Fed May Face Makeover Whether Trump or Clinton Wins White House
The Federal Reserve may be headed for a shakeup regardless of who wins the 2016 election, though Hillary Clinton is...
The Federal Reserve may be headed for a shakeup regardless of who wins the 2016 election, though Hillary Clinton is seen as less likely to demand radical change than Donald Trump.
Clinton, a Democrat, has called for greater diversity at the U.S. central bank, while defending the practice of recent U.S. presidents from both parties of not commenting on monetary policy. Trump has been vague on how the Fed should change, but has spurned the tradition of respecting its monetary policy independence. The Republican nominee has slammed it for keeping interest rates low, which he claims is designed to help cement President Barack Obama’s legacy.
Trump has already suggested that if he won the White House, he’d probably nominate someone else to lead the Fed once Chair Janet Yellen’s term expires in 2018. That creates “uncertainty as to who would be the nomination,” said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America Corp. in New York. Clinton, on the other hand, would be less inclined to overhaul the 103-year-old institution. “I think she’d keep the Fed status quo.”
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have proposed legislation in recent years to limit the central bank’s authority, including a monetary policy audit for which Trump has voiced approval. Tweaking the Fed legislatively would require either bipartisan support in Congress or one party sweeping the election on Nov. 8 so that it commands both the House and Senate and can bulldoze through its reforms.
Obvious Change
That means the most obvious change facing the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee will come through the traditional power of presidential appointment. Both Yellen and Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer will see their terms expire in 2018, and there are two existing vacancies on the seven-member Fed Board in Washington.
“I would think for Trump, you’re looking much more outside the box, at successful corporate raiders, successful hedge fund managers, people he may have had business relationships with,” said Aaron Klein, an economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a Clinton supporter. While he declined to speculate on who Clinton would choose for Fed chair, he said that should she win “you’ll tend to see more continuity at the Federal Reserve.”
Any appointment will be subject to Senate confirmation, creating a potential check. Meyer and her colleagues at Bank of America wrote in a Sept. 29 note that “the biggest risk for change comes under a Republican sweep,” which would potentially pave a way for Trump appointments in the Senate.
There’s some speculation that changes to Fed leadership could come even earlier than 2018. Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, said Yellen could resign if Trump were elected. Morgan Stanley strategists included a Yellen resignation as a possible post-election outcome in their election briefing earlier this year, though they rated it low-probability.
An abrupt departure would set a "bad precedent" and is unlikely, said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington and a former senior Fed economist.
“I don’t think she’d want to encourage that,” he said.
Annual Audit
Though legislative changes to the Fed will be harder to achieve, the 2016 Republican platform includes a plan to implement an annual audit of Fed activities and create a commission to “investigate ways to set a fixed value for the dollar.”
While Trump hasn’t explicitly endorsed the return to a system that backs the U.S. dollar with gold, his economic adviser Judy Shelton wrote in a Financial Times column on Sept. 28 that his running mate, Mike Pence, has urged a rethink of the international currency system and Trump has nodded toward the possibility.
“As Mr. Trump often urges: It is time to start thinking big once again,” Shelton wrote.
Economists agree that the gold standard is a failed and impractical system, and it would “take a Herculean effort of international coordination” to re-institute a metal-base for the currency, said Peter Conti-Brown, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s pretty improbable that Trump would try to reinstate it, he said.
‘More Representative’
If Clinton is elected, a different set of changes could be in store for the central bank.
The Democratic platform promises to protect Fed independence to carry out its dual mandate -- for low inflation and full employment -- against threats from new legislation. But it also said it would ensure bank executives don’t serve on regional Fed boards, and to “reform the Federal Reserve to make it more representative of America as a whole.”
The U.S. central bank consists of a Board of Governors in Washington and 12 regional branches.
“If Hillary Clinton is elected, there’s going to be widespread interest among members of the House and Senate in pursuing, at minimum, the aspects of Fed reform that are included in the Democratic Platform,” said Jordan Haedtler, one of the leaders of Fed Up, a progressive, grass-roots campaign aimed at reforming the central bank.
‘Long Overdue’
Clinton has called for greater diversity at the Fed, and a spokesman for her campaign said in May that “commonsense reforms -- like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks -- are long overdue.”
There’s already a push in Congress to deal with these issues. Yellen regularly gets asked about Fed diversity when she testifies on Capitol Hill and Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio, introduced legislation on Sept. 28 that would require the regional Fed banks to interview at least one diversity candidate when appointing new presidents.
Even absent congressional action, the Fed is actively working on diversity internally and that’s likely to continue under either a Clinton or a Trump administration. In fact, Clinton and her supporters may have a reason to avoid advocating for legislative reform of the Fed and let internal changes run their course.
“When you’re talking about the Federal Reserve and reforming it in any kind of way, it’s really taking the genie out of the bottle,” Conti-Brown said. Pushing structural changes to the Fed through Congress could open up the possibility of other proposals becoming law, including making it subject to a monetary policy rule, as some Republicans have advocated.
“There are lots of risks in doing wholesale governance reform, and I think the Clinton administration would be mindful of those risks,” he said.
By Jeanna Smialek
Source
Fed Up on Nightly Business Report
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014 ...
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014
Source
ACTIVISM Big Corporations Are Openly Backing Trump's Hate Agenda—Let's Boycott Them
ACTIVISM Big Corporations Are Openly Backing Trump's Hate Agenda—Let's Boycott Them
"You must pick a side," Deborah Axt said of corporate America on a recent press call. "Either you stand with our...
"You must pick a side," Deborah Axt said of corporate America on a recent press call. "Either you stand with our communities or with hate."
Axt, who is the co-executive director of immigration advocacy organization Make The Road New York, was launching Corporate Backers of Hate, a new campaign from Make The Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy in collaboration with a coalition of other immigrant and labor advocacy organizations. The new campaign targets nine companies—JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Disney, Boeing, BlackRock, Uber, and Blackstone—that are close to the Trump administration and have a financial stake in his most abusive policies, particularly immigrant detention and attacks on workers' rights.
Read the full article here.
CFPB says Education is obstructing access to Navient records
CFPB says Education is obstructing access to Navient records
YOUTH ‘LOBBY DAY’ LOOKS TO DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES: More than 100 young activists are expected to gather in front of the...
YOUTH ‘LOBBY DAY’ LOOKS TO DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES: More than 100 young activists are expected to gather in front of the Education Department today and call on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to maintain Obama-era guidelines aimed at addressing racial bias in school discipline policies. DeVos is chairing a White House school safety commission that’s considering whether to rescind the guidelines over concerns that they burden school districts and potentially keep violent students in the classroom. The activists are also expected to visit the offices of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), urging them to sign a pledge and “prohibit federal funding for any school policing or criminalization of schools and invest in restorative justice, and mental health supports and resources for schools, students, and families,” according to a release. The “youth-led lobby day” is being organized by left-leaning groups including the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York and the Urban Youth Collaborative.
Read the full article here.
Can Game-Changing "Community Schools" Model Survive Dallas ISD Politics?
Can Game-Changing "Community Schools" Model Survive Dallas ISD Politics?
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center...
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center in South Dallas. From the porches of tumbledown homes, neighbors glanced with mild curiosity as the school’s principal, Dionel Waters, stepped aboard. Waiting for him on the bus was an array of local dignitaries, including a city council member, a state representative, a U.S. Congressman, a Dallas County judge, and the guest of honor, Robert Kaplan, the president of the Dallas Fed. The riders had accepted an activist group's invitation to tour hardscrabble Dallas neighborhoods that remain untouched by the region’s booming economy.
Waters stood at the front of the idling bus with a microphone and described for Kaplan some of Dunbar’s challenges. The previous school year, all but two of the campus’ 594 students qualified as low-income. The median household income for the surrounding neighborhood, which borders the sprawling parking lots on Fair Park’s eastern edge, is around $10,000 per year. Broken families are the norm, as are parents with criminal records. Unemployment in the area is staggering, with only a third of working-age men and around 40 percent of working-age women with jobs, according to census data.
Then, Waters pivoted. Together with Hank Lawson, who works for the community development nonprofit Frazier Revitalization Inc., Waters described a vision for transformational change at Dunbar. With support from the Texas Organizing Project, which organized the bus tour, Dunbar would open the 2016-17 school year as Dallas ISD’s first ever “community school.”
Community schools are built on the idea that education doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Poverty levels, family structure, health and nutrition, emotional well-being, and all manner of other outside factors impact academic performance and school quality. Creating a better school, then, requires addressing not only what happens in the classroom but outside social and economic factors as well.
Exactly what a community school looks like depends on the specific needs of the individual school and the surrounding community. Generally speaking, though, the model emphasizes getting parents, community members and teachers greater input in campus decision-making; forging partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits to provide programming and services the school can’t; and finding non-punitive ways to address student behavior.
It is billed as a more humane alternative to No Child Left Behind-style school reform, which can punish poor and heavily minority schools for poor performance without doing much to address root causes.
Community schools are meant to be transformational. A report released in February by the Center for Popular Democracy profiled eight campuses and school districts across the country that have implemented the community schools model with tremendous success.
One of the more dramatic turnarounds took place in Austin. Webb Middle School, a perennially low-performing campus in a working class Hispanic neighborhood in northeast Austin, was on the brink of closure in 2007 when neighbors rallied and convinced the district to give them a final chance to save the school. They turned to the community schools model and crafted a detailed plan based on feedback from parents and neighbors.
The school restored music and art to the curriculum, adding band, orchestra and a dance troupe. The Boys and Girls Club began offering after-school programs. Another nonprofit provided college mentoring. A mobile clinic offered free immunizations and physicals. Other organizations provided parents help with employment, housing and health issues and offered them ESL classes.
Test scores climbed. So did enrollment. By 2015, Webb had gone from the worst middle school in the district to one of its best.
Waters and Lawson hoped something similar could happen at Dunbar, which had been placed on the state’s list of failing schools in the 2014-15 school year. So did Ed Turner, the Texas Organizing Project staffer who’d already spent months laying the groundwork and joined Waters and Lawson on the bus. And so, for that matter, did DISD administrators. Cynthia Wilson, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s chief of staff, told the Observer the following day that the district was supporting the community schools model in general and the Dunbar pilot in particular. “From our perspective, [it’s] a win-win,” she said.
On the bus, Kaplan nodded along as Waters spoke; turning Dunbar into a community school certainly seemed like a no-brainer.
But then, rather abruptly, DISD pulled the plug. Alendra Lyons, a community leader in the Dunbar neighborhood who both works at the school and serves on its site-based decision-making committee, was told at a committee meeting in June that the community schools pilot had been moved elsewhere.
Why, after months of planning and the showy presentation to the VIPs on the DART bus, the Dunbar project had been unceremoniously scrapped, Lyons couldn’t say, only that it definitely wasn’t happening.
DISD’s official explanation is, in a word, bureaucracy.
In a July 25 email, DISD spokesman Andre Riley said the community schools initiative had been moved from under Wilson and into the school leadership department.
Stephanie Elizalde, the chief of school leadership, said in a subsequent interview that she decided that John Neely Bryan Elementary in East Oak Cliff was a better fit for the pilot. Like Dunbar, John Neely Bryan is overwhelmingly low-income and has struggled academically, bouncing on and off the state’s list of failing schools. Last August, it received its second consecutive “improvement required” designation from the Texas Education Agency; a third would mean implementation of a “campus turnaround plan” and potentially drastic changes at the campus.
Unlike Dunbar, however, Bryan is part of DISD’s “Intensive Support Network,” two dozen struggling schools targeted by district administrators for special oversight. It also has a more seasoned principal. Elizalde describes Waters as “likeable, intelligent [but] also relatively inexperienced” – barely 30 with just two years as a principal under his belt. Elizalde felt that Bryan’s principal, DISD veteran Tonya Anderson, was better equipped to make the pilot a success.
For advocates of community schools, the stakes are high. A high-profile failure in the pilot could taint the model in DISD and cripple efforts to expand to other campuses. “That is what I don’t want to have happen,” Elizalde said. "I’ve got to think bigger picture."
But several people familiar with the discussions say Dunbar was the victim less of ordinary bureaucratic machinations but of DISD’s toxic internal politics. Specifically, they point to a long-simmering feud between the Texas Organizing Project and trustee Bernadette Nutall.
The rift dates back to efforts to rescue Dade Middle School, which, thanks to poor planning, sky-high turnover, and heavy-handed interventions by then-Superintendent Mike Miles, spun into chaos soon after it opened for the 2013-14 school year. The Texas Organizing Project was heavily involved in the turnaround effort, mobilizing parents and pushing DISD to make Dade the first of 20 community schools in the district. So, for that matter, was Nutall, who was famously removed from the campus following a confrontation with Miles.
By all accounts, the turnaround effort has been a success. There is much less agreement on whether Dade’s resurgence has more to do with the Texas Organizing Project’s community work, Nutall’s close oversight, or, alternately, a belatedly successful intervention by Miles, whose administration found a hyper-competent principal in Tracie Washington and offered the district’s best teachers a hefty salary bump to teach at Dade.
Nutall has bristled at the Texas Organizing Project’s credit-taking. In response to a KERA story this spring focused on the organization’s efforts to turn Dade and other campuses into community schools, Nutall sent an indignant email to trustee Miguel Solis, who was quoted in the piece broadly endorsing the community schools concept, and several DISD administrators saying Dade’s success had been “hijacked.”
Dade staff and community members had long been trying to have a meaningful role in the school, Nutall wrote, but they were consistently rebuffed by Miles and the previous campus administration.
“However, since the new administration has been in place, the staff, parents, students and community members have been able to implement the very same suggestions that were ignored before,” she wrote. “The results have been tremendous. Yet, they weren’t recognized for their efforts. Instead, they believe that their results have been hijacked in an effort to falsely attribute their success to a concept that had little to do with the results.”
In an interview, Nutall said she supports community schools but that there “has to be buy in from all parties.” That wasn’t present at Dade, and it wasn’t present at other campuses where Texas Organizing Project wanted to implement the model. “I understand them [the Texas Organizing Project] getting upset,” she said, adding that “they wanted the whole Lincoln-Madison feeder pattern.”
“I am not going to force something on principals and teachers,” Nutall said. “That is not good governance.”
At the same time, Nutall distanced herself from the decision to move the community schools pilot from Dunbar. The decision, Nutall said, was a judgment call by Elizalde and other DISD administrators.
Allison Brim, organizing director for the Texas Organizing Project, was also careful to downplay the friction between her group and Nutall.
“Essentially what happened, there had just been turnover in the administration,” Brim said.
In early 2016, former chief of school leadership Robert Bravo, with whom the Texas Organizing Project had been in discussions, was replaced by Elizalde. “She was very supportive of the community school concept but really wanted to reconsider where we were going to do the first pilot, which we were open to in some ways as well.”
John Neely Bryan, in everyone’s view, could benefit as much from the community schools model as Dunbar. Perhaps even more, given the comparative lack of outside resources directed at Bryan by churches and nonprofits.
“We were also interested in having full support from the trustee,” Brim said. She described Nutall as “supportive” of community schools but said that John Neely Bryan’s trustee, Lew Blackburn,”was pretty eager to find a school in his district” for a pilot.
In the end, for the Texas Organizing Project as well as for Elizalde, the most important thing “was really getting the opportunity to prove that this model was an effective, successful model for school turnaround,” Brim said.
All parties – Brim, Elizalde, and Nutall – were quick to say that the idea of turning Dunbar into a community school isn’t dead. Discussions are ongoing, and DISD and the Texas Organizing Project may well get around to implementing the model in the coming years.
Dunbar, after all, is still in sore need of a turnaround. State accountability ratings the Texas Education Agency will release in the coming days will show that Dunbar is on the state’s list of failing schools for the second consecutive year, which has made Elizalde rethink the decision to move the pilot.
“If I had a crystal ball and could have seen that Dunbar was going to wind up in [improvement required]-2 status," she said, "I would have left it there anyway.”
By ERIC NICHOLSON
Source
Retailers' Goal of Challenging Amazon Hindered by Labor Woes
Brick-and-mortar retailers hoping to fend off Amazon.com Inc. need to deploy the one weapon that could set them apart:...
Brick-and-mortar retailers hoping to fend off Amazon.com Inc. need to deploy the one weapon that could set them apart: top-notch customer service, provided by actual humans.
But making that goal a reality relies on something they’ve not really invested in -- well-trained employees with the kinds of wages and regular hours that make them want to stick around.
Read the full article here.
A Collaboration to Strengthen the United States Federal Reserve System
April 16, 2018 Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Dear Mr. Mehran:...
April 16, 2018
Alexander R. Mehran
Chair of the Board
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Dear Mr. Mehran:
We are writing to offer you our view about the urgency of appointing an individual who deeply understands the economic realities facing working class Americans to serve as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
For all of the dynamism and strength of the US economy, it has come to be characterized most fundamentally by enormous disparities in wealth, income and opportunity that strongly correlate to race, ethnicity and geography. Failing to address significant disparities in income and net worth between major segments of our population, and particularly in segments that are driving our nation’s demographic growth, will result in a less globally competitive US economy. This is a significant economic risk for the 12th District and the United States.
The San Francisco Fed will be strengthened by having a President whose experience and expertise better reflect the large segments of our population that are not proportionally experiencing the benefits of our economy. Ensuring that this expertise and perspective is represented within the Fed is a critical way to prepare for the challenges and opportunities in our economic future. This will require considering candidates with more diverse experience including in the fields of community development and philanthropy. We submit that the San Francisco Fed has a historic opportunity to name the first Hispanic, East Asian American or Pacific Islander President of a Federal Reserve Bank.
We applaud Chairman Powell's insightful comments on the necessity for diversity in Federal Reserve System and the larger economics profession. In his testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on November 28th, 2017, he stated, “We make better decisions when we have diverse voices around the table—both at the Board of Governors and at the Reserve Banks…We’ve seen what works. It’s about recruiting. It’s about going out of your way. It’s about bringing people in. Once they’re in, it’s about giving them paths for success. And it’s about having an overall culture and company that is very focused on diversity and sticks with that focus for a long period of time. That works.” This recognition must be coupled with bold leadership and action.
In order to decide the course of monetary policy through an informed assessment of different regional economic conditions from diverse points of view, the Federal Reserve System was designed to be decentralized, independent and include representatives of the public in its governance. The Fed’s mission is undermined when regional Reserve Banks fail to recruit leaders who live up to the mandate to “represent the public.” Selections that fail to allow meaningful opportunities for public input and engagement have tended to result in the elevation of Fed insiders. This insularity undermines the Fed’s public credibility and increases the likelihood that Congress will ultimately intervene to reform the process. The process for selecting the President of the New York Fed perpetuated the status quo. We urge the San Francisco Fed to avoid the same mistake. As a first step, we call on the San Francisco Fed to include the Chair of its own Community Advisory Board in the official selection committee for the next President.
Please accept this letter as an offer of support. We will do anything we can to help identify strong candidates as well as to publicly support actions that the San Francisco Fed takes to ensure progress on diversifying its Board of Directors and executive leadership.
Thank you for your service to the 12th District and our nation.
Respectfully submitted,
California Reinvestment Coalition Center for Popular Democracy Chicanos Por La Causa Community Council of Idaho Greenlining Institute NALCAB – National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development TELACU
cc: Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
San Francisco Fed Board Chair Alexander Mehran's April 20 Response to Coalition Outreach re: Collaboration Surrounding San Francisco Fed Presidential Appointment
April 20, 2018
Noel Poyo Executive Director National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders 5404 Wurzbach Rd. San Antonio, TX 78238 Dear Mr. Poyo: Thank you for your letter of April 16, 2018, concerning the appointment of the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. We appreciate your taking the time to reach out and share your perspectives on this important undertaking. As Chair of the Board of Directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, I know that I speak for all of my board colleagues in saying that the appointment of a Federal Reserve Bank President is among our most important responsibilities and one that we take very seriously. We share your desire to find a qualified candidate to fill this important role that understands and is able to represent the varied needs and interests of the richly diverse people and business communities throughout the Twelfth District. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has a legacy of success with regard to recruiting, developing and promoting women and minorities into leadership positions within its senior ranks. As you are well aware, Janet Yellen served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank from 2004 to 2010 before going on to become Vice Chair and later Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Under President Williams' leadership, the Bank continued to strengthen its focus on diversity and inclusion at all employee levels but particularly an10ng its leadership ranks where women now occupy over 30 percent and minorities over 45 percent of seniorlevel roles. In addition, President Williams established the Bank's Community Advisory Council in 2017 to give even stronger voice to those representing the district's underserved communities and to contribute to his ongoing economic analyses and monetary policy views. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has set a high bar for its executive leadership that we fully intend to uphold. Our board has not yet publicly communicated about the selection committee, job specifications or the processes that we will undertake to gather a list of qualified candidates for this important role. We expect to do so in the near future and will keep you apprised of our progress. For now, please know that we are absolutely committed to gathering input from various community and business leaders like you and your colleagues regarding the appointment of the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. While I appreciate your suggestion to include Mr. Matsubayashi, who chairs the Bank's Community Advisory Council, as part of the official selection committee, the Federal Reserve Act stipulates that only the Class B and Class C directors (those not affiliated with banks or financial institutions) are eligible to participate in the appointment process. As such, Mr. Matsubayashi is unable to serve in this capacity. However, we recognize that he is doing an outstanding job leading the Community Advisory Council, and we would greatly value his input and suggestions, as well as input from you and your colleagues, regarding qualified candidates for this important role. I wish to thank you once again for reaching out and offering your support of this important undertaking. We look forward to continuing this open, constructive dialogue, and with your support, doing all that we can to find the absolute best person from a diverse candidate pool to lead the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sincerely, Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Federal Reserve Agent cc: Danielle Beavers, Diversity and Inclusion Director, The Greenlining Institute David Adame, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chicanos Por La Causa Irma Morin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Council of Idaho Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager, Fed Up, Center for Popular Democracy Jose Villalobos, Senior Vice President, TELACU Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Orson Aguilar, President, The Greenlining Institute Paulina Gonzalez, Executive Director, California Reinvestment Coalition Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Seema Agnani, Executive Director, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development Coalition's Response to Chair Mehran's LetterMay 4, 2018
Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Dear Mr. Mehran:
Thank you for your letter dated April 20 and for your commitment to finding a San Francisco Fed president who “understands and is able to represent the varied needs and interests of the richly diverse people and business communities throughout the Twelfth district.”
We appreciate that the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank has shown its commitment to public representation by strengthening diversity among Reserve Bank staff. Unfortunately, that commitment has not extended to the position of President. Similarly, diversity and public representation on the San Francisco Fed’s governing board remains lacking. The Twelfth District is one of the most demographically diverse districts in the country, yet a recent analysis by the Center for Popular Democracy found that the San Francisco Fed’s board of directors is the least diverse in the Federal Reserve System.
Your letter indicated that it would not be possible to include a Community Advisory Council member on the search committee because “only the Class B and C directors (those not affiliated with banks or financial institutions) are eligible to participate in the appointment process.” We would like to clarify our request regarding Mr. Matsubayashi’s inclusion. Following established precedent, Mr. Matsubayashi can play a critical advisory role on the search committee by suggesting, interviewing, and advising on candidates under consideration. We are not suggesting or expecting that he would have final decision-making authority over which candidate is ultimately chosen.
The Federal Reserve Act clearly designates Class B and C directors as the final arbiters of who serves as president of each Reserve Bank. We do not agree that inclusion of a member of the public on the search committee would in any way violate the law. We have consulted with legal experts on the Federal Reserve Act, and they concur. Whenever a regional Reserve Bank encounters a presidential vacancy, it is customary to hire an executive search firm to identify and vet candidates who can fill that vacancy. We posit that employees of those executive search firms are participating in the search process. In 2014, outgoing Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher solicited the participation of non-Class B/C directors when he reportedly convened an advisory committee consisting of former Dallas Fed chairmen to help choose his successor.2 Freedom of Information Act requests have also revealed that members of the Board of Governors have occasionally suggested candidates to fill Reserve Bank presidential vacancies, thereby going beyond the final approval role that the Federal Reserve Act prescribes for governors. We fail to see how the inclusion of Mr. Matsubayashi on the search committee in an advisory capacity is distinguished from these other examples of involvement by non- Class B and C directors in recent Reserve Bank presidential selections.
In your letter of April 20th, you identified the establishment of the Community Advisory Council as an important step toward giving an “even stronger voice to those representing underserved communities,” in the District. The Council includes individuals selected by the San Francisco Fed itself as credible representatives of diverse communities. If the San Francisco Fed is unwilling to find a way to meaningfully include a leading member of that advisory council in the selection process for the next President, it is difficult to understand how underserved communities are truly gaining a stronger voice.
It is also difficult to be assured that people of color will be given due consideration for the position of President when communities of color and other important segments of the District’s population are not adequately reflected in the selection process. Despite clear calls for consideration of diverse candidates from members of Congress and the public, the last two Reserve Bank presidential vacancies have resulted in the selection of white, male, longtime Fed insiders. Including the Chair of the San Francisco Fed’s Community Advisory Council on the search committee in San Francisco is an essential step to maintain the credibility of the selection process for the next President of the San Francisco Fed.
In light of this clarification, we respectfully request that you consider including the Chair of the San Francisco Fed’s Community Advisory Council in the search process in a manner consistent with the Federal Reserve Act. If the San Francisco Fed chooses not to accept this recommendation, we would appreciate an explanation as to why. Regardless of your decision, we look forward to your continued collaboration as you take on the important responsibility of finding a qualified candidate to fill a policymaking role of crucial importance to the public.
Thank you for your service to the 12th District and our nation.
Respectfully submitted,
California Reinvestment Coalition Greenlining Institute Center for Popular Democracy Community Council of Idaho Chicanos Por La Causa NALCAB – National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development TELACU
cc: Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
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.
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
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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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