States May Copy California’s Law to Give Employees Right to File Class Actions
States May Copy California’s Law to Give Employees Right to File Class Actions
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether employees have the right to bring class actions against their...
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether employees have the right to bring class actions against their bosses. With the court’s Republican majority restored this year by President Donald Trump, labor advocates aren’t holding their breath.
Instead, they’re pursuing a work-around pioneered on the West Coast. A decade-old California law allows people to act as “private attorneys general,” bringing cases against companies on behalf of the government. Activists are urging other states and cities to follow suit.
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38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the...
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the ballot Nov. 6. Thirty-eight leaders from Apex, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Hillsborough, Holly Springs, Morrisville, Raleigh, Chatham County, Orange County and Wake County governments have signed a letter criticizing the amendments’ “potentially damaging impact.” The letter was released Thursday by Local Progress and Common Cause NC.”
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America Has Become A Tyranny of the Few - But We Can Fight It
America Has Become A Tyranny of the Few - But We Can Fight It
We’re in the thick of the second post-Citizens United presidential campaign, and it’s already clear that allowing...
We’re in the thick of the second post-Citizens United presidential campaign, and it’s already clear that allowing unlimited funds to influence political elections was a terrible idea.
Half of the funds supporting presidential candidates from both parties comes from a mere 158 families — a miniscule percentage of America’s 120 million households — as documented by a recent New York Times investigation. Largely white, older, male, and Republican, they are also unrepresentative of what our multicultural society looks like.
As a result of this narrow group of donors controlling what’s on the political agenda, America has a fundamentally undemocratic system in which working class people and people of color are left on the margins, silenced in a political debate, they can’t gain access to — because they don’t have millions to share.
America has become a tyranny of the few, and Americans are fed up with the broken system. Last week, voters in Maine elected to increase funding from $2 million to $3 million for the Clean Elections Fund, which provides government grants to candidates who agree to limit their spending and private fundraising. It might be a long time before Citizens United is overturned. In the interim, it’s important that other states introduce similar legislation challenging existing financing models.
The tyranny of the few is two-pronged, however. Not only are our elected leaders being held accountable to wealthy donors instead of the people of our nation, the least privileged of this nation are simultaneously facing strong barriers to voting.
Our antiquated voter registration system results in roughly 62 million eligible voters not registered, either because they never registered or their registration information is incorrect. In a 2008 Current Population Survey, blacks and Latinos cited “difficulties with the registration process” as their main reason for not registering to vote. Whites disproportionately reported not registering because they were “not interested in elections or politics.” Barriers to voting registration are in many states especially well in place for people of color, workers and youth, who are targeted by voter suppression laws.
We could put an end to the error-ridden old-fashioned manual voter registration and step into the 21st century with automatic voter registration. Other states could follow the example set by California and Oregon, which are linking voter registration to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Through linking voter registration with public offices such as the DMV, revenue agencies, the Postal Service and others, the United States could secure over 56 million more voters, as a report from Center for Popular Democracy shows.
So to sum up: people of color and working class Americans aren’t just unable to place millions of dollars with politicians who will take care of them in Congress, they aren’t even able to vote for leaders who might serve their interests.
The outcome? Our America has become an oligarchy run by a tiny and overly privileged section of its population, whose lives and wishes for our nation are in stark opposition to the lives and dreams of the average American.
This is borne out in our legislation. Despite overwhelming public support for policies such as taxing those who earn more than $1 million a year, and laws that address inequality, workers’ rights, and protection of the middle class, we see the footprints of corporate powers all over our legislation.
We need to act fast by passing laws that disrupt this undemocratic cycle. We must break Congress’ dependency on big money and return the power to the people, but we can’t only rely on our lawmakers to change our nation.
It will take a lot of work, but we can’t allow for this undemocratic oligarchy to go on. Let’s not leave the future of our country in the hands of the wealthiest, let’s instead bring back democracy to our nation.
Source: Common Dreams
Fed Pressed on Questions of Diversity
Fed Pressed on Questions of Diversity
The Federal Reserve faces criticism from lawmakers and others over its record on diversity at the same time the central...
The Federal Reserve faces criticism from lawmakers and others over its record on diversity at the same time the central bank is highlighting the economic outlook for minority groups.
Several Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee questioned Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Tuesday about the selection process for regional Fed bank presidents, echoing the concerns of advocacy groups who have said the system should be more open and allow more public input.
The 12 regional bank presidents are appointed by regional boards, subject to approval by the Washington, D.C.-based Fed board of governors. As heads of regional Fed branches, they are expected to keep their fingers on the pulse of their local economies and participate on decisions about interest rates. Just two of the current presidents are women and none are black or Hispanic. The last black president stepped down in 1974.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) criticized the selection process, saying Washington officials represented little more than a rubber stamp. Earlier this year, Fed governors signed off on the reappointment of most bank presidents until 2021 “without any public debate or any public discussion,” she said.
“If you’re concerned about this, why didn’t you use either of these opportunities to say enough is enough. Let’s go back and see if we can find qualified regional presidents who also contribute to the overall diversity of the Fed’s leadership?” Ms. Warren asked.
“It just shows me that the selection process for regional Fed presidents is broken,” retorted Ms. Warren, calling on Congress to consider changing the process.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group, has been pressing the Fed for months to increase the diversity of its leadership, as have many Democrats on Capitol Hill who signed onto a letter from Ms. Warren to Ms. Yellen on the matter last month.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has also weighed in. Her campaign released a statement saying the Fed “needs to be more representative of America as a whole.”
In a June 13 response to the lawmakers’ letter, Ms. Yellen acknowledged “there is still work to be done” on diversity within the Fed ranks “and I assure you that workforce diversity remains a priority for the Federal Reserve.”
In her prepared testimony Tuesday, Ms. Yellen stressed the need to ensure that the gains from the economic recovery are widely distributed.
She noted that blacks and Hispanics are still suffering some of the effects of the recession in more pronounced ways than other groups. Black and Hispanic workers still face higher unemployment rates than the workforce as a whole, she said.
“It is troubling that unemployment rates for these minority groups remain higher than for the nation overall, and that the annual income of the median African-American household is still well below the median income of other U.S. households,” Ms. Yellen said.
Diverging economic circumstances between white and black households predate the recession but the gaps widened after the financial crisis and have only barely narrowed in the recovery.
A Fed report released alongside Ms. Yellen’s testimony found that black households, which saw their median incomes fall 16% during the recession, are only 88% of the way back to prerecession levels. White households, by contrast, saw incomes fall only 8% and are already back to 94% of prerecession levels, the report said.
It is rare for the Fed to address the economic conditions for individual demographic groups. The central bank’s congressional mandate requires that it seek to hold down unemployment and keep inflation stable for the country as a whole. In the past, Ms. Yellen has said she was sympathetic to the economic troubles of minority groups but stressed the Fed’s options for addressing them were limited.
Ms. Yellen’s comments Tuesday suggest a rising recognition within the Fed that the racial gaps in the economy are becoming more pronounced and that there is a role for monetary policy to play in shrinking those gaps.
“It’s important for us to be aware of those differences and to focus on them as we think about monetary policy and work that the Federal Reserve does in the area of community development,” she said.
Ms. Yellen is set to address the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday and could face many of the same questions.
By David Harrison
Source
Want to combat inequality? Look to the Fed.
Want to combat inequality? Look to the Fed.
Undermining the central bank's responsibility to promote maximum employment would be a mistake....
Undermining the central bank's responsibility to promote maximum employment would be a mistake.
Read the full article here.
Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve...
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve, seeking to shine light on the central bank’s president selection process.
The lawsuit, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, is a product of the “Fed Up” campaign to strip private bankers’ influence from the Fed’s top rungs and increase transparency in its leadership selection. The suit was filed after the Fed ignored a FOIA request filed in August seeking information on president selections in 2015 and 2016, the group said.
“The leaders of the twelve Reserve Banks are among the most powerful and influential actors in shaping the nation’s monetary policies, yet the process by which they are chosen is completely non-transparent,” the group wrote in the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The lawsuit comes as Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, prepares to leave the bank in February.
“The public has a right to obtain records about how the Federal Reserve’s leaders are selected, and there is no justification for the Fed’s withholding of basic information about its governance,” said Connie Chan, an attorney representing Fed Up, in a statement. “The fact that Fed Up has to bring this FOIA lawsuit is itself further evidence of the Fed’s lack of transparency.”
By Tara Jeffries
Source
Activists ‘Fed Up’ With Rate Rise Talk Offer Plosser a City Tour
Bloomberg News - November 15, 2014, by Jeff Kearns & Christopher Condon -Labor and community organizers meeting...
Bloomberg News - November 15, 2014, by Jeff Kearns & Christopher Condon -Labor and community organizers meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen challenged officials who are ready to raise interest rates to first come visit the poorest neighborhoods with them before saying that the economy has recovered.
Kati Sipp, one of about two dozen activists meeting Yellen, said at a press conference yesterday in front of the central bank in Washington that she would show Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser “what life is like in this economy” for his city’s unemployed.
“Clearly Charles Plosser hasn’t been coming out the way that I work,” said Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families. “I work on 60th Street in West Philadelphia in a storefront office, and every single day someone or a couple of people come in to my office because they are looking for work.”
A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Fed declined to comment.
Members of the group met with Yellen and Fed governors Stanley Fischer, Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard. The coalition of 20 community groups, labor unions and religious leaders from around the U.S. wants the Fed to hear the concerns of ordinary Americans as it prepares to raise rates. It’s part of wider public pressure, including from lawmakers of both parties, who want more accountability and transparency from the central bank.
The Fed has been criticized by Democratic and Republican groups over its rescue of big Wall Street banks in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and over subsequent steps to support the economy through zero interest rates and massive bond purchases.
Yellen Meeting
The group meeting with Yellen and her colleagues yesterday included individuals struggling to find work despite the improving economic picture in the U.S., Ady Barkan, senior staff attorney at the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy, one of the organizers of the meeting, said in an interview.
“They all listened very intently and asked questions,” Barkan said of Yellen and the three governors. “They were very interested in hearing about the personal stories of the folks we brought.”
Those included Reginald Rounds, a resident of Ferguson, Missouri, near St. Louis, where protests erupted after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by police in August. The predominantly black town became a symbol of racial inequality and militarized policing as armored trucks and tear-gas canisters rolled through the suburban community after the shooting.
‘Sky-High’
Barkan said Rounds told the Fed officials that “sky-high unemployment” in the St. Louis area had contributed to “desperation” in the town.
Another speaker was Shemethia Butler, an unemployed woman from Washington. She recounted for Yellen how she was laid off from a job that offered no paid sick days after becoming ill and missing time at work, Barkan said.
Barkan said he had agreed with Fed officials not to recount how Yellen and the governors responded.
Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on the meeting.
The jobless rate has fallen to 5.8 percent from a 26-year high of 10 percent in October 2009. Interest rates have been held near zero since December 2008, and most Fed officials project that they will raise borrowing costs sometime in 2015.
Still, millions of Americans can find only part-time work, and average hourly wages have risen at about a 2 percent pace for the last five years, barely outpacing inflation.
Big Banks
“The economy is not working for the vast majority of people,” Barkan told reporters before the meeting in front of the central bank headquarters facing the National Mall. “It’s too important of an institution to be controlled and dominated by big banks and corporations rather than the public.”
In addition to low rates to help the unemployed, the groups are pushing for a more open and transparent search process for regional bank presidents that includes more community input. Barkan said the group asked Yellen for support in arranging meetings with each regional Fed president.
While formal changes to the process of selecting regional Fed leaders would require legislation, Barkan said the Fed board of governors held significant informal influence over the process.
“I’m sure they could change the process if they wanted to,” he said.
Plosser, Fisher
Plosser and Richard Fisher of Dallas both plan to retire next year and the “Fed Up” coalition wants more public input in naming their successors. Both banks have said they have hired executive search firms to find candidates.
Regional bank chiefs are picked by their respective boards, which are typically composed mostly of banking and business executives. Philadelphia’s nine-member board includes Comcast Corp. Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis.
Both presidents have cast dissenting votes this year against the Fed’s policy, and have been among officials favoring raising rates sooner to prevent inflation and financial-instability pressures from building.
“It’s important that real people are also representing the public and Federal Reserve policy making,” Sipp said. “We want publication of the names that are under consideration so that we know who they are, that it’s not just a puff of white smoke and suddenly we have a new” president.
Search Firms
The Philadelphia Fed has hired executive search firm Korn/Ferry International and said yesterday that the Los Angeles-based company has set up an e-mail address -- PhiladelphiaFedPresident@KornFerry.com -- to receive inquiries.
The Dallas Fed announced two days ago that it hired Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. to seek a replacement for Fisher.
Economist Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, told reporters yesterday that the Fed’s willingness to arrange the meeting was “incredibly encouraging” because the central bank “is one of the most important institutions in the world but few Americans know it.”
While the unemployment rate has declined to a six-year low, there remains “too large a gap between today and a healthy economy,” he said, adding that stakes are highest for disadvantaged groups, including African-Americans. Their unemployment rate tends to be twice as high as the broader U.S. level both “in good times and in bad,” Bivens said.
The rate was 10.9 percent in October, and rose to a 26-year high of 16.9 percent in March 2010, Labor Department data show. The rate for whites was 4.8 percent last month.
Wider Inequality
Yellen, a labor market economist for most of her three-decade career in government and academia, has shown concern for people who aren’t fully benefiting from a stronger economy. Last month, in a speech in Boston, she questioned whether widening inequality is “compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history.”
Since becoming chair in February, Yellen has focused attention on those who have been left behind after five years of economic expansion. In March, she told a community development conference in Chicago the Fed hadn’t done enough to combat unemployment and cited local residents who have struggled with joblessness.
In August, the Center for Popular Democracy brought low-wage workers to the Fed’s annual monetary policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they spoke briefly with Yellen on the sidelines of the event and met with Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who also wants to raise rates sooner.
The activists arrived at the Fed wearing the same shirts that they wore when they gathered in the lobby of the Jackson Lake Lodge during the symposium: bright green T-shirts emblazoned with the question “What Recovery?”
Source
ABQ call center workers get more family-friendly workplace rules
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company...
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company has been under increasing pressure to modify work rules to give workers greater flexibility to balance family and work requirements.
The company operates a nationwide call center near Jefferson and Menaul in Albuquerque and recently announced plans to add more employees top the more than 1,500 local workers already employed at the site.
News of the new workplace rules came from the Communications Workers of America which has been leading efforts with local organizations for these changes:
For Immediate Release July 2, 2015
Public Pressure Pushes T-Mobile US to Provide Fairer Paid Parental Leave Policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Responding to growing public pressure and local government initiatives, T-Mobile US announced this week that it would be adopt a paid parental leave program. The company also said it would end an oppressive policy that required call center workers to be on the phone 96.5% of their work time, leaving them with virtually no time for follow up on customer issues or to make changes in customers’ accounts as needed.
This is great news for workers who often must struggle to balance family and career. It comes as workers at T-Mobile US and a coalition of community supporters in cities like Albuquerque, N.M., step up efforts to restore a fair workweek and achieve other improvements for workers.
Members of TU, the union of T-Mobile workers, the Communications Workers of America and many organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy, OLÉ and other coalition partners, have been raising concerns about unfair scheduling and other issues for workers at T-Mobile US and other employers. Workers want a voice in the decisions that affect them in their workplace — not just the ones that the company selectively picks and chooses. That’s why T-Mobile US workers are joining TU.
T-Mobile US’s initial scheduling changes were made just as the Albuquerque City Council was moving forward to consider a proposal to implement paid sick leave and scheduling improvements. The Albuquerque coalition hosted a town hall meeting on irregular scheduling, where Albuquerque City Council members pledged to support their fight for a fair workweek including the right to take sick leave without retaliation.
A recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision found T-Mobile guilty of engaging in illegal employment policies that prevented workers from even talking to each other about problems on the job. The judge ordered the company to rescind those policies and inform all 46,000 employees about the verdict.
Parental leave is a good first step toward helping workers balance their career and family responsibilities. But workers want real bargaining rights and the right to fairly choose union representation. That’s what T-Mobile must realize.
Source: The New Mexico Political Report
Why the Fed should target underemployment, not unemployment, as it sets interest rates
Why the Fed should target underemployment, not unemployment, as it sets interest rates
Members of the Fed Up Coalition protest during the Jackson Hole economic symposium in 2015....
Members of the Fed Up Coalition protest during the Jackson Hole economic symposium in 2015.
See the photo here.
Who’s running our schools anyway?
After reading about Gov. Walker’s plan to close some Green Bay public schools and replace them with charters, I’m...
After reading about Gov. Walker’s plan to close some Green Bay public schools and replace them with charters, I’m beginning to believe the takeover of our public schools by big business and legislators like Walker is proceeding very well.
They say our public schools are failing. That’s not fully true. Some are, but it’s because of poverty. We don’t fund them adequately to overcome student poverty-related problems.
No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core were composed and implemented by Bill Gates and other member of the 1 percent without input from parents, teachers of early childhood students and early education experts.
The educational expectations, of especially very young children, are causing children great stress, enough to make them throw up, cry and get sick. The standardized testing by Pearson (a British multinational corporation) is a hoax. It has no background in education or teaching children. Its record of mistakes in the test questions, correcting tests, and delivering them on time is dismal.
I remember in the ’70s standardized testing was dropped all over the country because the tests were considered an inaccurate method of measuring the whole learning process. They basically measure memorization. Now they’re back and they’re quick, inaccurate and expensive.
The complaint of parents, teachers, children and administrators are growing louder because of excessive homework. Health care professionals are saying the stress of overburdening students causing sleeping problems is unhealthy. The curriculum being used now relies on demand-and-push as a method of teaching. I call it abusive because that method doesn’t respect the personhood of the student who becomes a yes person, not a creator.
In my teaching experience, I found children love to learn if they are presented with material they are mentally, physically and developmentally ready for.
We had a school in De Pere called the Wisconsin International School. It left with very little notice to parents and children. Teachers were out paychecks. A friend lost nearly $1,000 she paid as a retainer fee for the next year. They are suing but to little avail.
A year ago, the Center for Popular Democracy issued a report demonstrating “charter schools in 15 states ... had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. Now there are millions of new alleged and confirmed cases of financial waste, fraud, and mismanagement reported.”
But we don’t yet have the necessary law to protect us from dishonesty in charter schools. How come?
Sen. Dave Hansen said, “Wisconsin taxpayers cannot afford to pay for two systems, much less a system of private schools that are not held accountable for providing their students quality education.”
We need our public schools to care for all our students. Finland, a world leader in education, manages it with great success.
Peggy Burns of Green Bay has a bachelor’s degree in kindergarten-primary education, a master’s degree in elementary eduction and 24 graduate credits in early childhood/educational exceptional needs.
Source: Green Bay Press Gazette
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