How a Grassroots Coalition Got the Elitist Federal Reserve to Sit up and Listen on Race
How a Grassroots Coalition Got the Elitist Federal Reserve to Sit up and Listen on Race
A year ago, the Federal Reserve, our nation’s most powerful economic policy maker, said that there was nothing it could...
A year ago, the Federal Reserve, our nation’s most powerful economic policy maker, said that there was nothing it could do about racial disparities. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, there is "a rising recognition within the Fed that the racial gaps in the economy are becoming more pronounced and that there is a role for monetary policy to play in shrinking those gaps."
That's a major shift in how monetary policy gets made. How did it happen? A grassroots uprising from low-income people of color, the unemployed, and the underemployed pushed issues of racial justice front and center into debates about monetary policy – and they succeeded in changing the conversation at the Federal Reserve.
The Fed Up campaign is a coalition of community-based organizations from across the country, labor unions, policy think tanks, and expert economists who decided to take on the Federal Reserve, long considered immune to outside criticism.
The Great Recession of 2008 brought things to a head. With Congress failing to pass an adequate stimulus in the wake of the crash and authorizing almost nothing since, it’s become clear that the Federal Reserve is the country’s only institution acting to stimulate the economy.
Progressives are concerned about raising wages, getting good jobs for more people, and building the bargaining power of workers to win victories like paid sick days and fair scheduling.
But they didn’t think to target the Federal Reserve, an institution designed to remain as insulated from the public as possible. The Fed system comprises a Board of Governors, whose members are appointed to 14-year terms by the President and approved by the Senate, as well as boards of directors for each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. These regional boards are overwhelming white and male and draw their membership largely from the corporate and financial sectors, which makes sense as two thirds of them are appointed by commercial banks.
Given the Federal Reserve’s opaque, insular structure designed to keep the influence of regular people at bay, it’s nothing short of remarkable that the Fed Up campaign has altered the conversation as much as it has in two short years.
Since its launch in the summer of 2014 the Fed Up Campaign has released reports on racial disparities in the economy andthe unrepresentative composition of the Fed, met with Fed Chair Janet Yellenface to face as well as 11 out of the 12 regional Bank presidents, conducted protests, and lobbied members of Congressto question Yellen on racial disparities during her semi-annual Humphrey Hawkins testimony before Congress.
Under questioning from Congress in February 2016, Janet Yellen insisted to Congress that she could not do anything about racial disparities. Yet, not even four months later, when Janet Yellen testified at the Humphrey Hawkins hearing in June, something was different.
Yellen began her testimonywith statistics on racial disparities in income and employment among Blacks and Latin@s. This is something the Fed has never done before. By including data on racial disparities, Yellen signaled that the status of communities of color is relevant to the Fed's decisions on the economy and she said that broad-based inclusion in the recovery is a priority..
Yellen made this historic move on racial justice because of the pressure the Fed Up coalition put both on the Fed and on Congress. In May, Fed Up worked with Congress members to send a letter to Yellen urging better public representation and diversity on the 12 regional Banks' boards of directors, which was ultimately signed by 127 senators and representatives.
Then Fed Up released aslate of candidatesfrom more diverse backgrounds who could be appointed to the leadership of the Federal Reserve Regional and a new reportabout potential conflicts of interest among current directors, which received coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
The advocacy with Congress worked. After meeting with Fed Up coalition member Common Good Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) urged Yellen at her Congressional hearing to appoint people from more diverse backgrounds to the regional Banks. Sen. Robert Menendez(D-NJ) urged Yellen to improve on diversity, citing the fact that 83% of regional board directors are white – a figure from our February report.
And Sen.Elizabeth Warren(D-MA) echoed Fed Up's callfor reforming the process for selection regional Bank presidents, calling the process "broken" and saying, "I think Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed's selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of both backgrounds and interests."
The next day Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) echoed Warren's call, asking Yellen whether she'd considered our recommendation to appoint three Class C directors at each regional Bank from backgrounds in academia, labor groups, and community-based organizations.
We still have a long way to go before one of the most powerful, secretive, least democratically accountable, and thoroughly corporate dominated institutions truly represents the public and serves all of the public -- including low-income people and communities of color.
But Janet Yellen’s most recent Humphrey Hawkins testimony does show that the Federal Reserve is not completely insulated from public opinion, and that regular people standing up and demanding to be heard can push even the Federal Reserve to listen.
By Shawn Sebastian
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Two Federal Reserve Openings Provide One Chance to Counter Trump
The Federal Reserve is facing a significant change in leadership that goes beyond the installation of a new chairman....
The Federal Reserve is facing a significant change in leadership that goes beyond the installation of a new chairman. It is also awaiting the appointment of two other top officials who will play a crucial role in shaping Fed policy.
President Trump, who has already nominated Jerome H. Powell as the Fed’s next chairman, also gets to pick a new vice chairman. But the other open position, the presidency of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is not Mr. Trump’s choice to make.
Read the full article here.
Group Blasts Fed for Lack of Diversity in Leadership
Source:...
Source: Wall Street Journal
Federal Reserve leadership is overly male, almost entirely white and drawn too frequently from the banking community, according to a group critical of the central bank.
A new report from the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign analyzes the types of people populating the Fed’s Washington-based board of governors, the regional bank presidencies and the regional bank boards of directors.
The report notes that all voting members of the central bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee and nearly all the regional bank presidents are white. Just two of the 12 presidents and two of the five governors are women.
“These key decision-making bodies remain dramatically unbalanced and unrepresentative of the vast majority of people who participate in the economy,” said the group, which has called for more public input into the selection of regional bank presidents and their performance evaluations.
The center said the composition of the Fed’s leadership bodies violates the spirit of the law that created the central bank, which calls for membership drawn from many different industries and interests.
A Fed spokesman responded to the criticism about the regional bank boards by saying the central bank has “focused considerable attention” to finding directors “with diverse backgrounds and experiences” that represent agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor and consumers, as the law requires.
“We also are striving to increase ethnic and gender diversity,” the spokesman said, noting a rise in minority representation on the boards from 16% in 2010 to 24% today. Female representation has risen from 23% to 30% over the same period, and all told, 46% of regional directors now are either a woman or a member of a racial minority, the spokesman added.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen is the central bank’s first female leader.
The Fed Up group, with a membership drawing heavily from labor unions and community organizations, is a regular critic of the central bank. It has argued in recent months that the Fed shouldn’t raise short-term interest rates and has pressed its case in private meetings with Fed officials. Several of its members appeared outside the central bank’s research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last year to call attention to their views.
The group’s concern about a dearth of diversity at the Fed has been echoed by former Minneapolis Fed chief Narayana Kocherlakota. He argued in a blog post last month the central bank has appeared to give short shrift to racial concerns in part because there have been almost no African-Americans in its policy-making ranks. He wrote that the concerns of racial minorities have been “underemphasized” at the Fed.
The last African-American to serve on the Fed board was Roger W. Ferguson Jr., who served as a governor between 1997 and 2006 and as vice chairman from 1999 to 2006. The first African-American to serve as a Fed governor was Andrew Brimmer, from 1966 to 1974.
The report showed particular concern about the directors on the regional Fed bank boards, which are drawn from the private sector. It said 83% are white, compared with around two-thirds of the total U.S. population.
“The diversity of regional board members is meant to inform the bank presidents, who in turn, participate in discussions and vote at the FOMC,” the report said. “However, the boards, the presidents, and the FOMC fail to represent their region’s racial diversity.”
The report also said its analysis found that representatives of banking and what it calls commercial interests have increased their share of regional Fed board seats in recent years. Representatives of community groups and labor unions account for fewer than 5% of the available board seats, according to the center.
Among the regional Fed bank boards’ most high-profile roles is selecting their bank presidents. Recent regulatory changes now bar directors from participating in that process if their firms are regulated by the bank.
The directors also provide information to bank officials about local economic conditions and give advice on running the banks.
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of...
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of bankers in key central bank positions on Thursday, marking a major coup for national progressive groups championing reform.
“The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the wellbeing of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”
The campaign also provided insight into the type of Federal Reserve governors that Clinton would appoint.
“Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry,” Ferguson said.
The announcement brings the Democratic presidential front-runner closer to the position of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders proposed barring financial executives from sitting on the boards of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks in an op-ed in The New York Times in December.
The Clinton campaign statement came in response to a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen from 11 Democratic senators and 116 House Democrats. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the Fed to appoint more women and people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while expanding the representation of consumer and labor groups on regional Fed bank boards.
Currently, the vast majority of Fed bank board directors are white men. People representing either the financial industry or other major business sectors also occupy most of the seats.
It appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities.
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
The Fed’s control over monetary policy allows it to raise borrowing costs to head off inflation and reduce them to maximize employment. The members of Congress who wrote to Yellen argue that the disproportionate influence of financial officials and the lack of diversity at the Fed hamper its sensitivity to groups with a more precarious position in the job market.
Clinton had said virtually nothing about her agenda for the powerful central bank until now.
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy that has been at the forefront of recent efforts to make Federal Reserve reform a key part of the liberal agenda, confirmed that it has been in talks with the Clinton campaign for months.
“Secretary Clinton did the right thing today by coming out in favor of reforming the Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, director of Fed Up. “We’re very excited that she listened to the voices of community leaders from around the country who have said that we need a Federal Reserve that reflects and represents the American people and that creates a strong economy for all.”
Some liberal economists previously noted that Clinton’s reticence about the Fed was inconsistent with her stated plans to return the country to the prosperity of the late 1990s, which enabled widespread wage growth. They argue that the era’s well-distributed economic gains were due in no small part to the permissive monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Dean Baker, one such economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was elated to hear about Clinton’s remarks.
“Holy shit — that’s great news,” Baker said in an email upon receiving the news.
“While Senators Sanders, Warren, and others on the left side of the party took the lead, it appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities,” Baker continued. “There is also agreement that the Fed’s current archaic structure needs to be changed.”
By Daniel Marans
Source
Ford Supporters Descend on Senate Offices of Grassley and Collins to Demand GOP #CancelKavanaugh
Ford Supporters Descend on Senate Offices of Grassley and Collins to Demand GOP #CancelKavanaugh
The Women's March, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Center for Popular Democracy all participated in the protest,...
The Women's March, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Center for Popular Democracy all participated in the protest, where demonstrators chanted, "We believe Christine Ford! We believe Anita Hill!" before proceeding to senators' offices.
Read the full artilce here.
The Controversial New Argument For The Fed To Raise Interest Rates
The Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rates, which banks use to lend to one another and determine the cost of...
The Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rates, which banks use to lend to one another and determine the cost of credit throughout the rest of the economy, at or near zero since December 2008. The central bank has maintained the low rates so as not to disrupt the country's recovery from the largest financial crisis and recession in decades.
But several current and former senior economic officials told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that the virtually unprecedented, prolonged period of near-zero rates risks depriving the Fed of the “ammunition” to address the next recession -- let alone another financial crisis. The Fed's primary method of economic stimulus, they note, has traditionally been cutting interest rates, something that is not possible if rates are already so low.
That could force the government to rely disproportionately on fiscal stimulus, these experts warn, holding a recovery hostage to a partisan ideological divide that has paralyzed Congress and shows no signs of abating.
None of the officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal explicitly called for an interest rate increase in order to keep the Fed’s options open for the next crisis. The main reason that Fed officials publicly provide for a rate hike is still that they believe price inflation is on track to hit the Fed’s 2 percent target. (William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, signaled on Wednesday that the the Fed was reconsidering a September interest rate hike after several days of volatility in the stock market.)
But Fed watchers believe that a desire to replenish the Fed’s proverbial firepower for the next recession is part of the motivation of Fed officials who want to “normalize” -- i.e., increase -- rates.
Narayana Kocherlakota, the outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,vehemently opposes an interest rate hike in the near future. Kocherlakota nonetheless believesthat his central bank colleagues’ perception that low interest rates have given the Fed less “monetary policy ‘space’” will prompt them to raise rates sooner and higher than is desirable.
Jack McIntyre, a portfolio manager and senior research analyst at Brandywine Global, a Philadelphia-based asset management firm, also said those concerns are part of the Fed’s calculus. “Yes, the [Fed would] like to remove emergency-level monetary stimulus to build up ammunition for the next slowdown in the U.S. economy,” McIntyre told The Huffington Post. “It would be a net positive to move us off of zero interest rates to build up some ammunition so they can cut them when it slows down.”
Many economists insist, however, that these fears are misplaced. They instead argue that the best way for the Fed to prepare for the next recession is to prevent the economy from slowing down too soon in the near term.
“I would much rather have the Fed engage in slowdown and recession prevention by getting us to reach levels at which a rate hike would not be premature,” Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said earlier this week.
If the Fed raises rates in the coming months to give itself leeway for the next recession, Bivens warned, it risks “creating the crisis you are trying to have tools to fight against.”
Bivens is one of a number of liberal-leaning economists and activists who argue that the economy is still far from full employment. They want the Fed to wait for widespread wage growth to take hold before raising rates, and they were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Thursday and Friday to make their case to Fed officials directly.
When the economy slows down more substantially, Bivens said, the Fed could still stimulate growth using quantitative easing, the massive asset purchasing program it initiated during the most recent recession after interest rates had already bottomed out.
There are other even less conventional techniques available to the central bank, like instituting negative interest rates, which would effectively charge banks for depositing their money rather than lending. It is an idea that former Fed chair Ben Bernanke told The Wall Street Journal has merit.
Richard Parker, an economist at Harvard, agrees with Bivens and other economists that middle- and lower-income workers have yet to share in the gains of the current recovery, but is less worried about the damaging effect of a rate hike.
Instead, Parker believes that lawmakers and activists concerned about low wage growth should focus on changing the regulatory and fiscal policies that he believes would have a bigger impact.
Parker supports a “retained earnings tax” that would penalize corporations for hoarding cash for stock buybacks and other actions “meant to bolster share prices (and hence bonuses)” that do little for the real economy.
And while Parker acknowledges that partisan gridlock makes the prospects of pro-growth fiscal policy dim at the federal level, he sees the success of efforts to raise the minimum wage at the state and local level as a model for incremental progress.
“It is beginning to look like the early Progressive Era, when states were the laboratories for democracy,” he said.
Source: Huffington Post
Piden Fondos para Programa de Ayuda Legal a Inmigrantes en NY
El Diario - February 24, 2015, by Cristina Loboguerrero - Legisladores estatales y grupos que abogan por los derechos...
El Diario - February 24, 2015, by Cristina Loboguerrero - Legisladores estatales y grupos que abogan por los derechos de los inmigrantes pidieron ayer al gobernador Andrew Cuomo que apruebe fondos para implementar un programa que daría defensoría legal gratuita a los inmigrantes indocumentados que afrontan un proceso de deportación.Los asambleístas Francisco Moya y Marcos Crespo, junto a representantes de varias organizaciones hicieron su pedido frente a la Corte federal de inmigración en el bajo Manhattan."El derecho de acceder a un abogado es uno de los derechos más importantes", precisó Moya, asambleísta de Corona, Queens, quien estima que hacen falta $4.5 millones para implementar el programa en todo el estado.Su colega Marco Crespo, por su parte, indicó que la iniciativa permitiría mantener unidas muchas familias y traería además beneficios "sociales y económicos".Ambos legisladores pusieron como ejemplo el programa Unidad Familiar Inmigrante de la Ciudad de Nueva York (NYIFUP, por su sigla en inglés), que con un financiamiento de $5 millones otorgado por el Concejo Municipal opera a pleno desde noviembre pasado. Según la abogada Ángela Fernández, directora de la Coalición de Derechos de los Inmigrantes del Norte de Manhattan, NYIFUP ha beneficiado a unos 900 inmigrantes."Hay 1,300 inmigrantes en el estado que por no poder pagar a un abogado están en riesgo de ser deportadas", dijo Fernández.
Un día en la Corte
Los lunes, martes y miércoles, tres jueces revisan los nuevos casos en sus oficinas del piso 11 de la mencionada Corte, 201 de la calle Varick. Se estima que cada magistrado ve entre 7 a 15 casos por día; el resto de la semana lo dedican a los casos ya presentados.
Cada sala tiene unas pocas sillas, destinadas a la familia del procesado. Delante de las sillas hay un pequeño escritorio donde se sienta el acusado, vestido con el uniforme de recluso; a su izquierda, un intérprete; a su derecha, el abogado defensor. Enfrente, un representante del gobierno argumenta por la deportación.En el centro de la pequeña sala, el juez escucha atentamente a las dos partes. El acusado no puede dirigirse directamente al juez.Los abogados llegan temprano en la mañana para entrevistar a los detenidos y revisar sus casos antes de presentarlos en la corte durante las horas de la tarde.Oscar Hernández (21) fue detenido en 2011. Gracias a la ayuda legal del grupo de Servicios de Defensores de Brooklyn pudo salvarse de ser deportado y ahora está en proceso de legalizar su situación migratoria."No es lo mismo cuando uno está representado por un abogado, porque al desconocer las leyes y no poder pagar a alguien se está desorientado en todo el proceso", dijo el hombre, que vino a Estados Unidos hace siete años escapando de la violencia de su país
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If Amazon Wants New York, Make It Unionize
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail...
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail chain’s employees.
Read the full article here.
Bill Would Make Maryland Employers Set Work Schedules Earlier
As Labor Day approaches, advocates in Maryland are pushing for a change in how workers receive their schedules....
As Labor Day approaches, advocates in Maryland are pushing for a change in how workers receive their schedules.
Take Hilaria, who lives in Gaithersburg and works at a fast food restaurant. (That's all she'll say on the record, fearing potential reprisal from her employer.) Hilaria says she often doesn't receive her weekly work schedule until right before she has to start it.
"Sometimes it three to four days before the schedule [starts]," Hilaria says. "So we don't have enough time for activities — like for my daughter in school, or for my appointment with a doctor."
Advocates for workers argue Hilaria's story is not uncommon for those in the restaurant and hospitality industries. They're pushing the Maryland General Assembly to approve a measure next year that would make employers issue schedules three weeks in advance. It's called the Fair Work Week Act.
Del. David Moon of Montgomery County says it would provide protections for workers who don't have many.
"Schedules change. You're asked to fill in for people at the last second. It's a busy night and all of the sudden you have to jump in and completely alter your schedule. And if you can't, you're often made to find a replacement yourself," Del. Moon says.
A similar bill never received a vote during this year's session in Annapolis. Nationwide, Fair Work Week bills have been more successful at the city and county level. San Francisco approved a similar measure last year, and Albuqueque, New Mexico, is currently debating one.
Source: WAMU 88.5
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage Voters at polling centers across Colorado will soon be deciding...
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Voters at polling centers across Colorado will soon be deciding on Amendment 70, a measure that would alter the state constitution to increase the minimum wage from the current $8.31 per hour by yearly 90-cent increments to $12 in 2020. In 2020, it will be fixed at $12, except for yearly adjustments to account for inflation. Amendment 70 would further mandate that those inflation-tied adjustments only apply when they mean an increase in wages. In the past, when inflation was negative, minimum wage workers saw a pay cut.
Who’s behind it?
Supporters of the increase coalesced in mid-2016 into a group called Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, a coalition of unions, economic justice advocates and progressive policy analysts. Many of them had been part of an informal consortium of anti-poverty groups called The Everyone Economy that came together to strategize about raising the minimum wage back in February 2014. Partnering with Democratic legislators, they advocated for a pair of bills in the 2015 legislative session to help low-wage workers. One would have allowed municipalities to set their own minimums, and the other would have created a ballot measure to reach a $12.50 per hour minimum by 2020. Republicans killed both bills in the Senate.
Democrats floated another bill in 2016 to allow cities to set their own minimum wages, which met the same fate as its predecessors. After that, Everyone Economy members decided they had no recourse but to pursue a ballot measure themselves and formed Colorado Families for a Fair Wage.
Why $12 per hour and not $15?
The amendment’s proponents faced criticism for their decision to pursue $12 instead of $15 per hour in this week’s Westword cover story. According to the story, some former members of the coalition’s steering committee expressed deep dissatisfaction with its decision to pursue a $12 wage, arguing that, in doing so, the coalition shut out those whose voices were most pertinent to the effort — namely, dues-paying union members. They further take issue with the coalition’s failure to conduct focus groups composed of African-American working people, the demographic that would most benefit from a wage increase. CFFW spokesman Mike Kromrey now admits that was a mistake.
In its decision, the campaign relied on polling that showed that $12 per hour was more likely to pass. Campaign spokesman Timothy Markham dismissed any suggestion that the Westword story would affect the election outcome. “It might make for interesting gossip, but it doesn’t change the fundamental facts of the struggles Colorado workers are facing,” he said.
Interestingly, CFFW’s opponents on the right appropriated some of those far-left criticisms in the article and applied them to their own pitch. Keep Colorado Working, a conglomeration of chambers of commerce, industry groups and free-market business advocates that came together to oppose Amendment 70, sent a press release on Wednesday drawing attention to Westword’s report and castigating CFFW for deciding on their ballot language based on “polling, not policy impacts.”
The release does not mention the fact that those reports came from former CFFW members who wanted the minimum wage increase to be greater, not smaller, as Keep Colorado Working does.
How much firepower is against it?
Keep Colorado Working had a slower start raising funds, but has now raised $1.7 million. It has spent just under $1.4 million as of the most recent campaign finance filings, primarily on television advertising and consultants. About half of its funds ($650,000) come from the Alexandria, Virginia-based Workforce Fairness Institute. It has also gotten $525,000 from Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution, a committee that has donated hefty sums to pro-fracking campaigns and to a 2013 effort to recall legislators who had passed gun-control legislation.
For its part, CCFW has outraised its rivals almost 3 to 1, raising about $5.3 million in donations, much of which is from out-of-state groups like its largest donor, the Center for Popular Democracy, which has kicked in over $1 million. Its second-largest donor is the Palo Alto-based Fairness Project, which has contributed over $960,000 to CFFW and is also supporting minimum wage ballot measures in Maine, Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Keep Colorado Working wants to make sure you know that some of CFFW’s donors are not from Colorado. Virtually all of its communications use the terms “wealthy out of state special interests” liberally.
According to the most recent campaign finance filings, CFFW has spent $4.6 million on television and digital advertising, outreach efforts like canvassing and hosting events, mailers, polling and research.
Keep Colorado Working did not respond to requests for comment in time for this story’s deadline.
Will it pass?
Early polls indicate that it will.
An August Magellan Strategies poll of 500 likely Colorado voters showed that 55 percent of respondents supported the measure, 42 percent were opposed and three percent were undecided. A September joint project between Colorado Mesa University, Rocky Mountain PBS and Franklin & Marshall College showed that 58 percent of respondents favored Amendment 70, with 36 percent opposed and seven percent undecided.
CFFW is also conducting its own internal polls and told The Independent that it is consistently getting positive results. Colorado politics expert Eric Sondermann also predicted that it will narrowly pass in a comprehensive ballot prediction for Westword.
CFFW’s case was buoyed in the fall months, starting with the release of a University of Denver study that tied Amendment 70 to a $400 million increase in state GDP. The logic is straightforward: when low-wage workers get a raise, they are very likely to spend it in their local economies, rather than filing it away. Not long after, Governor Hickenlooper endorsed the amendment, tethering worker pay raises to a boost for the overall economy.
Keep Colorado Working countered with another study, commissioned by the Common Sense Policy Roundtable, which concludes that the increase would lead to a decline in income and massive layoffs. But critics say that CSPR’s ties to groups like EIS Solutions, a PR outfit with several oil and gas clients, and Americans for Prosperity, the oil and gas giant Koch brothers’ political arm, undermine the study’s integrity.
Proponents are feeling optimistic as they buckle down for the the pre-election weekend. Andy Jacob, political director for SEIU Local 105, which is CFFW member, said that the group will spend the weekend making phone calls, knocking on doors, communicating with members and “doing everything we can to get this passed.”
If it passes, will it really be a game-changer for workers?
Whether Amendment 70 passes or fails, the work is just beginning for Colorado labor unions and low-wage worker advocates. Most CFFW members acknowledge that $12 per hour is not in fact a living wage for workers with families in some parts of Colorado. Most estimates put a living wage for a single parent of two children in Denver at around $30 per hour. But advocates also believe that the current $8.31 per hour is inexcusable, and any more than $12 is not politically viable.
There’s a sense of immediacy among CFFW members. One hears the term “right now” a lot. They would rather take a safe bet than a real gamble when so many people’s livelihoods hang in the balance.
“Do we go with something that we know is going to be tough but that we know we can win on, or do we go with 15, which the Denver area might be ready for but the state isn’t, and we lose?” SEIU’s Jacob asked.
He works with low-wage union members every day and he believes he’s doing right by them. “‘12 by 2020’ will impact half a million people in Colorado,” Jacob said. “Don’t tell those people this isn’t going to help them. It is.”
By Eliza Carter
Source
7 days ago
7 days ago