CPD IN THE NEWS

CBS Minnesota - March 4, 2015 - A report to be released on Thursday aims to highlight employment disparities in the Twin Cities.

The groups Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Economic Policy Institute say they plan to hold a rally at the Neighborhoods Organizing for Change offices on Thursday afternoon to draw attention to the racial differences between wages and jobs available here.

The groups say that, though the economy is adding jobs, the unemployment rate among black residents in the Twin Cities metro area is nearly four times that of white residents.

The groups said that the racial disparities on display in Minnesota are “among the worst in the nation.”

The rally is scheduled for 3 p.m.

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“The vast majority of funding for Hoosier Action and its initiatives comes from its dues-paying membership,” Greene said. “Although we are a local partner of the Center for Popular Democracy, a national network that offers support.”

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Dec. 1 — More than a dozen states and cities in the past year considered legislation to require retail stores and restaurants to provide extra pay to employees for last-minute work schedule changes. Thus far only a handful of cities have enacted such measures into law.

These predictive or predictable scheduling proposals, also called fair workweek measures, were “very popular” in 2016, John S. Hong, an employment law attorney with Littler Mendelson in San Francisco, recently told Bloomberg BNA.

“But they died on the vine in a lot of states,” Hong said.

In addition to providing “predictability” pay, these measures would require employers to notify workers about their schedules a certain number of weeks in advance under predictive scheduling proposals. They also include “access to hours” provisions that require employers to offer newly available hours to part-time staff before hiring new workers or using contractors or staffing agencies.

Worker advocacy groups praise these measures as providing secure, clear and stable scheduling for workers. But employers counter that these requirements remove the flexibility needed for retailers and restaurants to operate their businesses effectively.

Predictive Scheduling Is ‘The Next Fight.’

Predictive scheduling bills this year were withdrawn or never went to a vote in California, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New York and Rhode Island.

Similar bills or provisions died in Connecticut, Illinois, Maine and Oregon in 2015.

Washington, D.C., also tabled a predictive scheduling proposal this year, while a court rejected a ballot initiative on the issue in Cleveland, Hong said.

Still, employee advocates said the number of jurisdictions that have considered scheduling laws is encouraging.

Introduction of the bills initiates public conversations among workers, employers and policy makers about the issue, they said.

“They begin the legislative process, which can take multiple years,” Elianne Farhat, deputy campaign director of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative.

Predictive scheduling is “the next fight,” following the success of the “Fight for $15" minimum wage initiative, Farhat told Bloomberg BNA Nov. 30.

“The issue will continue to pick up steam and move forward,” she said.

Two Cities Join San Francisco

Two cities this year enacted predictive scheduling laws. Seattle and Emeryville, Calif., followed in the footsteps of San Francisco, which passed the nation’s first ever predictive scheduling law in late 2014

Rules implementing San Francisco’s ordinance went into effect in March 2016. They apply to businesses that have 20 or more employees in the city and at least 40 retail sales establishments worldwide.

Seattle and Emeryville’s laws take effect in 2017.

Seattle’s law applies to retail and quick or limited food-service establishments with more than 500 employees worldwide and full-service restaurants with more than 500 employees and 40 full-service locations worldwide.

Emeryville’s law applies to businesses with more than 55 employees worldwide.

New Hampshire, San Jose Also Pass Laws

On the predictive scheduling periphery are San Jose, Calif., and New Hampshire, which passed narrower laws in the past year.

San Jose voters approved a ballot initiative in November that focused only on access to hour protections for part-time employees, meaning they would be given extra hours prior to hiring others.

New Hampshire in June didn’t quite enact a predictive scheduling law. Instead, it required employers to consider employee requests for flexible working arrangements and prohibited employers from retaliating against workers who made those requests.

The New Hampshire law is “minimal, but still important,” Liz Ben-Ishai, senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C., told Bloomberg BNA.

Farhat added that Washington, D.C. passed a law guaranteeing a 30-hour minimum workweek for building service workers, although it tabled its broader predictive scheduling law.

Depending on the needs of a particular locality, some cities or states will pass broader scheduling laws, while others pass narrower provisions.

“They’re all part of updating our work hour standards,” Farhat said.

Looking Ahead to 2017

Predictive scheduling bills are pending in New Jersey and Massachusetts, Hong said. But the latter “may die for lack of action” before the end of the year.

A measure also is pending in Minnesota, according to CLASP data, but it may share the same fate as the Massachusetts bill.

Asked if the issue of predictive scheduling will continue to crop up in 2017, Hong said more cities and states may consider such measures. But “ultimately they may die on the vine,” he said.

Ben-Ishai provided a more optimistic outlook for predictive scheduling.

“I think it’s a promising area moving forward,” she said.

State and local lawmakers in Oregon could consider predictive scheduling measures next year, she said. In 2015, a state predictive scheduling bill died in committee, but legislators preempted scheduling ordinances at the local level only until 2017.

Portland, Ore., already has passed a resolution to study and eventually establish workweek principles for city contractors, Farhat said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio in September announced that the city is developing legislation that would require predictable work schedules for about 65,000 hourly fast-food employees in the city.

Predictive scheduling is expected to come back in Washington, D.C. next year “in a very serious way,” Farhat said. And California may onceagain consider a statewide measure, she added.

Don’t Forget About State Preemption Laws

Hong observed that several states have preemption laws that prevent cities, towns and counties from passing workplace laws that conflict with state or federal law.

About 22 states so far have expressly preempted localities from adopting such laws, like those that would raise minimum wages, provide leave benefits or expand workplace anti-discrimination protections. Most of these state have enacted the laws within the last five years., Lawmakers in about 11 other states have introduced similar bills so far in 2016.

At least five states—Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas and Michigan—have laws that could preempt local predictive scheduling laws, Hong said.

Preemption laws don’t necessarily indicate that legislatures are against fair scheduling, he said. “They don’t want local governments doing something potentially inconsistent with state law,” Hong said.

But Ben-Ishai contended that preemption laws can be a strategy taken by lawmakers who “are not friendly to workers’ rights.”

Federal Predictive Scheduling Law?

A federal predictive scheduling bill known as the Schedules That Work Act ( H.R. 3071, S. 1772) was introduced in both houses of Congress in July 2015.

The identical bills were sponsored by democrats and have remained stalled in committee. They are unlikely to be considered for a vote before the year ends.

Ben-Ishai said she expects the bills’ sponsors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), will reintroduce the legislation in the next Congress.

But given Republican control of both Congress and the White House, Ben-Ishai said, “I don’t think we’re super optimistic about it moving forward.”

Predictive scheduling will have a better chance at seeing “more movement” at the state and local levels, she said.

By: Jay-Anne B. Casuga

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New York Times - November 10, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - A coalition of community groups and labor unions wants the Federal Reserve to change the way some Fed officials are appointed, criticizing the existing process as secretive, undemocratic and dominated by banks and other large corporations.

In letters sent to Fed officials last week, the coalition called for the central bank to let the public participate in choosing new presidents for the regional reserve banks in Philadelphia and Dallas. The current heads of both banks plan to step down in the first half of 2015.

The Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, has agreed to meet on Friday with about three dozen representatives of the groups to hear their concerns.

“The Federal Reserve has huge influence over the number of people who have jobs, over our wages, over the number of hours that we get to work, and yet we don’t have discussion and engagement over what Fed policy should be,” said Ady Barkan, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group that is orchestrating the campaigns. “More people’s voices need to be heard.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Yellen confirmed the meeting but declined to comment on the issues raised by the groups.

The Philadelphia Fed said in an email that the institution “is conducting a broad search for its next president and will consider a diverse group of candidates from inside and outside the Federal Reserve System.”

James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed, said the bank’s board would meet on Thursday to discuss the search process.

The campaign is part of a broader increase in political pressure on the Fed, which is engaged in a long-running campaign to stimulate the economy that some liberals regard as insufficient and some conservatives see as both ineffective and dangerous. Mr. Barkan led a picket line in support of the Fed’s efforts in August outside the annual monetary policy conference at Jackson Hole, Wyo.

House Republicans, meanwhile, have passed legislation that seeks to reduce the Fed’s flexibility in responding to economic downturns, arguing that such efforts are destabilizing.

The Fed acts like a monolith, but it has a complicated skeleton. Most power rests with a board of governors in Washington, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But operations are conducted through 12 regional banks, each of which selects its own president. And those presidents rotate among themselves five of the 12 seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy.

The two presidents who have said they plan to step down are, by coincidence, among the most outspoken internal critics of the Fed’s campaign to stimulate the economy. Charles I. Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed since 2006, plans to retire at the end of March. Richard W. Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed since 2005, is required to step down by the end of April, though he has not set a date.

Their replacements will be selected by the board of each reserve bank. Each board has nine members, including three bankers, but under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, only the nonbank members can participate in the process. The banks in each reserve district, however, still elect three of those six nonbank members. The other three, including the chairman and vice chairman, are appointed by the Fed board in Washington.

By law, the boards are supposed to represent a diverse set of viewpoints, including “labor and consumers.” But the 72 nonbank board members are predominantly corporate executives. Just eight are leaders of community groups; two more are leaders of labor groups.

Corporate executives exclusively make up the boards of the St. Louis and Richmond regional banks. The Dallas Fed’s board includes the presidents of the Houston Endowment — a charitable organization — and the University of Houston. The Philadelphia Fed has five executives and the president of the University of Delaware.

“I look at that list and it doesn’t strike me that most of those folks are representing the public,” Kati Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families, a nonprofit advocacy group that is one of the signatories of the recent letter, said of the Philadelphia Fed’s board. “We believe it is important for the people who are making economic policy to hear from the regular folks on the ground who are being affected by those decisions.”

The two dozen signatories also include the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, New Jersey Communities United and W. Wilson Goode Jr., a Philadelphia city councilman. The letter asks for the Fed to disclose basic information about the selection process, including the timetable, criteria and, eventually, names of candidates. It also seeks search committee seats and opportunities to question the candidates publicly.

The selection process is secretive, but control has increasingly shifted from the regional banks to the board of governors. Beginning under the leadership of Alan Greenspan, a former Fed chairman, the central bank has sought presidents who can contribute to making monetary policy. The board provides informal guidance during the winnowing process, and candidates travel to Washington to meet with the governors.

As a result of that trend, 10 of the 12 sitting presidents are former Fed staffers, economists or both. Mr. Fisher, a former investor, is one exception. The other is Dennis P. Lockhart, a former banker who leads the Atlanta Fed — and is the next president who will reach retirement age.

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