Second Draft of Scaffold Report Released
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a...
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a second draft of its controversial report on New York's Scaffold Law. According to the Institute's Deputy Director for Operations Robert Bullock, it's the only remaining version of the report that was shared with the report's funder, the state Lawsuit Reform Alliance.
The business-backed group, which opposes Scaffold Law, paid $82,800 to fund the report — sponsorship that has led critics to attack the study as advocacy in the guise of research. Its authors, however, insist the research was conducted in good faith.
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 — a thesis backed up in part by the report. 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 Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed group that supports Scaffold Law, lambasted the report upon its release last winter and requested copies of all communications between the institute and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance. That FOIL request produced a series of emails between researchers and LRA Executive Director Tom Stebbins, including Stebbins' suggested edits to a June 25, 2013, draft copy of the report that was not initially released by the institute.
The center appealed to SUNY, which ultimately released the June 25 draft. A comparison of the draft and the final report suggested that some of Stebbins' suggestions were reflected in the final version. Researchers, however, said any changes were the result of their efforts to sharpen their analysis, and not made due to pressure from the funder.
The newly released draft, dated Aug. 7, 2013, closely resembles the final report.
The center's Josie Duffy claims the six-week gap between the first and second drafts suggests that the institute moved quickly to follow the alliance's edits.
"SUNY says it has now disclosed everything it has, but given that LRANY and the authors held weekly conference calls to discuss the report's progress, we may never know the full extent of their influence over the final version," she said.
In an email, Bullock said the institute "has been open and honest about its contacts with funders and its research has been and will continue to be immune from influence."
"It is unfortunate," he added, "that a research organization known throughout the nation for the quality and character of its work should have to defend itself from accusations leveled by the Center for Popular Democracy, an organization well known for its partisanship."
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What You Need To Know About The Special Election In Arizona
What You Need To Know About The Special Election In Arizona
Ady Barkan, an ALS-stricken progressive activist whose “Be A Hero” initiative targets Republicans who voted for, or...
Ady Barkan, an ALS-stricken progressive activist whose “Be A Hero” initiative targets Republicans who voted for, or back the tax cuts, traveled to the district to campaign on Tipirneni’s behalf. While in Arizona, Barkan, who will need Medicare as his body deteriorates, asked Lesko to respond to the stated intentions of several Republican leaders, including House Speaker Ryan and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, to seek major cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
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Businesses Support Raising The Minimum Wage. Why Doesn’t The Business Lobby?
Businesses Support Raising The Minimum Wage. Why Doesn’t The Business Lobby?
Raising the minimum wage. More paid sick leave and family leave. More stable scheduling for workers. When a major...
Raising the minimum wage. More paid sick leave and family leave. More stable scheduling for workers. When a major Republican-friendly polling shop surveyed CEOs across the country about these typically left-leaning policies, one thing was made clear: they overwhelmingly support them.
So when it came to presenting the results to the Council of State Chambers of Commerce, which commissioned the research, the pollsters had a challenge on their hands — how to reconcile the widespread opposition to these policies by many business lobby groups with their popularity among the people actually running businesses.
In a recorded webinar, David Merritt, the managing director of polling firm LuntzGlobal, described the “empathy” CEOs feel for workers along with their support for labor-friendly policies. “If you ask about them in isolation, of course we want to take care of people who are caring for a loved one. Of course we want to give folks more benefits or more leave or more income.”
In the presentation, obtained by liberal advocacy group the Center for Media and Democracy, Merritt told the business lobbyists that executives expressed widespread support for a number of policies that are vehemently opposed by conservative politicians.
Based on their survey of 1,000 executives, LuntzGlobal found 80% supported raising their state minimum wage, 82% supported increasing paid parental leave requirements and 73% supported increasing paid sick leave. The Washington Post first reported details of the presentation.
“If you’re fighting against a minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle,” Merritt said in the presentation. “Because most Americans, even most Republicans, support raising a minimum wage.”
He went on to coach participants on how to oppose those policies anyhow.
“A lot of you guys have minimum wage battles at the state level. If you are fighting those fights, the best way to fight it is not to talk about the minimum wage,” he said. “If you can, turn it into a federal issue and talk about the Earned Income Tax Credit.”
Joe Crosby, Director of the Council of State Chambers, which commissioned the research, said in a statement that the survey was intended “to benchmark trends on current political issues” and “it primarily covered mid-sized and larger companies, not the smaller businesses that are most affected by wage and leave mandates.”
LuntzGlobal, founded by prominent Republican pollster and consultant Frank Luntz, was unable to comment, per the terms of its contract wit the Council of State Chambers, Crosby said.
“We have known for years”
Advocates for these worker-friendly policies said the findings are proof their cause has many allies in the business community — even if those allies aren’t often the most outspoken voices representing business interests in Washington and state houses.
“We have known for years what this research confirms: that an overwhelming share of business leaders support paid sick days, paid leave and other family friendly policies,” said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, a group that advocates for paid leave.
At one point in the call, Merritt held up language from the group Ness belongs to (below) as polling higher among executives than any other.
“I wouldn’t have changed anything about this statement,” Merritt said in the presentation. “This was the clear winner — from the National Partnership for Women and Families… Perfect, perfect language.”
Business lobby groups like the various state-level chambers of commerce are “not currently representing the views of their members — and doing that at the expense of single moms and hard-working parents,” said Elianne Farhat, who runs the Fair Workweek Initiative, a campaign of the Center For Popular Democracy, a liberal advocacy group. “In every place fair workweek laws are moving, the chambers of commerce have been the loudest voices of opposition.”
But Crosby, the Director of the Council of State Chambers, said the real question at issue is whether labor regulations should be forced onto all businesses by law, not whether businesses support the goal of better pay and working conditions. “Of course business owners support raising wages and benefits for their employees; those are goals they work for every day,” he wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. “But one-size-fits-all government mandates simply don’t work.”
A spokesperson for the National Restaurant Association, the industry’s largest trade group and one of the loudest voices opposing minimum wake hikes, said its members are more sensitive to labor costs than those in other industries. “The Council of State Chambers represents a diverse range of businesses, including tech and manufacturing companies, that could adapt to increased labor costs more easily” than restaurant and fast food owners, said NRA spokesperson Christin Fernandez.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the federal body representing the country’s business community, echoed concerns that pro-labor policies would negatively affect employers.
“The U.S. Chamber, based on input from our members, continues to believe that imposing higher labor costs on employers, especially small businesses, will force them to cut back elsewhere, and will ultimately price low and un-skilled workers out of entry level job opportunities,” said Randy Johnson, senior vice president of Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefits for the Chamber, in a statement.
Asked about the chamber’s position on paid family and sick leave, as well as predictive scheduling, all of which polled well in the survey, spokeswoman Blair Holmes wrote that the Chamber is “careful to be responsive and in synch” with the business community it represents.
“The only point we will make is to say we have not lobbied on these issues in any of the states,” she said, adding that the federal group “is not in a position to comment on the positions these state chambers may have taken” with respect to raising the minimum wage or paid leave and “will not comment on state or local versions of predictive scheduling legislation.”
On its website, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lists among its 2016 priorities: “Oppose efforts to increase the minimum wage and to index the minimum wage to inflation,” and “Oppose attempts to make FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave paid or to mandate paid sick leave.”
By Cora Lewis
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Charter Schools are Cheating Your Kids: New Report Reveals Massive Fraud, Mismanagement, Abuse
Salon - May 7, 2014, by Paul Rosenberg - Just in time for National Charter School Week, there’s a...
Salon - May 7, 2014, by Paul Rosenberg - Just in time for National Charter School Week, there’s a new report highlighting the predictable perils of turning education into a poorly regulated business. Titled “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud and Abuse,” the report focused on 15 states representing large charter markets, out of the 42 states that have charter schools. Drawing on news reports, criminal complaints, regulatory findings, audits and other sources, it “found fraud, waste and abuse cases totaling over $100 million in losses to taxpayers,” but warned that due to inadequate oversight, “the fraud and mismanagement that has been uncovered thus far might be just the tip of the iceberg.”
While there are plenty of other troubling issues surrounding charter schools — from high rates of racial segregation, to their lackluster overall performance records, to questionable admission and expulsion practices — this report sets all those admittedly important issues aside to focus squarely on activity that appears it could be criminal, and arguably totally out of control. It does not even mention questions raised by sky-high salaries paid to some charter CEOs, such as 16 New York City charter school CEOs who earned more than the head of the city’s public school system in 2011-12. Crime, not greed, is the focus here.
In short, the report is about as apolitical as can be imagined: It is narrowly focused on a white-collar crime wave of staggering proportions, and what can be done about it within the existing framework of widespread charter schools.
The report, co-authored by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education, makes the point that the problem of charter school waste, fraud and abuse, which it focuses on, is just one symptom of the underlying problem: inadequate regulation of charter schools. But it’s a massive symptom, which has so far received only fragmentary coverage.The report takes its title from a section of a report to Congress by the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, a report that took note of “a steady increase in the number of charter school complaints” and warned that state level agencies were failing “to provide adequate oversight needed to ensure that Federal funds [were] properly used and accounted for.”
But, the report noted, it’s not just the federal government that should be concerned. Reform efforts are underway in several states; Hawaii even repealed its existing charter school law in 2013, and put strict new oversight measures in place, and “Even the Walton Family Foundation, an avid charter advocate, launched a $5 million campaign in 2012 to make oversight of charters schools more stringent.”
“We expected to find a fair amount of fraud when we began this project, but we did not expect to find over $100 million in taxpayer dollars lost,” said Kyle Serrette, the director of education justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “That’s just in 15 states. And that figure fails to capture the real harm to children. Clearly, we should hit the pause button on charter expansion until there is a better oversight system in place to protect our children and our communities.”
The report explained that the problem has its roots in a historical disconnect between the original intentions that launched the charter school movement and the commercial forces that have overtaken it since. At first, the report noted:
Lawmakers created charter schools to allow educators to explore new methods and models of teaching. To allow this to happen, they exempted the schools from the vast majority of regulations governing the traditional public school system. The goal was to incubate innovations that could then be used to improve public schools. i The ability to take calculated risks with small populations of willing teachers, parents, and students was the original design. With so few people and schools involved, the risk to participants and the public was relatively low.
But the character of the movement has changed dramatically since then. As charter school growth has skyrocketed (doubling three times since 2000), “the risks are high and growing, while the benefits are less clear,” the report continued, adding:
This is not an uncommon occurrence in our nation’s history. In the past—in some cases, our very recent past—industries such as banking and lending have outgrown their respective regulatory safety nets. Without sufficient regulations to ensure true public accountability, incompetent and/or unethical individuals and firms can (and have) inflict great harm on communities.
The report found that “charter operator fraud and mismanagement is endemic to the vast majority of states that have passed a charter school law.” It organized the abuse into six basic categories, each of which is treated in its own section:
• Charter operators using public funds illegally for personal gain; • School revenue used to illegally support other charter operator businesses; • Mismanagement that puts children in actual or potential danger; • Charters illegally requesting public dollars for services not provided; • Charter operators illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenues; and, • Charter operators mismanaging public funds and schools.
Perhaps most disturbingly, under the first category, crooked charter school officials displayed a wide range of lavish, compulsive or tawdry tastes. Examples include:
• Joel Pourier, former CEO of Oh Day Aki Heart Charter School in Minnesota, who embezzled $1.38 million from 2003 to 2008. He used the money on houses, cars, and trips to strip clubs. Meanwhile, according to an article in the Star Tribune, the school “lacked funds for field trips, supplies, computers and textbooks.”
• Nicholas Trombetta, founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School is accused of diverting funds from it for his private purchases. He allegedly bought houses, a Florida Condominium and a $300,000 plane, hid income from the IRS, formed businesses that billed even though they had done no work, and took $550,000 in kickbacks for a laptop computer contract.
• A regular financial audit in 2009 of the Langston Hughes Academy in New Orleans uncovered theft of $660,000 by Kelly Thompson, the school’s business manager. Thompson admitted that from shortly after she assumed the position until she was fired 15 months later, she diverted funds to herself in order to support her gambling in local casinos.
Others spent their stolen money on everything from a pair of jet skis for $18,000 to combined receipts of $228 for cigarettes and beer, to over $30,000 on personal items from Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Louis Vuitton, Coach and Tommy Hilfiger. But the real damage came from the theft of resources for children’s future.
“Our school system exists to serve students and enrich communities,” said Sabrina Stevens, executive director of Integrity in Education. “School funding is too scarce as it is; we can hardly afford to waste the resources we do have on people who would prioritize exotic vacations over school supplies or food for children. We also can’t continue to rely on the media or isolated whistle-blowers to identify these problems. We need to have rules in place that can systematically weed out incompetent or unscrupulous charter operators before they pose a risk to students and taxpayers.”
Stevens was not just expressing a nebulous hope. The report also offered a set of proposals on how to go about reining in the abuses. Initial suggestions on how to respond to each kind of abuse are presented in each of the six areas mentioned above, but there is also a comprehensive framework integrating them into a coherent whole.
The report’s first proposal is that all states should establish an oversight “Office of Charter Schools.” It “should have the statutory responsibility, authority, and resources to investigate fraud, waste, mismanagement and misconduct,” including the authority to refer findings for prosecution. It should have “an appropriate level of staffing” so that “The ratio of charter schools to full-time investigators employed by the Office should not exceed ten to one.” It should have the power to place distribution of charter school funds on hold. And it should have the authority to intervene in funding or other decisions made by charter authorizing entities if they are violating state or federal law.
A second proposal is that states amend their charter laws to “explicitly declare that charter schools are public schools, and are subject to the same non-discrimination and transparency requirements as are other publicly funded schools.”
A third proposal is to require public online availability of each charter school’s original application and charter agreement.
Not surprisingly, a number of proposals target those running charter schools. Specifically, regarding charter school governing board members, the report proposes: 1) Require them to live in close proximity to the school/s physical location. 2) Require boards to be elected “with representation of parents (elected by parents), teachers (elected by teachers) and in the case of high schools, students (elected by students).” Other board members should be “residents of the school district in which the school/s operate.” 3) Require board members to file full financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest reports, similar to those required of traditional school district board members — and post them online on the school’s website. 4) Hold board members legally liable for fraud or malfeasance occurring at the school or schools that they oversee.
More broadly, charter schools — and the oversight entities that authorize them — should be publicly transparent in the following ways: 1) A full list of each charter school’s governing board members, officers and administrators with affiliation and contact information should be available on the school’s website. 2) Minutes from governing board meetings, the school’s policies, and information about staff should be available on the school’s website. 3) Charter schools should be fully compliant with state open meetings/open records laws. 4) Charter school financial documents should be publicly disclosed annually, on the authorizer’s website, including detailed information about the use of both public and private funds by the school and its management entities. 5) Charter schools should be independently audited annually, with audits published on the school’s websites. 6) All vendor or service contracts over $25,000 should be fully disclosed. No such contracts should be allowed with any entity in which the school operator, or any board member, has any personal interest.
If most of these sound like simple common sense, that’s pretty much just the point. There are plenty of issues around education that are controversial. Protecting ourselves, our children and their future against a massive white-collar crime wave should not be one of them.
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By A Thousand Cuts: The Complex Face of Wage Theft in New York
In recent years—at least as far back as the passage of the New York Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2010, through 2015,...
In recent years—at least as far back as the passage of the New York Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2010, through 2015, when a series of New York Times articles explored the shocking extent of wage theft and other workplace abuses in the nail salon industry—mainstream elected officials and the press alike have turned meaningful attention to the problem of wage theft in New York State and nationwide. The question is what remains to be done. This brief study does not attempt to answer that question fully, but begins the inquiry by delving into the shape that wage theft takes in New York City and statewide.
Download the report here
Case studies in this report focus on particular employers that low-wage worker advocates have identified as illustrating broader problems in sectors where wage theft is prevalent.
Though this study is merely an entry point to a much broader and deeper analysis, our results point to some common-sense first steps in improving wage theft enforcement in New York City, New York State, and beyond.
Recommendations include the following:
City, state and federal government should invest in rigorous social science and economic research to evaluate what types of education, enforcement, penalties, and damages are most successful in encouraging workers and others to blow the whistle on wage theft, compensating directly impacted workers, and deterring and reducing wage theft. Our legislative and regulatory approach to penalizing wage theft and retaliation should be reevaluated to take into account the impact that wage theft and retaliation have not only on the directly impacted workers but also on competing employers, entire geographic areas, sectors, and the economy. Outreach, education, and enforcement efforts need to be tailored to address the specific situations of certain sectors, ethnic groups, and communities. Government should partner with, and resource, community-based partners who have established trust in hard-to-reach communities of workers and employers. Government should partner with community and labor organizations with expertise in specific sectors and types of wage theft, to assist in bringing forward adequate and accurate testimony and evidence to evaluate compliance in that sector or type of employer. Government inspectors and investigators should receive regular training in sector-specific practices in order to rigorously evaluate testimony and facts presented by employees and employers for reasonability. Government enforcement needs to explore substantial regulatory, legislative and strategic changes to enable collection of unpaid wages, damages and penalties. Pilot projects should aggressively test the use of bonds in exploitative industries, the ability of courts and the Department of Labor (DOL) to freeze assets pre-judgment, and wage liens. Public procurement rules should prohibit convicted wage thieves from bidding on public contracts or dispositions at the federal, state and local level, or from receiving public subsidy, with permanent removal from bidding or eligibility lists in cases of egregious wage theft.Download the report here
La incertidumbre de los puertorriqueños de Nueva York que no han podido comunicarse con sus familiares en la isla
La incertidumbre de los puertorriqueños de Nueva York que no han podido comunicarse con sus familiares en la isla
Por otro lado, el Center for Popular Democracy lanzó un fondo de emergencia para asistir a organizaciones que trabajan...
Por otro lado, el Center for Popular Democracy lanzó un fondo de emergencia para asistir a organizaciones que trabajan con comunidades de bajos ingresos, que son más vulnerables a los daños de María.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
El premio de la diáspora boricua
El premio de la diáspora boricua
“En el noreste, grupos de poder inmigrante como Make the Road, afiliadas al Center for Popular Democracy, organizan a...
“En el noreste, grupos de poder inmigrante como Make the Road, afiliadas al Center for Popular Democracy, organizan a estas comunidades en Nueva York, Connecticut, Pensilvania y Nueva Jersey para crear un poder amplio en las minorías de esa parte de los EE.UU. Por otro lado, se han formado coaliciones nacionales como Power4Puerto Rico, que agrupan a muchos de estos grupos, incluyendo al Hispanic Federation, para cabildear por políticas públicas que tendrán un impacto directo en los puertorriqueños viviendo en la diáspora.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
These Cities Aren’t Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Whether or Not to Gut Unions
These Cities Aren’t Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Whether or Not to Gut Unions
In the face of the Janus case, local elected officials across the country are renewing our efforts to help workers...
In the face of the Janus case, local elected officials across the country are renewing our efforts to help workers organize—in traditional ways, and in new ones. Brad Lander is a New York City Council Member from Brooklyn and the chairman of the board of Local Progress, a national association of progressive municipal elected officials. Helen Gym is a Councilmember At Large from Philadelphia and Vice-Chair of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials.
If Amazon Wants New York, Make It Unionize
If Amazon Wants New York, Make It Unionize
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail...
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail chain’s employees.
Read the full article here.
US lawmaker welcomes plan to aid Caribbean immigrants
Guardian - July 22, 2013 - Caribbean American Congresswoman Yvette D Clarke has welcomed a plan by New York City (NYC)...
Guardian - July 22, 2013 - Caribbean American Congresswoman Yvette D Clarke has welcomed a plan by New York City (NYC) to aid undocumented Caribbean immigrants. NYC officials say the city will spend US$18 million to help undocumented Caribbean and other immigrants find jobs. City council speaker Christine Quinn, a mayoral candidate, said the money will fund adult education classes and legal services that the US federal government requires immigrants to take to qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme.
The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project will provide free legal services to immigrants threatened with deportation who are unable to represent themselves in proceedings. “New York has always been a city of immigrants within a nation of immigrants,” said Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn.
“Under this programme, thousands of immigrants in Brooklyn and other parts of the city will finally have an opportunity to challenge the deportation proceedings that separate families and weaken communities,” she said.
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2 days ago
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