CPD IN THE NEWS

The Sur Real Estate - February 14, 2013 - Yesterday, I attended an inspiring conference called “Workers Rising: a Symposium on Low-Wage Worker Organizing in NYC” put together by The Center for Popular Democracy and United NY. The conference’s energy was incredible- the main room was packed with folks standing in the back, crouching along the walls.  A wide range of people contributed working in sectors ranging from organizing, law, policy, city government, academics, and of course people working in low-wage jobs.

Here are some of the most important take-aways:

-A new labor movement has sprung up in the past year in which previously uncharted territories of the labor industry are being organized.  Industries such as fast food and retail, for example, are organizing workers who often work for minimum wage ($7.25 in NYC).  These workers are widely thought to be students looking for part time jobs, actors, or those looking to make an extra buck.  Contrary to this assumption, the majority of fast food workers and those in the retail industry are attempting to work in those industries full time, depending on that work to support themselves and their families.

-Successful attempts to organize car wash workers, taxi drivers, and domestic workers are taking place across New York City

-New York City is coordinating organizing its low-wage worker campaigns with other efforts across the country- mostly in LA and Chicago.  Organizers are sharing successful organizing strategies and change the face of the industry nation-wide. This collaboration across job sectors and cities clarifies that these efforts are part of a larger movement rather than isolated events.

-A great deal of organizing taking place in NYC is happening through “worker centers” and in collaboration with community groups rather than through unions.  Groups like Retail Action Project, New York Communities for Changeand OUR Walmart are organizing workers outside of the traditional union structures.

-Integrating labor and other issues (notably immigration reform) is crucial to create real change in labor.  Immigration reform will impact millions of low-wage workers across NYC, as well as the way the workplace functions.  Important to note as well is the growing shift from full-time workers to outsourcing and employing temps in all sorts of industries, including fast food. This, according to many of the panelists, will only increase as more immigrants gain rights as legal residents or citizens.  Immigration polices which promote guest-workers and outsourcing create challenges for organizing and regulation of rights in the workplace.

-The Center for Popular Democracy and United NY released a report entitiled “Workers Rising: Organizing Service Jobs for Shared Prosperity in New York City.” The report puts forth 4 sets of actions to improve the lives of low-wage workers in New York City. The actions are that:

The city should pass legislation that would ensure at least five days of paid sick leave (Earned Sick Leave Act) and protect workers from erratic scheduling (Predictable Scheduling Act)

NY should better regulate high-violation industries, and pass laws like the Car Wash Accountability Act and creating an “enhanced privileged permitting” system at airports

The City should create a “Mayor’s Office of Labor Standards” to educate employers, investigate worker complaints, and enforce worker rights

 NYC should modify its “home rule” authority in order to set a citywide minimum wage, which would be higher than the current state minimum wage.

As an organizer with UHAB, this conference helped me to connect tenant struggles with their apartments to their struggles in the workplace.  I work with one tenant leader, Ms. D., in Crown Heights who deals with horrible building conditions and a frustrating situation with an absentee landlord. In addition, she works as a home health aid, working hard for little pay.  Not only has Ms. D stepped up as a tenant leader in her building, but she has also begun attending union meetings and standing up for her rights in the workplace. It must be hard and frustrating  but Ms. D is working to create change in several aspects of her life, tackling huge issues through collective action.

Attending this conference reminded me that labor organizers need to work housing organizers who need to work with community organizers.  Everyone has the same goal: to give low-income New Yorkers a bigger voice in how they are treated, as well as to assert and expand their rights.  Keep up the good work!

Source

Jimmy Tobias at The Nation writes—These Cities Might Just Save the Country: Dispatches from the Urban Resistance, from Atlantic City to Miami Beach: On the second weekend of June, hundreds of activists, NGO workers, mayors, city councilmembers, academics and others from Spain and around the world flocked to Barcelona to discuss progressive resistance to the the rise of the right wing wherever it exists...

Read the full article here.

How does one get invited to attend one of the most exclusive palavers on the planet? Well, if it’s the annual Jackson Hole economic summit sponsored by the Federal Reserve System, it’s virtually a prerequisite that one belong to that elite fraternity of beings known as central bankers. Or a pointy-headed professor with a certified globalist bent. Or, it seems, a loudmouthed, obnoxious street radical with a Marxist-Leninist “social justice/economic democracy” bent.

So, if you’re a screaming activist with the Center for Popular Democracy, apparently, you have an open door, a welcoming hand, and a place at the table with the Jackson Hole uber-elite.“Federal Reserve officials sought to reassure a group of labor activists that the central bank isn’t going to cool down the economy just as a stronger labor market is reaching a broader swath of Americans,” reported  the Wall Street Journal on August 26.

Here is an excerpt from the Journal’s report:

“We’re going to run [the economy] hot, get the unemployment rate down lower,” San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said at an unprecedented meeting with activists from the Campaign [sic for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign.

The meeting of activists and high-ranking Fed officials took place shortly before the start of the Kansas City Fed’s high-profile policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Central bankers in attendance included Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s two top lieutenants, New York Fed President William Dudley and Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer....

The left-leaning activist group Fed Up publicly met with eight Federal Reserve presidents Thursday to discuss inequality and interest rates during the central bank's annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Serious, responsible critics of the Fed of  a conservative/libertarian bent would never receive similar cordial treatment, of course. That’s understandable, since they want to restrict the power of the Fed, or abolish it altogether. The left-wing activists, on the other hand, want to expand the power of the Fed, and to use those expanded powers to further socialize our economy and society. That is surprising to many people, but it shouldn’t be; it’s completely in line with Karl Marx’s handbook. The fourth plank in Marx’s 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto calls for “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Bingo: That’s the Federal Reserve.

So, what is the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and who is supporting it and its Fed Up Campaign? Not surprisingly, one of its major supporters is the Ford Foundation, which has been notorious for funding “progressive,” socialist, pro-communist, and outright communist organizations and individuals for more than seven decades. Also, among the CPD financial angels is the Open Philanthropy Project, which has generously funded CPD’s Fed Up Campaign, it boasts, to the tune of at least $2 million. And it has pledged millions more.

In our previous report on the Fed’s conference last weekend (Jackson Hole’s Gangsters and Banksters: What Are They Planning?) we utilized the Fed’s official list of conference attendees to underscore the fact that the Fed’s top echelon officials and advisers hail almost entirely from that elite cabal of globalist one-worlders, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Moreover, we pointed out, this confirmed a virtually non-stop control of the Fed by CFR members since the Fed’s inception, under the guidance of elite Wall Street banker Paul Warburg, who was also a founder of the CFR.

The same CFR hands are at work in the creation of the Astroturf Fed Up Campaign posing as a grassroots “opposition” force to the Fed. The Ford Foundation and many of the other tax-exempt foundations supporting this faux CPD effort are longtime funding arms for the globalist agenda. Ditto for many of the other controlled opposition groups that CPD/Fed Up list as their “Partners.” Here is a partial list of those CPD partners, most of which would scarcely exist, if not for the activist cash they regularly receive from their globalist paymasters they pretend to oppose:

Arkansas Community Organization

Living United for Change in Arizona

ACCE Institute (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment)

Working Partnerships USA

CASA de Delaware

New Florida Majority

Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Good Jobs Now

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change

TakeAction Minnesota

New York Communities for Change

Common Good Ohio

CASA de Pennsylvania

Ohio Organizing Collaborative

Texas Organizing Project

Wisconsin Jobs Now

Clearly, as with #BlackLivesMatter and the many other Astroturf “progressive” organizations funded by billionaire George Soros (a CFR member and CFR President's Circle corporate supporter), the Fed Up Campaign is another example of CFR Insiders providing simultaneous pressure from above and below to effect social/political/economic/moral revolution.

By  William F. Jasper

Source

Dive Brief:

L Brands Inc. is the latest retail company to end “on-call scheduling” in the face of a warning letter from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that the practice likely violates state law. 

The company said its Bath & Body Works stores and Victoria’s Secret stores are phasing out the practice nationwide.

Rise Up Georgia, a partner of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, has been organizing L Brands workers and asking the company to end the practice, especially at Bath & Body Works stores, and says the latest move doesn’t go far enough.

Dive Insight:

As the practice of on-call scheduling has drawn more scrutiny, lawmakers and regulators are calling for an end to the practice and taking steps, as Schneiderman's office has, to rein it in. Several jurisdictions, including a few states, already have laws on the books that could be used to temper or end the practice.

On-call scheduling uses algorithms to determine when workers are most needed or not, and many retailers have taken to sending workers home or having them at the ready without pay. That wreaks havoc on workers’ lives, hampering their ability to attend school, care for families, or hold down other jobs.

An improving job market is also helping make the practice less tenable as workers are more able to find jobs that are less disruptive to them.

Retailers should be prepared to see more such concerns, warnings, and even legislation as just-in time scheduling gets more scrutiny, Gail Gottehrer, a labor & employment litigator at Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider in New York who works on behalf of employers, told Retail Dive. The practice was a major concern when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last year unanimously passed its Worker Bill of Rights law.

But some worker advocates say that L Brands move doesn’t go far enough. 

"L Brand employees still have to put their lives on hold," Erin Hurley, an organizer for Rise Up Georgia and a former Bath & Body Works employee, said in a statement. "The company might have ended one type of on-call shifts, but it is still allowing for harmful shift practices: since July, they have been relying on shift extensions at Victoria’s Secret, which are on-call shifts by another name. While we celebrate the step forward, we call on L Brands to take a definitive step toward a fair workweek by giving workers shifts with definite start and end times, and enough hours to support their families.”

Schneiderman, meanwhile, praised the move while also making it clear that his office will continue to monitor the practice. 

Recommended Reading

Wall Street Journal: Bath & Body Works to End On-Call Scheduling

Source: RetailDive