#Cville2DC marchers pledge to fight white supremacy in all its forms after 118-mile journey
#Cville2DC marchers pledge to fight white supremacy in all its forms after 118-mile journey
WASHINGTON — They kept a grueling pace. More than 250 marchers completed a 118-mile journey from Charlottesville,...
WASHINGTON — They kept a grueling pace.
More than 250 marchers completed a 118-mile journey from Charlottesville, Virginia, to the nation’s capital on Wednesday. A core group of faithful marchers walked a third of the length of Virginia, a former Confederate slave-holding state, to speak out against racial hatred.
Read the full article here.
Fed Up on Nightly Business Report
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014 ...
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014
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Next labor fight is over when you work
Commercial Appeal - 05.24.2015 - WASHINGTON — If there's one labor issue that has come to the forefront of political...
Commercial Appeal - 05.24.2015 - WASHINGTON — If there's one labor issue that has come to the forefront of political agendas over the past few years, it's the minimum wage: Cities and states around the country are taking action to boost worker pay, as federal efforts seem doomed to fail.
But a new wave of reform is already in the works. Instead of how much you earn, it addresses when you work — pushing back against the longstanding corporate trend toward timing shifts exactly when labor is needed, sometimes in tiny increments, or at the very last minute.
That practice, nicknamed "just-in-time" scheduling, can wreak havoc on the lives of workers who can't plan around work obligations that might pop up at any time.
Right now, community groups and unions in Washington, D.C., are formulating a bill that will address the problem of schedules that can be both shifting and inflexible. The labor-backed group Jobs With Justice says it likely will include a requirement that employers provide workers with notice of their schedules a few weeks ahead of time, and that additional hours go to existing employees, rather than spreading them across a large workforce.
"The one thing we're finding overwhelmingly is that people aren't getting enough hours to make ends meet," says Ari Schwartz, a campaign organizer at D.C. Jobs With Justice. "People aren't getting their schedules with enough time to plan child care and the rest of the things in their lives."
When a proposal gets to the D.C. Council, Washington won't be the first: After passage of landmark legislation in San Francisco, bills have been offered in Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut, California, New York, Michigan and Oregon. Along with new proposals to expand paid sick day legislation, they are a bid to give workers more control over how they spend their time.
"These scheduling reforms are getting really popular, because it makes no sense that, for example, you're required to be available to work by your employer and you're not picked for that time," says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. "People who don't suffer these abuses already understand what it's like to juggle work and family, so people really identify with that as being a problem."
Carrots and sticks
Twenty years ago, schedules weren't as much of a problem. Working in retail, especially, tended to be a solid 9-to-5 job.
Then retail hours grew longer. And then came computerized scheduling, which allowed employers to best fit staffing to demand. Here's what that looks like in practice: Handing out schedules based on what times of day or the month you expect the most business, splitting up hours across a large workforce that is available on a moment's notice, and sometimes sending people home if traffic is slow.
That helps companies optimize their labor costs, but it wreaks havoc on the lives of low-wage workers, who don't know how much they're going to make from week to week, and often can't schedule anything else around work.
One worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is still employed there, has worked in the hot food prep section of the Whole Foods in Washington, D.C., for 12 years. She liked it; the pay wasn't bad, and the people were friendly. She worked consistently from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and took a second job as a nanny in the afternoons, which added around $300 a week to her income — more money to send home to her father in El Salvador, and to support her daughter in college in Tennessee.
But then, a new manager cut back hours; some people left and weren't replaced. The schedule posted on the wall started to shift the worker's days off, or tell her to come in from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. instead. Usually she got a week's notice, but once in a while she'd come to work and the schedule had already changed, so she'd have to go back home. After that happened on too many days, she had to drop the afternoon job. So once again, she was just squeaking by.
"She would come and say, ‘I really need you to cover this shift,' and it is what it is," the worker says in Spanish, through a translator. "Lots of us have lost lots of jobs."
It's been better over the past few months, she says. And that's not by accident: As public complaints surfaced about Whole Foods' scheduling practices, the company rolled out a new system that allows employees to see their schedules for two weeks in advance and prevents managers from changing them at the last minute or scheduling "clopenings" — both closing the store and opening it in the morning — without an employee's consent. The policy has been in place nationwide since early April, spokesman Michael Silverman says.
Whole Foods isn't alone. Walmart has also introduced a system of "open shifts," which allows workers to pick their own hours. Starbucks curbed some of its practices in the wake of a New York Times article last year that described their effect on one barista.
The Gap is working with the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of Law, University of California, in San Francisco to set up pilot projects around the country that would measure the impact of giving employees stable schedules and more hours. Many companies haven't considered how much their scheduling practices are actually costing them in the form of employee turnover, says Joan Williams, a UC law professor.
"If you don't count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models," says Williams. "Our hypothesis is that if you provide people with more stable schedules, you'll see lower turnover [and] absenteeism and higher worker engagement."
In time, the business case may grow clear enough that more companies move toward stable schedules on their own. But Williams says legislative efforts are needed as well: A recent national survey found that 41 percent of early-career, hourly workers get their schedules less than a week in advance.
Legislative action
Last year, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction to pass comprehensive scheduling reform, with a set of companion bills that require "formula retailers" (i.e., large chains) to give workers two weeks' notice of their schedules, pay workers for the shifts when they're on call and give hours to current employees instead of hiring more, among other provisions. The law went into effect in January but won't be enforced until July.
Meanwhile, scheduling legislation is in the works around the country. National groups such as the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Womens Law Center are helping to build coalitions where scheduling reforms could prove politically palatable, in places such as New York — where the union-backed Retail Action Project has been advocating for "just hours" for years — and Minnesota, where the AFL-CIO-affiliated Working America has been building support among non-union members for measures that would benefit all workers.
But it hasn't been smooth sailing for the scheduling reform movement. A Maryland bill failed this year, in the face of employer opposition. And though there isn't even a bill yet in Washington, businesses are voicing skepticism.
"Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes D.C. less attractive to businesses, than I'm concerned about that," said Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. "The D.C. chamber is concerned about any restrictions on free enterprise."
It's perhaps more concerning to employers than even raising the minimum wage: That's just extra cost. Scheduling, by contrast, impacts the very core of how they've learned to do business.
Campaign regulatory board stymied by Legislature
Minnesota’s campaign finance regulatory board heads into election season with its slimmest possible board membership...
Minnesota’s campaign finance regulatory board heads into election season with its slimmest possible board membership for taking action after the Legislature failed to confirm two appointees before adjourning its session.
Two appointments before lawmakers got hung up over concerns raised by Senate Republicans about the DFL political background of Emma Greenman. Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board appointments require confirmation from the House and Senate on a three-fifths vote; the House supplied sufficient votes to confirm Greenman and former Republican state Rep. Margaret “Peggy” Leppik during the session’s final day.
Board chairman Christian Sande said Friday that it could be August before the board is back to full strength. That’s because of the legal steps Gov. Mark Dayton must take to fill the slots, by which time election contests will be in full swing and campaign finance complaints will be streaming in.
“It means for the board to take any action the votes have to be unanimous,” Sande said. “I don’t know that it handicaps us. But it certainly does indicate that where in the past with six active members of the board it might be easier to arrive at four votes to achieve something.”
Absence of a single member would deprive the board of the quorum it needs to even meet.
The remaining members would have to be in complete agreement to impose any penalties, issue any advisory opinions or take other substantive action because state law requires four votes in favor when the typically six-member board makes decisions.
Campaign finance board appointments always have come with more political sensitivity and scrutiny than most agencies. In fact, state law dictates a specific political makeup and that some members be former lawmakers.
Greenman and Leppik had been serving on the board pending confirmation but their appointments were considered null when the Legislature adjourned without positive votes.
A Dayton spokesman says the governor plans to resubmit their names once the openings are posted, which would allow them to serve again until the Legislature returns next year and takes another look. It’s not clear when that could happen.
Sen. Scott Newman of Hutchinson said he and his Republican colleagues weren’t willing to confirm Greenman because of past and present political activity.
“Is this someone who would be able to set aside partisan politics and render judgment as to violations of campaign finance laws? We really doubted it,” Newman said in a phone interview. “We were very concerned about it because of the degree of involvement in political partisanship.”
He added, “This is not a personal attack on her. It is simply a realization of her past activities. She was a very politically active person.”
Greenman, a 36-year-old Minneapolis lawyer, is director of voting rights and democracy for the Center for Popular Democracy. Past stints include work for the Wellstone Action organization formed after the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone and for a Minnesota unit of the Service Employees International Union. In her appointment materials, she lists her political affiliation as with the DFL.
Greenman didn’t immediately return a call or email inquiring about her intentions moving forward said in an email Friday that the lack of a vote was disappointing. She said she is considering reapplying and has been encouraged to do so.
“I have had the pleasure of of serving on the board since January and believe it plays an important role in supporting and protecting Minnesota’s democracy,” she wrote.
In a packet compiled in connection with her earlier appointment, Greenman disclosed details about her past political involvement and her present job, which she said posed no conflict with a campaign board role and didn’t encompass campaign finance matters.
“At this point in my career I am able to serve on the board without any direct conflicts of interest. I do not work for any candidates or any political campaign committees. I do not currently represent the Minnesota DFL or any party official or political candidate,” she wrote in a November letter to Dayton seeking the appointment.
By Brian Bakst
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The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
Anger, pain, and courage. That was what the moment was about. Two women and their pain. A U.S. Senator in an elevator,...
Anger, pain, and courage.
That was what the moment was about.
Two women and their pain.
A U.S. Senator in an elevator, literally trapped and torn.
Frozen by their escalating anger and anguish over what he had just announced.
A yes vote for Brett Kavanaugh to join the Supreme Court.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Schedule Rules Prove Difficult to Implement
San Francisco — San Francisco, the country’s premier laboratory for new Internet services, is also used to innovating...
San Francisco — San Francisco, the country’s premier laboratory for new Internet services, is also used to innovating in municipal regulation.
But in its latest experiment, it’s starting to find that legislating good corporate behavior isn’t as easy as pressing a button on your smartphone.
In July, the city started implementing a first-in-the-nation law aimed at curtailing the trend toward “just-in-time” scheduling, where managers call in employees to work on short notice. The new measure requires large-chain retailers — such as Safeway and Walgreens — to publish schedules at least two weeks in advance and to compensate employees with “predictability pay” if they make changes less than a week ahead of time. It also mandates that additional hours be offered to existing employees first before new hires are made, and that part-time workers be paid at the same rate as people who work full-time.
So far, it’s been easier to publish schedules than live up to the spirit of the law.
“The two-week notice seemed to be instituted right away, but the other stuff is lagging,” said Gordon Mar, director of San Francisco Jobs With Justice, a labor-backed group that pushed for the “Retail Workers Bill of Rights” and has been monitoring its implementation.
The sluggish response may be because fines don’t kick in until Oct. 3; the city is still hashing out the rules. But the spotty compliance so far highlights the difficulty of attempts to mandate worker-friendly practices — especially the kind that touch the most fundamental aspects of business operations, rather than those that simply require higher pay and better benefits.
San Francisco employers fought the new ordinance, but couldn’t prevent its passage. Now, they complain it’s affecting service.
“We’re hearing from members in San Francisco that it really is not working well at all,” said Ronald Fong, president of the California Grocers Association. Stores can’t always predict surges in foot traffic, which might be brought on by a sunny day, leaving managers without the option to bring in more staff. That was a problem during the heat wave that swept over San Francisco this summer.
“Supplies weren’t able to get out to the shelves,” Fong said. “It just kind of snowballed, and our customers have a bad experience, or the stores lose sales.”
Some businesses don’t mind the rules in principle, but object to the red tape. “Everybody pretty much operates on a predictive schedule,” said Bill Dombrowski, president of the California Retailers Association. “But the process of implementing this, with offering the employees hours in writing and waiting three days for a response, it’s a lot of government intrusion into very minute detail.”
Also, not all industries schedule their workers in the same way. Milton Moritz is president of the National Association of Theatre Owners’ California and Nevada chapter, and said the theater business is by nature unpredictable, making the new law particularly difficult to comply with.
“We might not know until the Monday before the Friday a film shows, and even then we’re hiring, firing, scheduling people based on the business that film’s going to do,” Moritz said. “This ordinance flies in the face of all that. It really complicates the issue tremendously.”
The San Francisco ordinance hasn’t just been irritating for big companies. Some workers grumble the law discourages employers from offering extra shifts on short notice, because they would have to pay the last-minute schedule change penalty — even if workers would be happy for the chance to pick up more hours.
Rachel Deutsch, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy who has been helping local jurisdictions across the country craft fair-scheduling legislation, said that’s something that might change in future iterations.
“I think that’s the thing with any policy where it’s the first attempt to solve a complicated economic problem,” Deutsch said. “It’s been a learning process.”
So far, fair scheduling laws aren’t spreading as quickly as minimum wage and paid sick leave laws. A statewide bill in California failed a couple weeks ago, and no other local ordinances have passed besides San Francisco’s, though there are active campaigns in several cities including Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, several companies have acted on their own to curb some of the practices that workers have found most disruptive, like on-call shifts, where workers have to be available even if they aren’t ultimately asked to work. But in some cases — like that of Starbucks, which committed to eliminating many of those practices — those voluntary changes haven’t been any more effective than government mandates.
Erin Hurley worked at Bath & Body Works and campaigned for an end to on-call shifts. After she left the job, parent company L Brands said it would stop the practice at Bath & Body Works as well as another of its chains, Victoria’s Secret. But Hurley said she’s heard from current workers that managers are still doing effectively the same thing, by asking employees to stay a little longer.
“On-call shifts were replaced with shift extensions,” said Hurley. “Basically what L Brands did was change the name of the practice.” Keeping people on-call is very convenient for employers, and letting it go can be easier said than done. L Brands did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, advocates in San Francisco think the Retail Workers Bill of Rights has already done some good, and will be more effective when the city’s enforcement kicks into high gear — just like overtime rules did, when companies got used to obeying them.
Take Michelle Flores, 21, who has worked part time at Safeway for two years to support herself while in going to college. Unpredictable schedules made that difficult: She would only know her shifts a few days beforehand, which sometimes didn’t leave her enough time to hit the books.
“I would study from midnight until 5, 6 a.m., sleep for two or three hours, and then go to the exam,” said Flores, 21, who attends San Francisco State. This year, she expects that to change. “If I know that I have a shift scheduled, I’ll just study another day,” Flores said.
Also, the law came with some funding for community organizations to make employees aware of what workers are entitled to. That has ancillary effects — like getting people interested in joining a union, which can be better equipped to make sure companies are following the rules.
“It just creates an opportunity to talk to more workers about their rights under the law, and that leads to conversations about other issues in the workplace,” said Gordon Mar, of Jobs with Justice. “And that could lead to getting organized.”
Source: Valley News
Group Seeks All Drafts of Scaffold Law Report
Capitol Confidential - August 20, 2014, by Casey Seiler - The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed advocacy...
Capitol Confidential - August 20, 2014, by Casey Seiler - The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed advocacy group that supports New York’s controversial Scaffold Law, has filed an appeal of its initial Freedom of Information Law request for all communications between SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance, the business-backed anti-Scaffold Law group that paid almost $83,000 for an analysis of the law’s economic impacts.
That report, made public in February, has been the subject of fierce debate — concerning the details of the Institute’s report as well as larger issues of academic integrity. The Rockefeller Institute subsequently backed away from the most controversial chapter of the report, which included a statistical analysis that concluded gravity-related accidents fell in Illinois after the state ditched its version of Scaffold Law.
Scaffold Law, which places “absolute liability” on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a “comparative negligence” standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The initial FOIL request from the Center for Popular Democracy resulted in SUNY’s release of email communications between Rockefeller Institute researchers and Tom Stebbins of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance — contact that was required by the contract for the report.
On appeal, SUNY released an initial draft copy of the report that had been attached to one of those emails. The TU last week offered a side-by-side comparison of the draft and final versions.
The Center is now requesting to see all subsequent drafts of the report. “Given that the anti-worker groups behind this debunked report are still trying to use its flawed findings to weaken New York’s safety laws, SUNY should release all of the drafts that we know exist,” said the group’s Josie Duffy. “What we saw in the one draft that SUNY did release was disturbing enough, but we still don’t have a full accounting of how this study was manipulated.”
A SUNY spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment — though it’s unlikely the system would have anything to say about the mere filing of a FOIL request.
Here’s the Center’s FOIL appeal:
Center FOIL appeal
Source
Protest Planned at St. Louis Fed
St Louis Business Journal - March 4, 2015, by Angela Mueller - A group of activists is planning a series of...
St Louis Business Journal - March 4, 2015, by Angela Mueller - A group of activists is planning a series of demonstrations Thursday outside several Federal Reserve district banks, including in St. Louis.
The demonstrations are intended to highlight the rising unemployment rates among minorities and to urge officials not to raise interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"The Federal Reserve has the power - and responsibility - to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities," the Economic Policy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based liberal think tank that is backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
Demonstrations are planned for outside the regional Fed banks in New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas and St. Louis.
Source
Why are former Toys R Us workers planning to protest CalSTRS’ investments of private equity?
Why are former Toys R Us workers planning to protest CalSTRS’ investments of private equity?
Supporting the workers are Rise Up Retail, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Organization United for Respect....
Supporting the workers are Rise Up Retail, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Organization United for Respect.
Read the full article here.
Gap Says It Will Phase Out On-Call Scheduling of Employees
The move makes Gap the latest retailer to move away from “on-call scheduling,” which regulators, workers’ rights groups...
The move makes Gap the latest retailer to move away from “on-call scheduling,” which regulators, workers’ rights groups and some academics say is detrimental to employees and their families.
“At Gap Inc., we also believe that work-life integration enables all employees to reach their full potential and thrive both personally and professionally,” the company said in a statement on its blog announcing the change on Wednesday. “We recognize that flexibility, inclusive of consistent and reliable scheduling, is important to all of our employees.”
On-call scheduling requires employees to call ahead before a specific shift to see if they will be needed, a practice that gives workers little predictability in scheduling. Facing public and regulatory pressure, some retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret, have already begun phasing out the practice.
Gap said its five brands — Athleta, Banana Republic, Gap, Intermix and Old Navy — had agreed to stop on-call scheduling by the end of next month and have committed to providing employees with at least 10 to 14 days’ notice, according to Wednesday’s announcement.
In April, the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, sent a letter to more than a dozen retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, J. C. Penney and Victoria’s Secret, requesting more information about on-call scheduling and questioning whether such practices were legal. In the months since, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret both announced they would discontinue it.
Mr. Schneiderman praised Gap’s decision in a statement on Wednesday.
“Workers deserve stable and reliable work schedules, and I commend Gap for taking an important step to make their employees’ schedules fairer and more predictable,” he said.
Gap had already begun scaling back the use of on-call shifts after starting a pilot program last year to test alternative scheduling practices. Mr. Schneiderman’s office told Gap last week that it would consider legal action if the retailer did not take steps to end on-call scheduling, according to Eric Soufer, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal advocacy group, found that the children of parents who worked unpredictable schedules could have inferior cognitive abilities, in areas like verbal communication, and struggle with anxiety and depression.
“Parents’ variable schedules require irregular family mealtimes and child bedtimes that interfere with children’s healthy development,” the study said.
Correction: August 28, 2015
An article on Thursday about an agreement by five Gap apparel store brands to stop requiring employees to make themselves available for last-minute shifts misstated when the policy change will become effective. It is the end of next month, not the beginning of next year.
Source: New York Times
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