Community Activists And Senator Warren Persuade HUD Sec. Julian Castro To Help Homeowners And Reign In Wall Street Speculators
Community Activists And Senator Warren Persuade HUD Sec. Julian Castro To Help Homeowners And Reign In Wall Street Speculators
Last September 30, community activists and local officials from around the country came to Washington, DC to protest...
Last September 30, community activists and local officials from around the country came to Washington, DC to protest HUD’s pro-Wall Street policies.
Two years ago, community organizing groups around the country, with the key support of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), began pressuring HUD Secretary Julian Castro to stop selling delinquent mortgages to Wall Street investors and help nonprofit organizations to purchase the loans, help homeowners keep their homes, and expand the supply of affordable housing.
On Thursday, they won. Castro announced a set of policy changes to its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) that activists had labeled a “Wall Street giveaway.” Last year, for example, 98% of the mortgages HUD sold went to Wall Street firms, at discounts averaging nearly 50%. Castro pledged to fix the program to triple the sales of delinquent mortgages to nonprofit community groups with experience in stabilizing neighborhoods and helping homeowners and to put more restrictions on foreclosures.
The policy fix was needed because some of the same Wall Street firms that precipitated the housing crash have been buying up distressed housing assets in bulk, including delinquent mortgages and vacant houses that are a product of the crash.
Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and HUD Secretary Julian Castro are frequently mentioned a potential VP running mates with Hillary Clinton.
The campaign’s victory is the result of a perfect political storm. The organizers mounted a savvy grassroots organizing campaign that built on the momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in 2011. In the current political season, no politician, especially a Democrat, wants to be too closely identified with Wall Street’s financial industry, which most Americans still blame for the 2008 economic tsunami from which the country still hasn’t recovered. During this presidential season, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders vied to be the champion of Wall Street reform. HUD Secretary Castro, a former San Antonio mayor, has been auditioning for the role of Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, but many pundits view him as too conservative and cautious — and too pro-business — to help Clinton galvanize both Latino voters and Bernie Sanders’ supporters in the contest with Donald Trump. With his announcement this week, Castro can claim to be on the side of homeowners and communities against Wall Street speculators.
HUD’s DASP program, started by the Obama administration in 2012, became a part of the larger problem by auctioning off its distressed mortgages to the highest bidder, which allowed Wall Street firms to take ownership and accelerate foreclosures.
“This whole process shows just how tilted the playing field is for the big banks and hedge funds,” said Warren, who has been the Senate’s most vocal critic of Wall Street abuses, last year. “Many of these banks and funds were responsible for fueling the housing bubble in the first place — leading to the crash that hit these families like a punch to the gut. Now these same banks and funds are turning around and scooping up these loans at bargain-basement rates so they can profit from them a second time.”
The new HUD policy changes to fundamentally reform the program, resulting in more mortgage pools being sold to non-profits, more foreclosures avoided, and more vacant property turned into affordable housing. The changes include:
Help existing homeowners facing foreclosure remain in their homes by modifying their mortgages to reflect current market values — a strategy called “principal reduction.” Until now, both HUD and Fannie Mae, under pressure from the banking industry, had resisted this approach. Now, even private equity firms and hedge funds will have to use that strategy in reworking troubled mortgages.
Increasing the sale of HUD’s distressed mortgages to non-profit organizations
A commitment to work with local governments and non-profits to target sales to those who will help homeowners keep their houses and expand the supply of affordable housing.
Far greater provisions for transparency in the sale process
“These recent HUD changes move in the direction of common sense policy,” said Maurice Weeks of the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the groups that coordinated the nationwide grassroots campaign. “We shouldn’t be handing over our neighborhoods at bargain basement prices to Wall Street.”
“HUD’s bulk mortgage sale program has been fueling the speculator buy-up of our neighborhoods,” observed San Francisco Supervisor John Avalas, one of many local elected officials who supported the campaign. “Finally, HUD is making changes to this mortgage sales program that better prioritize what our communities need — saving more homes from foreclosure and creating more affordable housing. It’s about time!”
Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the Center for American Progress and coauthor of a new report on the problem, told the New York Times that the policy changes “significant improvements” in the loan sale program.
“The policies announced today are a promising step toward more responsible loan auctions,” she said.
Millions of homeowners are still delinquent on the mortgage payments, many through no fault of their own, but because of predatory and reckless lending practices as well as the sluggish recovery of the economy in terms of restoring the incomes of working families. As a result, federal officials and community activists expect there to be many more sales of troubled mortgages that were guaranteed by the federal government.
The policy changes are a culmination of several years of research and activism by grassroots groups on the front lines of the nation’s housing and banking crisis.
Several years ago, different community groups began noticing the growing presence of Wall Street speculators in their neighborhoods, one of the aftershocks of the epidemic of foreclosures. Several local groups examined records, interviewed tenants, and issued reports documenting that in areas where Wall Street investors own a significant number of these single-family homes — including Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Charlotte, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, and Los Angeles and nearby Riverside — their practices have harmed tenants and undermined long-term neighborhood stability.
The activists discovered that HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac — which own or guarantee the distressed mortgages on many single-family homes — were part of the problem. Over the past few years, they’ve auctioned off about 150,000 non-performing loans that they want to get off their books. Of these loans, fewer than two percent have gone to nonprofit buyers. The rest (98 percent) have gone to Wall Street companies. As of last fall, five Wall Street firms — Lone Star, Blackstone Group, Angelo, Gordon & Co., Selene Residential Partners, and the Royal Bank of Scotland — accounted for 64 percent of all the public loan sales. Last year, Goldman Sachs popped up on the purchaser list for the first time, buying loans from Freddie Mac.
The community organizers and their researchers also exposed a double standard. Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been unwilling to offer principal reduction to struggling homeowners, and HUD has been unwilling to require principal reduction as part of its program, these agencies often offer steep discounts when they sell these mortgages to Wall Street speculators, who typically foreclose on the homeowners, adding to their inventory of homes scooped up in private foreclosure sales. In unloading these mortgages, the federal agencies often ignored the housing needs of local communities.
The grassroots groups enlisted the help of two national umbrella organizations — the Center for Popular Democracy (a network of community organizing groups) and Local Progress (a network of progressive local elected officials) — as well as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who championed the cause in Congress. These used a variety of tactics — protest actions, internet petitions, and muckraking research — to generate media attention and put pressure on the Obama administration.
These groups — many of which had been working on banking issues for over a decade — launched their national campaign in September 2014. They were relentless in pressuring HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prioritize non-profits over speculators in their sales of troubled mortgages. In particular, they demanded that these agencies prioritize sales to non-profit Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) that have the capacity to purchase large inventories of underwater mortgages and distressed properties — including vacant houses that owners lost through foreclosure and occupied homes where underwater borrowers are on the brink of foreclosure — and stabilize them as affordable housing. The CDFIs were being crowded out by hedge funds working hand in hand with HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
At the start of the campaign, the activists released a report, Vulture Capital Hits Home: How HUD is Helping Wall Street and Hurting Our Communities, that explained why HUD’s policy of favoring Wall Street investors was exacerbating the nation’s housing crisis.
A week before Christmas in 2014, at rallies outside local HUD offices, community groups in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston presented HUD with their “Grinch of the Year” award for refusing to fix the DASP program.
“By auctioning pools of delinquent loans to the highest bidders — vulture capitalists — HUD is driving unnecessary foreclosures and contributing to the rise of ‘Wall Street Landlords,’” said Gisele Mata, an organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a statewide organizing group that played a key role in the national campaign, at the press conference.
In June 2015, the campaign released another report, Do Hedge Funds Make Good Neighbors? How Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD are Selling Off Our Neighborhoods to Wall Street, at a protest rally in front of the Santa Monica office of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant (with over $300 billion in assets under management), which had become the largest landlord of single-family rentals in the country by gobbling up distressed mortgages - including many sold by HUD — at bargain-basement prices. Since 2012, the report found, federal agencies had sold over 120,000 delinquent mortgages to Wall Street hedge funds and private equities firms. Bayview Acquisitions, largely owned by Blackstone, has bought 24,000 of these mortgages. The report unearthed an array of disturbing business practices, including failure to make repairs and the harassment and illegal eviction of occupants. An investigation by the New York Times published last week confirmed earlier findings of abusive practices. The Times revealed, for example, that Lone Star had pushed thousands of borrowers into foreclosure and failed to negotiate with homeowners to modify their mortgages so they could remain in their homes.
Through Local Progress and 17 progressive mayors from across the county,, the campaign persuaded the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pass resolution asking HUD to change its policy.
Last September, community activists and local elected officials from around the country converged in Washington, D.C. to bring the cause directly to federal officials. After a rally at which Senator Warren and Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass) demanded that HUD curb its mortgage sales to Wall Street investors, the activists met with senior officials at HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A few weeks later, the New York Times published an editorial, “Foreclosure Abuses, Revisited,” calling on HUD to suspend its sales of distressed mortgages until federal agencies adopt significant reforms.
By March of this year, the campaign had built enough momentum to get 45 members of Congress to send a letter to HUD and FHFA in support of the campaign’s demands.
In April, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) wrote to Castro - by then on many lists of potential vice presidential candidates - criticizing HUD for worsening the housing crisis with its favorable treatment of Wall Street investors and urging him to “end to the days of casino-level gambling with other peoples’ livelihoods.” That same month, the campaign sent Castro a petition with over 100,000 signatures, demanding that he change HUD’s policies on disposing troubled mortgages.
Along with the changing political climate and Castro’s ambitions, the community organizing groups’ persistence paid off.
With more homes in the hands of non-profits instead of Wall Street speculators, communities will gain further control over their neighborhoods and be less at the mercy of Wall Street. Community groups now plan to work city by city, and state by state, to make sure that HUD sells delinquent mortgage pools to mission-driven purchasers, and to continue the fight for housing justice and community control to strengthen and protect neighborhoods across the country.
By PETER DREIER
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Shutting Down the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Working at The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Kate has partnered with youth-led organizations on various policy...
Working at The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Kate has partnered with youth-led organizations on various policy initiatives and community organizing campaigns, and has represented young people facing school suspensions. At Proskauer, she has conducted trainings and served as a mentor and supervisor, enabling our lawyers to make a real difference in school suspension hearings. Even when a suspension cannot be avoided, an attorney may be able to help reduce its duration or secure other benefits, such as help for a learning disability, or a transfer to a school that is better-suited to the student.
Read the full article here.
Congress to Consider Bill to Help Part-Timers
New York Post - July 22, 2014, by James Covert - Part-timers with increasingly unpredictable work schedules are taking...
New York Post - July 22, 2014, by James Covert - Part-timers with increasingly unpredictable work schedules are taking their beef to Washington.
A congressional bill is slated for introduction Tuesday that would give workers more control over their hourly schedules at big retailers like Walmart, Home Depot and JCPenney.
Led by Walmart, major chains increasingly are switching around workers’ shifts on short notice, making it difficult and often impossible for part-timers to work second jobs.
The practice — common in retail, restaurant, janitorial and housekeeping jobs — has hit working mothers especially hard, according to critics.
Unpredictable work hours make it difficult to schedule everything from babysitters to doctor’s appointments.
“I think it’s gotten to a crisis point,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative, a new campaign by the Center for Popular Democracy, adding workers need “some amount of predictability and stability in our work hours so we can live and manage our lives.”
The bill, sponsored by US Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), would require employers to give an extra hour of pay to workers summoned less than 24 hours in advance.
The bill would also guarantee a minimum of four hours’ pay if an employee is sent home early — a frequent occurrence at restaurants.
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Issue committees pump $86M into Colorado election
For some corporations and advocacy groups, Colorado's jam-packed ballot has meant opportunity. And they don't just care...
For some corporations and advocacy groups, Colorado's jam-packed ballot has meant opportunity.
And they don't just care about political candidates. In fact, issue committees — which stand on the front line of fights over proposed amendments and propositions — have raised more than 10 times the amount of money of Colorado Democrats and Republicans seeking state or local office. These committees have drawn in more than $86 million, a staggering difference when compared to the approximately $7.3 million raised by state and local Democrats and Republicans.
These statewide issue fights — this year races concerning ColoradoCare, the minimum wage and a so-called "right to die" proposition have dominated much of the conversation — can give out-of-state groups a chance to get more bang for their buck and jump into statewide elections, which might affect their bottom line more than federal races, Colorado State University political science professor Bob Duffy said. States like Colorado are less expensive to campaign in than, say, California, which makes it appealing for groups looking to affect legislation without breaking the bank, he said.
ELECTION: Haven't voted yet? Here's what to know
"Typically those elections are cheaper and also low-information elections," he said, pointing out that sometimes people have less information about statewide ballot measures than more high-profile races. "So a little money can go a long way. A big fish can have a much bigger impact in a small pond than they can in a big pond."
In the fight over Amendment 72, for example, the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris has bankrolled No Blank Checks in the Constitution, a group fighting against the proposed hike in cigarette taxes. Philip Morris is one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, and is known for products including Marlboro cigarettes. It has so far spent more than $16 million on the campaign. That alone is more than Democrats and Republicans running for state and local offices have raised.
"Obviously cigarette sale declines puts a real crimp in their bottom line, and they have an opportunity (to fight it), and it's probably cheaper to do it here than in California, for example," Duffy said.
Oftentimes out-of-state groups will use statewide races as a test case to see how effectively they can influence it — and again, it makes most sense to do that in a less-expensive race than in a large state with lots of media markets — and sometimes it's meant as a warning shot to groups who might be considering similar legislation in other states, Duffy said.
Opponents of the "right to die" proposition have gotten much of their funding from Catholic groups. The Archdiocese of Denver, for example, has contributed more than $100,000 to the campaign fighting Proposition 106, which would allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients who met certain criteria so they could end their own lives.
Colorado Families for a Fair Minimum Wage, a group advocating for Amendment 70, which would raise the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, has raised almost $5 million, including more than $1 million from the Center for Popular Democracy Action, a New York-based advocacy group which focuses on several social justice issues. Keep Colorado Working, a group opposing the hike, has raised about $1.7 million, and has also received out-of-state support, including $50,000 from Florida-based Darden, the company that owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, among other brands.
"Especially after 2010, some federal election rulings unleashed some money," Duffy said, referencing a few court decisions on campaign finance, included Citizens United. "The floodgate really opened up."
By Alicia Stice
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Americans Don’t Miss Manufacturing — They Miss Unions
Filed under In Real Terms This is In Real Terms, a column analyzing the week in economic news. Comments?...
Filed under In Real Terms
This is In Real Terms, a column analyzing the week in economic news. Comments? Criticisms? Ideas for future columns? Email me or drop a note in the comments.
U.S. manufacturing jobs, I argued a few weeks ago, are never coming back. But that doesn’t stop politicians from talking about them. Donald Trump scored his knockout blow in Indiana in part by railing against the decision by Carrier, a local air-conditioning manufacturer, to shift production to Mexico. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have sparred throughout their race over who would best protect manufacturing jobs. And the man they are all trying to replace, President Obama, pledged during his reelection campaign to create a million manufacturing jobs during his second term; he’s still about 700,000 jobs short of that goal.
Candidates talk about manufacturing because of what it represents in the popular imagination: a source of stable, well-paying jobs, especially for people without a college degree. But that image is rooted more in nostalgia than in reality. Manufacturing no longer plays its former role in the economy, and not only because there are far fewer factory jobs than in the past. The jobs being created today often pay less than those of the past — sometimes far less.
A new report this week from the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, found that a third of production workers — non-managers working on factory floors and in related occupations — earn so little that their families receive some form of public assistance such as food stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit. Many of those workers are temps, who account for a growing share of factory employment. The median wage for a manufacturing production worker, according to separate data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was $16.14 an hour in 2015, below the $17.40 an hour for all workers.
On average, manufacturing jobs still pay better than most jobs available to people without a college degree. The median manufacturing worker without a bachelor’s degree earned $15 an hour in 2015, a dollar more than similarly educated workers in other industries.1 But those averages obscure a great deal of variation beneath the surface. Average manufacturing wages are inflated by high-earning veterans; newly created jobs tend to pay less. And there are substantial regional variations. The average manufacturing production worker in Michigan earns $20.80 an hour, vs.$18.86 in South Carolina, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Why do factory workers make more in Michigan? In a word: unions. The Midwest was, at least until recently, a bastion of union strength. Southern states, by contrast, are mostly “right-to-work” states where unions never gained a strong foothold. Private-sector unions have been shrinking across the country for decades, but they are stronger in the Midwest than in most other parts of the country. In Michigan, 23 percent of manufacturing production workers were union members in 2015; in South Carolina, less than 2 percent were.2
Unions also help explain why the middle class is healthier in the Midwest than in the Southeast, where manufacturing jobs have been growing rapidly in recent decades. A new analysis from the Pew Research Center this week explored the state of the middle class in different parts of the country by looking at the share of households making between two-thirds and double the national median income, after controlling for the local cost of living. In many Midwestern cities, 60 percent or more of households are considered “middle-income” by this definition; in some Southern cities, even those with large manufacturing bases, middle-income households are now in the minority.
Even in the Midwest, however, unions are weakening and the middle class is shrinking. In the Indianapolis metro area, where the Carrier plant Trump talks about is located, the share of households in the middle tier of earners has shrunk to 54.8 percent in 2014 from 58.9 percent in 2000. And unlike in some parts of the country, the decline in the middle class there has been primarily driven by people falling into the lower tier of earners, not moving up. The Carrier plant, where workers make more than $20 an hour, is unionized.
Cause and effect here is complicated. Unions have been weakened by some of the same forces that are driving down wages overall, such as globalization and automation. And while unions benefit their members, economists disagree over whether they are good for the economy as a whole. Liberal economists note that overall wages tend to be higher in union-friendly states; conservative economists counter that unemployment tends to be higher in those states, too.
But this much is clear: For all of the glow that surrounds manufacturing jobs in political rhetoric, there is nothing inherently special about them. Some pay well; others don’t. They are not immune from the forces that have led to slow wage growth in other sectors of the economy. When politicians pledge to protect manufacturing jobs, they really mean a certain kind of job: well-paid, long-lasting, with opportunities for advancement. Those aren’t qualities associated with working on a factory floor; they’re qualities associated with being a member of a union.
#FedSoWhite
When the Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open Market Committee meets next month to decide whether to raise interest rates, every one of the 10 voting members will be white. Eleven of the 12 regional Fed bank presidents, who rotate voting responsibility, are white, and not one is black or Latino. (Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is Indian-American.) The Fed does a bit better when it comes to gender balance — Chair Janet Yellen is a woman, as are three other voting FOMC members. But overall, the people making U.S. monetary policy are disproportionately white men.
Does that matter? More than 100 members of Congress think so. In a letter to Yellen on Thursday, 11 senators and 116 members of the House of Representatives — all of them Democrats — wrote that they are “deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve has not yet fulfilled its statutory and moral obligation to ensure that its leadership reflects the composition of our diverse nation.” The letter is only the latest effort to draw more attention to the Fed’s lack of diversity: A report earlier this year from the liberal Center for Popular Democracy highlighted the issue, and several members of Congress also asked Yellen about it when she testified on Capitol Hill in February. (Bernie Sanders signed the letter. Hillary Clinton, who wasn’t eligible to sign since she isn’t in Congress, said she agreed with the message.)
It isn’t clear whether policy would be any different if the Fed were more diverse. But the letter writers and their allies argue that at the very least the Fed’s lack of representation could be skewing the way policymakers view the economy. By law, the Fed must balance two competing goals: maintaining stable prices (which the Fed defines as inflation of about 2 percent per year) and promoting full employment. In recent months, Yellen and her colleagues have begun the process of raising interest rates — concluding, in effect, that with the unemployment rate down to 5 percent, the “full employment” part of their mandate is largely complete. But the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 8.8 percent in April, as high as the white unemployment rate was in the middle of the recession. For them, “full employment” remains a long way off.
The long road back
Last week I noted that Americans who graduated from college during the recession are still struggling to make up for the slow start to their careers. The Wall Street Journal this week told the even more harrowing tale of people who lost jobs during the recession, many of whom still bear deep financial and psychological scars.
That isn’t surprising. Losing a job is a significant setback in any context, but it is far worse when a bad economy makes it hard to get back to work quickly. People who are laid off in a recession are far more likely to become unemployed for more than six months, which can then make it harder to find a job even once the economy improves. One estimate cited by the Journal found that people who lose jobs during a recession continue to make 15 to 20 percent less than their peers who kept their jobs, even a decade or more after the recession ended. And that is just in the typical recession; the most recent downturn was far worse.
Number of the week
Just under 8 million Americans were looking for work in March, and employers had 5.8 million jobs available to be filled. Economists look at the ratio of those numbers as a gauge of the health of the labor market, and by that measure, the economy is looking good: There were 1.4 unemployed workers for every open position in March, the fewest since 2001.
Don’t take the workers-per-job ratio too literally, though. The official definition of “unemployment” leaves out plenty of people who want jobs, and the government count of job openings is also incomplete, counting only positions for which companies are actively recruiting. But alternative measures of both unemployment and openings show the same trend: There are more jobs and fewer workers to fill them. That’s good news for workers who want jobs, and also for those who already have them — at some point, companies that want to attract workers will have to start offering higher pay.
Elsewhere
Americans are having fewer babies. Janet Adamy looks at the causes and consequences of the U.S. “baby lull.”
Eduardo Porter argues the government should do more to create good jobs for those displaced by the transition toward a service-based economy.
Timothy O’Brien, who saw Donald Trump’s tax returns as part of a lawsuit a decade ago, provides some hints as to what voters might learn if Trump ever releases the documents publicly.
Lam Thuy Vo and Josh Zumbrun dive into the data on the jobs created since the start of the recession.
In much of the country, poor people don’t have access to broadband internet, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation.
By Ben Casselman
Source
Trabajadores demandan freno a la ‘epidemia’ de robo de salarios en NYC
Trabajadores demandan freno a la ‘epidemia’ de robo de salarios en NYC
Source:...
Source: El Diario
Freno a la epidemia de robo de salarios fue la consigna que gritaron sin cesar unas 30 empleadas domésticas y jornaleros frente a la Corte de Brooklyn. La acción, liderada por el Proyecto de Justicia Laboral (WJP), sirvió para exponer a un contratista inescrupuloso como parte de “una maquinaria que exprime a las familias trabajadoras”.
Los defensores denunciaron que la creación de’ empresas fantasma’ es una estrategia que los empleadores para esquivar a las autoridades y seguir en el negocio pese a tener casos abiertos en las cortes de la ciudad.
Samuel Just, propietario de Just Cleaning, fue arrestado el verano pasado por la Fiscalía de Brooklyn luego de que el WJP documentara varios casos de robo de salario. Pese a la presión de las autoridades y de los grupos defensores de los jornaleros, el empresario se niega a pagar a las víctimas, la mayoría mujeres latinas.
“El robo de salario es un crimen. No hay otra manera de calificarlo”, sentenció Ligia Guallpa, directora ejecutiva del WJP.
Otras organizaciones se unieron a la protesta para denunciar que el robo de salario afecta radicalmente a las comunidades inmigrantes. Gonzalo Mercado, director ejecutivo de Staten Island Community Job Center, explicó que los contratistas están creando empresas fantasmas para evadir a las autoridades y las pesquisas de los activistas.
“Hemos visto a empleadores circulando por las paradas de jornaleros con camionetas sin logotipos. Su estrategia es evitar ser identificados”, sentenció. “Muchos trabajadores no saben quién los contrata, lo que hace más difícil la recuperación de los salarios”.
El mexicano Oscar Lezama (36) contó que una compañía de Staten Island, que se dedica a la instalación de cocinas, se negó a pagarle unos mil dólares por horas extra.
“No sabía para quién trabajaba. Nunca vi nombres o logotipos que identificaran a la compañía”, comentó.
La organización Staten Island Community Job Center ayudó a Lezama a recuperar su salario mediante negociaciones directas con el propietario, pero Mercado dijo que identificar a la compañía implicó una investigación exhaustiva.
“Las organizaciones, de alguna manera, estamos tomando el rol del Departamento de Trabajo para recuperar los salarios”, dijo Mercado. “Muchos contratistas prefieren la negociación directa y así evitar comparecer en una corte, lo que reduce el tiempo de recuperación de salario, algo que beneficia al trabajador”.
Los defensores están pidiendo mano dura para los contratistas que reinciden en el robo de salario. Parte de sus esfuerzos implica que la Ciudad revoque o niegue la renovación de las licencias.
“Los contratistas recurren a subcontratistas para contratar jornaleros y luego no pagarles”, dijo Guallpa. “En las cortes se defienden argumentando que nunca contrataron al trabajador”.
De acuerdo con la activista, Samuel Just estaría recurriendo a estas estrategias para evadir su responsabilidad. El empresario presuntamente recurre a subcontratistas y empresas fantasma para continuar en el negocio y esquivar a los fiscales, algo que WJP está documentando.
La protesta frente a la Corte de Brooklyn fue la quinta acción colectiva convocada por WJP para exponer al propietario de Just Cleaning, pero también para crear conciencia acerca de que el robo de salario es un problema, que se agudizó en los últimos años, según defensores.
“La falta de denuncia, el miedo de los trabajadores indocumentados y las leyes débiles están nutriendo el abuso de los empleadores”, se lamentó Omar Henríquez, organizador de la Red Nacional de Trabajadores por Día (NDLON). “El robo de salario implica la evasión de impuestos. Es perjudicial para nuestros gobiernos y comunidades”.
El Servicio de Impuestos Internos (IRS) estima que los empleadores clasifican erróneamente a millones de empleados cada año en el país, evitando en promedio cerca de $4.000 en impuestos federales por cada trabajador.
Las víctimas de Just declinaron hacer comentarios por recomendación de sus abogados, pero estuvieron en la protesta demandando justicia. Varias llamadas al empleador no fueron atendidas al cierre de esta edición.
Un estimado de 2.1 millones de neoyorquinos son víctimas de robo de salario al año, lo que representa una pérdida de $3.2 mil millones en pagos y beneficios, según el reporte “By a Thousand Cuts: The Complex Face of Wage Theft in New York” del Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA).
Según la Fiscalía de Brooklyn, Just recogía a los trabajadores en una van en la esquina de las avenidas Marcy y Division -en el barrio de Williamsburg-, y les ofrecía entre $10 y $15 la hora. El contratista hizo trabajar a los jornaleros hasta 27 horas seguidas durante la celebración de Pesaj o Pascua Judía, que implica una intensa limpieza de los hogares.
Al menos 11 trabajadores -la mayoría mujeres- habrían sido víctimas de Just, pero sólo cinco se atrevieron a denunciarlo, según los activistas.
“El castigo de empleadores como Just motivará la denuncia y enviará un mensaje claro a otros contratistas que violan las leyes. Sólo así frenaremos la epidemia de robo de salario en Nueva York”, dijo Guallpa.
Seattle Officials Repeal Tax That Upset Amazon
“From coast to coast, people lose their homes and get displaced from their communities even as the biggest corporations...
“From coast to coast, people lose their homes and get displaced from their communities even as the biggest corporations earn record profits and development booms,” said Sarah Johnson, director of Local Progress, a national association of progressive elected municipal officials. “Elected officials across the country are paying close attention to how Amazon and other corporations have responded to Seattle’s efforts to confront their affordable housing and homelessness crisis.”
Jackson Hole Summit To Provide Forum For Policymakers Amid Market Turmoil
Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal...
Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal group that has been cajoling the Fed to hold off on raising interest rates. Some researchers, for example, argue that “core inflation” – which strips out food and energy prices and is often used by bankers as their preferred gauge – may be less relevant in a world where futures contracts, global shipping and worldwide trade help even out retail level price swings for some of those goods.
Some analysts have also said that globalization has been a factor in holding down U.S. wages and prices even at times of solid growth.
When the Fed met in June, US oil prices had recovered to over $60 a barrel, and there had been a belief that we’d seen the lows.
Inflation has been a concern for the Fed, as it has been running well below its 2 percent goal and some signs have indicated that it may fall further. London Business School professor Lucrezia Reichlin is the discussant. Yet the theory is still a useful framework to think about monetary policy. This year central bankers, finance ministers, academics and financial market participants will chewing over why inflation is so low, whether this is unsafe and what they can do about it. Investors have cut the probability of a move at that gathering to 28 percent Tuesday from 48 percent on August 18 based on trading in fed funds futures.
They confront a big disparity between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China.
China’s stock market is swooning and its economy slowing.
Goldman Sachs economists wrote Wednesday that they “expect liftoff in December, and see the recent market sell-off as another argument against a hike in September“.
U.S. counterparts will experience both advantages and disadvantages if their currencies behave according to textbooks and their currencies weaken against the dollar if the Fed raises rates.
Dudley said a final decision would reflect how the market acts over the next few weeks, as well as the end-of-montheconomic data.
The absence of Yellen and Draghi has lowered expectations for a major policy announcements at Jackson Hole.
The official roster of attendees at the invitation-only event included Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and Fed governors Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell, and presidents from eight of the 12 regional Fed banks. “So you look around the world and ask who can take up the slack, and really the answer is nobody”, said Kevin Logan, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities, in New York.
The opening session at 10 a.m. Eastern will examine a paper on “Inflation dynamics though firms’ pricing behavior” by Simon Gilchrist, a professor at Boston University and Egon Zakrajsek, an associate director for monetary affairs at the Fed Board of governors.
The vice chairman is considered extra inclined than Yellen to boost charges prior to later, so his statements might make clear how the talk contained in the central financial institution might transpire when officers meet September 16 and 17.
Source: Rapid News Network
Mayor Signals New Future with Paid Sick Days Move
Gotham Gazette - January 23, 2014, by Amy Carroll & Javier Valdés - Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker...
Gotham Gazette - January 23, 2014, by Amy Carroll & Javier Valdés - Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have announced an expansion of paid sick leave coverage for hundreds of thousands of additional workers.
Their decision is a concrete move to confront and alleviate inequality, and bodes well for all New Yorkers, especially low-income workers and their families who live paycheck to paycheck.
The new administration’s proposal will guarantee paid sick leave to manufacturing workers and those at businesses of five or more employees, as well as provide for more aggressive enforcement by city agencies. These are critical first steps that recognize the dignity of workers who drive our city’s economy.
Leonardo Fernando is one of those workers. A 47-year-old immigrant who’s lived in Queens for nine years, he works 12-hour shifts at a car wash, in the heat and in the cold, to support his four children. Previously without paid sick days, he’s gone to work with the flu because he couldn’t afford to risk losing his job or missing a day’s pay. He will now be protected.
Of course, there’s still more to do through the legislative process. We would like to see all workers in New York have the right to paid sick time, and for the administration to strengthen enforcement through increased fines and provide workers the right to go to court when their rights are violated. But this is a great start.
In expanding the earned sick days law, which was fought tooth and nail by the Bloomberg administration and its corporate allies, Mayor de Blasio is honoring a campaign promise and governing as a progressive. And Speaker Mark-Viverito has signaled a clear break from her predecessor, who delayed the enactment of this law for years.
The shift in public policy is a direct result of years of work by workers, progressive advocates, community organizers, labor unions, and the faith community, who banded together to identify and elect new leaders in response to a widening income gap and exclusionary policies that didn’t help middle and working class families.
New York City is now a place where no worker will lose a job for taking a sick day.
What’s next?
Imagine a New York that’s more affordable, more inclusive, more fair. Imagine a city where all children have access to pre-school, a city that eliminates discriminatory policing, a city that leverages wealth to fight inequality and keep families in their homes.
The possibilities are endless. It’s a new day in New York.
Amy Carroll is the Deputy Director of The Center for Popular Democracy. Javier Valdés is the Co-Executive Director of Make The Road New York.
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Detener los préstamos de día de pago es apenas el inicio
En los últimos años, se han incrementado las críticas contra los préstamos de día de pago por explotar a los...
En los últimos años, se han incrementado las críticas contra los préstamos de día de pago por explotar a los prestatarios de bajos ingresos y atraparlos en un ciclo de endeudamiento. El problema ha alcanzado tal magnitud, que este verano, la Oficina de Protección Financiera del Consumidor (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau o CFPB) propuso nuevas normas para acabar con las prácticas más abusivas en este sector.
Sin embargo, los prestamistas de día de pago no son los únicos que lucran con las dificultades de las comunidades de bajos ingresos al otorgarles préstamos engañosos que a menudo hacen que la gente termine con deudas abrumadoras. De hecho, esas prácticas orientadas a grupos de bajos ingresos se han vuelto comunes en muchos sectores económicos, desde préstamos hipotecarios hasta financiamiento para estudios universitarios.
Durante décadas, prácticas discriminatorias en ciertos vecindarios les negaron a las personas de color acceso a préstamos hipotecarios, cuentas de banco y otros servicios importantes. Hoy en día, se hace lo mismo con esquemas engañosos de préstamo que les niegan a mujeres negras y latinas la oportunidad de una vida mejor.
Un informe reciente subraya el impacto que dichas prácticas han tenido en las mujeres de color. Entre otros datos alarmantes, el informe indica que 6 de cada 10 clientes de préstamos de día de pago son mujeres, que la probabilidad de que las mujeres de raza negra reciban un préstamo con tasa no preferencial es 256% más alta que la de hombres blancos de las mismas características y que las mujeres de color terminan pagando deudas estudiantiles durante mucho más tiempo que los hombres. El estudio, encargado por la Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New Jersey Communities United e Isaiah, un grupo religioso en Minnesota, también prueba que las prácticas agresivas en préstamos, desde aquellos contra el cheque de pago hasta hipotecas con tasas altas, han aumentado considerablemente en años recientes. Muchos estudios han demostrado que se manipula a prestatarios con una buena historia crediticia, particularmente mujeres negras y latinas, para que saquen préstamos con intereses altos incluso cuando reúnen los requisitos para tasas más bajas.
Las mujeres de color son vulnerables a prestamistas de dudosa reputación debido a que el racismo y sexismo del sistema de por sí pone a muchas mujeres en una posición económica precaria. Cada vez más, se ha empujado a las mujeres a aceptar trabajos con poco control y paga. En la fuerza laboral con sueldos bajos predomina la mujer, y la brecha salarial entre los sexos afecta mucho más a las mujeres de color. En el año 2014, las mujeres de raza negra ganaban 63% de los ingresos de hombres blancos, y las latinas, 54%. Muchas mujeres de color, estancadas en empleos con poca paga, horarios imprevisibles y pocas oportunidades de superarse, se ven forzadas a sacar préstamos simplemente para subsistir o tratar de mejorar su desesperada situación.
Durante demasiado tiempo, se ha permitido que proliferen los préstamos usurarios y otras prácticas empresariales que les niegan oportunidades a comunidades y explotan a los más vulnerables en términos económicos. El mes pasado, la Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comenzó a tomar medidas contra los préstamos de día de pago o garantizados con títulos de propiedad de autos, pero es necesario hacer más. Las entidades normativas deben asegurarse de que todos los préstamos tomen en cuenta la capacidad del prestatario de pagar la deuda y de que los prestamistas no vayan en pos de los menos protegidos desproporcionadamente y traten de lucrar con ellos.
Las normas para préstamos de día de pago del mes pasado muestran claramente un ímpetu en combatir los préstamos cada vez más abusivos de los banqueros. Estas normas son un paso en la dirección correcta, pero no van suficientemente lejos. Estamos avanzando, pero queda mucho por hacer para asegurar que no se explote a las mujeres negras y latinas con esta versión de discriminación del siglo XXI.
Por Marbre Stahly-Butts
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