Payday lenders must be stopped from preying on the poor: Guest commentary
Payday lenders must be stopped from preying on the poor: Guest commentary
Payday lending has come under attack in recent years for exploiting low-income borrowers and trapping them in a cycle...
Payday lending has come under attack in recent years for exploiting low-income borrowers and trapping them in a cycle of debt. The problem has grown to such an extent that last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed new rules to rein in the most egregious abuses by payday lenders.
Yet payday lenders are not alone in profiting from the struggles of low-income communities with deceptive loans that, all too often, send people into crushing debt. In fact, such targeting has grown common among industries ranging from student loan providers to mortgage lenders.
For decades, redlining denied black people and other communities of color access to mortgages, bank accounts and other important services. Today, black and brown women are similarly being “pinklined” with lending schemes that deny them the opportunity for a better life.
A recent report underlines the toll these practices have taken on women of color. Among other alarming statistics, the report shows that 6 out of 10 payday loan customers are women, that black women were 256 percent more likely than their white male counterparts to receive a subprime loan, and that women of color are stuck paying off student debt for far longer than men. It also shows that aggressive lending practices from payday lending to subprime mortgages have grown dramatically in recent years.
In Los Angeles, debt is a dark cloud looming over the lives of thousands of low-income women all over the city.
Barbara took over the mortgage for her family’s home in South Central Los Angeles in 1988. She had a good job working for Hughes Aircraft until she was injured on the job in 1999 and took an early retirement. To better care for an aging mother living with her, she took out a subprime loan for a bathroom renovation.
The interest rate on the new loan steadily climbed, until she could barely afford to make monthly payments. She took out credit cards just to stay afloat, burying her under an even higher mountain of debt. To survive, she asked her brother to move in, while her son also helped out with the bills.
Numerous studies have shown that borrowers with strong credit — especially black women and Latinas — were steered toward subprime loans even when they could qualify for those with lower rates.
Women of color pay a massive price for such recklessness. The stress of dealing with debt hurts women in a variety of ways.
Alexandra, a former military officer, lost her partner, the father to her daughter, after a protracted struggle with ballooning subprime loan payments. The credit card debt she needed to take out as a result threatened her health, leaving her with hair loss, neck pain and sleep deprivation. She eventually needed to file for bankruptcy to settle the debt.
Women of color are vulnerable to dubious lenders because structural racism and sexism already puts far too many women in economically vulnerable positions. The low-wage workforce is dominated by women, and the gender pay gap is significantly worse for women of color. Many women of color are forced to take out loans just to survive or to try to improve their desperate situations.
Predatory lending practices, and other corporate practices that deny communities opportunities and exploit the most economically vulnerable, have been allowed to proliferate for far too long. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began taking action on payday and car title loans last month, but more needs to be done.
Regulators must ensure all lending takes into account the borrower’s ability to repay, and that lenders do not disproportionately target and attempt to profit off of the least protected.
The payday lending rules acted on last month are a step in the right direction but don’t go nearly far enough. We have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure black and Latina women are not exploited by the 21st century version of redlining.
Marbre Stahly-Butts is deputy director of Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, of which Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment is an affiliate.
By Marbre Stahly-Butts
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After the Las Vegas Shooting, Taking on Myths About Gun Control
After the Las Vegas Shooting, Taking on Myths About Gun Control
Nearly 60 people were killed and more than 500 injured in the worst mass shooting in modern US history on Sunday night...
Nearly 60 people were killed and more than 500 injured in the worst mass shooting in modern US history on Sunday night, early Monday morning in Las Vegas at a concert. As details are still emerging about the suspected shooter, we’ll take on the issue of gun control and the myths of the gun industry with Dennis Henigan. Then, we’ll turn to the situation in Puerto Rico. Samy Olivares of the Center for Popular Democracy will give us a report on the on-going slow-motion disaster unfolding in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and how mainland Americans can help. Finally, author George Monbiot joins us from London to discuss his new book Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. Hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar.
Listen to the story here.
Supreme Court deadlocks on immigration case
Karla Cano faces uncertainty. She had expected to qualify for deferred action under the Obama administration’s...
Karla Cano faces uncertainty. She had expected to qualify for deferred action under the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration. But a tied decision by the U.S. Supreme Court creates uncertainty for Cano and her family.
“All that is unjust about my situation will continue,” said Cano, 21, a senior at Mount Mary University and the mother of a 2-year-old son.
“I am in college so I can have a career helping others, but I cannot start a career like that without work authorization,” she said. “We just want to help this country and support our families like anyone else.”
The court on June 23 deadlocked on President Barack Obama’s executive actions taken to shield millions living in the United States from deportation.
The 4–4 tie means the next president and a new Congress will determine any change in U.S. immigration policy. The president said the court’s deadlock “takes us further from the country we aspire to be.”
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, called the court ruling unacceptable and pledged to “do everything possible under the law to go further to protect families.”
The dispute before the eight justices — the case was heard in April, after the death of Antonin Scalia — was over the legality of the administration’s orders creating “deferred action for parents of Americans and lawful permanent residents” or DAPA and expanding “deferred action for childhood arrivals” or DACA.
Basically the actions would have provided protection from deportation and three-year work permits to about 5 million undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, as well as undocumented people who came to the United States before the age of 16.
The president announced the orders in 2014 and, soon after, they were challenged by 26 states led by Republican governors, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Federal district and appeals courts sided with the states and said the executive office lacked the authority to issue orders shielding immigrants from deportation.
The high court tie means the appeals court ruling stands. But the ruling in United States v. Texas did not set any landmark standards in the dispute over immigration.
The U.S. Justice Department brought the case to the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the appeals court decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union was among the many groups to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.
Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, the “4–4 tie has a profound impact on millions of American families whose lives will remain in limbo and who will now continue the fight. In setting the DAPA guidelines, President Obama exercised the same prosecutorial discretion his predecessors have wielded without controversy and ultimately the courts should hold that the action was lawful.”
Reaction from the U.S. progressive community was swift and compassionate.
“This split decision deals a severe blow to millions of immigrant families who have already been waiting more than 18 months for the DAPA and DACA programs to be implemented,” said Alianza Americas’ executive director Oscar Chacón. “The cold fact is that millions of parents and children will go to bed tonight knowing once again that their families could be torn apart at any moment.”
At the Center for Popular Democracy, co-executive director Ana Maria Archila said, “If the highest court in the land cannot find a majority for justice and compassion, there is something truly broken in our system of laws, checks and balances.”
In Wisconsin, Voces de la Frontera held news conferences in Green Bay, Madison and in Milwaukee. LULAC, Centro Hispano and the Southside Organizing Committee also were involved.
“This is very sad for me,” said Jose Flores, a factory worker, father of four and also the president of Voces de la Frontera. “I have been waiting and fighting for reform like DAPA for years. But we are not giving up. I refuse ... to shrink back into the shadows.”
Cano, a member of Voces de la Frontera, said, “I am not giving up on the struggle. We need more people to get involved in the upcoming elections, because this decision shows the importance of both the presidential and U.S. congressional elections and whom the next president will nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
BY LISA NEFF
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ABQ call center workers get more family-friendly workplace rules
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company...
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company has been under increasing pressure to modify work rules to give workers greater flexibility to balance family and work requirements.
The company operates a nationwide call center near Jefferson and Menaul in Albuquerque and recently announced plans to add more employees top the more than 1,500 local workers already employed at the site.
News of the new workplace rules came from the Communications Workers of America which has been leading efforts with local organizations for these changes:
For Immediate Release July 2, 2015
Public Pressure Pushes T-Mobile US to Provide Fairer Paid Parental Leave Policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Responding to growing public pressure and local government initiatives, T-Mobile US announced this week that it would be adopt a paid parental leave program. The company also said it would end an oppressive policy that required call center workers to be on the phone 96.5% of their work time, leaving them with virtually no time for follow up on customer issues or to make changes in customers’ accounts as needed.
This is great news for workers who often must struggle to balance family and career. It comes as workers at T-Mobile US and a coalition of community supporters in cities like Albuquerque, N.M., step up efforts to restore a fair workweek and achieve other improvements for workers.
Members of TU, the union of T-Mobile workers, the Communications Workers of America and many organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy, OLÉ and other coalition partners, have been raising concerns about unfair scheduling and other issues for workers at T-Mobile US and other employers. Workers want a voice in the decisions that affect them in their workplace — not just the ones that the company selectively picks and chooses. That’s why T-Mobile US workers are joining TU.
T-Mobile US’s initial scheduling changes were made just as the Albuquerque City Council was moving forward to consider a proposal to implement paid sick leave and scheduling improvements. The Albuquerque coalition hosted a town hall meeting on irregular scheduling, where Albuquerque City Council members pledged to support their fight for a fair workweek including the right to take sick leave without retaliation.
A recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision found T-Mobile guilty of engaging in illegal employment policies that prevented workers from even talking to each other about problems on the job. The judge ordered the company to rescind those policies and inform all 46,000 employees about the verdict.
Parental leave is a good first step toward helping workers balance their career and family responsibilities. But workers want real bargaining rights and the right to fairly choose union representation. That’s what T-Mobile must realize.
Source: The New Mexico Political Report
Lawmakers Split on Immigration Bill
Queens Chronicle - September 18, 2014, by Matthew Ern - Nearly three million undocumented immigrants could be granted...
Queens Chronicle - September 18, 2014, by Matthew Ern - Nearly three million undocumented immigrants could be granted amnesty if a controversial new bill is approved by the state Legislature and signed into law.
The New York is Home Act would allow illegal aliens living in the state to apply for professional licenses, serve on juries, vote in local and state elections, and apply for driver’s licenses if they can prove they’ve been living in New York for at least three years and have paid taxes to the state.
The bill was introduced by state Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), although several other key Democratic lawmakers say they weren’t aware of it until the New York Post ran a story about it earlier this week. There is a companion bill in the state Assembly sponsored by Karim Camara (D-Brooklyn).
Several aspects of other pieces of legislation, like the DREAM Act, are included within the newly proposed bill. Such an all-or-nothing approach to immigration reform could potentially turn off some lawmakers and make the measure harder to pass than individual measures, like the driver’s licenses bill.
Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) said he takes issue with the fact that the bill would grant noncitizens the right to vote.
“Although I support the DREAM Act, I do not support many aspects of the New York is Home legislation such as allowing undocumented aliens the right to vote as well as other benefits reserved for American citizens,” Avella said.
For many officials, bills granting undocumented immigrants more specific rights must take priority over passing the New York is Home Act.
“As the sponsor of the New York DREAM Act, I am a firm supporter of expanding rights for all immigrants,” Assemblyman Fransisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights) said in a prepared statement. “My priority right now is making sure that the DREAM Act passes in 2015. The momentum behind the DREAM Act is building and almost all elected Democrats in the New York State Legislature now support it. Only once the DREAM Act is passed, can we begin to examine opportunities for additional rights expansions for New York’s immigrants through legislation such as the New York is Home bill.”
Assemblyman Bill Scarborough (D-Jamaica) said he is unsure if he could support all aspects of the New York is Home Act although he recognizes the need for some immigration reform.
“In general, we do need to help support these undocumented immigrants, especially the children who were brought here,” Scarborough said.
“My focus is on enacting the DREAM Act through either the budget or legislative process,” said state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst), prime sponsor of both the DREAM Act and the bill that would allow undocumented New Yorkers the opportunity to obtain driver’s licenses.
“We came within two Senate votes of passing the DREAM Act a few months ago. The governor’s leadership and the support of editorial boards across the state have raised public awareness and understanding of the issue and generated the kind of momentum we’ll need come January to make the DREAM Act a reality in New York.”
Immigration rights groups Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy have come out in support of the bill.
“The bill really looks at the ways the state can take action to foster growth within immigrant communities,” Make the Road New York Lead Organizer Daniel Coates said. He argues that New York is home to many immigrants who contribute to the local economy and neighborhoods in a variety of ways and that the government should give back to them.
“Washington, DC has proven time and again that it’s incapable of any type of immigration action. States like New York with large immigrant populations need to step up and lead the national discussion,” Coates said.
Source: The Queens Chronicle
Nancy Pelosi, N.Y. pols rip GOP tax plan at Queens teach-in
"When we look at this bill, it’s really a thinly veiled $1.5 trillion attempt to take away people’s health care, to...
"When we look at this bill, it’s really a thinly veiled $1.5 trillion attempt to take away people’s health care, to stop funding schools, to sell off our nation’s infrastructure. That’s really what’s happening,” Charles Khan, with the Community and Labor Coalition and the Center for Popular Democracy, told the crowd at the All Saints Episcopal Church.
Read the full article here.
Protesting health care repeal
Senate Republicans tried and failed three times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Many Americans who were against the...
Senate Republicans tried and failed three times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Many Americans who were against the repeal spent time calling and writing to their senators, and even making it to Washington to protest the plans in person. Those advocates say they believe standing up against the repeal efforts made all the difference. Karen Scharff from Citizen Action, Michael Kink from Strong Economy for All, and Jaron Benjamin from Housing Works discuss their fight against the repeal.
Watch the video here.
Progressive groups target Julián Castro
The veepstakes oppo war has begun. With Bernie Sanders’ durability exciting progressives at their potential to shape...
The veepstakes oppo war has begun.
With Bernie Sanders’ durability exciting progressives at their potential to shape the Democratic race, a coalition of groups — many of them backers of the Vermont senator — are launching a preemptive strike against Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, aimed at disqualifying him from consideration to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
Tuesday morning, the group emailed petitions to several million people attacking Castro on the relatively obscure issue of his handling of mortgage sales and launching a website with an unsubtle address: DontSellOurHomesToWallStreet.org.
They’re just as open with their political aims: to publicly discredit Castro as a progressive, latching onto the mortgage issue to seed enough suspicion to keep him off Clinton’s shortlist.
“It’s a situation where the Clinton campaign wants Castro to be a major asset to her chances of winning the White House, and unless he changes his position related to foreclosures and loans, he’ll be a toxic asset to the Clinton campaign,” said Matt Nelson, the managing director for Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latino organizing group that focuses on social justice.
“All year, we’ve seen the candidates tripping over themselves to show how tough they’ll be on Wall Street,” said Kurt Walters, the campaign manager for Root Strikers, a 501(c4) group of Demand Progress and its 2 million affiliated activists, who is planning to deliver the petitions to Castro’s office when they’re ready. “Then to turn around and take a step backwards on that exact question, and put someone who has been doing the exact opposite — I think it would be tough for a lot of people who care about Wall Street accountability to get excited about that pick.”
By the coalition’s calculations, HUD under Castro has sold 98 percent of the long-delinquent mortgages it acquired through a program aimed at preventing foreclosures to Wall Street banks under Castro’s watch, without anywhere near the number of needed strings attached. (HUD says that figure is way off.) And Nelson and Walters say that for a politician who’s aiming to be considered the vice presidential prospect for both progressives and minorities, Castro has done too much to help private equity firms like Blackstone, instead of black and Latino communities.
“If Secretary Castro fails to create significant momentum in terms of stopping the sale of mortgages to Wall Street, then I do think it disqualifies him. But there’s time left on the clock,” said Jonathan Westin, the director of New York Communities for Change, which was formed out of the remains of the community activist group ACORN. “I think a lot of the progressive movement would not be in support of a Castro ticket if he fails to make traction here.”
The 41-year-old Castro is seen by many as the perfect balance to Clinton — younger and Latino, with a history as mayor of San Antonio and now two years in the Obama administration, handsome and with a 2012 convention keynote speech that immediately made him a rising star to watch in the party. And people close to him say he’s a proven progressive across the board.
“Castro has a strong record at HUD fighting on behalf of progressive issues including protecting those with criminal records, standing up for LGBT rights and advocating for more inclusive communities through affirmatively furthering fair housing,” said one person close to the secretary.
But Maurice Weeks, an Atlanta-based organizer who works on housing justice in communities of color for the Center for Popular Democracy/CPD Action, said that Castro’s lack of action at HUD is breeding more gentrification and suffering in a way that should make blacks and Latinos pay attention.
“What I wouldn’t be excited about is any candidate, not just Julián, who is looking to further some of these practices,” Weeks said.
At issue is the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, started in 2010 to allow mortgages going toward foreclosure to be sold to what HUD calls “qualified bidders and encourages them to work with borrowers to help bring the loan out of default.”
The progressives attacking Castro say they believe the mortgages should be sold instead to nonprofits and other institutions that would care more about the communities involved. What Castro’s done, they say, has essentially amounted to a fire sale for Wall Street firms.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and one of Sanders’ few endorsers in Congress, complained about the program to Castro last week in a letter obtained by Politico.
“Your own Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, which was designed to help right the wrongs of the meltdown years, has been selling homes that once belonged to the families I’ve spoken with at rock-bottom prices to the Wall Street entities that created this situation in the first place,” Grijalva wrote.
HUD says that Castro has continued to meet with advocates, in the hopes of improving the policy, and points to several changes that have been made — including those that have increased the number of mortgages sold to nonprofits. An official pointed to changes made a year ago that, among other things, now require servicers buying loans to delay foreclosure for a year.
“Providing an option for homeowners to remain in their homes is one of the reasons the DASP program was created” said a HUD spokesperson. “We’ve received feedback from stakeholders which has led us to make a number of important changes to the program including the creation of nonprofit-only pools and delaying foreclosure for a year. Additionally, we are still evaluating further enhancements to the program to meet our core mission.”
But that’s not enough for the groups joining the coalition to attack Castro. Those include the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action, American Family Voices, Color of Change, Courage Campaign, CPD Action, Daily Kos, MoveOn, New York Communities for Change, Other 98%, Presente, RootsAction, Rootstrikers and the Working Families Party.
With the exception of the Working Families Party, which is backing Sanders, the groups have not formally endorsed a candidate in the presidential primaries.
Most conversations about Clinton’s prospective pick center on Castro and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and the secretary’s ambitions to be the vice presidential nominee are well known.
But among progressives, so are the suspicions about his bona fides. The red banner across the website proclaiming “TELL HUD SECRETARY JULIAN CASTRO: STOP SELLING OUR NEIGHBORHOODS TO WALL STREET!” amounts to the opening salvo in doing something about it.
“There’s a lot of hope around him,” said Brandi Collins, campaign director for the 1.2-million member Color of Change, who said she was one of the people excited by the possibilities opened up by his keynote speech.
Collins said this complaint about Castro’s leadership is reflective of a whole range of issues her organization has had with what members say is the secretary’s closeness to Wall Street and lack of attention to black and brown communities.
“If he’s not showing up for our communities while the cameras aren’t there, we don’t know that he’ll show up when he’s on his way to the White House,” Collins said.
According to Julia Gordon, formerly at the Center for American Progress and currently an executive vice president at the National Community Stabilization Trust, the coalition may have a point — if only because it is taking advantage of opaque accounting at HUD. Gordon said she’s met often with HUD about these issues but hasn’t seen the kind of progress she’d like or evidence that the program matches the claims that officials make.
“We know it’s been good for investors. According to HUD, it’s been good for the fund, although the level of detail that they release to account for it is minimal. We really don’t know how good it’s been for the homeowners, and that’s where this wave of protests is coming from,” Gordon said.
Laurie Goodman, the director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, said that the people who are attacking Castro for selling the loans to Wall Street are misinterpreting the pragmatic realities about what’s in play.
The mortgages in question tend to be delinquent for over two years, she said, and getting them out of HUD with its limited resources and tools to deal with them is a positive step for homeowners. Only big banks can take on mortgages like that, she argued, making the nonprofit issue moot.
“The only way to help these borrowers is to sell the loans. You don’t have any other buyers big enough in size,” she said. “Even if you wanted to do something different, you couldn’t.”
Within that, though, Goodman credited HUD under Castro for making “some really big improvements.”
Not nearly enough, according to Gordon.
“Both HUD and [the Federal Housing Finance Agency] have let down communities by not focusing on what they want the buyer to do with these,” Gordon said, arguing that they’ve been focused instead on offloading the debt. “They’re just like, ‘Get it away from me.’”
The idea that Castro would be the first Latino on a national ticket means something, Nelson said, though he argued that this only adds to the burden for the secretary to show leadership on the mortgage issue in the way progressives want at this moment of added attention to their concerns.
Nelson said that at Presente, they think of it like a parable — it doesn’t make it any better to be hurt if the hurt is coming from one of their own.
There are two trees in a forest, Nelson said, and they see an ax coming to chop them down. “Don’t worry,” says one tree to the other, “the handle’s one of us.”
“Basically,” Nelson said, “we’re fighting to make sure Castro isn’t the handle.”
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
Source
The Spy Who Fired Me
Harpers Magazine - March 2015, by Esther Kaplan - Last March, Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, devoted part of...
Harpers Magazine - March 2015, by Esther Kaplan - Last March, Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, devoted part of his show to a company called Cornerstone OnDemand. Cornerstone, Cramer shouted at the camera, is “a cloud-based-software-as-a-service play” in the “talent-management” field. Companies that use its platform can quickly assess an employee’s performance by analyzing his or her online interactions, including emails, instant messages, and Web use. “We’ve been managing people exactly the same way for the last hundred and fifty years,” Cornerstone’s CEO, Adam Miller, told Cramer. With the rise of the global workforce, the remote workforce, the smartphone and the tablet, it’s time to “manage people differently.” Clients include Virgin Media, Barclays, and Starwood Hotels.
Cornerstone, as Miller likes to tell investors, is positioning itself to be “on the vanguard of big data in the cloud” and a leader in the “gamification of performance management.” To be assessed by Cornerstone is to have your collaborative partnerships scored as assets and your brainstorms rewarded with electronic badges (genius idea!). It is to have scads of information swept up about what you do each day, whom you communicate with, and what you communicate about. Cornerstone converts that data into metrics to be factored in to your performance reviews and decisions about how much you’ll be paid.
Miller’s company is part of an $11 billion industry that also includes workforcemanagement systems such as Kronos and “enterprise social” platforms such as Microsoft’s Yammer, Salesforce’s Chatter, and, soon, Facebook at Work. Every aspect of an office worker’s life can now be measured, and an increasing number of corporations and institutions—from cosmetics companies to car-rental agencies—are using that informationto make hiring and firing decisions. Cramer, for one, is bullish on the idea: investing in companies like Cornerstone, he said, “can make you boatloads of money literally year after year!”
A survey from the American Management Association found that 66 percent of employers monitor the Internet use of their employees, 45 percent track employee keystrokes, and 43 percent monitor employee email. Only two states, Delaware and Connecticut, require companies to inform their employees that such monitoring is taking place. According to Marc Smith, a sociologist with the Social Media Research Foundation, “Anythingyou do with a piece of hardware that’s provided to you by the employer, every keystroke, is the property of the employer. Personal calls, private photos—if you put it on the company laptop, your company owns it. They may analyze any electronic record at any time for any purpose. It’s not your data.”
With the advent of wireless connectivity, along with a steep drop in the price of computer processors, electronic sensors, GPS devices, and radio-frequency identification tags, monitoring has become commonplace.Many retail workers now clock in with a thumb scan. Nurses wear badges that track how often they wash their hands. Warehouse workers carry devices that assign them their next task and give them a time by which they must complete it. Some may soon be outfitted with augmented-reality devices to more efficiently locate products.
In industry after industry, this data collection is part of an expensive, high-tech effort to squeeze every last drop of productivity from corporate workforces, an effort that pushes employees to their mental, emotional, and physical limits; claims control over their working and nonworking hours; and compensates them as little as possible, even at the risk of violating labor laws. In some cases, these new systems produce impressive results for the bottom line: after Unified Grocers, a large wholesaler, implemented an electronic tasking system for its warehouse workers, the firm was able to cut payroll expenses by 25 percent while increasing sales by 36 percent. A 2013 study of five chain restaurants found that electronic monitoring decreased employee theft and increased hourly sales. In other cases, however, the return on investment isn’t so clear. As one Cornerstonereport says of corporate social-networking tools.“ There is no generally accepted model for their implementation or standard set of metrics for measuring R.O.I.” Yet this has hardly slowed adoption.
Read the full article here.
This Is What Chicago Can Learn From America's Other Police Accountability Taskforces
This Is What Chicago Can Learn From America's Other Police Accountability Taskforces
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ...
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the formation of a police accountability task force Tuesday.
In a Monday press release, the mayor said the five-member body — which he will appoint, and which will be advised by former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick — "will review the system of accountability, oversight and training that is currently in place for Chicago's police officers," according to the Chicago Tribune.
"The shooting of Laquan McDonald requires more than just words," Emanuel said in a statement. "It requires that we act."
The announcement came one week after a Cook County judge compelled the city to release video footage of the Oct. 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, which was captured on a patrol car dash camera but kept under wraps for 13 months.
McDonald's killer, Officer Jason Van Dyke, shot the teenager 16 times in front of multiple witnesses but was charged with first-degree murder only last week. The sluggish circumstances of the release have since drawn accusations of an administrative cover-up. Van Dyke was released from jail Monday after posting ten percent of his $150,000 bail.
Mayor Emanuel also fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday, in response to calls from the public and some officials to have him removed. Meanwhile, the video's release has set off a week of protests in Chicago, as questions remain regarding next steps.
Jason Van Dyke is the first Chicago police officer to be charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty incident in 35 years, a fact that has elicited doubt Emanuel's task force will yield substantive results.
"Our first thought is that this [task force] can't be a substitute for what's really needed here, which is a full-scale federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department with subpoena power," Ed Yohnka, Director of Communications and Public Policy at the ACLU of Illinois, told Mic. "Whatever this task force does, what we've witnessed in this and other instances is a fundamental breakdown in the ability of police to protect the public, and the public's faith in CPD."
Others echoed Yohnka's skepticism. "Appointing a committee to look into an issue is a tried-and-true tactic elected officials long have employed to buy time and breathing room when faced with a scandal or crisis," wrotethe Chicago Tribune. "[It] gives Emanuel something else to talk to reporters and the public about other than the ... video."
Indeed, it's unclear how effective police accountability task forces in other cities have been. An Inspectors General was appointed in Los Angeles, New York City and New Orleans have uncovered systemic abuses and identified problems that shoddy or nonexistent data collection had rendered invisible over the past decade. Seattle has a 15-member community police commission, appointed by the mayor, to review oversight and accountability processes.
However, "there is no clear evidence that these oversight bodies alone are effective in obtaining meaningful reforms," according to a Justice in Policing report and toolkit from the Center for Popular Democracy and PolicyLink, both policy advocacy organizations.
Yohnka suggested to Mic that a more tried route to change in Chicago would require a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. "That confidence needs to be restored, that someone in power is actively looking into this," he said. "But it's systemic. This issue pervades multiple superintendents and multiple people in terms of leadership in the department. It requires a systemic approach to accountability, transparency and how law enforcement operates."
One such DOJ examination of the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department published in March laid bare a hotbed of racist law enforcement practices that yielded reform suggestions amidst a national conversation around racism and policing. This is not a unique phenomenon. According to the Washington Post, the DOJ has launched 67 investigations into police departments across the U.S. over the past decade, 24 of which were closed without reform agreements, and just 26 of which resulted in "binding agreements tracked by monitors."
Results have been mixed. The long-term effect of these agreements are not tracked by the DOJ, making it hard to tell if they actually work.
"We don't tend to evaluate .?.?. after we have left," Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the department's civil rights division, told the Post. "There's a limit to how much we can .?.?. remain engaged with a particular jurisdiction given our limited resources."
This leaves little precedent for a positive outcome in Chicago — a city with a staggering recent history of police abuse. Over the past decade, the city has spent $500 million on legal costs and settlements stemming from law enforcement misconduct, including $5 million paid out to Laquan McDonald's family in April.
That same month, Chicago set up a $5.5 million fund to compensate victims of former-CPD Commander John Burge, who tortured and sexually abused more than 100 mostly black arrestees during his tenure with the department. The case of Dante Servin, an off-duty officer who fired into a crowd and killed 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in 2012, was also dismissed in April because state's attorney Anita Alvarez — whose office has a history of questionable conduct — charged him with a crime the judge deemed too severe for what he did.
The McDonald case has also been plagued by scandal, including allegations that police officers tampered with surveillance tape that captured the shooting from a nearby Burger King, resulting in 86 minutes of footage gone missing.
Some have suggested the mere appearance of police accountability can have positive effects, lending legitimacy to law enforcement bodies that had formerly lost the trust of their communities. But in the case of Chicago, it may be too late for that.
"The reality is, we're kind of past the point of cosmetics here," said Ed Yohnka. "There's been this fundamental breakdown in terms of trust. Whether we're talking the Burge incidents or the millions of dollars in payouts to victims, there really needs to be a much broader look at what is going on."
Source: Mic
6 days ago
6 days ago