CPD IN THE NEWS

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., holds a town hall meeting at the Luis Muñoz Marin Foundation in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, Monday, May 16, 2016. Sanders arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday to talk about the U.S. territory's worsening debt crisis ahead of the June 5 primary.

The race for the Democratic nomination is in its final throes, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Hillary Clinton are fighting it out for every last remaining delegate. Puerto Rico’s June 5 primary — in which 67 delegates are up for grabs — will carry more political weight than usual, and the campaigns are lavishing attention on the island.

As he campaigned in the territory’s capital on Monday, Sanders laid out a bold proposal to help Puerto Rico dig itself out from $72 billion dollars in debt, but economists and former government officials tell ThinkProgress the plan is legally impossible.

Both Sanders and Clinton have urged Congress to pass a bill giving Puerto Rico the ability to declare bankruptcy and restructure its debt. But Sanders went further this week, demanding that the Federal Reserve act unilaterally to help the island if Congress continues to drag its feet on a bill to restructure the massive debt the Puerto Rican government says it cannot pay.

Ironically, the reforms Congress passed to rein in Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis — reforms Sanders supported — are part of why the Federal Reserve can’t do what Sanders is now demanding.

“If the Federal Reserve could bail out Wall Street, it can help the 3.5 million American citizens in Puerto Rico improve its economy and lift its children out of poverty,” he said. “Under current law, the Federal Reserve has the authority.”

Some progressive groups, like the Center for Popular Democracy, are voicing support for Sanders’ plan. In an e-mail to ThinkProgress, the director of the CPD’s “Fed Up” campaign said that if the U.S. government could find a way to prop up Wall Street during the 2008 crash, it can do the same for Puerto Rico.

“When the financial crisis hit Wall Street, they used all of their most creative legal minds and institutional power to design solutions that would protect the big banks from collapse; if they wanted to, Fed officials could similarly find appropriate solutions here.”

But other economic experts and former Federal Reserve board members told ThinkProgress that Sanders is mistaken. Ironically, the reforms Congress passed to rein in Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis — reforms Sanders supported — are part of why the Federal Reserve can’t do what Sanders is now demanding.

“The type of assistance Senator Sanders is asking the Fed to provide would not be legally possible,” said Donald Kohn, who served on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 2002 to 2010. “[It is] not what the Congress intended. Among other things, [the law] requires that any facility be broadly based and not intended for a particular troubled borrower.”

The reforms in the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill sharply curtailed the central bank’s ability to make emergency loans to struggling banks, partnerships, or corporations in order to keep them afloat. While questioning whether the Puerto Rican government counts as a bank, partnership, or corporation in the first place, Kohn also cited another section of the law saying the Federal Reserve must “prohibit borrowing from programs and facilities by borrowers that are insolvent,” as Puerto Rico will soon be, and that emergency lending powers are “not to aid a failing financial company.”

The Federal Reserve has given Congress the same message, and other fiscal policy experts agree. University of Pennsylvania professor Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on the Fed’s legal authority, told the Washington Examiner that Dodd-Frank “specifically forbids this kind of targeted bailout,” while Cato Institute director of financial regulation studies Mark Calabria added that “the intent and clear language forbids ‘one-off’ rescues to single entities.”

Warren Gunnels with the Sanders campaign argued in an e-mail to ThinkProgress that because only a fraction of Dodd-Frank’s reforms have been finalized and implemented, the Federal Reserve can still step in. “The Federal Reserve has the authority to facilitate an orderly restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt through a reverse auction process that will lead to major haircuts for Wall Street vulture funds,” he said.

Still, most experts say it falls on Congress to act to rescue Puerto Rico. House Republicans introduced a bill this week that would allow Puerto Rico to restructure its debt, but would also implement an un-elected control board to oversee the island’s budget and cut the minimum wage from $7.25 to $4.25 an hour for workers under 25.

We don’t need more austerity for children in Puerto Rico who are going hungry.

Sanders blasted the proposal as undemocratic and a further burden on the poor. “We need austerity for billionaire Wall Street hedge fund managers who have exacerbated the financial crisis in Puerto Rico. We don’t need more austerity for children in Puerto Rico who are going hungry,” he said.

Regardless of the feasibility of Sanders’ Federal Reserve proposal, his pro-sovereignty and anti-austerity message resonated with Puerto Ricans on and off the island. Two prominent officials, including the mayor of the capital of San Juan, rescinded their endorsements for Hillary Clinton after Sanders’ visit, while other community leaders sang his praises.

“Bernie Sanders is the only candidate dedicated to the people of Puerto Rico,” said Jose Nicolas Medina, an attorney in San Juan. “Much of our problems are due the policies of Clinton. As first lady and as Senator, Hillary did nothing to help the situation of Puerto Rico. So we punish the Clintons with our votes.”

Others watching Sanders’ speeches told ThinkProgress they were inspired by his promise to allow Puerto Ricans to vote for either independence or statehood during his first year in the White House, and his characterization of the current U.S.-Puerto Rican relationship as “colonial-like treatment.”

“To have a candidate for president finally admit that Puerto Rico is a colony is historic,” said Phillip Arroyo, the former chair of the Young Democrats of America’s Hispanic Caucus and a Puerto Rican living in Florida. “He has planted a seed in the mind of the new generation. It will ultimately bear fruit regardless of whether he’s elected.”

BY ALICE OLLSTEIN

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Radicalized white men are on a reign of terror, and I’m not just talking about the tiki-torch terrorists in Charlottesville. I’m talking about the white men who are threatening our health care, our schools, our communities, our institutions, and our families through their callous and self-serving policies. Hoods have been replaced by pinstripe suits.

Read the full article here.

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

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Baristas are among the 10 job titles that received the biggest pay hikes this year, but CBS MoneyWatch reports that some Starbucks baristas may be getting shortchanged in another way.

Last year, Starbucks promised to start posting employees’ work schedules at least 10 days in advance after a New York Times article titled “Working Anything but 9 to 5” detailed the burdens employees faced because they were receiving only a few days’ notice about their schedules.

But by some accounts, Starbucks’ promise has yet to become a reality.

One student tells CBS that “wild inconsistency” plagues his Starbucks work schedules and that lack of advance notice forced him to pay a co-worker to cover one shift so he could take an exam.

A report released this month by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy — “The Grind: Striving for Scheduling Fairness at Starbucks” — questions six facets of Starbucks’ scheduling practices:

Unpredictable workweeks.

Inconsistency in days, times and amounts of work.

Insufficient rest due to working “clopen” shifts (when employees are scheduled to close one night and to open the store early the next morning).

Obstacles to taking sick leave.

Understaffing and insufficient hours.

Failure to honor employees’ availability.

Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and a co-author of the organization’s report, tells CBS that even though Starbucks “has the values and wants to do right by their employees,” many troubling issues persist.

CBS reports that Starbucks did not respond to its requests for comment. In an internal memo later published by Time, Starbucks executive Cliff Burrows wrote that the company couldn’t validate the survey, but noted that:

“The findings suggest, contrary to the expectations we have in place, that some partners are receiving their schedules less than one week in advance and that there is a continuing issue with some partners working a close and then an opening shift the following morning.”

Burrows also asked store managers “to go the extra mile to ensure partners have a consistent schedule.”

Source: MoneyTalks News