CPD IN THE NEWS

Barkan, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2016, started two programs at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group that promotes progressive political groups. The programs include “Fed Up,” a pro-worker policy group, and “Local Progress,” a network of progressive politicians. For one of his projects, “Be a Hero,” Barkan traveled across a country in a wheelchair-accessible RV to campaign for political candidates who will “stand for” families so that “health care benefits [families have] paid for [will be] there for them when they most need it,” according to the campaign’s website.

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Wall Street Journal - November 12, 2014, by Nick Timiraos - Nearly 7 million Americans are stuck in part-time jobs that they don’t want.

The unemployment rate has fallen sharply over the past year, but that improvement is masking a still-bleak picture for millions of workers who say they can’t find full-time jobs.

Martina Morgan is deciding which bills to skip after her hours fell at Ikea in Renton, Wash. Sandra Sok says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours after she transferred to a Wal-Mart in Arizona from one in Colorado.

In Chicago, Jessica Davis is frustrated by her schedule dwindling to 23 hours a week at a McDonald’s even though her location has been hiring. “How can you not get people more hours but you hire more employees?” the 26-year-old Ms. Davis said.

The situation of these so-called involuntary part-time workers—those who would prefer to work more than 34 hours a week—has economists puzzling over whether a higher level of part-time employment might be a permanent legacy of the great recession. If so, it could force more workers to choose between underemployment or working multiple jobs to make ends meet, leading to less income growth and weaker discretionary spending.

Employers added some 3.3 million full-time workers over the past year, but the number of full-time workers in the U.S. is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007. Meanwhile, the ranks of workers who are part time for economic reasons has fallen by 740,000 this year to around 4.5% of the civilian workforce. That is down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but remains well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession.

“There’s just less full-time jobs available than there used to be,” said Michelle Girard, chief economist at RBS Securities Inc.

The slow decline in part-time work is particularly acute when broken out by industries. For the retail and hospitality sectors, the number of involuntary part-time workers in October was nearly double its prerecession level. For construction, mining and manufacturing work, by contrast, the share of such part-time labor was just 9% above its pre-recession level.

Other data show that the ability of part-time service workers to find full-time work has been much slower during the current recovery. In goods-producing industries, around two-thirds of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time employment by July 2014, up from 60% in 2009, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But for service-sector workers, the rate has seen little improvement. Around 48% of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time work one year later, up from around 46% in 2009.

An important question for policy makers now is whether the elevated level of involuntary part-time work is due to cyclical factors, meaning it will fall as the economy heals, or to structural changes that have made employers more inclined to rely on a larger contingent workforce and avoid converting part-time workers to full-time positions.

On one side are economists like Ms. Girard, who say greater economic uncertainty and rising labor costs—from increases in the minimum wage, regulations or health-care expenses stemming from the Affordable Care Act—explain higher levels of part-time work. “There is a structural element to this at the very least,” she said.

The health-care law requires employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent workers to offer affordable insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week or face fines. “Companies are just more inclined to hire part-time workers, not necessarily because of the health-care law, but for business reasons that make it a more attractive option,” Ms. Girard said.

Anecdotal reports have suggested employers have cut hours to prepare for the implementation of the health-care law, but that hasn’t been borne out by economic data.

An analysis by Bowen Garrett of the Urban Institute and Robert Kaestner at the University of Illinois at Chicago found a small increase in part-time work this year, but the increase occurred for part-time jobs with between 30 and 34 hours—above the 30-hour threshold that would be affected by the health-care law.

Other economists say higher levels of involuntary part-time work are mostly cyclical. Businesses don’t appear to be paying part-time workers more than full-time workers; that would be one clear sign of a shift in hiring preferences.

Elevated levels of involuntary part-time work in service jobs may reflect how low-wage employers ramped up hiring earlier in the recovery. More recently, the sector has absorbed those returning to work after long unemployment spells.

Part-time work in service jobs is “a stepping stone for the unemployed and for people out of the labor force,” said Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. Labor markets are “improving in just the way you would expect.”

Labor advocates, meanwhile, say technological changes in how businesses schedule employees are at fault. Software allows employers to schedule and cancel shifts rapidly based on business conditions.

Carrie Gleason, the director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, a labor advocacy group, said that could explain why more part-time workers say they want full-time work. “There’s now this persistent uncertainty in the jobs that hourly workers have today,” she said.

“I need to spend some time with my kids,” said Ms. Morgan, 32. “Two jobs? It’s too much.”

Ikea employees are guaranteed a minimum amount of hours every week. Those that can work “during peak times when our customers are in our stores have the opportunity to obtain more hours,” said Mona Liss, a company spokeswoman. The company in June also announced it would raise the average minimum hourly wage in its U.S. stores next year by 17%.

Meanwhile, the structural-cyclical debate has important implications for the Federal Reserve. If the changes are structural, wages might begin to rise sooner than expected, putting more pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates. If they’re cyclical, it would suggest that Fed policy can remain accommodative.

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen routinely highlights the elevated level of part-time work as a key measure of labor slack. “There are still ... too many who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work,” she said at a press conference in September.

Business surveys conducted by the Atlanta Fed have shown there are more part-time workers because “business conditions don’t justify converting them to full time,” said John Robertson, senior economist at the bank. But other businesses have said their reliance on a larger part-time workforce stemmed from the higher costs of hiring full-time workers.

“It would be wrong to say it’s all cyclical, and it would be wrong to say it’s all structural,” Mr. Robertson said. “We’re somewhere in the middle.”

Ulyses Coatl illustrates how any improvement might unfold. He worked for two years as a stylist at a Levi’s apparel store in lower Manhattan but quit his job in September because the hours had become too unpredictable. His schedule varied from as many as 34 hours a week to four hours, but had averaged around 18 hours in recent weeks, he said.

A Levi’s spokeswoman said the company is “always looking at ways to improve retail productivity, including store labor models and processes” that conform to “industry best practices.”

Wal-Mart says the majority of its workforce is full time, and the share of part-time workers has stayed about the same over the past decade. A spokeswoman said store employees can view all of the open shifts in their store, and that there are full-time positions available in the store at which Ms. Sok works.

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State Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale got an earful during a daylong meeting in Philadelphia on Friday on ways to improve the accountability and effectiveness of charter schools.

Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, warned that if Harrisburg passed pending legislation that would permit the unlimited growth of charters, the cost to the district would be so devastating that it might not be able to manage its own schools.

Lawrence Jones Jr., head of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School in Southwest Philadelphia, said the state needs to provide equitable funding for both district and charter schools.

"This grand experiment is one that is about to collapse under its own weight, because we are doing such a poor job in oversight," said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth.

Kyle Serrette, education director for the Washington-based Center for Popular Democracy, said his organization was stunned by the number of federal fraud cases involving charter officials that have occurred in Pennsylvania in recent years.

His group, which works with community groups and unions, called for "a comprehensive investigation that allows the public, regulators, and legislators to better understand the depth of the problem" to improve oversight.

And Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz told the auditor general that his office is taking another look at the district's charter school office and a group of city charter schools.

The review, which he expects to be completed in a few months, is a follow-up to a study his office completed in 2010 which found that the charter office "was not doing its job" overseeing the schools and that questionable practices were rampant at 13 charters it reviewed.

It was the fifth and final meeting that DePasquale has held across the state to gather input on improving the state's 174 taxpayer-funded charters, which enroll 120,000 students.

Philadelphia is home to 86 charters with 67,000 students.

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Fox News Latino – October 24, 2013 -

A disproportional number of Latino construction workers in New York City die while on the job compared to their coworkers of other races, according to a new report.

From 2003 to 2011, three-fourths of construction workers who died were either U.S.-born Latinos or immigrants, according to a review of all of the fatal falls on the job investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency of the federal Labor Department.

“The data we have demonstrates that Latinos and immigrants are more likely to die in these types of accidents,” Connie Razza, from the Center for Popular Democracy, which compiled the report, told the New York Daily News.

Construction safety advocates and a study by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association cited safety violations on job sites run by smaller, non-union contractors and an unwillingness by some undocumented workers to report violations as main reasons for the high number of deaths among Latino workers.

“Contractors aren’t taking simple steps to protect their workers,” said Razza. “They are not providing the training and the safety equipment that are required by law.”

While New York may have a surprisingly high number of deaths of Latino construction workers, numbers nationwide for Hispanic deaths on the jobs are also greater than any other group.

OSHA reported that 749 Latino workers were killed from work-related injuries in 2011— more than 14 deaths a week or two Latino workers killed every single day of the year. While 12 percent of all fatal work injuries in 2011 involved contractor work, Latinos made up 28 percent of fatal work injuries among contractors — well above their 16 percent share of all fatal work injuries in 2011.

Advocacy groups in New York are working to combat any changes to the state’s scaffolding law, which organizations like Razza’s the Center for Popular Democracy say gives incentive to keep workplaces safe.

Contractors argue that the law, which holds owners and contractors who did not follow safety rules fully liable for workplace injuries and deaths, has caused their insurance costs to skyrocket.

New York lawmakers, however, has historically blocked any of the proposed changes to the law.

“All we’re looking for is the ability to have the same right as anybody else would in the American jurisprudence system,” said Louis J. Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.

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