Practices of 13 Retailers Questioned by New York Lawyers
The Market Business - April 14, 2015, by Rachel M - The lawyer at New York has initiated inquiry against 13 retailers,...
The Market Business - April 14, 2015, by Rachel M - The lawyer at New York has initiated inquiry against 13 retailers, inquiring them if workers are asked to come on call for short notice shifts and spend less than 4 hours when employees are required to report to operate, stating the practice as illegal in NY.
On-call scheduling requires workers to call in just a few hours in advance or the night before to see if they need to come in to work. If not needed, the employee will receive no pay for the day.
“For many workers, that is too little time to make arrangements for family needs, let alone to find an alternative source of income to compensate for the lost pay,”
A New York state law requires that employees who are asked to come into work must be paid for at least four hours atminimum wage or the number of hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, even if the employee is sent home.
California has a similar law that says employees must be paid for half of their usual time — two to four hours — if they are required to come in to work but are not needed or work less than their normal schedule.
The letter was also sent to J. Crew Group Inc.; L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works; Burlington Stores Inc.; TJX Cos.; Urban Outfitters Inc.; Sears Holdings Corp.; Williams-Sonoma Inc.; Crocs Inc.; Ann Inc., which owns Ann Taylor; and J.C. Penney Co.
The letters ask the retailers for more information about how they schedule employees for work, including whether they use on-call shifts and computerized scheduling programs.
Rachel Deutsch, an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York worker advocacy group, said on-call scheduling can make it difficult for workers to arrange child care or pick up a second job.
“These are folks that want to work,” she said. “They’re ready and willing to work, and some weeks they might get no pay at all even though they set aside 100% of their time to work.”
Danielle Lang, a Skadden fellow at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, said the attorney general’s action could have repercussions in other states.
“The New York attorney general is a powerful force,” she said. “It’s certainly an issue that’s facing so many of our low-wage workers in California, and anything that puts a highlight on this practice and really pressures employers to think about these practices is a good thing.”
Sears, Target and Ann Inc. said in separate statements that they do not have on-call shifts for their workers. J.C. Penney said it has a policy against on-call scheduling.
TJX spokeswoman Doreen Thompson said in a statement that company management teams “work to develop schedules that serve the needs of both our associates and our company.”
Gap said in a statement that the company has been working on a project with the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law to examine workplace scheduling and productivity and will see the first set of data results in the fall.
“Gap Inc. is committed to establishing sustainable scheduling practices that will improve stability for our employees, while helping toeffectively manage our business,” spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson said.
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Why the Phrase 'Late Capitalism' Is Suddenly Everywhere
An investigation into a term that seems to perfectly capture the indignities and absurdities of the modern economy......
An investigation into a term that seems to perfectly capture the indignities and absurdities of the modern economy...
Read the ful article here.
It’s Time to Put the Brakes on Runaway Drug Prices
It’s Time to Put the Brakes on Runaway Drug Prices
The movement against ICE is born at the grassroots. Groups like Indivisible Project and the Center for Popular...
The movement against ICE is born at the grassroots. Groups like Indivisible Project and the Center for Popular Democracy have also called for defunding ICE.
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Fed official explains why he stopped trying to predict the future
Fed official explains why he stopped trying to predict the future
JACKSON HOLE, WYO. -- The world's economic elite gathered here for an annual symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve...
JACKSON HOLE, WYO. -- The world's economic elite gathered here for an annual symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last week to debate the strategies central banks should employ to safeguard the global economy. We sat down with St. Louis Fed President James Bullard to chat about when he might be ready for a rate hike, the limits of his powers and why predicting the future is futile.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.
Wonkblog: Let’s start with the question of the day: Which month looks good to you for a rate hike?
Bullard: Actually, I’m agnostic on this. Our new framework calls for one, and only one, and then we go on pause for a bit. It’s not critical to me exactly when we make that move, so we wouldn’t have to go at any particular meeting.
I do like to move on good news, so if we have good information, and we’re at a meeting, it might be a good opportunity to go ahead and make that move. But what’s different about what I’m saying is I’ve got a real flat interest rate path — much closer to the markets’ interest rate path. I don’t have this march upward of 200 or 250 basis points.
If only one more rate hike is really needed to get to the Fed’s neutral stance, why does it matter if you move in September, December or next year? You would be willing to wait until 2017?
Certainly, I just don’t feel that there’s any urgency when you’ve got the framework I’m talking about.
[The Federal Reserve is debating how to fight the next recession]
So explain your framework for us.
What we wanted to do is break down this idea that we’re really certain about where the economy is going in the medium- and long-run. What most models do is they have something called a steady state, which is really an average of all the variables in the past: You look at the unemployment rate, and you take the average unemployment rate. You look at interest rates and take the average past interest rate. You look at inflation, growth — you take averages of the past, and you call those your normal values.
As you go along, you expect all your variables to go back to their normal values. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s the old framework. And what we’re saying is we don’t like that framework anymore because it suggests we have a lot more certainty about where the economy is going than we really do.
These averages of these variables from the past — they can sometimes be high and sometime be low. You can be in a configuration where these things are low, and then you can switch to another configuration when they’re high. Then they’re high for a while, and you switch back to low. What you have to do is make policy given whatever regime you’re in.
We think that the regime that is dominant right now is a slow-growth regime that is characterized by low productivity growth and very low real returns on short-term government debt around the world. We think these regimes are persistent. These things aren’t changing any time soon. And because of that, we just have to take them as given, for now anyway.
Given that in this framework, it’s difficult to tell when the regime is shifted, how do you know that you’re not setting monetary policy for a regime that’s already expired?
You’re gonna know when the regime switches. These very low real rates of return on government debt, if you look at the ex-post return on one-year Treasurys, it’s about -135 basis points right now. If that starts to go up rapidly, we’re gonna know and we’re going to take note of it. We’re gonna say, “Aha! Our regime has changed, and we’re going to have to change monetary policy accordingly.”
But for forecasting purposes, I wouldn’t say that I’m expecting that to happen all of a sudden. It’s been that way for at least the last three years, and if you look at real rates of return, they’ve declined for the last 30 years. It’s also very clear that we’re in a very low productivity environment.
It’s not that you go to sleep. You stay alert to the possibility that the regime can change in the future, and probably will change at some point in the future. It’s just not good to be predicting that it’s going to change.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's speech here laid out the argument that the Fed is not out of ammunition to fight the next recession. Do you agree with that?
I loved the speech. She made the case that we still have quite a bit of bandwidth to handle problems if they arise in the next couple of years, and I very much agree with that. But at the same time, it’s always good to be studying other possibilities. I actually have papers on nominal GDP targeting, so I think that’s an interesting topic. It's probably not ready for prime time, but I’m a believer in research.
What led you to the support for this regime-based framework. Can you talk about the evolution of your thinking?
Maybe some frustration with the dot plot. We were saying we were going to have to raise rates fairly aggressively over the forecast horizon in order to keep the economy on track, and that wasn’t materializing. We had that forecast for several years, and it wasn’t really working. For that reason, I wanted to get a different way to think about what we were doing.
We’ve only moved once on the policy rate, and markets are saying maybe one more move this year. That would only be one move per year — that’s really not normalization. If you’re going to say it’s going to take 10 years to get back to a normal value, you’re really saying we’re not going back there. That’s way longer than any sort of business cycle than you can reasonably talk about.
How do you feel about the division between monetary and fiscal policy currently? Do you feel it’s time to pass the baton here?
I do think that. And I think the regime framework is good for laying that out for people. Part of the story is that the recession has been over for seven years. The unemployment rate has gone down below 5 percent. Inflation is low, but we don’t think it’s that low, and it’s kind of coming up to target.
So the cyclical dynamics are all done. The dust has settled, I guess is the way I would put it.
You might say the dust has settled, and I don’t like what I see. But for that, you can’t solve that with monetary policy. You’ve got to have things that are going to increase productivity in the economy. You’ve got to make the economy more efficient. New ideas, better technology, better diffusion of technology, better human capital, better skills match — I think it’s a lot of small things that you have to do right to get an economy humming. The story of let’s keep interest rates low and that will help us, that’s kind of over for now.
Related to that are the demonstrations by Fed Up and the Center for Popular Democracy that were held Thursday. Any additional thoughts on their point of view, that there’s still more that the Fed can do?
I love the people that come here. I think they’re a really great slice of the American workforce. It’s really nice that they’re willing to take time out of their lives to come out here and talk to us boring central bankers.
They want to talk about low nominal interest rates as solving difficult problems of how our labor markets operate and how our labor markets are unfair to many people. I would like them to think about the German labor market reforms that were done over the last decade. Germany had very high unemployment for a long time. It was an endemic problem, and then they did these reforms and got their unemployment rate cut in half — even though Europe went through a double-dip recession during that period.
It showed to me that there are ways to attack these problems, and I think we could do that in the U.S. I think they should refocus their efforts on the labor secretary, so we could get those kinds of reforms going. People aren’t even talking about that.
By Ylan Q. Mui
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New York immigration activists criticize Schumer for deal to reopen government
New York immigration activists criticize Schumer for deal to reopen government
Before 81 senators, including 33 Democrats, voted on Monday to reopen the federal government, U.S. Senate Minority...
Before 81 senators, including 33 Democrats, voted on Monday to reopen the federal government, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer blamed President Donald Trump in a speech on the Senate floor for his refusal to compromise on an immigration deal.
For many liberals in his home state, however, Schumer is to blame for being too willing to compromise, since he agreed to reopen the government without a permanent solution for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
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School Voucher Opponents Ready for Fight as Bill Advances
The Tennessean - March 3, 2015, bt Jason Gonzales - Anti-voucher groups are digging in for a fight as the second of two...
The Tennessean - March 3, 2015, bt Jason Gonzales - Anti-voucher groups are digging in for a fight as the second of two almost identical voucher bills easily passed the House Education and Planning Subcommittee by a 7-1 vote. State Rep. Kevin Dunlap, D-Rock Hill, was the lone dissenter.
The proposed legislation that passed Tuesday is sponsored in the House by state Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, and has considerable backing from pro-voucher groups and legislators alike. A separate bill sponsored by state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, narrowly passed the Senate Education Committee.
The legislators hope to provide low-income students a voucher program to pay for private school tuition with a state-funded scholarship. The program targets students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch who attend a public school ranked in the bottom 5 percent of the state in academic achievement.
Several groups have publicly voiced opposition to the bills, including the Tennessee Education Association. The teacher's union has been against proposed voucher legislation for years. In past years, opponents have been successful in their fight, as bills have continually struggled in the House and Senate finance committees.
Between the two bills, Haslam said the administration agreed to fund the measure from Dunn and state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. On supporting the Dunn-Gardenhire bill versus Kelsey's, Haslam said Tuesday morning the bill most resembles the one he supported last year.
Kelsey is a sponsor of both bills, and House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, recently told The Associated Press the plan could survive in the House this year.
Volunteers with Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence were the visible face Tuesday of the anti-voucher group at Legislative Plaza. They were there to pass out brochures and stickers that said, "No School Vouchers."
Anne Marie Farmer, a volunteer with the public education advocacy group, said the group argues vouchers don't have the desired effect in a time when schools need more resources. The group also contends vouchers only give private schools a choice, not parents.
"We don't believe it is an effective way to raise student achievement," she said
Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition have also voiced opposition to the bill.
A recent poll by the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy, however, says Tennesseans are not concerned with school choice. The TEA sent out a Tuesday media release weighing in on the poll.
"When Tennesseans were asked to rank important issues facing the state's public schools, school choice came in dead last," said Barbara Gray, Arlington Community Schools administrator and TEA president, in the release. "This poll shows that legislators need to redirect their attention to the issues that really matter to Tennesseans, like parental involvement, over-emphasis on standardized testing and cuts to programs like physical education and music."
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Business Notes: Maryland Among Locations That Could Host 2026 World Cup Games
Business Notes: Maryland Among Locations That Could Host 2026 World Cup Games
“Elected officials across the country are paying close attention to how Amazon and other corporations have responded to...
“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,” Sarah Johnson, director of Local Progress, a national association of progressive elected municipal officials, told the Times.
Read the full article here.
Report: $15 Chicago Minimum Wage Would Lift Up Struggling Workers
Progress Illinois - May 27, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - A proposal to hike Chicago's minimum wage to $15 an hour would not...
Progress Illinois - May 27, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - A proposal to hike Chicago's minimum wage to $15 an hour would not only be a boon for many low-wage workers but also the city's economy, according to a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy.
"Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would promote economic stability among Chicago workers, economic vitality in their neighborhoods and economic growth throughout this city," said Connie Razza, director of strategic research at the center, which works both locally and nationally to build "the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda."
The new report comes ahead of Wednesday's Chicago City Council meeting, during which aldermen with the Progressive Reform Caucus plan to introduce an ordinance for a citywide hourly minimum wage of $15 an hour. The ordinance was developed with members of Raise Chicago, a coalition of community and labor groups advocating for a higher hourly wage floor in the city. Chicago's current minimum wage is $8.25 an hour, the same as the base hourly wage in Illinois and $1 more than the federal level.
Under the proposed ordinance, large companies in Chicago making at least $50 million annually would have one year to phase in a $15 minimum hourly wage, including for workers at their subsidiaries and franchise locations, according to Raise Chicago. Small and mid-sized businesses would have slightly more than five years to boost their employees' wages to $15 an hour.
The first phase of the proposed ordinance, which would apply to larger firms, would increase the wages for 22 percent of Chicago workers, or 229,000 people, according to the report. Phase one would generate nearly $1.5 billion in new gross wages annually, or $1.1 billion after deductions. During the first stage of the proposed ordinance, the higher employee wages would mean an estimated $616 million in new economic activity across the region, leading to the creation of 5,350 new jobs, the report showed. A $15 hourly wage for workers employed by large businesses in the city would also provide approximately $45 million in new sales tax revenue.
Increased wages for workers could also lower employee turnover costs for businesses, according to the report. Requiring Chicago employers with annual gross revenues of $50 million or greater to pay their workers at least $15 an hour would reduce labor turnover in the workforce by as much as 80 percent per year.
However, larger firms covered under the proposed ordinance could see their overall employer costs increase by up to 4 percent, according to the report's estimations. As a result, affected firms may raise consumer prices by about 2 percent. Such a price hike would translate into an $0.08 increase for a $4 hamburger, the report noted.
Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), who intends to co-sponsor the ordinance, said he expects about 10 out of the 50 Chicago aldermen to initially sign on to the legislation.
"The push then would be to get others to join with us in this cause, because it's important," the alderman said. "We should have talked about this many, many years ago, and had (the minimum wage) kept up with inflation, we might not be having this conversation right now. ... I'm hoping that our colleagues will see that this is not a job killer."
Sawyer said there is no specific date planned for when the proposal could go up for a full city council vote.
It is the alderman's hope that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's recently-formed minimum wage task force will consider the $15 minimum wage proposal. Emanuel has asked members on the diverse committee, chaired by Ald. Will Burns (4th) and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law's President John Bouman, to craft a plan to increase the wages for hourly minimum wage and tipped workers in the city.
"I understand the interest in forming this committee," Sawyer said. "I don't think it's necessary because a proposed ordinance is ready to be submitted tomorrow. But now that the committee has been talked about, this [$15 minimum wage ordinance] is the first thing they can look at."
Sawyer and other backers of a $15 minimum wage are "open to listening to any and all suggestions" about the proposed ordinance, the alderman said. Sawyer also noted that Chicagoans are in favor of a $15 minimum wage.
During the March primary election, Chicago voters overwhelming supported a non-binding ballot referendum to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees of companies with annual revenues over $50 million. The referendum appeared on the ballot in 103 city precincts, garnering support from 87 percent of voters.
Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now, which is involved with the Raise Chicago campaign, said the city's strong public support of a $15 minimum wage is not surprising.
"We know that people in this city are struggling," she stressed. "The current minimum wage in Illinois is only $8.25 an hour, and that's so low that the workers, and certainly those who are supporting families, simply cannot survive, oftentimes working two or three jobs just to make ends meet and make other major personal sacrifices for themselves and their families.
"The $15 an hour wage will correct that," Johnson added. "It will provide a path out of poverty for families and allow (workers) to meet their families' basic needs so they no longer have to rely on food stamps or other public assistance. And in addition, it will stimulate the city's economy."
A total of 900,000 people work in Chicago, and 329,000 of them make less than $15 an hour, according to the report. Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately represented among low-wage workers in the city.
Blacks and Latinos make up 23.6 percent and 26.8 percent of the share of all Chicago workers, respectively. However, 28 percent of low-wage earners in the city are black and 42.4 percent are Latino. Low-wage workers who live in the city are concentrated in the Chicago neighborhoods of Austin, Avondale, Bridgeport and McKinley Park, among other areas.
"This geographic concentration of residents earning low wages means that an increase in the minimum wage will offer larger benefits to certain neighborhoods, while also stimulating the citywide economy," the report reads.
Meanwhile, Chicago aldermen are up for re-election next year, and Sawyer said those who co-sponsor the $15 minimum wage ordinance might see more support from voters at the polls.
"I think in my community, (supporting a $15 an hour minimum wage) plays better. People that try to live off of minimum wage understand that it needs to be raised, so those [aldermen] that have people that can understand that will obviously fare better," Sawyer said. "Maybe some in more affluent wards, it many not play as well, but even those there can understand the economic impact."
People who "have more disposable income, they spend it," the alderman continued. "And if you have more disposable income and you spend it, that means the money is circulating in those individual communities. Sales taxes are paid. That means we can get more revenue to do things: Pay down debt, infrastructure improvements, capital improvements."
Over the next few months, Raise Chicago members and others plan to take part in a number of activities to build community support for a $15 Chicago minimum wage and "put pressure on elected officials to carry out the will of the people," Johnson said.
When asked if Chicagoans can expect to see more public protests concerning the minimum wage, Johnson said, "We'll see."
Be sure to check back with Progress Illinois for our coverage of Wednesday's Chicago City Council meeting.
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White/Rich/Democrats Finance Proudly Racist #Blacklivesmatters
White/Rich/Democrats Finance Proudly Racist #Blacklivesmatters
The famous phrase, “Show me the money” applies in the violent acts of the #blacklivesmatter effort, the racism and...
The famous phrase, “Show me the money” applies in the violent acts of the #blacklivesmatter effort, the racism and bigotry sweeping the nation. It is about rich, white Democrats financing the effort to divide American among racial lines, to create chaos and anarchy. Last week a group from #blacklivesmatter closed down a portion of the 405 Freeway in the West Los Angeles area, and not a single person was arrested. Of course LA cops are not allowed to detain or arrest illegal aliens, either, for violation of immigration laws. It is as if LA does not have a police force—or the police force is protecting the lawbreakers and making honest Angelenos victims.
“The Democracy Alliance was created in 2005 by a handful of major donors, including billionaire financier George Soros and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay to build a permanent infrastructure to advance liberal ideas and causes. Donors are required to donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups, and their combined donations to those groups now total more than $500 million. Endorsed beneficiaries include the Center for American Progress think tank, the liberal attack dog Media Matters and the Democratic data firm Catalist, though members also give heavily to Democratic politicians and super PACs that are not part of the DA’s core portfolio. While the Democracy Alliance last year voted to endorse a handful of groups focused on engaging African-Americans in politics ― some of which have helped facilitate the Black Lives movement ― the invitation to movement leaders is a first for the DA, and seems likely to test some members’ comfort zones.
#blacklivesmatter it one of the chosen totalitarian organizations supported by these rich/white Democrats. My guess is they prefer chaos to stability, violence to peace and bigotry to love.
Some of the biggest donors on the left plan to meet behind closed doors next week in Washington with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement and their allies to discuss funding the burgeoning protest movement, POLITICO has learned.
The meetings are taking place at the annual winter gathering of the Democracy Alliance major liberal donor club, which runs from Tuesday evening through Saturday morning and is expected to draw Democratic financial heavyweights, including Tom Steyer and Paul Egerman.
The DA, as the club is known in Democratic circles, is recommending its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement. And the club and some of its members also are considering ways to funnel support directly to scrappier local groups that have utilized confrontational tactics to inject their grievances into the political debate.
It’s a potential partnership that could elevate the Black Lives Matter movement and heighten its impact. But it’s also fraught with tension on both sides, sources tell POLITICO.
The various outfits that comprise the diffuse Black Lives Matter movement prize their independence. Some make a point of not asking for donations. They bristle at any suggestion that they’re susceptible to being co-opted by a deep-pocketed national group ― let alone one with such close ties to the Democratic Party establishment like the Democracy Alliance.
And some major liberal donors are leery about funding a movement known for aggressive tactics ― particularly one that has shown a willingness to train its fire on Democrats, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“Major donors are usually not as radical or confrontational as activists most in touch with the pain of oppression,” said Steve Phillips, a Democracy Alliance member and significant contributor to Democratic candidates and causes. He donated to a St. Louis nonprofit group called the Organization for Black Struggle that helped organize 2014 Black Lives Matter-related protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police killing of a black teenager named Michael Brown. And Phillips and his wife, Democracy Alliance board member Susan Sandler, are in discussions about funding other groups involved in the movement.
The movement needs cash to build a self-sustaining infrastructure, Phillips said, arguing “the progressive donor world should be adding zeroes to their contributions that support this transformative movement.” But he also acknowledged there’s a risk for recipient groups. “Tactics such as shutting down freeways and disrupting rallies can alienate major donors, and if that’s your primary source of support, then you’re at risk of being blocked from doing what you need to do.”
The Democracy Alliance was created in 2005 by a handful of major donors, including billionaire financier George Soros and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay to build a permanent infrastructure to advance liberal ideas and causes. Donors are required to donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups, and their combined donations to those groups now total more than $500 million. Endorsed beneficiaries include the Center for American Progress think tank, the liberal attack dog Media Matters and the Democratic data firm Catalist, though members also give heavily to Democratic politicians and super PACs that are not part of the DA’s core portfolio. While the Democracy Alliance last year voted to endorse a handful of groups focused on engaging African-Americans in politics ― some of which have helped facilitate the Black Lives movement ― the invitation to movement leaders is a first for the DA, and seems likely to test some members’ comfort zones.
“Movements that are challenging the status quo and that do so to some extent by using direct action or disruptive tactics are meant to make people uncomfortable, so I’m sure we have partners who would be made uncomfortable by it or think that that’s not a good tactic,” said DA President Gara LaMarche. “But we have a wide range of human beings and different temperaments and approaches in the DA, so it’s quite possible that there are people who are a little concerned, as well as people who are curious or are supportive. This is a chance for them to meet some of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and understand the movement better, and then we’ll take stock of that and see where it might lead.”
According to a Democracy Alliance draft agenda obtained by POLITICO, movement leaders will be featured guests at a Tuesday dinner with major donors. The dinner, which technically precedes the official conference kickoff, will focus on “what kind of support and resources are needed from the allied funders during this critical moment of immediate struggle and long-term movement building.”
The groups that will be represented include the Black Youth Project 100, The Center for Popular Democracy and the Black Civic Engagement Fund, according to the organizer, a DA member named Leah Hunt-Hendrix. An heir to a Texas oil fortune, Hunt-Hendrix helps lead a coalition of mostly young donors called Solidaire that focuses on movement building. It’s donated more than $200,000 to the Black Lives Matter movement since Brown’s killing. According to its entry on a philanthropy website, more than $61,000 went directly to organizers and organizations on the ground in Ferguson and Baltimore, where the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in April sparked a more recent wave of Black Lives-related protests. An additional $115,000 went to groups that have sprung up to support the movement.
She said her goal at the Democracy Alliance is to persuade donors to “use some of the money that’s going into the presidential races for grass-roots organizing and movement building.” And she brushed aside concerns that the movement could hurt Democratic chances in 2016. “Black Lives Matter has been pushing Bernie, and Bernie has been pushing Hillary. Politics is a field where you almost have to push your allies hardest and hold them accountable,” she said. “That’s exactly the point of democracy,” she said.
That view dovetails with the one that LaMarche has tried to instill in the Democracy Alliance, which had faced internal criticism in 2012 for growing too close to the Democratic Party.
In fact, one group set to participate in Hunt-Hendrix’s dinner ― Black Civic Engagement Fund ― is a Democracy Alliance offshoot. And, according to the DA agenda, two other groups recommended for club funding ― ColorOfChange.org and the Advancement Project ― are set to participate in a Friday panel “on how to connect the Movement for Black Lives with current and needed infrastructure for Black organizing and political power.”
ColorOfChange.org has helped Black Lives Matter protesters organize online, said its Executive Director Rashad Robinson. He dismissed concerns that the movement is compromised in any way by accepting support from major institutional funders. “Throughout our history in this country, there have been allies who have been willing to stand up and support uprisings, and lend their resources to ensure that people have a greater voice in their democracy,” Robinson said.
Nick Rathod, the leader of a DA-endorsed group called the State Innovation Exchange that pushes liberal policies in the states, said his group is looking for opportunities to help the movement, as well. “We can play an important role in facilitating dialogue between elected officials and movement leaders in cities and states,” he said. But Rathod cautioned that it would be a mistake for major liberal donors to only give through established national groups to support the movement. “I think for many of the donors, it might feel safer to invest in groups like ours and others to support the work, but frankly, many of those groups are not led by African-Americans and are removed from what’s happening on the ground. The heart and soul of the movement is at the grass roots, it’s where the organizing has occurred, it’s where decisions should be made and it’s where investments should be placed to grow the movement from the bottom up, rather than the top down.”
By STEPHEN FRANK
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Report: Emanuel's $13 Minimum Wage Plan Would 'Shortchange' Women, Minority Workers
Progress Illinois - October 29, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to lift the city's...
Progress Illinois - October 29, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to lift the city's hourly minimum wage to $13 would leave out approximately 65,000 low-wage workers who are mostly women and people of color.
That's according to a new Center for Popular Democracy report, which compared the potential impacts of the mayor's $13 minimum wage plan with a competing $15 minimum wage ordinance introduced in late May by a group of aldermen, including members of the council's Progressive Reform Caucus.
The proposed $13 ordinance specifically "shortchanges" domestic and tipped workers, the majority of whom are women of color, according to the report.
The Raise Chicago coalition, which supports the $15 plan, released the report's findings at a City Hall press conference Wednesday morning. More low-wage Chicago workers would be covered by the $15 plan, which would also almost double the economic impact for the city compared to the $13 measure, the report found.
"With the opportunity to nearly double the economic growth of people across the city, our Raise Chicago ordinance would help propel people towards financial stability, help this city and state with tax revenues, and its effects would ripple through every community in Chicago," said Action Now Executive Director Katelyn Johnson, a Raise Chicago leader. "The mayor's proposal does not do enough to address the needs of Chicagoans and, in fact, will keep people living paycheck to paycheck."
In July, Emanuel, along with 25 other aldermen, introduced an ordinance to bump the city's hourly minimum wage from the current $8.25 to $13 by 2018.
The measure models the recommendations of the mayor-appointed Minimum Wage Working Group, which was tasked with researching and gathering public comment about increasing the city's minimum wage. The mayor formed the commission the same month the ordinance seeking to hike Chicago's base wage to $15 an hour by 2018 was introduced.
Under the mayor-backed ordinance, the city's minimum wage for non-tipped employees would increase by $1.25 in each of the next three years and $1 in 2018 to hit the $13 level. The city's minimum wage would be adjusted each year after 2018 to keep pace with inflation. The tipped minimum wage, which is currently $4.95 at the state level, would be lifted by $1 to $5.95 over two years and indexed to inflation after that.
The $15 plan, on the other hand, would require large employers in Chicago making at least $50 million annually to raise their employees' wages to $12.50 an hour within 90 days. Those companies would then have to raise workers' hourly wages to the $15 level within one year of the measure taking effect.
Businesses with less than $50 million in annual revenue would have a different minimum wage phase-in period. Small and mid-sized businesses would have to increase their base hourly wage to $12 within 15 months. After that, the smaller employers would have to increase their minimum wage by $1 each year until they hit the $15 level by 2018.
Johnson said the mayoral working group's measure "burdens small businesses," because it provides "no separate phase-in period for large corporations and small businesses."
The city's minimum wage under the $15 proposal would be adjusted each year after 2018 to keep pace with inflation. If that plan were adopted, the base hourly wage for tipped workers would be 70 percent of the overall minimum wage.
Tipped workers under the $15 ordinance would earn a $10.50 hourly wage once the phase-in process is completed. That wage would be 63 percent greater than what the $13 plan proposes.
Domestic workers, meanwhile, are covered by the Raise Chicago minimum wage ordinance, but they're excluded from the $13 proposal.
"This exclusion would have a disparate impact on women of color, who make up the majority of domestic workers in Chicago," the report reads.
Ovadhwah "O.J." McGee, a Chicago home care aid and SEIU* Healthcare Illinois member, said workers who provide supports to seniors and those with disabilities, for example, deserve a living wage. McGee, a single father who is also a certified nursing assistant, said he earns less than $13 an hour and struggles to make ends meet. He said "$15 would make such a great difference for me."
"The mayor's proposal will leave domestic workers behind. They wouldn't even get the $13 an hour, and that's an injustice," McGee said, adding that the $13 ordinance also "shortchanges tipped workers, providing them with only a $1.50 wage increase."
"That's a shame," he stressed. "The reality is by leaving domestic and tipped workers behind, the mayor is leaving workers of color behind. The majority of these jobs are ... held by African Americans and Latino workers."
Nearly 40 percent of the city's more than 1.3 million workers living in Chicago make less than $15 an hour, according to the report, which also estimated the total number of workers who would see their wages lifted, either directly or indirectly, by the two proposals.
"Under the $15 proposal, we project that 444,000 workers earning up to $17.30 will receive wage increases related to raising the wage floor," the report states. "Under the $13 proposal, only those workers currently earning up to $15.60, or about 379,000 workers, would receive higher wages."
The $13 measure would leave out 65,000 low-wage workers, including 42,000 Chicago residents, according to the report. Of the 65,000 low-wage workers who would be excluded from the $13 plan, approximately 13,000 are African American and 20,000 are Latino.
Additionally, the mayor's $13 measure "fails to secure the truly robust economic recovery that the $15 Raise Chicago ordinance would achieve," the report reads.
After full implementation, the $15 proposal would generate $2.9 billion in new gross wages; $1.04 billion in new economic activity and 6,920 new jobs; more than $80 million in new sales tax revenues; and $125 million in new income tax revenues, the report found.
On the flip side, the $13 plan would lead to $1.25 billion in new gross wages; $522 million in new economic activity; and $40 million in new sales tax revenues.
"Our research found that the benefits of a $15 minimum wage far outweigh those of the mayor's proposed $13," Connie Razza, director of strategic research at the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement. "At a time when income inequality is at historic levels and American communities are still reeling from the financial crisis, two dollars more may well be the threshold between survival and stability."
"For Chicago, it means over half a billion more dollars in economic activity that would benefit small businesses and communities, millions more in tax revenue for the city, and would significantly raise the wage floor," she added.
During the March 18 primary election, Chicago voters overwhelmingly supported a non-binding ballot referendum to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees of companies with annual revenues over $50 million. The referendum appeared on the ballot in 103 city precincts, garnering support from about 87 percent of voters.
"The time to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour is now, and no half measurers will be accepted," Johnson stressed.
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