to more than $10 next year.
Source: The New York Times
Silicon Valley part-time workers file petition to work more hours
Silicon Valley part-time workers file petition to work more hours
San Jose labor advocates, religious leaders and hourly workers on Tuesday submitted to city officials a proposed ballot measure that would force large and mid-size companies to offer their part-...
San Jose labor advocates, religious leaders and hourly workers on Tuesday submitted to city officials a proposed ballot measure that would force large and mid-size companies to offer their part-time employees more hours before hiring additional temps.
Organizers submitted more than 34,700 signatures to place the Opportunity to Work Initiative on the city’s November ballot, city officials said. At least 18,852 valid signatures, as verified by the county’s Registrar of Voters, are required.
If approved by voters, the initiative would apply to all companies with more than 35 employees.
The initiative is the latest effort of the Silicon Valley Rising movement, which is trying to address the region’s growing affordability crisis for low-wage earners. Community leaders and coalition members have also campaigned for affordable housing and minimum wage increases.
“This is another step toward framing more properly the questions of the wage gap and wealth gap in Silicon Valley,” said the Rev. Jon Pedigo, board member of the Silicon Valley Rising coalition and pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in East San Jose. “We see this as a moral issue, and we see this as a unifying issue where everyone will win.”
Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, some of the biggest names in tech, have proudly touted the fact that they have done aways with gender pay gap. But that doesn't mean the tech industry overall is suddenly paying men and women equally across the board. Hired
One-third of San Jose workers earn less than the average annual rent for a one-bedroom home in the city, and families are increasingly struggling to make ends meet, according to an April report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Working Partnerships USA and the Fair Workweek Initiative.
“We’ve reached a crisis point,” Pedigo said. “There are so many people every day that are displaced.”
More than 40 percent of the estimated 162,000 people who work hourly jobs in San Jose rely on part-time work or variable schedules for their income, the report said.
Variable work schedules cause workers' incomes to fluctuate monthly, making it harder for earners to consistently support their families and pay rent. The burden falls hardest on women and minorities. More than 60 percent of hourly workers are women, according to the report. Almost 70 percent are people of color.
Alejandra Mejia, 29, makes $12 an hour as a part-time manager at a McDonald’s in San Jose. A single mother of three, Mejia depends on her monthly income to feed her kids.
The four of them live in a single room in a friend’s house. She can’t afford her own place, and she can’t depend on receiving a consistent monthly income. Over the past eight years, her weekly shifts have fluctuated — usually between 20 and 30 hours per week.
Mejia asked her boss for more work hours. Last week, the restaurant hired new people and gave Mejia only eight hours. Mejia will make $400 this month, almost $200 less than the average monthly income she depends on.
“I’m assuming I’m going to get money to support my kids, to feed my kids and to pay my rent,” Mejia said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do this month.”
Large companies consistently fail to treat employees like Mejia as people, as opposed to “cogs in a wheel,” Pedigo said. He called their choice to spread wages among part-time employees instead of hiring full-time workers “reprehensible.”
“We have a choice we have to make about how we move forward,” Pedigo said. “Do we move forward together based on the common good, or do we move forward based on the bottom line and the profit margin?”
By Jessica Floum
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“No hate in my holler” march is a window into West Virginia’s political divide
“No hate in my holler” march is a window into West Virginia’s political divide
When Jessica Shayan saw on Facebook that the national group CPD Action, a sister organization of the Center for Popular Democracy, had planned a march to coincide with President Trump and House...
When Jessica Shayan saw on Facebook that the national group CPD Action, a sister organization of the Center for Popular Democracy, had planned a march to coincide with President Trump and House and Senate Republicans visiting the Greenbrier Resort for an annual policy retreat, she was alarmed.
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