Tipped Workers Fight for Higher Wages
Amsterdam News - July 17, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, a new coalition of food delivery workers, low-wage...
Amsterdam News - July 17, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, a new coalition of food delivery workers, low-wage tipped workers and women’s rights leaders across New York called for an end to subminimum wages for tipped workers. This campaign begins right when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is preparing to appoint a Wage Board charged with recommending an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers.
The broad coalition fighting for subminimum wage workers includes Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, Fast Food Forward, the Labor-Religion Coalition, the National Employment Law Project, New York Communities for Change, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Strong for All, United New York and other community groups.
On July 10, Domino’s delivery workers rallied outside of a Manhattan Domino’s restaurant to call for an end to subminimum wages for tipped workers, citing wage theft, and demanding an administrative wage order that requires companies to directly pay tipped workers the state’s minimum wage, with tips as an addition.
“The public might think we do well, but the reality is that many times we don’t even get a tip,” said Alfredo Franco, a tipped Domino’s delivery worker in New York City. “Delivery fees are often confused with a tip for the drivers. We never see a penny of that. Many of us have to work two or three jobs just to get by, sacrificing everything, including time with our families. We need a reliable income. The tipped [sub]minimum wage has to go.”
According to a report released on July 9 by the National Employment Law Project, a wage order eliminating the tipped subminimum wage would benefit close to 229,000 low-wage tipped workers in New York. Women make up more than 70 percent of the low-wage work force. The wage order would benefit working women and, according to the report, make progress in addressing the gender pay gap in New York.
Michael Stewart, executive director of United NY, released a statement championing the NELP’s report. “As New York faces one of the worst economic inequality crises in the nation, it should put an end to the subminimum wage for tipped workers that leaves so many of our neighbors living in extreme poverty,” said Stewart. “The minimum wage is already too low. Allowing employers to pay below it does further damage to workers and our economy.”
As a result of legislation signed by Cuomo last year, New York’s minimum wage is scheduled to go up to $9 an hour by Dec. 31, 2015, and the minimum wage for tipped food service workers is still stuck at $5 an hour, with tipped hotel workers earning slightly more at $5.65 an hour.
Zenaida Mendez, president of the National Organization for Women of New York State, said the gender pay gap needs to close, and no longer allowing the subminimum wage for tipped workers would help it along.
“The poverty rate for waitresses is three times the rate for the American workforce as a whole,” said Mendez. “For this reason, the National Organization for Women is seeking to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. This pay inequality must end.”
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Cash Bail Fuels the Prison Industrial Complex. But We Can Stop It.
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Cash Bail Fuels the Prison Industrial Complex. But We Can Stop It.
From 2015 to 2018, the homeless population in Los Angeles rose from less than 29,000 to 59,000. Many of those homeless...
From 2015 to 2018, the homeless population in Los Angeles rose from less than 29,000 to 59,000. Many of those homeless Angelenos were formerly incarcerated, and many will again be incarcerated for being homeless. Yet, according to the Center for Popular Democracy’s “Freedom to Thrive” report, Los Angeles spends 25.7% of its general fund budget on policing compared to a mere 3 percent to support nondepartmental “General City Purposes,” which includes city council spending on jobs, youth, homeless services, and substance abuse programs.
Read the full article here.
Durham County judge, attorneys interested in filling seat held by Paul Luebke Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/article118570918.html#storylink=cpy
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Durham County judge, attorneys interested in filling seat held by Paul Luebke Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/article118570918.html#storylink=cpy
Phil Lehman was officially sworn in to fill his longtime friend Paul Luebke’ seat last month, but his term as a state...
Phil Lehman was officially sworn in to fill his longtime friend Paul Luebke’ seat last month, but his term as a state representative will only last a month or so.
Lehman, a a longtime consumer advocate in the state attorney general’s office who retired three years ago, was appointed to the seat the night before the Nov. 8 election and plans to step down in January.
“I don’t think there was enough time to do all the vetting process and consulting with the political groups to find somebody younger than I was to be in this for the long haul,” said Lehman, 70.
Luebke, 70, a Democrat who represented Durham for 25 years in the state House, died in late October. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma in 2015 and received treatment, but suffered a sudden return of the cancer.
Luebke, who was running for re-election to a 14th term, remained on the ballot for the general election
According to elected officials, a subset of the Durham County Democratic Party Executive Committee that included precinct chairs and vice chairs and elected officials in House District 30, initially planned to fill the seat after the election. That changed after concerns were raised about procedure and possible future complications.
“The recommendation was made by the state Democratic Party that we didn’t want to go through the election cycle without having somebody appointed to serve in his place on the ballot,” said Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham Democrat who said he preferred taking that route from the beginning.
The subset of the Durham committee met Nov. 7 and voted to appoint Lehman to the seat as a place holder to fill the existing term and the start of the new term.
At least four candidates want the seat when Lehman steps down.
▪ Danielle Adams, 32, is an eight-year member of the Durham County Soil & Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors who was recently re-elected. She is the southern coordinator for Local Progress, an arm of the national nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. It encourages progressive policy making at the local level.
Adams wants to bring a strong, pragmatic, progressive voice that represents young people, women and people of color.
“I don’t think my voice has been reflected, and I think part of my desire comes in wanting to see that change and being that change not only for myself but for the many others like me,” she said.
▪ Shelia Huggins, 49, is a private attorney who worked for the city for eight years, most recently as a senior administration manager with the Department of Economic and Workforce Development. Huggins said she has focused on supporting entrepreneurship by serving on the N.C. Central University School of Business Board of Visitors and Alamance Community College Small Business Center Board of Advisers.
Huggins wants to improve the economic vitality of the state.
“I would really like to see us build a business climate that is supportive of people who are trying to build businesses and people who already have business in the state of North Carolina,” she said.
▪ Marcia Morey, 61, Durham County’s chief district judge, has served on the bench for nearly 18 years. She was a driving force behind the county’s misdemeanor diversion program, which was the first in the state after it was established in 2014 to give 16- and 17-year-olds charged with certain misdemeanors a second chance. The program was later expanded to18- to 21-year-olds and has been a model for other counties across the state
Morey said she is up for a new challenge to help make better policies and laws.
“I think after 18 years in the courts, you see many issues that would come before the General Assembly,” Morey said. “It has given me a lot of awareness and experience to kind of know how to look at laws, and how they are interpreted, and the impact they have on people’s lives.”
▪ Sherri Zann Rosenthal, 59, is a senior assistant city of Durham attorney. She worked as a contract attorney for the city for six years before becoming an assistant city attorney in 1995. Rosenthal served as president of the Durham-Orange Women Attorneys and created a committee on child sexual trafficking in Durham. The committee’s advocacy lead to the creation of the Durham County Task Force Against Child Sexual Exploitation, which is providing prevention training in schools and promoting the gathering of information of cases that come through the Durham County Department of Social Services.
Rosenthal said public policy has always been her core interest.
“I think that at the state level we have really gotten away from fact-based public policy, and we have gotten very polarized. It is very important that we join together so that we solve real problem,” she said.
By Virginia Bridges
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Editorial: Automatic signup gets more voters to polls
Among millennials, voter turnout in Illinois ranks 47th in the country, according to the political advocacy group...
Among millennials, voter turnout in Illinois ranks 47th in the country, according to the political advocacy group Common Cause. In the 2014 primary election, their turnout in Chicago wards was as low as 9 percent.
We don’t have to settle for such low numbers.
Illinois should look to Oregon and California, which recently approved automatic voter registration. Oregon did it in March and California OKd it just a week ago.
Under automatic voter registration, people are automatically registered when they get or update a driver’s license or state identification card. An opt-out provision is included for people who don’t want to register.
Illinois has 9.7 million residents who are eligible to vote, but 2.1 million of them are not registered, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Decatur, said last week at a meeting of the Senate Executive Subcommittee.
Automatically adding unregistered people to the voting rolls could drive up voter turnout. It also would help county clerks by automatically updating voter addresses when people move and update their driver’s licenses. The Center for Popular Democracy estimates that nationwide automatic voter registration system would add 56 million voters to the rolls.
Cook County Clerk David Orr argues government has a responsibility to use technology to improve the voting process.
“Nowadays the burden should be on the government,” Orr says.
Exactly.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
U.S. lawmakers urge Yellen to diversify the Fed
U.S. lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday sent...
U.S. lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen urging more diversity at the U.S. central bank.
Ten of the Fed's 12 regional bank presidents are men; 11 of them are white, the letter noted.
"Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country cannot be understated," said the letter, signed by 116 members of Congress and 11 Senators.
The Fed has come under fire in recent months from both Republicans and Democrats, including candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign, for a range of perceived failings, from its process to deciding monetary policy to its governance. Those calls have emboldened lawmakers who seek to limit the Fed's powers and are prompting some current and former Fed officials to call for steps to placate the bank's harshest critics.
A Federal Reserve Board spokesman said the U.S. central bank was committed to diversity and was already taking steps to bring more women and minorities into its leadership ranks.
Minorities now make up 24 percent of regional Fed bank boards, up from 16 percent in 2010; 46 percent of all directors are either non-white or a woman, the spokesman said, adding, "we are striving to continue that progress."
Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by James Dalgleish
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Economic Inequality: Safe Words, at Last
OZY - December 23, 2013, by Pooja Bhatia - For decades, talk about economic inequality was taboo. Those who tried were...
OZY - December 23, 2013, by Pooja Bhatia - For decades, talk about economic inequality was taboo. Those who tried were met with accusations of sour grapes, inciting class warfare, or — gasp! — advocating socialism.
But such rhetorical bludgeons appear to have lost force in recent years, and words like “inequality” and “economic fairness” have at last found a place at the table of mainstream American political discourse. It’s not quite the head of the table, but it’s not the servants’ quarters either.
Words like “inequality” and “economic fairness” have at last found a place at the table of mainstream American political discourse.
“The core issue of economic justice has been getting more traction now than during most of my time in organizing,” says Andrew Friedman, who’s been a progressive organizer for more than 15 years and now co-directs the Center for Popular Democracy in New York. Derecka Mehrens, executive director of labor-oriented think tank Working Partnerships USA in San Jose, Calif., agrees: “There’s been a sea change in how and even whether we talk about inequality.”
The signs are everywhere. In his November apostolic exhortation, the pope warned of the “tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and called “an economy of exclusion and inequality” sinful. Clear majorities of Americans support hiking the minimum wage and other policies that aim to reduce the wealth gap. Earlier this month, President Obama positioned inequality and lack of social mobility as the “defining issue of our time.” Mayors-elect of major cities all made economic inequality central to their platforms. And this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction went to George Packer’s The Unwinding, which chronicles rising social and economic inequality in the United States.
Inequality talk is no longer off-limits for a simple reason: The lot of many has stagnated or worsened over the past decade, in some cases severely.
Some credit the 2011 Occupy movements for popularizing economic inequality. (Or blame it, depending on their perspective.) But the main reason inequality talk is no longer off-limits is probably simpler: The lot of many has stagnated or worsened over the past decade, in some cases severely. Some 10 million people lost their homes in the Great Recession. Although unemployment is at a five-year low, the decline is partly because many have stopped looking for work.
As OZY noted a few weeks ago, the lag between technical “recovery” and job growth is lengthening, and these days it’s lingering four to five years. No wonder the Great Recession’s rough ride seems endless. Moreover, while worker productivity has increased over the past decade, real wages have stagnated or declined — leaving the average worker to wonder just where the gains from productivity are going.
“They hear the news that the stock market is climbing and say, Oh really?” Mehrens says.
Lovely A. Warren won election as mayor of Rochester last month with a campaign lamenting what she called the “two Rochesters,” challenged by crime and poverty, but also boasting prosperous neighborhoods.
Economic inequality has been growing since at least the early 1980s. But it was harder to complain about during the Clinton years, when broad-based growth lifted all boats, yachts and dinghies alike. Economic inequality grew during the Bush years too, but those were the days of subprime homeownership and plasma TVs for all. Five years after the collapse of that easy-credit economy, most Americans are still hurting. The average household has recovered less than half the wealth it lost during the recession.
As a result, income inequality has become a winning issue in some cities. The mayors-elect of New York, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis made economic justice a central plank of their platforms — and did so despite naysayers and with newfound success. New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s “tale of two cities,” for instance, was not much different from Fernando Ferrer’s campaign theme in 2005 or Ruth Messinger’s in 1997 — but only in the New York of 2013 did it resonate.
It was harder to complain about during the Clinton years, when broad-based growth lifted all boats, yachts and dinghies alike.
Not that the discursive war has been won, mind you. Plenty of people and conservative think tanks still argue that inequality has nothing to do with poverty. Winning a war of words wouldn’t be enough anyway, organizers say: “We need to figure out how to use this sea change in how we talk about inequality to how we act against inequality,” says Mehrens.
The newfound cache of certain phrases has had some perverse effects. Developers and other big employers have latched onto terms like “living wage” but not always with worker-friendly intentions, says Lee Strieb, a researcher with labor organization Unite Here. Developers have “attempted to wrap themselves in the flag of the living wage, almost as a shield to avoid unionization,” says Strieb. ”There is a heightened sensitivity to the need to address [the wage] issue — but to the extent they can address it in a superficial way, they will.”
Mr. de Blasio’s relentless critique of economic inequality in New York seemed to resonate with voters, who elected him in a landslide.
The shift could signal a readiness to engage meaningfully with issues like the living wage or tax increases on top earners.
It’s unclear whether 2014 will set in motion changes to our income distribution. Mayors alone may have little power to tackle the issue. They usually can’t run big deficits and, in cities like San Francisco and New York, space for affordable housing is hard to find. Most important, mayors can’t singlehandedly restore the middle-class jobs that disappeared during the recession.
Yet the shift in tone and rhetoric is significant and could signal a readiness to engage meaningfully with issues like the living wage or tax increases on top earners. Consider Cam Kruse, 72, a mostly retired civil engineer who is active in ISAIAH, a social justice organization of about 100 churches in metropolitan Minneapolis. Kruse believes in small government. When working full time, he perched in the top one to three percent of earners. And he was a Republican for most of his adult life.
But earlier this year he found himself urging the state legislature to raise tax rates on top earners, which, he said, had fallen through the decades. Growing “gaps” in education, health, housing and transportation worried him. “My success, and that of all the other top earners in Minnesota, has been based on the investments that people before us made,” he testified. “It is our turn to give back and make investments for those who will be our future.”
The tax increase passed.
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The Stock Market Swings Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Our Rigged Economy
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The Stock Market Swings Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Our Rigged Economy
Political activism on the left around monetary policy doesn’t have much infrastructure, but the Center for Popular...
Political activism on the left around monetary policy doesn’t have much infrastructure, but the Center for Popular Democracy, through a group called the Fed Up Campaign, has begun to change that.
Read the full article here.
Not one of the regional Fed banks has ever been run by a black or Latino
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Not one of the regional Fed banks has ever been run by a black or Latino
Atlanta, located in the heart of the South, was a center of the civil rights movement, became a corporate hub of the...
Atlanta, located in the heart of the South, was a center of the civil rights movement, became a corporate hub of the New South economy, and boasts a large black professional class.
Can it help break the Federal Reserve's color barrier?
Dennis Lockhart's retirement early next year as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has spotlighted the selection of his replacement as members of Congress and a coalition of activist groups call for an aggressive search among blacks and Latinos with finance or economics expertise.
African-Americans have served on the Federal Reserve's Washington-based Board of Governors three times in the Fed's 103-year history, and the central bank now has a female chair, Janet Yellen.
But none of the regional banks have ever been run by a black or Latino, a lack of diversity some argue is worrisome on its face and could make the system as a whole less attentive to how policy impacts less advantaged communities.
"Grave racial disparities exist across our nation in unemployment, wages and income. ... It is critical that incoming leadership ... be committed to doing more," four African-American members of the House of Representatives wrote in a letter this week to Yellen and Thomas Fanning, chair of the Atlanta Fed's private board of directors.
"Lockhart's recent retirement announcement presents an opportunity to enhance and expand the Federal Reserve's leadership," they said in the letter.
In a public webcast on Thursday, Fanning said he wants to hold "one of the most transparent processes ever," and that the search committee has already received nominations from the public at large.
As in other districts, the search will be national in scope. There is no requirement that the head of the Atlanta Fed come from the bank's southeastern region, and the 12 regional Fed banks often bring in a president from outside their own geographic area.
Executive search firm SpencerStuart has been hired to run the search. Consultant John Harpole said the firm has helped place 1,600 women, minorities and other "underrepresented groups" in corporate positions, and would cast a wide net among local institutions, national organizations and its "strong network" of sitting executives to find candidates.
The issue is sensitive for the Fed, whose policies affect every citizen but which is designed to be immune from the day-to-day politics that influence other U.S. government agencies.
Group says Fed is unaccountable
Because monetary policy focuses on influencing interest rates that apply nationwide, Fed officials say it is too blunt a tool to address issues like the persistent gap between unemployment rates for blacks and white.
Activists counter that those sorts of problems might improve if unemployment was driven as low as possible — even at the risk of higher inflation. The Fed sets policy with two goals in mind, low employment and stable inflation of around 2 percent annually.
The U.S. unemployment rate in August, the latest month for which data is available, was 4.9 percent.
A labor-affiliated coalition of civic groups, known as Fed Up, has taken the argument even further, arguing that the Fed's very structure makes it unaccountable.
The regional banks in particular have supervisory power over local financial institutions as well as a voice in national policymaking, but are set up as private entities owned by the banks they oversee. The regional bank presidents are chosen by a local board of directors, though the choice must be approved by the Fed governors in Washington.
In a meeting with civic activists in August, New York Fed President William Dudley agreed the institution had done a "pretty lousy" job of promoting diversity. But Fed officials in general argue that the current structure has worked well, and that changes would need to offer clear advantages without risking the central bank's independence.
In that environment, the Atlanta Fed appointment will be watched closely. Though many regional bank heads come from within the broader Fed system, tapped from its ready pool of economists with doctoral degrees, Lockhart had a varied career in private equity and banking before taking over the Atlanta Fed 10 years ago.
And while the search will be national, Atlanta has a deep pool of black professionals - 10 percent of African-Americans in the city have a graduate or professional degree, three percentage points higher than the national average.
"That would be a great thing," Fanning said. "We want the best person as well."
By Howard Schneider
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The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
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The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
One of the women who confronted Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake in a Capitol elevator Friday said she hopes other Republican...
One of the women who confronted Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake in a Capitol elevator Friday said she hopes other Republican senators listen to the stories of women who have been sexually assaulted.
Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher stopped Flake on Friday morning and spent nearly five minutes shouting at the Arizona lawmaker after they learned he had decided to support the US Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Archila said Friday night she was looking for Flake to step up.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Barkin Tapped as Next President of Richmond Fed Bank
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Barkin Tapped as Next President of Richmond Fed Bank
The Federal Reserve's Richmond regional bank announced on Monday that Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global...
The Federal Reserve's Richmond regional bank announced on Monday that Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., will be the bank's next president.
He will succeed Jeffrey Lacker, who resigned as the bank's president in April after revealing his involvement in a leak of confidential information in 2012 that had triggered congressional and FBI investigations.
Read the full article here.
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