Puerto Rico Activists Crash Federal Reserve Panel With Creative Protest
Puerto Rico Activists Crash Federal Reserve Panel With Creative Protest
NEW YORK — Over a dozen activists descended on a building where Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and her three living...
NEW YORK — Over a dozen activists descended on a building where Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and her three living predecessors were speaking on Thursday to demand that the Fed bail out Puerto Rico’s cash-strapped government.
The demonstrators, who are affiliated with the progressive Fed Up coalition, distributed Puerto Rican flags and empanadas as Puerto Rican music played outside Manhattan’s International House, a student residence. Yellen was there for an unprecedented panel discussion alongside past Fed chairs Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, who participated via videostream.
The activists were joined by Puerto Rican lawmaker Manuel Natal, who was in town to participate in a panel discussion hosted by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on Friday.
“They have two mechanisms under their authority to help Puerto Rico: one is to provide a bailout to Puerto Rico similar to the one they did to banks, the same banks that are now in Puerto Rico making a fortune out of our fiscal situation,” Natal said. “And the second would be to buy our debt” and charge Puerto Rico interest rates that are lower than the market would offer.
The activists claim that since the Fed had the authority to buy trillions of dollars of bad debt from Wall Street banks after the 2008 financial crisis, it can do the same for the debt of Puerto Rico.
Economic observers with knowledge of the Fed’s functions consider that argument dubious. Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who was an economist at the Fed Board of Governors for many years, said that the Fed is not allowed to buy municipal debt — of the kind Puerto Rico owes — that comes due over a period longer than six months. He also said such a purchase would be inconsistent with the Fed’s dual mandate of maintaining price stability and full employment.
The Fed has “never bailed out any insolvent entity as far as I know. They always demand collateral sufficient to cover any loan,” Gagnon said, as the Fed did when it provided aid to major U.S. banks.
Natal, the lawmaker, also believes some of Puerto Rico’s debt has been issued unconstitutionally and can therefore be nullified.
Greg Williams, a spokesman for Jubilee USA, a coalition of faith-based groups that advocates for global debt relief policies, declined to endorse a Fed bailout, but suggested the Fed could broker a deal instead.
“We support a proposal where the Fed facilitates a restructuring process,” Williams said.
More important than the details of the demonstrators’ demands, however, is the protest’s political symbolism in the midst of a heated battle over Puerto Rico’s future. The demonstration was perhaps the most colorful in a series of political moves and counter-moves by the Puerto Rican government and its sympathizers on one hand and the commonwealth’s bondholders and their allies on the other. Both seek to influence a congressional rescue plan that could enable Puerto Rico to restructure its debts.
Members of Congress from both parties are negotiating changes to the draft of a relief bill released last week by the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories.
But many in Puerto Rico, and some progressives in the mainland United States, object to the Washington-based federal oversight board the bill would introduce to audit Puerto Rico’s finances and recommend reforms. Under the terms of the bill, Puerto Rico would pursue voluntary compromises with its creditors; failing that, the board could greenlight court-supervised debt restructuring that would force bondholders to accept the losses.
Those critics of the draft bill — including lawmaker Natal — view the board as having the trappings of American colonial rule over Puerto Rico.
Critics of the draft House bill say it has the trappings of American colonial rule over Puerto Rico.
They also argue that Puerto Rico should not have to meet any conditions to gain access to court-supervised debt restructuring. Puerto Rico, unlike the fifty mainland states, lacks the power to grant its municipalities and public corporations federal bankruptcy protections.
Puerto Rico is taking a multi-pronged approach to secure debt relief that appears designed to increase its leverage with creditors and win terms that are as favorable as possible.
The island’s governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, signed a bill on Wednesday that would empower him to declare a state of emergency and enact a moratorium on the island’s $70 billion debt. Puerto Rico’s next major debt payment — a $422 million tranche — comes due on May 1.
Daniel Hanson, a Puerto Rico specialist for the financial analysis firm The Height, wrote in an email newsletter that Puerto Rico’s creditors will likely challenge the moratorium in court, where Puerto Rico’s “playbook is not likely to be persuasive to American courts adjudicating the contracted rights of creditors.”
Garcia Padilla has said the island is incapable of paying its debts in full. Puerto Rico has enacted spending cuts and tax hikes in recent years that have stifled its economy and depleted its social services, creating a situation that many people already characterize as a humanitarian crisis.
Puerto Rico also argued for the right to enforce a local bankruptcy law that went before the Supreme Court last month after lower courts had blocked the island from putting it into effect. The high court is expected to rule in the case by late June.
In Congress, Democrats sensitive to Puerto Rico’s plight — and solicitous of the votes of former island residents living on the mainland — hope to dilute some of the proposed oversight board’s sweeping powers.
The Height’s Hanson, however, expects subsequent iterations of the House bill to be “more creditor-friendly,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, organizations representing Puerto Rico’s powerful creditors have stepped up their efforts to amend the legislation to limit the restructuring authority that the island would get. The commonwealth’s bondholders include a significant number of so-called vulture funds, which are hedge funds that have bought its debt from other creditors at discounted rates on the promise of recovering the obligations’ original full-dollar value.
A group called Main Street Bondholders, which claims to represent ordinary retirees, has created a web site attacking the draft House bill for granting Puerto Rico “super Chapter 9” bankruptcy protections.
Main Street Bondholders is associated with the conservative seniors group 60 Plus, which played an active role in the fight against the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times reported in December that 60 Plus is funded by a handful of large, anonymous donors and was recruited into the effort by a Republican public relations firm that also represents BlueMountain Capital, a creditor that has been outspoken against federal government help for the island.
The fight over whether to help Puerto Rico has reached the bottom rung of American discourse — cable news ads paid for by undisclosed donors. The ad, which ran on CNN and was paid for by the Center for Individual Freedom, urges Congress to “stop the Washington bailout of Puerto Rico.” The Virginia-based conservative group does not disclose its donors. It was founded in 1998 to combat government restrictions on smoking.
The CFIF did not respond to a Huffington Post question about whether any of its funders have a financial stake in the outcome of the Puerto Rico bailout.
By Daniel Marans & Ben Walsh
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Fed votes to keep key interest rate near 0%, stays mum on future hike
Federal Reserve policymakers Wednesday voted to keep the central bank’s benchmark interest rate near zero percent and...
Federal Reserve policymakers Wednesday voted to keep the central bank’s benchmark interest rate near zero percent and offered no new hints of when it would enact the first hike since 2006.
After a two-day policy meeting, officials released a monetary policy statement that was little changed from June in its guidance about what they would need to see before raising the interest rate.
11:40 a.m.: An earlier version of this article said the Fed's policy statement was identical in its guidance about what officials would need to see before raising the interest rate. The statement contained a small wording change.
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An increase would come when members of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee have “seen some further improvement in the labor market” and is “reasonably confident” that the low inflation rate will move back toward the Fed’s 2% annual goal in the near future, the statement said.
The statement, approved by a 10-0 vote, left open the possibility of a rate hike after the Fed’s next meeting, in September. But it did not lock policymakers into taking that step in case upcoming economic data, including jobs reports for July and August, indicate the economy isn’t strong enough to handle higher interest rates.
The Fed said recent data suggest the economy “has been expanding moderately in recent months” and that the housing market “has shown additional improvement.” The Fed’s view of the labor market improved, with the statement saying there had been “solid job gains and declining unemployment.”
But Fed policymakers raised concerns about what they called soft business investment and exports.
And the statement noted inflation continued to run well below the Fed’s 2% annual target, attributing that partly to declines in energy prices as well as the lower cost of imports caused by the rising value of the dollar.
For the 12 months ended May 31, the price index for personal consumption expenditures, the Fed’s preferred gauge, was up just 0.2%.
The central bank has kept its benchmark federal funds rate near zero since December 2008 in an attempt to boost economic growth during and after the Great Recession.
As the economy has strengthened, pressure has built on Fed policymakers to start raising the rate.
Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen has said that she expects an interest rate hike this year but that policymakers would continue to keep rates low for “quite some time” to continue providing support for the economy.
A survey last month by financial information website Bankrate.com found that a majority of Wall Street experts expected the Fed to raise its short-term interest rate in September.
Fed policymakers are closely watching economic data to determine when to hike the rate for the first time since 2006.
The economy shrank at a 0.2% annual rate from January through March, largely because of unusually bad winter weather and a labor dispute that slowed activity at West Coast ports.
The Commerce Department is expected to report Thursday that growth returned this spring. Analysts are forecasting that the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the second quarter.
The job market has shown solid gains in recent months, and the unemployment rate in June dropped to 5.3%, the lowest in more than seven years.
But wage growth has been sluggish. The Center for Popular Democracy has criticized the Fed for not focusing enough on wage improvements as a key factor in deciding when to raise rates.
And even with the overall economy performing better in the second quarter, growth this year is expected to be subpar. The Fed’s most recent projection, made in June, is for overall economic growth of just 1.8% to 2% for the year, which would be the worst since 2011.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
April 15: National Protests on Tax Day Demand Trump Release His Tax Returns
April 15: National Protests on Tax Day Demand Trump Release His Tax Returns
WASHINGTON - Today, the National Working Families Party announced their participation in the Tax Day March. President...
WASHINGTON - Today, the National Working Families Party announced their participation in the Tax Day March. President Trump’s financial ties to Russia are causing growing questions for both Democrats and Republicans. As a result, thousands of people plan to gather in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, April 15, 2017, at 11 a.m. The Tax March was an idea that started on Twitter, but has gained momentum on and offline, with over 135 marches planned in cities across the country...
Read full article here.
Dem lawmakers hear demands for ‘reparations’; but let’s call it THIS so nobody gets ‘uncomfortable’
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators,...
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the black community reparations for “systematic discrimination in law enforcement.”
“Thinking about decriminalization with reparations—the idea is we that have extracted literally millions of dollars from communities, we have destroyed families,” said Marbre Shahly-Butts, deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, during her address at the State Innovation Exchange in Washington, D.C. “Mass incarceration has led to the destruction of communities across the country. We can track which communities, like we have that data.”
“And so if we’re going to be decriminalizing things like marijuana, all of the profit from that should go back to the folks we’ve extracted it from,” she continued.
The focus of state legislators should be “state budgets and then reparations,” Shahly-Butts said.
“‘Reparations’ makes people kind of uncomfortable, so we can call it ‘reinvestment’ if you want to. Use whatever language makes you happy inside,” she said.
Fellow panelist Dante Barry, executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, also recommended some type of “reinvestment” to help black youth and said New York City would be better off investing $100 million in the black community rather than hiring more police.
“In terms of response around black youth unemployment, it gets back to this whole piece around reinvestment,” Barry said. “What would you do with $100 million? How would we better use that money to provide jobs for unemployed youth, to provide housing, to have mental health access. … It’s really about how do we rethink some of our budgetary needs and how we’re putting power behind the way that we can really incorporate reinvestment in communities.”
If there were one policy he would want state legislators to prioritize, Barry said it would be a ban on all guns on campus.
Source: Biz Pac Review
Car wash activists release report on John Lage
Amsterdam News - June 20, 2013 - According to a recently released report by car wash workers and their advocates, the...
Amsterdam News - June 20, 2013 - According to a recently released report by car wash workers and their advocates, the owner of several car washes with labor law violations is still paid by the city to clean city-owned cars.
Created and distributed by Make the Road New York, Center for Popular Democracy, New York Communities for Change and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the report includes public documents that they believe show that city taxpayers have “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting” John Lage and his associate Fernando Magalhaes.
According to the report, between 2007 and 2013, Lage Car Wash Inc. had contracts with the New York City Police Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) worth over $300,000 combined. Also, the city paid Lage Car Wash at least $135,924 for the past three years for car wash services and almost $38,000 to other entities that are controlled by Lage or Magalhaes. Last year, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation in Lage’s business practices.
Currently, car wash employees of Lage’s report that they work over 50 hours a week for an hourly wage of $6 without tips or about $7.30 including tips and including overtime. Back in 2005, the U.S. Labor Department sued Lage on charges he and 15 of his companies “willfully and repeatedly” violated wage laws. The suit ended with Lage paying $4.7 million in wages and fines.
None of this was of much surprise to Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum.
“This report is proof that Lage Car Wash Inc. and its treatment of workers is not fair to the workers, nor do these conditions uplift and sustain our communities,” said Appelbaum. “New York City should quickly take action and truly reconsider doing business with a company who operates in this manner.”
Last week, car wash workers and supporters attended the Car Wash Workers General Assembly, where they discussed their experiences working for Lage-owned companies.
“We learned from the strike at Sunny Day [in the Bronx] and the struggle at Soho [in Manhattan] that we can defend our rights and win, and we are no longer going to accept mistreatment and poverty wages,” said Hector Gómez, a car wash worker who worked at the recently closed Lage Car Wash in Soho and currently works at Sutphin Car Wash. “Just think how much more we can win when all the car washes in New York City are organized and united.”
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For Some Starbucks Workers, Job Leaves Bitter Taste
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (...
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (SBUX) in New York City, is fed up.
"Starbucks' attitude is that there's always someone else can who can do the job," she said in running through her complaints about life at the java giant.
If that isn't necessarily the consensus among Starbucks workers, interviews with nine current and former baristas at the company make clear it's not an isolated opinion, either. Even those who say they like their job paint a picture of a business that underpays front-line workers, enforces work rules arbitrarily and too often fails to strike a balance between corporate goals and employee needs.
Of course, such complaints are nothing new in retail, where low pay and erratic schedules are the norm. But by its own account, Starbucks is no ordinary company and is ostensibly a far cry from the fast-food outlets now facing a nationwide uprising by employees tired of working for peanuts.
That's evident in the company's recruitment pitch. Starbucks invites job-seekers to "become a part of something bigger and inspire positive change in the world," describing it as a chance to discover a "deep sense of purpose."
Damage control
That image suffered a serious blow last month after The New York Times vividly chronicled a Starbucks worker struggling with the company's scheduling practices. The story, which centered on a 22-year-old barista and single mother, amounted to a public relations nightmare for Starbucks. Perhaps not coincidentally, within days of the story's publication top executives were promising reform.
In a memo to employees earlier this month, for instance, Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead vowed to "transform the U.S. partner experience," referring to Starbucks' more than 130,000 baristas. Inviting worker feedback, he said Starbucks will examine its approach to employee pay, revisit its dress code, make it easier for people to ask for time off, and consider other changes aimed at helping baristas balance work and their personal lives.
Among other changes, the company said it would end the practice of "clopening," when an employee responsible for closing a store late at night is also assigned to open it early in the morning.
"We recognize that we can do more for our partners who wear the apron every day," he wrote.
Some baristas did not feel this August memo from Starbucks went far enough in proposing ways to improve work conditions, so they marked it up with their own ideas.
Although Starbucks workers welcome this pledge to respect the apron, they fear the company is more intent on dousing the PR flames than on genuinely improving employees' experience. After the retailer last month sent an email to workers outlining possible solutions to the kind of scheduling problems and related issues detailed by the Times, a group of baristas gave the proposal a C- and posted online a marked-up version of the memo listing their own demands (image above).
"We hope you're ready for a commitment to give us schedules that don't mess with taking care of kids, going to school or holding onto that second job we need because Sbux wages don't make ends meet," wrote the baristas, who are working with a union-backed labor group, the Center for Popular Democracy.
Retail jungle
Despite the recent media focus on Starbucks, the company's labor practices are generally no worse than those of many large retailers. In some ways they're better, with the company offering health care to part-time, as well as full-time, workers; unusually generous 401(k) matching contributions; annual stock grants to employees; and tuition reimbursement.
Starbucks highlights such benefits as an example of its commitment to employees. "Sharing success with one another has been core to the company's heritage for more than 40 years," Alstead said in the September memo.
Meanwhile, some baristas say they enjoy their work and feel valued by Starbucks. "It's a decent place to work, and my manager and co-workers are great," said one employee who asked not to be identified.
But other current and former workers claim Starbucks has changed in recent years, saying that corporate leaders' intense focus on slashing costs has short-circuited its professed commitment to workers. Mostly, they say Starbucks doesn't listen to employees and even punishes those who identify problems.
"The biggest problem is that baristas don't have a voice," said Sarah Madden, a former Starbucks barista who left the company this spring after two years with the coffee vendor. "They can't speak to issues that they know exist. Workers know how to fix them, but when [they] speak up there are serious repercussions -- your hours get cut, you're transferred to another store or isolated from other people."
Employees interviewed for this article said one result of Starbucks' cost-containment push is that stores are frequently understaffed, hurting customer service and forcing managers to scramble to find staff. That problem is common across the big-box stores that dominate the retail sector, experts said.
"One the one hand, retailers overhire, but they're also understaffed, so everybody's running around and then there aren't enough people on the floor," said Susan Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago and an expert in work-life issues. "Companies are effectively loading all the risk onto workers so that they're not the ones incurring the risks inherent in business."
Starbucks denies that its stores are short-staffed. "We're proud of the level of service we provide in our stores," said Zack Hutson, a spokesman for the company. "We know that the connection our partners have with customers is the foundation of the Starbucks experience. It wouldn't be in our best interest. We want our customers to have the appropriate service level when they come to our stores."
To be sure, Starbucks is hardly the only U.S. corporate giant to keep a gimlet eye on its bottom line -- among Fortune 500 companies that approach to management is the rule, not the exception, and CEOs across the land defend it as an inviolable fiduciary duty to shareholders.
But baristas say Starbucks' focus on profits and cost-cutting has increasingly led its leadership to tune workers out. Locke, who has worked for the company since 2006 and who earns roughly $16,000 a year, said she yearned for the Starbucks of old.
"When I started they had a training program and taught you how to be a coffee expert. There was more of a culture of supporting each other as co-workers. Store managers were sympathetic. I really enjoyed it."
Asked why she stays at Starbucks, Locke said her employment options are limited because she lacks a college education and because her only professional experience is in retail.
Living wage?
According to workers, the best thing Starbucks can do for its apron-wearers is to raise their pay and offer full-time hours instead of the 20 to 30 hours that most employees work.
Samantha Cole, a barista in Omaha, Neb., said she struggles to get by on her supervisor's salary of $11.25 an hour. Such pay may be better than what she would earn working for other retailers, but the 30-year-old mother of two say it's still not a living wage.
"I'm definitely not making enough money," said Cole, who has been with the company for six years. "A lot of us are right there with what fast-food workers are making."
Such frustrations are also evident in comments on the Facebook page Starbucks uses to communicate with employees and where it is asking baristas for input regarding the company's labor practices. Wrote one employee: "I've worked for the company for 7 years in January, and I don't make enough to support myself on one job so I work 2 jobs, 6 days a week.... I've seen a lot of amazing partners leave because they don't make enough."
Starbucks declined to disclose compensation data, citing competitive reasons and saying that pay varies widely according to workers' experience and where in the U.S. stores are located. It didn't respond to emails requesting clarification regarding other aspects of its labor policies.
It's worth noting that low pay isn't unique to Starbucks -- in retail it is the norm. As of 2012 (the latest year for which data is available), the median hourly income for retail salespeople is $10.29 per hour, or $21,410 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hourly pay for full-time retail workers range from a high of $14.42 to $9.61 for lower-paid people, according to Demos, a liberal-leaning think tank in New York. Part-timers typically make much less, with the average cashier earning $18,500 a year.
"Until [Starbucks] gives a living wage to every employee, they can't claim to be a good employer," Locke said, who added that it has been roughly two years since her last pay raise.
"Race to the bottom"
Another priority for baristas: stable, regular schedules. Like most large retailers, Starbucks uses scheduling software to try to match the number of workers it has in a store at any given time to the amount of business it gets. Workers also may be scheduled according to the sales they generate or their facility in promoting certain products. The technology also can enable other savings, such as limiting overtime.
For employees, however, that approach -- known as "just-in-time" or "on-call" scheduling -- often results in lower income and chaotic hours.
Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at City University of New York's Murphy Institute, characterizes the widespread adoption of scheduling and so-called workforce optimization technologies as a "new race to the bottom."
"Companies that have already reduced operating costs by making deals with irresponsible subcontractors and using the cheapest available materials are now cutting corners in the form of the 'just-in- time scheduling' of their workforce," she and her co-authors wrote in a recent report. "These 'lean' manufacturing practices take advantage of sophisticated software and an increasingly desperate workforce to cut labor costs to the bone."
By the same token, tighter control of worker schedules helps Starbucks contain payroll costs. But it also means employees who had expected to work a certain number of hours every week can see their schedules dramatically cut back and fluctuate wildly. The result? Smaller paychecks and a disturbance to family life.
"It makes it very hard for parents to participate in an intimate family routine and structure it in such a way that experts agree is good for children," Lambert said.
Irregular schedules also make it hard for workers who do need extra income to work a second job, schedule appointments and plan other aspects of their lives.
Baristas said Starbucks posts their schedule only days in advance and that they are often subject to change. Following the Times story, Starbucks said it would post schedules at least one week in advance. That's not enough time, several workers said, asking the company to provide at least two or three weeks notice, as retailers ranging from Walmart (WMT) and H&M to Victoria's Secret (LB) do.
Meanwhile, despite Starbucks' promise to end clopening, the practice continues, some workers said, although the company insists that this is only in cases when people request such shifts.
"Partners should never be required to work opening and closing shifts. That policy is clear," Starbucks' Hutson said, adding that the company is studying ways to give workers more input in their schedules. "If there are cases where that's not happening, we want to know about that."
Given the scrutiny on Starbucks, the company can count on baristas to do just that.
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Post Navigation Report Finds Lack of Proper Fraud Oversight at Charters in State
LA School Report - March 24, 2015, by Craig Clough - California is extremely vulnerable to fraud at charter schools and...
LA School Report - March 24, 2015, by Craig Clough - California is extremely vulnerable to fraud at charter schools and as a result can expect to lose $100 million in wasted tax money in 2015, a new report released today finds.
The report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Public Advocates found that there are “structural oversight weaknesses” in the state’s charter system.
Among the problems it found:
Oversight depends heavily on self-reporting by charter schools.
General auditing techniques alone do not uncover fraud.
Oversight bodies lack adequate staffing to detect and eliminate fraud.
California has the largest number of charter schools in the nation — 1,184, according to the California Charter Schools Association. The number in LA Unified grew this year to 285, 231 of which are independent.
The report recommends a few solutions, including requiring oversight agencies, such as the State Comptroller’s Office and Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, to conduct audits on charter schools once every three years, and not only when requested to do so.
“There’s no proactive system for auditing California’s charter schools by state officials… They wait until someone has whisteblowers come forward and the media has put something out, but there’s not a regular system for auditing schools,” said Kyle Serrette, director of education at the Center for Popular Democracy, in a call with reporters.
The report stated that over $81 million in fraud has been uncovered at charter schools to date, but that it is likely the “tip of the iceberg” and estimated the state will lose $100 million this year alone to waste, fraud and mismanagement at charters.
“We have a situation where we are losing millions of dollars to fraud in the charter sector every single year. We now know what the problem is,” Serrette said, adding that the backers of the report will be pushing state lawmakers for policy changes based on the findings of the report.
Serrette also said there are other states that do a better job of applying rigorous oversight of charters.
“Pennsylvania is a great example where the auditor general audits all of Pennsylvania’s charter schools every three to five years and the districts, which tend to be the authorizers there, they do the same thing,” Serrette said.
Click here to read the full report.
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A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto...
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto Ricans will hold you accountable,” said Julio López Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the leading activist groups on the Puerto Rican debt crisis. “There’s a question about what are those investments, and if that question is not answered that is extremely concerning.”
Read the full article here.
Queens Radio Show Aims to Help Day Laborers Avoid Death or Injury on the Job
Queens Radio Show Aims to Help Day Laborers Avoid Death or Injury on the Job
As a muted telenovela played on a T.V. overhead, Jorge Roldan inched toward the microphone in a basement radio studio...
As a muted telenovela played on a T.V. overhead, Jorge Roldan inched toward the microphone in a basement radio studio in Corona, Queens.
Speaking in Spanish, Roldan, a coordinator at the Laborers’ International Union of North America who is based in Long Island City, reminded his audience, mainly construction workers, that their bosses are obligated to give them respirators when they work on jobs involving airborne contaminants like asbestos.
“New York is an old city – many buildings have asbestos,” he said. “Wash your clothes in two different machines. The asbestos resist everything.”
His advice was standard fare for Sin Fronteras. Since April, the hour-long program has brought together six Latinos weekly to offer advice on a delicate topic for the Latino immigrant community: the exploitation and mistreatment of undocumented laborers.
Translated “Without Frontiers,” the offering is the only public-affairs program of 91.9 Radio Impacto 2, an unlicensed Spanish-language music station founded in 2008 that caters to the Ecuadorian population. Sin Fronteras focuses on worker-safety issues, but also promotes cultural events in the Ecuadorian and Latino community. Its guests have included Queens Assemblyman Francisco Moya and Ecuadorian Consul General Linda Machuca, among other local leaders.
More than 98,000 Ecuadorians live in Queens. Latinos account for over 27 percent of the borough population and are a nearly equal percentage of the construction workers citywide, according to a 2015 report by the New York Committee for Operational Safety & Health, a labor advocacy group. An investigation in 2013 by the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy found that between 2003 to 2011, Latino and/or immigrant workers made up three quarters of fatal falls at construction sites in New York City.
“We don’t want more of our people to die,” said Sin Fronteras’ founder, Rosita Cali, an Ecuadorian immigrant who also co-directs Padres en Acción, an organization in Jackson Heights that offers workplace safety trainings sponsored by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – known as “OSHA classes.”
“Workers have to protect themselves,” she said. “They have the right to say, ‘no, I’m not going to go on that ladder.’ They have a voice and a vote.”
Juan, a 28-year-old Ecuadorian construction worker, represents the people the program tries to reach. An undocumented immigrant, he said he has been a construction worker since March and makes $17 an hour, nearly one-third more than in his previous job working in a kitchen. But about two months ago, he said, he started feeling sick after working with fiberglass insulation in a building in Brooklyn.
Juan said he asked his construction supervisor for a mask, but was told that there were none available.
“They told us that there weren’t any, that we would have to wait,” said the worker, who asked that his last name not be published. “The day went by, and then the week. How can that be?”
By the end of the week, he said, he had an obstructed sense of smell, body aches and a cough, which his doctor attributed to inhalation of fiberglass.
“When you remove the insulation, the dust rises – even your skin starts to sting,” said Juan.
Christina Fox, the work center coordinator for New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a non-profit based in Jackson Heights, said the Latino laborers she works with often don’t report injuries to their supervisors. She explained that workers might not think their injuries are severe enough or don’t know that they have a right to receive compensation.
Attending a workplace safety class could change this.
“A worker will be able to go to their job, recognize there’s a crack in the retaining wall, stop, and tell their supervisor,” she said. “But low-income workers don’t [always] have the flexibility to leave the job. A lot of workers might enter that risk situation.”
It’s a scenario that Sin Fronteras aims to address. Cali began pushing for more workers’ rights classes several years ago. When she heard in 2013 that the Ecuadorian Consulate was running out of space to host OSHA classes, she offered up the basement of her jewelry store and barbershop in Corona – the same basement where her program is now recorded.
For two months, she said, dozens of immigrants flocked to her shop weekly to learn about their right to report workplace accidents, regardless of legal status.
“When I saw how huge and exaggerated the demand was, I said, ‘this can’t be – we’re going to hold classes in other places,'” recalled Cali.
She created Sin Fronteras to expand the outreach. Like the majority of the hosts on the program, she doesn’t have professional radio experience, but the station’s owners immediately liked the idea of a program that seeks to help the community. The six hosts on Sin Fronteras are all volunteers and include a lawyer who specializes in construction accidents and the founder of Padres en Acción, Ronaldo Bini, who speaks about public-safety measures.
“Because people lack knowledge, they aren’t prepared and lose the chance to build their lives,” said Cali. “We want people to listen to the radio programs and come here and take OSHA classes, scaffold classes for workers’ protection.”
Maria Fernanda Baquerizo, the community relations coordinator at New York’s Ecuadorian Consulate, said that labor abuse is prevalent in the largely undocumented Ecuadorian community in Queens.
“It’s very positive that our community, our immigrants, can listen to important information of where to receive help,” she said. “Because generally the people who are abused at work, the undocumented, think that their employers can abuse them and not pay them wages… Immigrants feel helpless, they feel alone. They don’t know how to move forward.”
By Leila Miller
Source
'Welcome to Florida!'
'Welcome to Florida!'
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a...
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a meeting in October in New York, which led to the creation of Power For Puerto Rico, a coalition that includes longtime Latino civil rights organization Unidos.us, Make the Road, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Hedgeclippers (an organization focused on exposing the connections between Wall Street and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis).”
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4 days ago
4 days ago