Good jobs for everyone
The Hill - 05-06-2015 - The strain from Modesta Toribio’s retail job weighed down her life. Despite working full-...
The Hill - 05-06-2015 - The strain from Modesta Toribio’s retail job weighed down her life. Despite working full-time as a cashier in Brooklyn, Modesta struggled to pay for rent, food, or transportation. The bills added up quickly. Taking the day off to care for a sick child meant risking losing her job. Going to school at night was not an option, and she could not arrange for steady childcare because her schedule changed every week.
Modesta’s story is not unique. It is the story of countless strivers who work to sustain their families, but collide against structural barriers that keep them from making ends meet.
In this case, Modesta and her co-workers took action, organized and won concessions from their boss. It was not easy – their boss initially retaliated by cutting their hours. But, the workers gained momentum, and eventually they won better pay and better treatment.
For millions of others, though, they still do not have the dignity of a good job.
That is why the Center for Popular Democracy is proud to have launched an ambitious campaign to win good wages, benefits and opportunity for all workers with the Center for Community Change, Jobs with Justice and Working Families Organization. Named Putting Families First, the campaign will advance the audacious idea that every American should and can have access to a good job.
It’s an effort undertaken with a sense of urgency. We know that good jobs and access to them for all cannot be achieved without confronting the deep history and continuing reality of racism and sexism in America, particularly as they play out in the labor market.
As such, we propose five straightforward and commonsense tenets:
Guaranteeing good wages and benefits. Investing resources on a large scale to restart the economy in places of concentrated poverty. Taxing concentrated wealth. Valuing our families and the work of women who care for children and elders Building a green economy.What stands between us and an economy that works for everyone are rules that unfairly favor the greedy few because they are written by politicians beholden to wealthy special interests. But workers and families who are working together for change know well that rules written by the few can be re-written by the many.
Workers around the country are launching over 100 campaigns that embody an ambitious jobs agenda that includes everyone, elevating demands that speak to the reality of people throughout our country.
One example: making high quality child care available to all working parents, raising wages and benefits for the millions of women who work in early childhood education and care fields, changing the state and federal revenue models to make childcare more accessible, and providing financial support to unpaid caregivers.
Ensuring that all working families have access to quality, affordable childcare – and that the jobs in that industry provide living wages and good benefits – is crucial to women’s economic stability, especially women of color who are the vast majority of workers in this sector.
Winning these campaigns will make a huge difference for Modesta and her family, and for millions of families in this country who are struggling to make ends meet.
The reality is that there is bold action happening in every corner of this country. Whether we are talking about fast food workers striking across the country, or immigrant workers winning policies against wage theft, or entire communities organizing to win ballot initiatives to enact paid sick days and better wages.
The American public is thirsty for a visible effort to create real, good, dignified jobs for everyone.
We are supporting important local fights that will produce very real change in the lives of workers. And we are changing the broader frame in which those fights are waged. We are not tinkering at the margins. We have our eyes set on transforming the country through campaigns in 41 states – campaigns that grow every day.
We are setting out to challenge the orthodoxies of both parties to focus on the real problem: the need to create jobs and improve wages.
Like Modesta and her co-workers, we are coming together to stand up for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and for America. We have a vision of honoring the dignity of work, and the dignity of the people who work. We believe that we can do better, but that we will have to challenge those who are stealing our wages, limiting our ability to sustain our families and destroying our planet in order to do so.
Putting Families First will change the national conversation about work and about greed, starting where it matters most: in our states. It will enable us to live up to our collective responsibility to create the country that we want our children to live in.
Archila is co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
Source: The Hill
Why Black Lives Matter wants Hillary Clinton to reinstate Glass-Steagall
Why Black Lives Matter wants Hillary Clinton to reinstate Glass-Steagall
Hillary Clinton's support from financial institutions has always been her Achilles heel but running counter to this...
Hillary Clinton's support from financial institutions has always been her Achilles heel but running counter to this criticism is her pledge to end systemic racism. The two are actually closely related and if she is to make good on her promises on racial justice, she will have to test those close connections to Wall Street by directly pushing for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and closing the carried interest tax loophole.
The Movement for Black Lives' policy platform calls for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law that separated commercial and investment banking. The law has lately become a core focus of economic progressives.
Groups involved with the Movement for Black Lives see it as a key way to advance economic racial justice. Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about the policy – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration. The absence of an impermeable boundary between commercial and investing functions both instigated and then accelerated the 2008 financial crisis, forcing millions to lose their homes and jobs.
Communities of color were hit hard and recovered more slowly. Mortgage lenders like Wells Fargo systemically targeted black and brown borrowers for subprime loans, putting many at risk of foreclosure. In the years after the recession, many of these lenders settled multi-billion-dollar discrimination lawsuits years after the damage had been done.
Also, a 2015 American Civil Liberties Union study showed that black families continued to lose wealth years after the recession – even as white families began to climb out. The average black household lost 40 percent of its non-home equity wealth.
"Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about Glass Steagall – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration."
Home ownership is one of the most stable and reliable ways to acquire wealth in America, and the massive loss of homes among black and brown communities during the 2008 crisis will take decades to recover from. A new Glass-Steagall would help prevent banks from getting bigger and riskier, stopping them from coming back to black and brown neighborhoods and destroying even more wealth.
The carried interest tax loophole is another example. Eliminating this loophole, which lets private equity firms and hedge funds avoid taxes on part of their income, could raise $180 billion. It might sound like a drop in the bucket in the context of a national budget, but when you look closer, it is money that could make a huge difference.
It is also money that could have drastic implications for cities and states around the country that claim they don't have enough funding. The City of Chicago is facing a massive school funding crisis of more than a billion dollars. The hedge fund-cozy Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner routinely go to the school district for more concessions to make up the gap.
In the meantime, billionaire hedge-funders use the carried interest loophole to get out of paying taxes that translates into much needed revenue. The details of closing the loophole should be worked out by economists, but one thing is clear: if we keep a loophole that costs us billions of dollars while closing schools in black and brown neighborhoods, we are making a strong statement about the level of racial injustice we are willing to accept.
If Hillary Clinton wins the election, she will enter office at one of the most racially charged moments in American history. It is also a moment of some of the greatest income inequality in history – a reality even starker for black and brown communities. If we truly want to achieve racial justice, we should look at policies that prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis. Closing the carried interest loophole and reinstating a modern Glass-Steagall are the tip of the iceberg. It is up to us to push Clinton for more.
Commentary by Maurice Weeks, who leads the housing & Wall Street accountability campaign at Center for Popular Democracy. Follow him on Twitter @mo87mo87.
By Maurice Weeks
Source
Poll Says Americans Want Fed To Focus On Jobs, Hold Off On Rate Increases
NEW YORK--As the Federal Reserve gets ready to debate its interest rate policy stance next week, a poll released...
NEW YORK--As the Federal Reserve gets ready to debate its interest rate policy stance next week, a poll released Thursday finds a strong majority of the American voters surveyed want central bankers to refrain from boosting short- term interest rates--and to instead concentrate on using monetary policy to further boost the job market.
The poll also found that respondents have inflation concerns, but even so, they still want the Fed to do what it can to create more jobs and spur the sort of wage gains that have eluded much of the nation. The poll of 716 registered voters also found respondents wanting greater public input into the central bank's decision making.
The survey was conducted in early September by Public Policy Polling under the direction of the left-leading Center for Popular Democracy. The group has been actively arguing against any move to raise short-term interest rates from current levels. Over recent months, its activists have been meeting with regional Fed bank president to press their case. The group also brought their case this year's high-profile central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
In the survey, 62% of respondents said high unemployment remains a "major problem," and 60% said low wages and weak incomes were also significant concerns. Half said the same thing about inflation. Just over half of respondents said the Fed should use its policy tools to prioritize job creation and stronger wage gains--versus 38% who want the central bank to direct its main focus to controlling inflation.
"There is no threat of inflation," said Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research with the CDP. The poll shows Americans believe "the U.S. economy is not healthy enough to raise rates right now," she said in a conference call with reporters discussing the survey.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe the economy could benefit from maintaining low rates, and a similar amount want to see the current ultralow rates maintained.
The Fed is set to meet Wednesday and Thursday next week to decide what to do with its near-zero short-term interest rate target. Until only recently, there were fairly broad-based expectations that officials would raise rates at the meeting, ending an unprecedented era of ultralow rates that have prevailed since the end of 2008.
But a sharp rise in global uncertainty spurred by questions about growth in China, as well as the waves of market volatility this situation has unleashed, has undone any sense of certainty about what the Fed will do next week.
Steady if unspectacular growth coupled with a solid drop in the unemployment rate underpin the case to raise rates. Arguing against is persistently weak inflation and weak wage growth, with the Fed failing to achieve its price target for over three years. The Fed is legally charged with promoting job growth and stable inflation, and for many there is a conflict right now between the employment and inflation environments. That makes interest-rate decisions difficult for central bankers.
The poll also found dissatisfaction with the Fed's democratic accountability. Some 71% of respondents said the public doesn't have enough input into central-bank decision making. A majority of respondents believe the financial sector is overrepresented on regional Fed boards of directors.
The poll is unusual in that the public's attitude about the central bank is rarely measured. As important as the Fed is to the economy's performance, its mission and tools are often little understood by the broader public. For most of the Fed's history, its officials were happy operating in the shadows. But over recent years the Fed has become much more open about its aims and activities. Still, a Pew Research from last year found that only a quarter of Americans could even name Janet Yellen as chairwoman of the Fed.
"The focus on the Fed is extraordinary," Josh Bivens, director of Research and Policy at Economic Policy Institute, said on the conference call. The Fed "is the only engine we have for this recovery, and that's why it's getting all the attention," he said.
Source: Nasdaq
We’d Be Picking Workers Up Off The Street
Salon - October 29, 2013, by Josh Eidelson - If the potential president does business's bidding on a new...
Salon - October 29, 2013, by Josh Eidelson -
If the potential president does business's bidding on a new scaffolding bill, workers will die, an advocate warns.
Industry groups hope New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo – a presumed presidential aspirant who’s frequently defied liberals on economics – will back their push to “reform” the country’s toughest law holding contractors responsible when workplace falls end in injury or death.
“I think we’d be picking workers up off the street,” if the state’s “scaffold law” is gutted, said Joel Shufro, who directs the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. “Because I think employers would cut corners in ways that would result in workers being injured or killed.” Cuomo’s office did not respond to inquiries.
In an Oct. 16 letter, dozens of business groups and the New York Conference of Mayors urged Cuomo to reform the stat’s “scaffold law,” a move they said would “help alleviate fiscal stress by saving taxpayer dollars, creating jobs, and increasing revenue to the state and localities.” Signatories included the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, whose director Tom Stebbins told Salon that the group has made the issue a priority because “insurance rates put people of business, they take jobs away, and as we’re finding out more and more, it’s costing us more and more in our public projects.”
The 128-year-old “scaffold law” allows contractors to be held liable for “gravity-related” injuries suffered by their employees when management failed to comply with a safety rule, even (with certain exceptions) if the employee was also at fault. Stebbins contended there was “no data that supports” the claim that it improves safety, and argued that what he called the law’s “absolute liability” standard means “you’re assigned fault without negligence,” and actually “makes job sites less safe.”
“If you absolve employees from responsibility for their actions, they’re less responsible,” said Stebbins. “And if employers are guilty under almost any circumstances, they’re not as incentivized.”
NYCOSH’s Shufro countered that the law holds employers liable “if they violate OSHA regulations or other city, state ordinances, do not provide appropriate training, do not provide appropriate personal protective equipment … But if they are in compliance … they are not liable, they will not be found at fault.”
Stebbins acknowledged that “if you were the only cause of your injury, then that absolute liability doesn’t apply,” but he told Salon that “even the responsible contractor can’t stop every situation.” Stebbins cited the case of a worker who he said intentionally “jumped off the building in order to make a scaffold law claim.” Under current law, he said, a contractor “could be a fraction of a percent responsible and be held liable for 100 percent of the judgment,” rather than having “liability apportioned by fault.” He argued that the law also hurt workers because cash devoted to insurance costs is “money that’s not being spent on jobs, not being spent on union labor.”
Labor groups rejected such claims. “Opponents claim that the Scaffold Law drives up costs and is a job killer; the reality is that it helps prevent a job from being a worker killer,” New York AFL-CIO president Mario Cilento told Salon in an email. Cilento credited the law with “placing responsibility for providing adequate safety equipment and measures squarely in the hands of contractors and owners, ensuring that there is absolutely no ambiguity in who is responsible for maintaining a safe workplace in a very dangerous occupation.” He added that “insurers and contractors try to gut the Scaffold Law and in turn workplace safety” over and over, but “they’ve been rebuffed because the Legislature has recognized that there is no price tag on the lives and well-being of New Yorkers.” Cilento’s Illinois counterpart, state AFL president Michael Carrigan, emailed that the labor federation “regrets the repeal” of the similar Illinois Scaffolding Act, prior to which “Illinois had been the second safest state in construction deaths and accidents.” (The business groups’ letter to Cuomo credited the repeal of Illinois’ law for a subsequent 53 percent decline in construction injuries and said it gave the state “the 10th lowest injury rate in the country”; NYCOSH attributed the decline in injuries to overall national trends.)
“All this law says is that the employers shall be liable if they do not follow rules and regulations that govern safety on these jobs,” said NYCOSH’s Shufro. “So it seems to me that the best way of reducing their costs is to require employers to follow the law.” An NYCOSH analysis of OSHA data on New York state construction found that “At least one OSHA fall prevention standard was violated in nearly 80 percent of accidents in which a worker fell and was killed.”
A study released Thursday by progressive Center for Popular Democracy argued that the industry’s death and injury toll is disproportionately borne by immigrant workers and Latinos. CPD found that Latino and/or immigrant workers made up 60 percent of “fall from elevation fatalities” investigated by OSHA in New York State, and reported that “In 2011 focus groups, Latino construction workers reported fearing retaliation as a key deterrent to raising concerns about safety.”
While business groups have long sought changes in the scaffold law, both sides said this year’s showdown on the issue could be particularly acute. “More and more we’re seeing the cost to the public,” said Stebbins, including insurers “leaving because they can’t sustain an absolute liability and it’s impossible for them to gauge risk.” Shufro countered that insurers “have refused” when asked by legislators to “open the books” and document their losses; NYCOSH also notes that New York experienced only a 9.1 percent drop in construction employment from 2006 to 2011, while the national decline was 28.4 percent.
Cuomo has previously clashed with labor on issues ranging from public workers’ pensions to an expiring (ultimately partially extended) millionaire’s tax. Salon’s Blake Zeff argued in a January BuzzFeed essay that Cuomo’s “approach to balancing two competing interests – piling up points to advance in a Democratic primary for president, while steering to the center in key areas (and carefully avoiding antagonizing monied interests who fund campaigns and influence elite opinion) – has consisted of aggressive advocacy of ‘cultural’ or ‘social’ progressive causes, while downplaying economic ones.” Cuomo this month appointed GOP former Gov. George Pataki to co-chair a commission on reducing tax rates, a move that Michael Kink, who directs the labor-backed coalition A Strong Economy for All, compared in a Capital New York interview to “bringing in Godzilla to oversee the rebuilding from a Godzilla attack.”
Shufro said the scaffold question would “be one of the major political battles that will go on and dominate Albany for the next session,” and so Cuomo was “going to have to make a certain decision about which side he’s going to come out on … I know that this is an important issue to labor, just as it seems to be an important issue to the business community.” Shufro predicted Cuomo’s approach to the scaffold law would be “one of the major issues that will help unions make decisions about how they see him going forward.” He added, “It’s not an easy place to be in.”
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As Federal Reserve Selects New Top Officials, Coalition Calls for Public Input
New York Times - November 10, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - A coalition of community groups and labor unions wants the...
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.
Source
Ugh: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren want Federal Reserve to be more diverse
Ugh: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren want Federal Reserve to be more diverse
The Federal Reserve has 12 regional bank presidents. Ten of them are men and 11 of them are white. This is a troubling...
The Federal Reserve has 12 regional bank presidents. Ten of them are men and 11 of them are white. This is a troubling finding to lawmakers in Washington.
Politicians, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, are urging the U.S. central bank to become more diverse, according to a new letter sent to Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
“Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country cannot be understated,” said the letter, signed by 116 members of Congress and 11 Senators.
A spokesperson for the Federal Reserve Board confirmed that the central bank has been working hard to incorporate diversity into its model. At the present time, the Fed is looking to bring on more women and minorities.
Today, one-quarter of minorities make up regional Fed bank boards, and nearly half of all directors are female or non-white.
Instead of trying to create politically correct diversity, why don’t members of Congress pen a letter urging the Fed to close its doors. At the very least, the likes of Warren and Sanders can encourage the Fed to bring in the likes of Ron Paul, Tom Woods or Robert Wenzel.
End the Fed…
By Andrew Moran
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I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the...
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the first time. I ended my week in rage after learning that Flake, R-Ariz., would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Turning Wisconsin schools into police states won't help kids learn
Turning Wisconsin schools into police states won't help kids learn
According to a new report put together by LIT and the Center for Popular Democracy, “Despite white students’...
According to a new report put together by LIT and the Center for Popular Democracy, “Despite white students’ overwhelmingly similar behavior patterns, and despite black students accounting for only 55% of the student population in Milwaukee in the 2013–2014 school year, data shows that black students accounted for 84.6% of the referrals to law enforcement.
Read the full article here.
Police arrest 155 health care protesters at U.S. Capitol
Police arrest 155 health care protesters at U.S. Capitol
U.S. Capitol Police officers arrested at least 155 demonstrators Wednesday at Senate office buildings, as health care...
U.S. Capitol Police officers arrested at least 155 demonstrators Wednesday at Senate office buildings, as health care advocates continued to pressure lawmakers two days after a Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act collapsed.
Police officials said in a statement that officers responded to “demonstration activity” at 45 separate locations in Senate office buildings beginning about 2:15 p.m. Authorities said demonstrators were warned “to cease and desist with their unlawful demonstration activities” before police made arrests, the statement said.
Read the full article here.
Poughkeepsie Becomes Second City in NYS with a Municipal ID
Poughkeepsie Becomes Second City in NYS with a Municipal ID
“Emily Tucker, Senior Staff Attorney for Immigrant Rights at the Center for Popular Democracy, said, “I’ve written...
“Emily Tucker, Senior Staff Attorney for Immigrant Rights at the Center for Popular Democracy, said, “I’ve written reports on municipal IDs used in the development of over a dozen programs, and I regularly advise elected officials and advocates on best practices for municipal IDs. I’ve reviewed Poughkeepsie’s legislation, and I can say with confidence that it is among the strongest municipal ID ordinances I have encountered. Poughkeepsie’s legislation should represent the gold standard for municipal ID card programs in the country.”
Read the full article here.
3 days ago
3 days ago