Former Fed Staffer, Activists Detail Plan to Overhaul Central Bank
Former Fed Staffer, Activists Detail Plan to Overhaul Central Bank
A former top Federal Reserve staffer joined with activists on Monday to lay out the mechanics of a plan to overhaul the...
A former top Federal Reserve staffer joined with activists on Monday to lay out the mechanics of a plan to overhaul the structure of the U.S. central bank.
Dartmouth College’s Andrew Levin, who was a top adviser to former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Jordan Haedtler of the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign and the Economic Policy Institute’s Valerie Wilson say in a paper that their proposals amount to an important modernization of the Fed.
“The Fed’s structure is simply outdated, and that makes it harder for its decisions to serve the public,” Ms. Wilson said in a press call. “We are well aware we can’t create a dramatic shake-up” of the Fed, she said, explaining what she and her colleagues are calling for is “pragmatic and nonpartisan.”
The linchpin of the overhaul is bringing the 12 quasi-private regional Fed banks fully into government. The paper’s authors also repeated calls for bankers to be removed from regional Fed bank boards of directors, while proposing nonrenewable terms for top central bank officials and greater government oversight over Fed actions.
The paper Monday fleshed out the specifics of how the overhaul would happen, building on ideas first made public in April. “We had a ‘why,’ and now we have a ‘how,’” Mr. Levin told reporters.
Mr. Levin and Fed Up have seen successes in their campaign to overhaul the central bank. Earlier this year, congressional Democrats and the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton endorsed their push to remove bankers from the boards overseeing the 12 regional Fed banks. Fed Up’s effort to promote diversity in a central bank that is still dominated largely by white males, not withstanding the current leadership of Chairwoman Janet Yellen, also has gained traction among Democrats.
The regional Fed banks are unique among major central banks for being owned by local banks. Some fear this structure gives financial institutions undue sway over policy decisions. Fed bank presidents have countered this isn’t the case.
Regional Fed officials have acknowledged that more diversity within the central bank system would be welcome, but they have been reluctant to tinker with the current structure. The paper also proposes auditing the Fed’s monetary-policy-making functions, and that has been something officials have fought hard against, believing it will lead to bad economic outcomes.
The authors say regional Fed banks can easily be made public by canceling the shares of the member banks and refunding the capital these banks were required to keep with the Fed.
The money to do this can be created by the Fed, and the paper says the fact that the central bank no longer would have to pay dividends to the banks would help it return more of its profit to the government. Over the next decade, that could mean the Fed might return as much as $3 billion more in excess profit, helping reducing the government’s budget deficit.
A number of regional Fed bank leaders have pushed back at being made fully public. In May, New York Fed President William Dudley said “the current arrangements are actually working quite well, both in terms of preserving the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to the conduct of monetary policy and actually leading to pretty, you know, successful outcomes.”
The paper’s authors said making the Fed fully public also would allow it to remove bankers and other financial-sector members from the boards that oversee each regional Fed bank. The authors said directors should be nominated by either a member of Congress or a state governor, subject to approval by the Fed boards.
None of these directors should be from the financial sector, to prevent the conflict of interest created by a member of a regulated financial institution overseeing the operations of their own regulator.
This, too, has drawn pushback from some on the Fed. Philadelphia Fed leader Patrick Harker said in July that “the banker from a small town in Pennsylvania provides incredibly important insight,” and he wants people like that on his board.
New bank leaders should be selected by an open process in which candidates are named publicly, with a formal mechanism for public input. All Fed officials also should serve single staggered seven-year terms, which the paper says would help insulate central bankers from political interference. The selection process of regional Fed bank leaders has long been a secretive affair. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Dallas, Minneapolis and Philadelphia Fed banks, who all took their posts since 2015, have had connections to Goldman Sachs, which has drawn criticism from the Fed Up campaign. Mr. Dudley at the New York Fed was once that firm’s chief economist.
The authors also would like to subject Fed monetary policy decisions to Government Accountability Office audits. To ensure this oversight doesn’t interfere with Fed decision-making, the paper calls for the audits to be done annually and not at the request of a member of Congress, and the GAO shouldn’t be able to comment on any given interest-rate decision.
The paper calls for the Fed to release a quarterly monetary policy report that describes officials’ views on policy, the economy’s performance relative to the Fed’s official price and job mandates, forecasts and a description of risks, and a description of any models driving policy-making.
Any changes to the Fed are ultimately up to elected officials. In February, Ms. Yellen told legislators “the structure could be something different and it’s up to Congress to decide that—I certainly respect that.”
By Michael S. Derby
Source
Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the...
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the speech. Much like Trump, they say raising rates again will harm working people’s chances of getting jobs and better pay. The protesters wore green T-shirts reading “The Fed wants more of us unemployed.
Read the full article here.
Fed Splits Evident Amid Wait for Yellen: Jackson Hole Journal
Bloomberg News - August 22, 2014, by Jeff Kearns, Simon Kennedy and Michael McKee - Divisions within the...
Bloomberg News - August 22, 2014, by Jeff Kearns, Simon Kennedy and Michael McKee - Divisions within the Federal Reserve over how long to keep easy monetary policy are already in evidence in Wyoming as investors prepare for Chair Janet Yellen’s keynote speech.
Fed Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard told Bloomberg Radio that the U.S. central bank may begin tightening monetary policy earlier than officials previously expected.
“The evidence is leading toward an earlier increase than would have been in the works earlier this year,” said Bullard. “Labor markets have improved quite a bit relative to what the committee was thinking.”
Bullard spoke after Kansas City Fed President Esther George told Bloomberg Television that broad-based employment gains suggest the U.S. economy is strong enough to withstand higher interest rates. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, who voted against the Fed’s policy statement last month, told CNBC he’s concerned about the Fed not adjusting policy appropriately.
By contrast, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart urged more patience, warning in a separate interview with Bloomberg Radio against “moving prematurely and snuffing out some progress.”
* * *
Robots don’t steal jobs, the U.S. labor market is less flexible than it was and workers haven’t suffered unprecedented periods out of work.
Photographer: Bradly Boner/Bloomberg
Fed Chair Janet Yellen arrived at the dinner to be greeted by about 10 people wearing bright green T-shirts emblazoned with “What Recovery?” and carrying placards with labor market data. Close
Those are among the conclusions of papers being presented at the symposium. Here is a review of their contents, which can be read in full on the Kansas City Fed’s website.
Robots and computers don’t steal as many jobs as some believe, and automation actually benefits many workers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor David Autor said in his paper.
A key reason humans aren’t obsolete yet is that simple tasks such as visually identifying a chair, which any child can do, aren’t so easy for engineers to teach to computers, Autor said.
“Journalists and expert commentators overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for skilled labor,” he wrote. “Challenges to substituting machines for workers in tasks requiring flexibility, judgment, and common sense remain immense.”
* * *
The U.S. labor market became less fluid in recent decades partly because of an aging workforce, a shift to older businesses, and the spread of occupational licensing and certification, economists Steven J. Davis and John Haltiwanger wrote in their paper.
The economists define labor market fluidity as “flows of jobs and workers across employers.” The paper found the U.S. “underwent a large, broad-based decline in the pace of labor market flows in recent decades.”
“An aging workforce is a factor behind the slowdown of worker reallocation,” the paper said.
* * *
U.S. workers in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 recession haven’t experienced unprecedentedly long bouts of non-employment, according to a paper by economists Jae Song and Till von Wachter.
Their findings “suggest that the potential for hysteresis in the aftermath of the Great Recession is moderate,” the paper said. Hysteresis posits that people out of work for too long have a harder time finding work, leading to a persistent decline in the employment-to-population rate
* * *
Policy makers would benefit from a better understanding of labor markets, economist Giuseppe Bertola argued in a paper that weighed the impact of rules making those markets rigid or flexible.
Rules that protect workers from job losses and provide more generous unemployment benefits can soften and smooth shocks to the economy, said Bertola.
* * *
George opened the symposium late yesterday by putting the presenters on the spot.
The last conference devoted to labor markets was 20 years ago, George told the group of almost 200 as they ate steak and salmon dinners beneath elk antler chandeliers.
The presenters and discussants back then included five future Nobel Prize winners and two academics who would go on to be central bankers: Bank of England Deputy Governor Charles Bean and Stanley Fischer, the Bank of Israel governor who became Fed vice chairman in June. Fischer sat at one of the front tables last night.
“So for those of you that will be on the program,” George said to laughter, “We’re either setting you up for a blessing or a curse.”
This year’s topic is “Re-Inventing Labor Market Dynamics.” In 1994 it was “Reducing Unemployment: Current Issues and Policy Options.”
George said she went through the 1994 proceedings only to find central bankers and economists are still grappling with some of the same basic issues today.
“I saw that the discussion included things like the decline in demand for low-skilled workers due to technology and the challenge of the long-term unemployment,” George said. “And questions were raised by that symposium, as they are today, about the usefulness of the unemployment rate as a measure of economic slack.”
It reads like a list of the most vexing issues the Fed faces now and will be attempting to tackle today and tomorrow.
* * *
Fed Chair Janet Yellen arrived at the dinner to be greeted by about 10 people wearing bright green T-shirts emblazoned with “What Recovery?” and carrying placards with labor market data.
The protesters had traveled to Wyoming to highlight the plight of “struggling workers from around the country” who want the Fed to pursue “full employment that reduces poverty and expands the middle class,” according to the Center for Popular Democracy, a Brooklyn-based organization. The backs of their T-shirts had a graph comparing the performance of wage growth among the top 1 percent and the rest.
Ady Barkan, a staff attorney with the group, spoke briefly with Yellen at the door of the lodge’s Explorers Room. “She said she understands the issues we’re talking about and is doing everything they can,” he said, after she had entered the room.
Yellen has regularly cited weak labor markets as a scourge of the economy she’s trying to boost with easy monetary policy.
Shemethia Butler, who works part time at a McDonald’s Corp. restaurant in Washington, was one of those to make the trip. The 34-year-old said that while she isn’t up on monetary policy, she wants policy makers to know she fears higher interest rates for her and her community. She said she works 25 to 35 hours a week for $9.50 an hour at a job she’s had for just over a year. Before that she was unemployed for two years.
“There’s no recovery,” Butler said. “The economy is broken because there aren’t enough jobs for people like me.”
* * *
Yellen’s speech will be the main event of the first full day of the conference. She will speak at 8 a.m. Mountain Time today.
Her address will be followed by the presentation of the paper by Davis and Haltiwanger.
Autor will then discuss job polarization before a panel on demographics featuring Karen Eggleston of Stanford University, David Lam of the University of Michigan and Ronald Lee of the University of California, Berkeley.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi will deliver the keynote luncheon speech.
Tomorrow, Von Wachter and then Bertola will present their papers.
The final panel will provide an overview of labor markets and monetary policy. It will include Bank of England Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and Brazilian central bank chief Alexandre Tombini.
* * *
The conference is lacking Wall Street participants for the first time.
An exception is Jacob Frenkel, chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, who is attending in his capacity of chairman of the board of trustees of the Group of 30, a private-sector group of mainly former policy makers which advises central banks and governments. Tim Adams, president of the Institute of International Finance, is also present.
Draghi, Kuroda and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz provide international central banking firepower.
Among academics in attendance are Alan Blinder of Princeton University, Harvard University’s Kenneth Rogoff and Martin Feldstein, and John Taylor of Stanford University. President Barack Obama’s administration is represented by Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and Jeffrey Zients, director of the National Economic Council.
* * *
The backdrop for the symposium and Yellen’s speech was set by the release of the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s July discussions.
Fed officials in July raised the possibility they might raise rates sooner than anticipated, as they neared agreement on an exit strategy. Some participants were “increasingly uncomfortable” with the pledge to keep interest rates low for a “considerable period,” the minutes said.
At the same time, “many participants” still saw “a larger gap between current labor market conditions and those consistent with their assessments of normal levels of labor utilization.”
* * *
* * *
Some recent stories on the U.S. labor market:
* * *
The opening day of Jackson Hole has been associated with stock-market gains in each of the past seven years. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose an average 1.3 percent on each of them from 2007 to 2012, following speeches by then-Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who skipped last year’s conference.
The biggest climb was the 1.9 percent of 2009, when Bernanke said the economy appeared to be “leveling out.” Gains also followed his signals of 2010 and 2012 that fresh asset-purchases were imminent.
The bar is therefore set high for Yellen who identifies slack labor markets as a reason for easy monetary policy. Economist Ed Yardeni says the “Fairy Godmother of the Bull Market” won’t let us down.
Still, Steven Englander of Citigroup Inc. says that because “dovishness is increasingly anticipated,” Yellen may have to intensify her support for low interest rates if risk-assets such as stocks are to rally anew.
Source
Elizabeth Warren And Congressional Democrats Call Out Lack Of Diversity At The Federal Reserve
Elizabeth Warren And Congressional Democrats Call Out Lack Of Diversity At The Federal Reserve
A majority of House Democrats and eleven Democratic senators sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on...
A majority of House Democrats and eleven Democratic senators sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Thursday, urging the Fed to improve the diversity of its top officials and increase the representation of consumer and labor groups in its ranks.
The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in the House, argues that a lack of diversity of all kinds at the Federal Reserve undermines the central bank’s ability to represent the public.
The Fed’s control over monetary policy, the letter notes, gives it far-reaching influence over the economy. When the central bank decides to raise interest rates, it increases borrowing costs, putting downward pressure on job creation in order to keep inflation in check.
A Fed with fewer black and female decision-makers might be less attuned to the ways in which modest changes in the job market disproportionately affect African-Americans and women, both of whom suffer from employment discrimination.
“When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected,” the letter states.
Boasting the signatures of 116 House Democrats, including all of the Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus, the letter does not lack for evidence with which to critique the central bank.
Eighty-three percent of the board members of the regional Federal Reserve banks are white, and almost three-quarters of them are men, according to a Center for Popular Democracy study cited in the letter.
Just 11 percent of those board members represent consumer and community groups or labor organizations, the study states, while 39 percent come from the financial industry and 47 percent from other major business sectors.
When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.
Warren-Conyers letter to Janet Yellen
The congressional Democrats praised Yellen in the letter for prioritizing full employment since she has taken the helm in 2014. Yellen has presided over just one increase in the Fed’s benchmark rate in December, when the Fed raised it to a range of 0.25 to 0.5 percent from the near-zero level, where it had been since the 2008 financial crisis.
The letter also credits Yellen for promising to “consider” African-American candidates for open regional Fed president positions during her congressional testimony in February, and expressing “concern” that there has never been a black president of a regional Federal Reserve bank.
But just days after Yellen’s testimony, the Democrats note, the Fed announced it had approved the re-appointment of 10 regional Fed presidents, all of whom are white and eight of whom are men.
“Despite the importance of this decision, there appears to have been no public consultation, and limited transparency regarding the metrics and criteria used to evaluate the presidents’ performance, or in the decision to reappoint them,” the letter alleges.
Warren and Conyers’ letter is part of a broader push by progressive members of Congress, along with national activist groups and like-minded economists, to make Federal Reserve monetary policy a key component of the progressive agenda. They argue that the outsize influence of inflation-wary financial professionals on the central bank, plus sustained pressure from ideological conservatives in Congress, mean it’s time for liberals to be more vocal about their views.
The Fed Up coalition, an alliance of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy, has led these efforts, which include a reform plan released in April that would transform the Fed into a wholly public entity, among other changes. (The 12 regional Fed banks are currently owned by private financial institutions.)
Fed Up said activists affiliated with its member groups made calls to members of Congress to encourage them to sign the letter.
Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among the lawmakers who did so. Sanders also praised Fed Up’s April reform plan and released detailed proposals of his own for the central bank in December.
Fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign implied that Clinton agreed with the letter’s key demands.
“Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue,” Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement. “Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry.”
The remarks appear to be the most explicit comments to date by either Clinton or her campaign on the Democratic presidential front-runner’s vision for the Fed and the types of Fed officials she would appoint as president.
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Trump told CNBC last week that he would likely replace Yellen, who is the first female chair of the central bank, once her term ends in 2018. In the same interview, he said he supports low interest rates, a policy Yellen promoted that might be undone by a more conservative Fed chair.
Trump’s latest comments suggest a departure from claims he made in August, when he said the low rates were feeding a financial asset bubble.
By Daniel Marans
Source
Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It...
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It is run by the Center for popular Democracy...
Read the transcript here.
Urban Outfitters heeds call to end on-call shifts
WELL, THAT was fast! Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's...
WELL, THAT was fast!
Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's unbelievably abusive to its lowest-wage workers. Within hours of the column hitting print, Urban announced it was killing the practice for good.
Coincidence? You decide.
Here's yesterday's statement from the Philly-based billion-dollar retailer, which also owns the brands Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and Bhldn.
"We are always looking for ways to improve, and as such we have decided to end on-call scheduling for all [Urban] brand associates throughout North America. We look forward to continuing to find ways to better fulfill our mission of providing fashion and lifestyle essentials to our dedicated customers."
This is amazing news for employees at Urban's 518 North American stores.
For years, they'd been receiving their work schedules only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they wouldn't be told, until three hours before the shift was to begin, whether they'd actually be needed to work. If they weren't, they wouldn't be paid, even though they'd been required to hold that time for the company.
The unpredictability had wreaked havoc on workers, who are mostly young and female.
They were unable to schedule classes if they were in school. Or to schedule hours at a second job if they needed a full-time income. Or to reliably arrange day care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both was fixed even though their working hours weren't.
What a crappy way to treat members of the demographic that Urban targets so heavily.
"It's pretty messed up," one worker, a college student, told me. She was paying her way through school, but Urban's scheduling meant she couldn't schedule other work to help pay tuition. "It's hard to plan."
Readers reacted with disgust to the column.
"Retail needs to be called on the carpet!" wrote emailer rgrassia. "We need more people with the ability to do something to pressure these companies to change the ways they conduct themselves."
Reader Madeleine Pierucci excoriated Urban for "co-opting the '60s struggles and playing it to the detriment of its 2015 workers. Not cool." She also planned to picket Urban's Center City store next week.
And a furious churchgoer named Samantha C. vowed to spread the word throughout the National Baptist Convention to have its 100,000 church members boycott Urban's stores in protest.
"It's time for slavery to stop," she declared.
Urban's change of heart is a testament to the power of the press, says Carrie Gleason. She's director of the fair-workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and has been working for a very long time to get employers to end on-call staffing.
"The media has helped shift the public opinion in terms of what is acceptable around employers' expectations of their employees' time," she told me. "I think Urban's announcement is a direct response to the fact that the public is now holding the whole retail industry to higher standards."
I'd like to take credit for Urban's reversal, but the truth is, another media outlet has been hammering at on-call scheduling by retailers - and not just Urban - for a while now.
The online news site BuzzFeed has chronicled the issue so doggedly that the New York state attorney general in April called companies on the carpet for the practice, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage workers.
As a result, huge chains like Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie and Gap announced plans to discontinue the practice not just in New York but nationally, improving hundreds of thousands of workers' lives.
Urban, though, had said it would discontinue the practice only in New York. Everywhere else, it would be exploitation as usual.
It turned my stomach that Philly-based Urban - a company that so many of us grew up with and feel affinity for - would treat its workers so shabbily. And I said as much in my column, which we - ahem - pushed on the Daily News front page and on Philly.com.
If that helped nudge Urban into doing the decent thing, then yesterday was a good day.
Not just for Urban's workers. But for Urban's shareholders:
As news hit that Urban would end its on-call scheduling, CNBC reported, the company's stock rallied 4.68 percent.
You're welcome, Urban.
And thank you.
Source: Philly.com
Let’s Be Real Episode 6: We’re Fed Up!
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people...
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people and people of color. We take you to a rally in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where we spoke with two protesters about how the Fed impacts their communities. Then, we sit down with the Director of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up! Campaign to hear about the fight to put working people and communities of color at the center of the Fed’s decision-making process.
Read the full article here.
Zara stores in NYC accused of discriminating against black employees and customers
According to a new report published by the Center for Popular Democracy, ZARA’s New York City locations have a serious problem with discrimination.
Study author Chaya Crowder writes that Zara has a “documented history of racial insensitivity in its designs, discriminatory treatment of its employees, and prejudice agains its customers.” Zara, as you may remember, is the company that caught flack for items like a bag with a swastika on it, a striped shirt with a gold star that looks very much like what Jews were forced to wear in concentration camps during the Holocaust, and a T-shirt bearing the phrase “white is the new black.” Charming stuff!
So it’s hard to be completely shocked by the report’s conclusions—after surveying employees at six of Zara’s NYC stores (for context, eight of the Spanish retailer’s 53 U.S. locations are in the city), Crowder found that most employees feel workers with lighter skin are treated better. From the report:
Employees of color agreed most strongly that ‘managers show favoritism.’ Many of the employees interviewed felt that favoritism is based on race. One employee stated ‘Managers definitely show favoritism to the Europeans.’ Another employee asserted, ‘The favoritism goes to those that are not African American or Latino’… In general, employees with a longer tenure at Zara identified favoritism, especially race-based favoritism, as an issue.
And, employees say that customers are treated with bias, as well. According to Crowder, Zara workers say that that the code “special order” is used as a way to trail suspected shoplifters in the stores. The people trailed, say employees, are disproportionately black:
A preponderance of employees surveyed mentioned a practice of labeling customers as ‘special orders,’ a security code for suspected shoplifters. Employees overwhelmingly felt that the Zara practice led to Black customers being disproportionately labeled as special orders upon entry to Zara stores.
A Zara spokesperson told the Guardian that “Zara USA vehemently refutes the findings,” adding that Crowder did not try to reach the company.
Zara’s parent company, Inditex, reiterated to Fusion in an email that Zara USA refutes the accusations, adding that the report “was prepared with ulterior motives,” and that “it fails to follow an acceptable methodology for the conduct of a credible objective survey on workplace practices, and instead appears to have taken an approach to achieve a pre-determined result which was to discredit Zara.”
But Zara is currently being sued by a former employee who says he was harassed and later fired because he’s gay, Jewish, and American.
This, of course, is not the first time a major retailer has been accused of discrimination. Back in 2013, sources at Barneys said racism against black customers was part of the culture at the luxury department store.
Zara’s parent company, Inditex, reiterated to Fusion in an email that Zara USA “vehemently refutes the claims,” adding that the report “was prepared with ulterior motives,” and that “it fails to follow an acceptable methodology for the conduct of a credible objective survey on workplace practices, and instead appears to have taken an approach to achieve a pre-determined result which was to discredit Zara.”
Source: Fusion
Scaffold Law Debate Heats Up Over Dueling Reports on Safety and Costs
Legislative Gazetter - April 21, 2014, by Matthew Dondiego - A new report released last Thursday by a pro-labor, pro-...
Legislative Gazetter - April 21, 2014, by Matthew Dondiego - A new report released last Thursday by a pro-labor, pro-immigrant rights advocacy group criticizes the construction industry for using what they call misleading figures and cherry picking data to lobby against the state's controversial "scaffold law."
The scaffold law is a century-old law in place to protect worker's rights. Under the law, contractors and property owners serving as contractors are responsible for providing a safe work environment for their employees or become liable for any on-site injuries and accidents.
Opponents of the law point out that contractors are fully liable for workers' injuries even if it is determined the worker is at fault. Opponents say it is outdated and causes construction costs to rise due to the increased costs of insurance premiums. Supporters of the law say it provides common sense protection for workers performing a dangerous job and maintain that contractors are not held liable in court if proper safety precautions are in place.
The new report, titled Fatally Flawed and released by the Center for Popular Democracy, which is supported financially by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and labor unions, is a scathing criticism of a Rockefeller Institute study — which is frequently referenced by the construction industry — that concluded the scaffold law resulted in an additional 667 work site injuries and adds about $3 billion in additional costs to construction projects in New York state each year.
According to last week's report, the oft-cited Rockefeller Institute study is "fundamentally biased" and calls the New York Civil Justice Institute, which paid $82,800 to commission the Rockefeller study, "a poorly-disguised front group" for the construction industry aligned Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York. According to the report, the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York and the New York Civil Justice Institute share the same address, 19 Dove St, Suite 201, Albany, N.Y., and the same telephone and fax numbers.
"This [Rockefeller Institute] study was bought and paid for by the construction industry," Josie Duffy, a staff attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy. "This is a direct result of people who do not like the scaffold law for business reasons, paying for this report to be released."
On the claim that the scaffold law contributed an additional 667 injuries, the report says the Rockefeller Institute "confuses correlation with causation."
This claim, according the Center for Popular Democracy, is based on worker injury rates in "sub-sectors and non-construction industries," such as warehouse work, transportation, roofing, residential building construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade and utilities industries, and are compared to the rest of the nation.
"The authors assert that these differences are greater in New York and attribute these greater differences entirely to the scaffold law," the new report reads. "There is simply no basis to conclude that the scaffold law is the cause of these differences. Indeed, the authors provide no justification for comparing injury rates in construction with injury rates in less hazardous industries, or using those differences as a proxy for the impact of the scaffold law."
Duffy bluntly says that the scaffold law does not cause an increase in workplace accidents. She says the Rockefeller Institute's study, which was released in February, lacks factual evidence that the law makes work sites more dangerous and "that number is coming from nowhere."
"To me, that is the most egregious part of this whole report," Duffy said.
Despite the strong words used in the report and by Duffy, Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, says that the Rockefeller report "conclusively" found the law made construction sites more dangerous for workers.
He said that absolute liability for contractors creates "perverse incentives" for workers.
"Workers are not incentivized because they are never held responsible and contractors are not incentivized because they are guilty in nearly every circumstance," Stebbins said. "Only by apportioning liability to fault, as is done in every other state and every other part of our civil justice system, can we maintain balance and improve safety."
According to Stebbins, the report released by the Center for Popular Democracy last week is a "political hit piece, with no statistical merit or actual research of any kind. They cannot get researchers to back up their opinions, because the facts do not support the scaffold law."
Stebbins argues that absolute liability causes the insurance markets to treat sites with sterling safety records the same as companies with less stringent safety precautions. Opponents of the scaffold law say that absolute liability holds the company liable for the worker injuries regardless of who is actually found to be at fault.
Duffy however, said that companies are not automatically found to be liable for injuries sustained by workers on construction sites and are typically safe from injury-related costs so long as they had the proper safety precautions in place.
"What absolute liability means is that you have to pay for the costs of the injuries … and that's only going to happen if you're breaking the law," she explained. "What this law says is there has to be some level of protection for workers."
According to Duffy, under the law companies still hold the right to argue their case in court and they are not automatically found responsible for every injury.
"It's important that employers get to have their voices heard in law, I support that this law allows people to get their voices heard on both sides and that's a very, very real protection," she said "Nothing happens automatically in this law and you can't even be taken to court unless your breaking the law in the first place."
The report also criticizes the Rockefeller Institute for failing to take into consideration certain conditions in New York that may affect the injury rates in the state. Such measures include New York generally has more high-level construction works which may drive up injury rates and New York construction workers are more likely to be union workers and therefore are more likely to report injuries. According to the report, Texas has one of the lowest construction injury rates yet is among the highest in construction fatality rates.
According to the report, "Such low-injury-rate states have artificially suppressed the US injury rate, which the paper nonetheless compares to the New York rate."
"This is a law that protects construction workers. Construction workers are doing a really difficult job and they're doing it every day and they are growing our economy," Duffy said. "Construction workers are literally the bread and butter of what makes New York City, New York City … and this is a state of construction."
Assemblyman Francisco Moya, a Democrat from Queens, said the Center for Popular Democracy's report "injected some truth into the politically-charged debate surrounding the scaffold law."
"Many untruths have been lobbed at the scaffold law in an attempt to dismantle it. This report makes clear that those untruths have unfortunately been crafted by parties who have a financial interest in watering down workplace protections," Moya, a staunch supporter of the law, said in an e-mail. "When it comes to life and death decisions about workplace safety, there's no room for politics. It has to be about facts. And the fact is that the Scaffold Law protects workers. That's the real bottom line."
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Don't Raise Rates, Protesters Tell St. Louis Fed
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - March 5, 2015, by Jim Gallagher - About a dozen chilly protesters gathered outside the...
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - March 5, 2015, by Jim Gallagher - About a dozen chilly protesters gathered outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on Thursday to complain that the Fed may soon make it harder to find work.
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates later this year, a move intended to prevent inflation in years hence. The protesters complained that higher interest rates can also cut off the jobs recovery.
The Fed represents “the 1 percenters,” said Derek Laney, an organizer with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment. “They are the big banks, the big corporations, and their mandate is to keep inflation low at all costs.”
People at the bottom of the economic ladder would trade some inflation for jobs, he said.
The protesters complained that the Fed has set a target for inflation at 2 percent — slightly above the current inflation rate — but has no target for reducing unemployment.
Rising rates tend to slow an economic rebound eventually, although there is usually a long lag.
The protest was timed for release of a report by three national advocacy groups, including the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Popular Democracy and Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Stronger Economy.
The report complained that the boards of the Fed's 12 regional banks, which influence national decisions, are heavy on banking and business executives, but light on representatives of other citizens, such as labor and clergy.
The boards also don't fully reflect their community's racial mix, the report said. For instance, the St. Louis Fed's board is 10 percent black while its multi-state region is 17 percent black, according to the report.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis did not immediately provide a comment.
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