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MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Low inflation allows the Federal Reserve to keep U.S. interest rates lower for longer in order to boost the economy and jobs, a top Federal Reserve official said on Wednesday.

"If we can keep creating jobs while inflation is in check, let's do that," Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said at a meeting with community activists and members of the black community in Minneapolis who were airing their concerns about low pay and high unemployment. "We can do our best to make the job market as strong as possible."

By KRITOFFER TIGUE, ANN SAPHIR, & DIANE CRAFT

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Associated Press - August 22, 2014, by Matthew Brown — Shadowing central bankers and economists at the annual Federal Reserve conference here, a group of about 10 demonstrators pressed Fed Chair Janet Yellen not to yield to pressure to raise interest rates.

Carrying placards and green T-shirts embossed with the slogan "What recovery?" they said they'd come from New York, Missouri, Minnesota and elsewhere to draw attention to people left behind by the recovery and still unable to find work.

One demonstrator approached Yellen to press his point as she prepared to enter the opening reception Thursday night. With security guards hovering nearby, the two shook hands and spoke for about a minute before Yellen entered the closed-door gathering.

Yellen spokesman Doug Tillett said her staff would seek to arrange a meeting between the chair and the demonstrators back in Washington.

Their message was generally in sync with Yellen's stance since she became Fed chair in February to keep rates low to help support a still-subpar economy. In a speech to the conference Friday, Yellen noted that while the unemployment rate has steadily dropped, other gauges of the U.S. job market have been harder to evaluate and may reflect continued weakness.

The timing of a Fed rate increase remains unclear, though many economists foresee an increase by mid-2015.

The demonstrators, including several who said they were unemployed or had settled for low-wage jobs, said they'd traveled here to encourage Yellen not to give in to those who say rates must be increased to avoid causing high inflation or other financial instability.

The demonstrator who approached Yellen before the opening reception was Ady Barkan of a group called the Center for Popular Democracy in New York.

"She said she understood what we were saying and that they were doing everything they can," Barkan said Friday. "We'd like them to do more."

He argued that the Fed should lower its target for unemployment and factor in whether wages are rising consistently before making any move to raise rates.

Tillett, the Yellen spokesman, said, "We're certainly willing to meet with them and hear what they have to say."

Asked whether there were security concerns in having demonstrators approach Yellen and seek to buttonhole other conference attendees, Tillett said, "We appreciate their freedom of expression."

The demonstrators also met before the event with Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which sponsors the Jackson Hole event. Later, they managed to corner Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer during a break in the proceedings.

"We're not in recovery," Cee Cee Butler, a 34-year-old mother of two from Washington, D.C., told Fischer. "It may be fine on Wall Street, but on my streets, it's not fine at all...There's a lot of homeless people that live in my city, a lot of children that panhandle quarters."

Butler said she works a minimum wage job at McDonald's and receives food stamps but still can't make ends meet. She said the trip to Wyoming — her first time aboard an airplane, she said — was paid for by donations from advocacy groups.

Another demonstrator, 42-year-old Kendra Brooks, told Fischer that she holds a master's degree in business administration but has seen her income drop by more than half since losing her job as a program director at a nonprofit about a year and a half ago.

Two weeks ago, Brooks said, she began working for Action United in Philadelphia, a community advocacy group. But it's not comparable to her former job, she said, and "is like starting from scratch."

"They heard what we said, but the outcome of that, in terms of interest rates, is still pending," Brooks said of the group's interactions with Yellen, George and Fischer. "This has been what my recovery looks like, and it's a nightmare."

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Just four years ago, fast food workers in New York City walked off the job, launching the first strike to ever hit the industry and a movement that has had rapid success. Calling for a $15 minimum wage and the right to form a union, the Fight for 15 started staging strikes and protests in a growing number of cities — the last day of action reached 320 — that drew in workers beyond fast food, including adjunct professors, childcare providers, and retail workers.

That fight is by no means over, but it has led to surprising victories. Today, two states have passed increases to bring their minimum wages to $15 an hour, as have a number of major cities.

Now workers are pushing forward on a new demand: the right to consistent and predictable schedules.

In many ways, advocates see this as a natural extension of the Fight for 15. After all, higher hourly pay means little if you never know you’ll have enough hours to make ends meet or if a last-minute change disrupts your plans for childcare or transportation.

“Workers who have experienced their wage increase and then see their hours cut the next week more than anything know that their paycheck is their wages times hours,” pointed out Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.

Erratic and unpredictable scheduling has become a more and more common problem. “The erosion of unions, compounded by the accelerated pace of change and the nature of work, has only increased the need for updating our standards around hours,” she said.

At least 17 percent of all workers have irregular schedules, including changing or on-call shifts or working two shifts in one day. Over 40 percent of workers don’t find their schedules out until a week in advance, while 40 percent say their hours vary week to week. It’s especially prevalent in service sector jobs; huge numbers of retail workers in New York City and food service workers in Washington say they don’t get enough notice of their hours each week.

“The fight for just hours is definitely the next movement for people trying to achieve security for their families.”

“The fight for just hours is definitely the next movement for people trying to achieve security for their families,” Gleason added. “New energy has been generated with the Fight for 15, and as policymakers have raised the minimum wage and passed paid sick days across the country, they’re turning their attention to the crisis around hours finally.”

The movement has already notched victories. In 2014, San Francisco became the first city to pass legislation regulating schedules, enacting a law that requires retail chains to give employees two weeks notice of their schedules, pay them if shifts change at the last minute, give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before new hires are brought in, and to treat part-time workers similarly as full-time ones.

Then on Monday evening, the Seattle city council voted unanimously to pass a law that looks very similar. It will require large employers in retail and food service to give employees two weeks notice of schedules, extra pay for last-minute changes, and input into what their schedules will look like. It will also get rid of “clopenings,” or when employees work a closing shift one day only to come in early the next morning to open.

Seattle workers had already helped secure a $15 minimum wage increase in 2014. And it was after that victory that the conversation around scheduling began.

“It really became apparent during the 15 campaign that workers not only needed a higher minimum wage, but they needed more stable schedules,” said Sejal Parikh, executive director of Working Washington. After that campaign resulted in a victory, “workers started talking about what the next campaign would be: Making sure the minimum wage is enforced, and figuring out how to get to more secure schedules in the city.”

It’s “the natural other half of the 15 dollar campaign,” she added.

It’s “the natural other half of the 15 dollar campaign.”

That effort also coincided with one targeted at Starbucks. In the summer of 2014, shortly after a New York Times exposé on the company’s scheduling practices, Starbucks announced that it would make changes such as ending clopenings and posting schedules three weeks out.

But a year ago this month, Starbucks baristas in Seattle launched a campaign accusing the company of unevenly implementing these practices and still allowing workers’ schedules to be erratic.

Those two groups of workers got together and began talking to the city council late last year, and Parikh said they got a warm reception. The issue “really resonated with people,” she said. “Many of us have worked in retail or fast food or coffee and could recall times when we didn’t know what our schedule would be.” Workers were deeply involved in crafting the legislation, too: it was built around answers to surveys sent out to fast food employees and baristas asking them about their priorities.

It helped to be able to work with those in San Francisco who worked on the passage of the bill there and have been implementing it since. “Because San Francisco went first, we have a piece of policy where we’ve learned a lot of lessons,” she said.

“It’s really catching on,” she added. “I think it’s going to be one of the next pieces of labor policy across the country.”

It’s already reached the other coast. Seattle’s victory came just a week after New York City said it would start working on being the next. Last Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced that he, along with legislators and advocates, would begin crafting legislation aimed at improving scheduling for fast food workers. While the details will be hashed out in the months to come, he focused on two weeks advance notice, compensation for last-minute changes, and cracking down on clopenings.

“It’s really catching on.”

“It’s time for us to use the power of city government to make sure that people are treated decently,” he said at the press conference announcing the new effort.

New York City, home to the first fast food strike, now has a $15 minimum wage thanks to the state increase. “If [workers are] making 15 an hour, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t know when they’re actually making that money,” said Freddi Goldstein, deputy press secretary for the mayor. Scheduling “just felt like a natural next step.”

And as Seattle looked to San Francisco for guidance, New York will work with people in those two cities to see what worked and what didn’t.

The city is only looking at the fast food industry so far because, Goldstein said, it’s a workforce that is rarely unionized and “highly abused.” But it’s possible the focus could expand beyond that industry in the future, and as the effort to craft the legislation unfolds new planks could also be added. “I wouldn’t say we haven’t decided to do or not do anything at this point,” she said.

The scheduling movement hasn’t met with a totally unbroken string of successes: On Tuesday the D.C. city council voted to table a bill that would have addressed scheduling, killing it for the current session. Councilmember Elissa Silverman vowed to introduce a new version of the bill in the next one.

But the idea is starting to spread. It’s cropped up in Minneapolis, MN and Emeryville, CA. A scheduling bill has also been introduced in Congress, although it hasn’t advanced. “We’re already seeing policymakers step up across the country,” the Center for Popular Democracy’s Gleason said.

“The movement for the Fair Labor Standards Act was about wages and the 40-hour workweek,” she added. “It’s only natural that we’re seeing the demand for just wages and hours back again.”

By Bryce Covert

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New York City Council Member Carlos Menchaca loves to grow spices and chilies to add to his home cooked meals — but when it comes to choosing his favorite Mexican food spot in Sunset Park, he doesn’t play favorites.

“That’s a hard one,” Menchaca chuckled. “I always order tacos al pastor with a side of Mexican rice and beans,” he said of his traditional go-to dish. It binds him to his Mexican roots and the vibrant immigrant community that has adopted him as their hometown hero.

“What I love about Sunset Park is that anywhere you go, Bush Terminal Park, the senior center, down 5th Avenue, or even 8th Avenue, you feel at home,” Menchaca, who also represents Red Hook, parts of Bensonhurst and Borough Park, told the Sunset Park Voice. “It’s a neighborhood of families.”

A large majority of those Sunset Park families hail from the neighborhood’s Mexican and Asian immigrant communities — the two largest ethnic groups in New York City, after Dominicans, according to Census data — which stood firmly behind Menchaca during his 2013 run for District 38 council member.

Menchaca made history as the first Mexican-American Democrat elected to serve in the New York City Council. His victory over an incumbent councilwoman signified the rise of Mexican Americans in the political landscape, putting the young trailblazer on the map.

“We grew as a family. They took care of me and I took care of them,” Menchaca said of his constituents.

The 35-year-old Manchaca already knew he wanted to go into politics while growing up in the border town of El Paso, Texas, described himself as a “feisty kid, wanting to know everything” to advocate for his family.

He witnessed his single mother, Magdalena, struggle to raise seven children on her own.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Menchaca said of the hardships the family faced. “We interacted with government all the time, and it made me passionate about understanding how the system could be better.”

The first in his family to graduate from college, Menchaca holds a degree from the University of San Francisco in performing arts and social justice. His experience in political activism led him to New York to join the Coro Fellows Program – where he learned the value of community-government relations.

Since then, he’s made it his mission to bridge communities and as a council member he introduced participatory budgeting in Sunset Park – a democratic process that allows residents to decide how to spend a public budget and where taxpayers dollars go to fund their neighborhoods.

Menchaca’s success at empowering disenfranchised communities through the initiative has garnered write-ups in The New York Times, DNAInfo, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In his first year of PB, two-thirds of the ballots in his district were cast in Spanish and Chinese.

“Whether you live or work here, your voice matters, and what we’ve been able to do through participatory budgeting is bring opportunities to invite everyone to the table no matter their age, sexual orientation, or immigration status,” Menchaca said.

As Chair of the Committee on Immigration and member of the LGBT Caucus, Menchaca sponsored the 2015 launch of IDNYC, a municipal identification card offered to New Yorkers and undocumented immigrants. It gave them an opportunity to have legal identification without fears of deportation, open a bank account, access to public places, among other benefits.

But Menchaca was just getting started.

His next mission: Invest in adult education to help immigrant New Yorkers learn English. Menchaca says he receives daily letters at his legislative office from non-English speaking parents requesting for classes to help them communicate with their children’s teachers.

That’s why he’s advocating for $16 million and calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to fund the Adult Literacy Initiative they way he did with universal pre-kindergarten. A recent report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York suggests that these classes could raise immigrants’ wages and reduce income inequality in impoverished communities.

“This is where it gets serious,” Menchaca said. “We think about gentrification and all the things that make us so afraid, because we don’t know what it is. But one thing that’s clear is how we can affect family’s lives through education.”

As our conversation steered towards immigration reform and the importance of ethnic and community media, Menchaca’s calm demeanor turned sympathetic. The 102-year-old El Diario/La Presna, the nation’s oldest Spanish language newspaper, laid off nearly half of its staff due to budget cuts, which shocked its readers, including Menchaca.

“The second I heard those real issues of El Diario, I called for a public hearing,” he said. He calls ethnic and community media a lifeline to many people in the city because it connects them to job postings, news, and immigration issues vital to families.

An hour before the hearing, Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced, via press release, an expansion of the administrations outreach to community and ethnic media companies across the city. In addition, the city created an online directory of 200 media ethnic media outlets, that will be available to city agencies and the city vowed to place more advertising in the ethnic papers.

Aside from the legal and education proposals, gentrification is another issue Menchaca’s community knows all too well. People have seen the factory district west of the Gowanus Expressway redeveloped as Industry City, a home for trendy shops, hip cafes, and markets like the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg aimed at food fanatics.

In February, when the mayor proposed the BQX Connector, a streetcar line that would link Sunset Park to Astoria, Queens, some residents feared this new development would accelerate gentrification in their waterfront neighborhood, but the councilman says it can also ease transportation woes in his district.

“We are in desperate need of transportation options and I think the BQX serves as one idea we need to explore,” Menchaca said. “We want to increase the ability for people to travel outside the neighborhood for jobs.”

People have been vocal on fixing the R trains, the extension of bus lines, potentially bringing Citi bike and the ferry into their communities. For now, Menchaca sees the BXQ as an economic development to help community members, but it will only happen if people work together, he noted.

Menchaca confirmed that he plans to embark on a City Council re-election campaign in 2017.

What will his campaign be about? Preserving manufacturing jobs in Sunset Park, protecting immigrants through legal services, and shaping how the police force works with the community, he said.

“No matter the immigration status, you help everybody, and when you do that, you get these beautiful communities that are so diverse,” said Menchaca.

Clarification [June 2, 10am]: An earlier version of the headline misleadingly referred to the councilman as Sunset Park’s hometown hero, although he was not born in New York. We’ve adjusted the headline accordingly.

BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE

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