Retailers Discover That Labor Isn't Just a Cost
For the past couple of decades, retailing in the U.S. has -- with some notable exceptions -- been a vast experiment in...
For the past couple of decades, retailing in the U.S. has -- with some notable exceptions -- been a vast experiment in minimizing labor costs.
At the 2009 annual convention of the National Retail Federation, though, Charles DeWitt noticed the beginnings of a shift. "Retailers started coming up to me and saying, 'We can't get any more out of this cost stone,'" recounted DeWitt, vice president of business development at workforce-management-software maker Kronos.
Since then, this change in attitude has become the stuff of business headlines. Most notably, Wal-Mart, the retailer that set the cost-cutting tone in the 1990s, has been raising wages and spending more on training. There's surely a cyclical element at work here -- as the unemployment rate drops, it's harder for retailers to find workers. There's also a political element -- bad press and minimum-wage campaigns must have some effect on corporate behavior.
But the really intriguing possibility is that retailers, in their technology-driven rush to optimize operations during the past two decades ("rocket science retailing," one Wharton School operations expert dubbed it) were actually failing to optimize labor. Their systems measured it only as a cost, and didn't track the impact of low wages, part-time work and unpredictable work schedules on sales and profits. Now some retailers are trying to fix that.
One big set of targets are the scheduling systems that have allowed retailers to ever-more-closely match staffing to customer traffic, but in the process wrought havoc with many workers' lives by making their schedules so unpredictable. Jodi Kantor gave a face to this last year with a compelling New York Times account of the chaotic life of a single-mom Starbucks barista.
Kronos supplies Starbucks' scheduling software, and DeWitt was quoted in the Times article describing its workings as "like magic." So it was a little surprising to see him on stage last week at O'Reilly Media's Next:Economy conference, nodding pleasantly and occasionally chiming in as a Starbucks barista, a labor activist and a journalist described the horrors inflicted by scheduling software.
When I told him afterward that I was surprised he wasn't more defensive, DeWitt said, "I'm more of a math guy, an optimization guy. This is a parameter to be optimized." It's also a business opportunity. "We are in early-stage investigations with very big customers," DeWitt went on. "The plan is to go in and suck all these things out of the database and work with them to customize metrics."
The idea is to figure out how dynamic scheduling and other labor practices affect metrics such as absenteeism, turnover and sales. Right now a lot of retailers just don't know. Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and the labor activist who shared the stage with DeWitt, recalled a conversation she had with an executive at a big retailer at last year's National Retail Federation convention. "I said, 'These schedules cost you in terms of turnover.' She said, 'I’m in operations. That’s HR.'"
That's not true everywhere. Here's Stuart B. Burgdoerfer, chief financial officer of L Brands, the retailer that includes the Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works chains, speaking at the company'sannual investor day this month:
As we looked at the data, we just had too many people working too few hours per week. And the trouble with that or the opportunity with that is how well can they really know your business, how invested are they in us, or we in them, if they're only working a few hours per week and their turnover rate is very high?
And so we see the opportunity to have a more knowledgeable, more engaged, more effective and productive associate. When she's working, typically she is working more hours per week. So that's the opportunity. And we think it's a significant one. Really do.
Recent academic work backs this up, to a point. Researchers such as University of Chicago social psychologists Susan Lambert and Julia Henly and Pennsylvania State University labor economist Lonnie Golden have been documenting the extent and social costs of irregular scheduling. Meanwhile, operations experts at business schools have been trying to identify labor practices that maximize sales and profits.
The best known of these is probably the "good jobs strategy" outlined by Zeynep Ton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first in a2012 Harvard Business Review article and then in a 2014 book. Ton studied low-cost, high-wage retailers such as Costco, Trader Joe's, Oklahoma-based convenience-store chain QuikTrip and Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona and concluded that they operated in a virtuous cycle in which highly trained, autonomous, full-time employees working with a limited selection of products drove high performance.
There's a tendency, upon hearing accounts such as Ton's (she also spoke at the Next:Economy conference), to wonder why every retailer doesn’t do that. One reason is that the limited-selection approach can't work for everybody. Another is that, as my Bloomberg View colleague Megan McArdle wrote last year, if every retailer paid like Costco, many of Costco's labor advantages would disappear. And finally, while some retailers surely have hurt themselves in their zeal to optimize labor, the move away from full-time retail jobs and toward staffing that's closely matched to customer demand hasn't been totally irrational.
In one recent study, Saravanan Kesavan, Bradley R. Staats and Wendell Gilland of the University of North Carolina looked at labor practices at a large (unidentified) retail chain. Their hypothesis was that the use of temporary and part-time workers would be linked with per-store sales in an inverted U-shaped curve -- with sales at first rising as the percentage of temps and part-timers rose, but eventually falling.
The data backed them up. To maximize sales, the optimal share of temp workers was 13 percent and part-timers 44 percent. But those percentages were both higher than the retailer's current averages of 7 percent and 32 percent. Overall, hiring more part-timers and more temps was likely to lead to higher sales.
The data-driven reexamination of labor practices by big retailers will surely lead to some improvements in how workers are treated and paid. I don't get the impression that, by itself, it will lead to all retail jobs becoming good jobs.
Source: Bloomberg
Organize Florida activists protest Trump infrastructure plan
Organize Florida activists protest Trump infrastructure plan
Progressive activists gathered on the shores of Lake Parker on Thursday to air their discontent with the Trump...
Progressive activists gathered on the shores of Lake Parker on Thursday to air their discontent with the Trump administration’s outline for a nationwide infrastructure improvement plan.
The plan, outlined broadly in a six-page memo released last month, amounts to placing heavy burdens on the poor through flat user fees like tolls, subsidizing private companies and ignoring public transportation, school facilities and clean energy, said activists with Organize Florida, a project of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning political advocacy group.
Read the full article here.
Turning Immigrants Into Citizens Puts Money in L.A.'s Pocket
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are...
LA Weekly - September 18, 2014, by Dennis Romero - Most Californians are on-board with federal legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
Maybe we're just being selfish. It turns out that naturalization, the process of going from immigrant to citizen, puts cash in our pockets, concludes a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy, the National Partnership for New Americans, and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at USC Dornsife.
If we naturalized folks who are eligible but who are dragging their feet, L.A. would see as much as a $3.3 billion economic impact and as much as $320 million in additional tax revenues over a 10-year span, the report's authors say. Holy frijole.
The researchers say that naturalization makes immigrants eligible to get better jobs and better pay, which in turn helps them spend more money in their communities: "These increased earnings will lead to additional economic activity," the report says.
L.A. immigrants can earn as much as an extra $3,659 a year, more than in New York or Chicago, by starting the citizenship process, the academics say in the paper:
Clearly, naturalization benefits immigrants: it provides full civil and political rights, protects against deportation, eases travel abroad, and provides full access to government jobs and assistance.
While opponents of a pathway to citizenship often paint south-of-the-border immigrants as a burden on taxpayer resources, the paper argues that folks who fully legalize their allegiance to the United States actually contribute to our tax base.
Of course, what they're talking about is "increased naturalization" "over the status quo," according to the report. It's all about potential.
Getting immigrants to naturalize would require some heavy lifting, though.
One barrier to naturalization is the cost, the authors say, which has risen from $225 in 2000 to $680 in 2008. The cheaper U.S. Green Card ($450) "sets up an incentive to continue to defer naturalization," the study says.
The authors say more encouragement in cities like L.A. could go a long way toward seeing more folks naturalize. This week City Hall joined an effort, "Cities for Citizenship," to do just that.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy:
Cutting through the administrative and financial red tape of the naturalization process is an outgrowth of that leadership and will benefit millions of American families who have been excluded from the privileges of citizenship. We ask both city leadership and the immigrant community to join us in this initiative.
Source
How to Build the Movement for Progressive Power, the Urban Way
As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban...
As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban centers. From Atlanta to Seattle and points in between, cities have begun seizing the initiative, transforming themselves into laboratories for progressive change. Cities Rising is The Nation’s chronicle of those urban experiments.
Cities are where the action is these days. Progressive action, political action. From paid sick days to universal pre-K, fossil-fuel divestment to anti-fracking ordinances, police reform to immigrant rights, the country’s urban centers are leading the way, far outpacing the federal government in vision and action. Just look at the growing movement for a $15 minimum wage. While Bernie Sanders has been raising minimum-wage consciousness on the campaign trail—introducing a bill in July to raise the federal minimum to $15 and calling for the same during the first Democratic presidential debate—it was local politicians, with names barely known beyond their districts, who first heeded the call of struggling workers and made $15 a reality. Before Bernie, in other words, there was Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant, Ruth Atkins, and the Emeryville City Council.
In recognition of this moment, progressive politicians from cities around the country—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, and beyond—have joined forces to begin sharing their strategies for creative progressive change. Calling themselves Local Progress, they swap policy solutions to urgent, ongoing injustices like income inequality and police brutality, share model legislation and provide strategic support for legislative campaigns. Kind of like an urban anti-ALEC. Today, just three years after it was formed, more than 400 elected officials from 40 states are part of the effort. And the victories are beginning to add up—from paid parental leave in Boston to paid sick leave in New York City, socially responsible investing in Seattle to the use of eminent domain in Richmond, California, to slash homeowner debt.
This week, Local Progress members from all over the country are meeting in Los Angeles for the group’s fourth national gathering. From October 26 through 28, they aretrading their best ideas and strategies for building progressive local power—and combatting police violence, spreading the Fight for $15, expanding affordable housing, boosting civic engagement, and pushing the fight for LGBTQ rights beyond marriage equality.
Chuy Garcia, who gave Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel a run for his millions in this year’s election, will be on the scene, as will Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, and dozens of council members, alderman, and supervisors from around the country. If cities are the incubators of promising progressive ideas, this gathering is a bit like the annual science expo.
The Nation has asked four Local Progress stalwarts to share some of the policy solutions they’ll be discussing at the gathering. New York City Council members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos, and Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack all weighed in, offering thoughts on everything from humanizing the sharing economy to organizing for police reform, protecting sanctuary cities, and pushing back against privatization and regressive tax policy. Here’s what they said.
—Lizzy Ratner
PROTECTING WORKERS IN THE ON-DEMAND ECONOMY
By Brad Lander
Rides from Uber. Home cleaning from Handy. Meals from Seamless. Web design from Upwork. Even doctors from Medicast.
There’s no doubt the on-demand economy is convenient. Consumers can arrange for services at the tap of a touchscreen. Workers can choose their hours and earn a little extra cash.
But there’s a very dark side to the “sharing” economy: The benefits aren’t usually shared with the workers.
Working “by-the-gig” rarely provides job security, health insurance, paid sick days or family leave, on-the-job training, or retirement contributions. Workers lack the right to organize a union. And eight in 10 freelance workers report having been cheated out of wages they were owed.
President Obama and Democratic presidential candidates are finally talking about the issue. But the Republican Congress will likely block any progress. Marco Rubio recently called for even further deregulation, leaving workers at the mercy of multibillion-dollar corporations.
So cities are taking the lead in writing new rules, working with Local Progress, the National Employment Law Project, forward-thinking unions, and worker organizations to level the on-demand playing field.
In Seattle, City Council member Mike O’Brien is fighting for a bill that would allow drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other “ridesharing” companies to organize and bargain collectively so that workers have some voice in the terms and conditions of their work.
In New York City, we are working with the Freelancers Union to combat wage theft and late payment. When conventional employees are cheated out of wages, the state labor department can enforce and win double damages. The #FreelanceIsntFree campaign (which recently brought its message to the White House) would provide freelancers with similar protection.
Council Member Corey Johnson and I are working with the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance to mandate a “driver benefits fund” (funded by a small fare surcharge) to provide for-hire drivers with healthcare benefits—a first step toward the “Shared Security Account” that Nick Hanauer and David Rolf called for in a Democracy Journal article this summer. And we’re amending New York City’s human-rights laws to make clear they apply to independent workers. There is no reason Uber should be able to discriminate against drivers based on race or religion.
Meanwhile, from San Francisco to Burlington, cities are establishing offices of labor standards and adopting other innovative approaches (like partnering with community-based organizations) to enforce the laws that protect workers. One task: making sure conventional employees aren’t illegally misclassified as independent workers by employers trying to cheat them out of benefits and protections (a big problem for day laborers and domestic workers). These offices can also make sure that companies who need licenses from the city get and keep them only if they respect local, state, and federal laws.
Ultimately, we’ll need national regulation to match the growing on-demand economy. But for now, progressive cities are bringing worker protections into the 21st century—and some real sharing into the sharing economy.
THE MUNICIPAL BATTLE FOR EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
By Antonio Reynoso
Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Sandra Bland. For more than a year, the senseless deaths of young black men and women by police officers or in police custody have dominated headlines and helped fuel a movement. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, this movement has been gaining ground in cities, towns, and counties across the country, spreading the call to end racist policing and begin enacting serious police reform. Its powerful message has reached all the way to the presidential campaign trail and beyond. But as the public waits for progress at the national level, change is already happening at the local level, thanks to powerful alliances between community activists and hundreds of local politicians.
In New York City, where I am a City Council member representingneighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, there is a desperate need for sensible reforms of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). For all to many New Yorkers, the excessive use of police force is a daily reality. The excessive surveillance of the Muslim community and a racialized stop-and-frisk policy also take their toll.
In response, organizations and progressive politicians have been fighting to improve accountability and transparency after years of racial profiling by the NYPD. The work has been supported by a broad coalition called Communities United for Police Reform, which has driven a strategic, multi-year campaign to knock on doors, organize the public, influence the public discourse, and pass legislation to implement smart reforms.
Communities want change, and they want to participate in the process of reforming the NYPD. So, working together, we’ve introduced the Right To Know Act as a way to meet their demands. These bills would require NYPD officers not only to identify themselves when stopping civilians but also to explain that the searches are voluntary and may be declined.
This is not the first time we have stood up for the people of our community. In 2013 and 2014, in partnership with Communities United for Police Reform, the City Council passed a series of bills known as the Community Safety Act, which together banned racial profiling by police and made it easier for New Yorkers who have experienced profiling to sue NYPD officers. The act also installed an independent inspector general to oversee the actions of the NYPD.
Of course, New York City is not the only city in our nation where racial profiling, unjust searches, and incidences of police brutality are common occurrences. Nor is it the only city where coalitions of community leaders and elected officials are working to improve the system. In the last year alone, communities have joined together with progressive local legislators to correct the imbalance of justice.
In Los Angeles County, the grassroots organization Dignity and Power Nowwon a transformative campaign, led by formerly incarcerated people and their families, to establish a strong civilian oversight commission for the sheriff’s department, which has an ugly history of violence against civilians on the streets and in county jails.
In Newark, community leaders partnered with Mayor Ras Baraka to create one of strongest civilian complaint review boards in the country, which has both a voice in disciplining police officers and a policy advisory role.
And in Minneapolis, a coalition led by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change succeeded in pressing the City Council to repeal spitting and loitering ordinances that were being disproportionately used to harass and harm black and Latino residents. They also won passage of a data-collection law that will begin to collect and publicize important evidence about the police department’s stop-and-frisk and use-of-force practices.
Members of Local Progress, partnering with community-based allies, have been central to these fights and many more, and we will continue combating such injustices across the United States, fighting for everyone to be treated equally under the law.
CITIES MUST LEAD THE NATION ON IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
By John Avalos
In the last few years, hundreds of cities across America have disentangled their police departments and jails from the federal immigrant-deportation machine, refusing to honor the Feds’ requests that cities detain immigrants past their release date so they could be picked up and deported. These policies protect immigrant families from the devastation of deportation and from crime, because they foster better relationships between the police and immigrant communities. The movement has been a bright spot for our country’s immigrant-rights movement.
But during the last few months, the policies, and in some cases the very idea, of sanctuary cities has come under attack. The catalyst for these changes was an undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez who allegedly shot and killed a young white woman named Kate Steinle. He claims that the shooting was an accident, but her case has become a cause célèbre among opponents of immigrants because Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times previously, and had recently been released from jail in San Francisco without being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
San Francisco’s Due Process for All Ordinance, the latest update to its Sanctuary City policy, bars the sheriff from detaining people past their release date on behalf of ICE’s Secure Communities, or S-Comm, program. The goal of Due Process for All is to protect immigrants and their families from S-Comm, which created an immigration dragnet, deporting tens of thousands of immigrants and tearing their families apart. Due Process for All also enables immigrants to be integrated into San Francisco’s local law-enforcement efforts by promoting relationships between immigrant communities and the police. San Francisco has been at the leading edge of a national movement: across the nation, over 350 other local governments have recently adopted policies limiting collaboration with federal immigration officials.
But as a result of the widespread effort of local governments to limit coordination with the S-Comm, the federal government has tweaked and renamed its deportation effort the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which calls on local law enforcement to notify Homeland Security of a detainee’s release rather than detaining the individual past his or her release date. Like S-Comm, PEP has the same effect of weakening trust between immigrants and local law enforcement because local law enforcement is seen as an arm of federal immigration efforts.
The politics of race, citizen entitlement, and immigration reform have put San Francisco and other cities’ sanctuary-city policies squarely in the cross hairs of conservative extremists and political opportunists. From the highly polarizing presidential campaign of Donald Trump to the calculated posturing of Hillary Clinton (who supports PEP) to the election-year pandering of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, eager to blame the policy for Steinle’s death, politicians are scapegoating immigrants and undermining the sanctuary city policies that immigrants rely on for their security. Just last week, the US Senate narrowly failed to pass a Republican-backed bill that threatened to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities and increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who reenter the United States after deportation.
Some cities are already working to resist this pressure. On the same day that Senate Republicans sought to punish sanctuary cities, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming our commitment to the Due Process for All Ordinance and urging our sheriff not to comply with the new PEP program.
Cities around the country should follow suit and adopt a wide array of programs and policies to protect and empower immigrant communities. Like New Haven, they can establish Municipal ID cards to help immigrants navigate daily life; like Chicago, they can ensure that city services are available in multiple languages; like New York, they can provide quality free legal counsel to residents facing deportation; and like Los Angeles, they can conduct outreach programs and offer affordable citizenship preparation courses to help residents naturalize and gain the benefits of citizenship.
This moment is a pivotal one for our nation and the many cities that have sought to protect immigrants against deportation. We either succumb to the rightward push of the politics of race and citizen entitlement or we strengthen our efforts to protect and integrate immigrants and their families in recognition and honor of the contributions they make to our society. Local governments must lead our nation forward.
FIGHT FOR A PROGRESSIVE SOURCE OF REVENUE IN CHICAGO
By Scott Waguespack
The fiscal crisis that’s squeezing cities and towns across this country is perhaps at its most dramatic in Chicago.
Our municipal pension systems are woefully underfunded, the result of decades of failure by city and state governments to pay their share. Our schools are facing an enormous fiscal shortfall that could result in the firing of 5,000 teachers in the middle of the year. And we’re witnessing heartbreaking violence in our communities, the result of an overwhelmed police force and neighborhoods mired in economic hardship.
Simply put, our city has a cash problem.
To his credit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged this problem in his recent budget address, railing against the budgeting tricks of previous years and vowing to end the city’s structural deficit. Unfortunately, Mayor Emanuel reached into the same tired bag of tricks in order to solve the problem: regressive tax increases on working families and privatization of public services.
These are tricks we’re all too familiar with here in Chicago. We’ve already been through some of the worst privatization deals in the country, and we know full well from our experiences with parking meters and school janitors that it’s been a fiscal boondoggle resulting in higher costs and worse services for taxpayers. And the mayor’s regressive property-tax proposal is just another way to balance budgets by raising taxes on working families who are already struggling to get by.
Here’s the good news, though: Chicago is one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. There’s an enormous amount of capital flowing through this city every day. Chicago’s City Council Progressive Caucus, which I chair, has been advocating for common-sense tax ideas to direct some of these dollars toward crucial programs and services, easing the burden on working families without selling off public assets.
We’ve advocated for creating a special property-taxing district that covers the skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Too often, owners of these buildings hire politically connected firms to get enormous discounts on their assessments; a more fair valuation would generate substantial new revenue.
We support reforming the billion-dollar mayoral slush fund called “tax-increment financing.” We support fixing the problems in the infamous parking-meter privatization deal. We introduced an amendment that would tax big-box stores for the undue stress they put on our stormwater system, and have called for expanding the sales tax to include luxury services like pet grooming or portfolio management.
In short, the Progressive Caucus has progressive revenue ideas that will work for all of Chicago. We’ve convened a series of town hall meetings across the city, drawing crowds of hundreds of concerned neighbors, and have introduced a series of amendments to move this budget in the right direction.
As progressive leaders who love this city, our caucus knows we need new revenue to educate our children, care for those in need, and provide growth and opportunity in every community. For our city to prosper, those dollars must come from those who can most afford to pay, not from the pockets of working families.
Equal pay is widely understood to be a feminist issue — so why isn't the Fight for $15?
Equal pay is widely understood to be a feminist issue — so why isn't the Fight for $15?
The idea that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work is probably among the least controversial feminist...
The idea that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work is probably among the least controversial feminist positions because, in 2017, it's pretty difficult to argue against.
Hollywood actresses like Patricia Arquette have traded in their standard acceptance speeches for impassioned calls for wage equality, while Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg created a whole new brand of feminism when she began coaching women on how to combat workplace inequality by "leaning in," making equal pay part of a mainstream dialogue...
Read full article here.
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
Rally scheduled and website started in support for Pittsburgh immigrant in process of being deported
Rally scheduled and website started in support for Pittsburgh immigrant in process of being deported
After City Paper reported the story of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no...
After City Paper reported the story of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no criminal record who is currently in the process of being deported, CP editor Charlie Deitch called for Pittsburghers to get involved in the fight to keep Esquivel-Hernandez in the Steel City.
And many have responded. On July 8, more than 100 marchers will rally in support of Esquivel-Hernandez and “to oppose the politics of hate and fear,” according to the group’s Facebook page. The supporters are particularly calling out presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, from Pa., for their remarks and actions against undocumented immigrants. (Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists, and Toomey sponsored a bill to block funding to “sanctuary cities,” or ones that refuse to communicate with the Department of Homeland Security about undocumented immigrants without warrants; the bill was blocked recently by U.S. Senate Democrats.)
In fact, Esquivel-Hernandez was picked up by immigration officers most likely because he had been cited for driving without a valid license in Mount Lebanon, a town without a sanctuary city-like policy. Lt. Duane Fisher, of the Mount Lebanon Police, says the township's general policy is to make contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if police “find someone who is unlicensed” and to see whether ICE has “any reason to see if [the suspect] is wanted.” Fisher says that from there, Mount Lebanon police don’t follow up on the case, and that it becomes ICE’s call. Pittsburgh, while not a sanctuary city, has a policy to not initiate contact with ICE, but will cooperate if contacted.
Immigration will be a main topic at the public march on Friday, which will coincide with the People’s Convention being held Downtown, and begins at 2:30 p.m. at 10th Street and Penn Avenue. For those wishing to provide further support to the Esquivel-Hernandez family, a website has been created (keeptheesquivelfamilytogether.com) where supporters can sign a letter to U.S. District Attorney David Hickton, who is prosecuting the case against Esquivel-Hernandez, that asks Hickton to drop the felony re-entry charges.
The groups rallying around Esquivel-Hernandez include the Pittsburgh chapter of the Labor Council for Latino Advancement, Latino outreach group Casa San José, nonprofit coalition One Pittsburgh, and social-justice-advocacy group the Thomas Merton Center.
A message in support of Esquivel-Hernandez is written on the website: “We sincerely believe Hickton is using this charge to brand Martín as a criminal deserving of jail time and immediate deportation. Martín does not belong in a prison cell. He should be back with his family and the community that loves and needs him the most.”
Esquivel-Hernandez has been in Pittsburgh for more than four years and has been involved in an assessment of Latino needs for Allegheny County; advocated for better translation services in Pittsburgh schools; and marched in immigrant-rights rallies.
The Obama administration has said that it will prosecute undocumented immigrants who threaten public safety, but the advocacy groups claim that Esquivel-Hernandez does not fit into that category given his lack of a criminal record and positive involvement in the community.
Donations can also be given on the website, or people can send a check to Pittsburgh LCLAA with “solidarity with Esquivel family” written on the memo line. Checks can be mailed to:
Pittsburgh LCLAA
United Steelworkers
Attn.: Guillermo Perez
60 Blvd. of the Allies
Pittsburgh, PA. 15222
By Ryan Deto
Source
Undocumented immigrants in New York could become 'state citizens' under new bill
NY Daily News - June 15, 2014, by Erin Durkin - Undocumented immigrants in New York could become “state citizens” with...
NY Daily News - June 15, 2014, by Erin Durkin - Undocumented immigrants in New York could become “state citizens” with a slew of benefits from driver’s licenses to voting rights under a bill to be introduced Monday.
Advocates are set to announce the measure that would allow immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens to become New York State citizens if they can prove they’ve lived and paid taxes in the state for three years and pledge to uphold New York laws — regardless of whether they’re in the country legally.
The state bill, which would apply to about 2.7 million New Yorkers, will face long odds in Albany, where even more modest immigration reforms have failed to pass.
People who secured state citizenship would be able to vote in state and local elections and run for state office. They could get a driver’s license, a professional license, Medicaid and other benefits controlled by the state. Immigrants would also be eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid.
The legislation would not grant legal authorization to work or change any other regulations governed by federal law.
“Obviously this is not something that’s going to pass immediately, but nothing as broad as this or as bold as this passes immediately,” said Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), the sponsor in the state Senate.
In The Battle To Raise Minimum Wages, Businesses Opposed Are Outgunned
In The Battle To Raise Minimum Wages, Businesses Opposed Are Outgunned
This is the third post in a series about ballot measures to raise the minimum wage in Colorado and three other states....
This is the third post in a series about ballot measures to raise the minimum wage in Colorado and three other states. The first post introduced a restaurateur in Denver who supports the increase and the national organization that persuaded him to go public with that support, is here. The second looked at how the provision could widen inequality among servers and kitchen workers.
There are 32 mostly state and local business associations that have signed on to Keep Colorado Working, the coalition formed to fight Amendment 70, which would raise the state’s minimum wage through a constitutional amendment. Only one of them, however, has actually contributed money to fight the ballot measure: The Colorado Restaurant Association and its political action committee have spent $359,000, which makes it the single largest Colorado contributor to campaign, which has raised $1.7 million to date.
Indeed, while dozens of local food services businesses have chipped at least $105,000 to the effort, which has raised $1.7 million to date, more than $1 million has come into the coalition’s coffers from out of state, including $850,000 from a shadowy business group called the Workforce Fairness Institute. Other large national contributors include Darden, the Olive Garden’s parent corporation, and the National Restaurant Association.
But all this is far less than the $2 to $3 million that opponents had anticipated spending to try and defeat the amendment. And it is dwarfed by the $5.2 million that advocates for the vote, working under the name Colorado Families for a Fair Minimum Wage, have raised. Most of their money has come from national unions and union-backed organizations like The Fairness Project and progressive philanthropies like the Center for Popular Democracy and the Civic Participation Action Fund.
In a campaign awash with money, the efforts of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which has been organizing Colorado businesses to support the amendment, are fairly modest. Business for a Fair Minimum Wage founder and C.E.O. Holly Sklar won’t say how much her group is spending in Colorado, but the effort is being funded by Dr. Bronner’s, the organic soap-maker with a long history of activism. (She declines to further identify its funders, except to say that they comprise businesses and foundations.) Dr. Bronner’s has made raising the minimum wage a top company priority, even relabeling some of its soap bottles with “Fair Pay Today!” “People should be able to make ends meet on the wages they get,” says David Bronner, C.E.O. of his family’s company, which is registered as a benefit corporation. “They should not have to rely on inefficient government programs like food stamps and housing assistance. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize companies using the welfare system to keep wages low.”
Bronner says his company has given about $75,000 to Business for a Fair Minimum Wage. “We really like what they’re doing,” he says. “I think it’s really important that policy makers hear from business owners, that business owners too see value in raising the minimum wage, and it isn’t just about labor groups and worker rights.”
Outside of Colorado, business groups have mounted little more than token opposition. In each of Arizona, Maine, and Washington, where advocates have raised over $1 million to promote their respective ballot measures, opponents have raised $100,000 or less, according to state campaign finance records. The Arizona Restaurant Association sued to try and prevent the minimum wage from making the November ballot, but hasn’t spent any money combating it since then. (The group’s president and C.E.O., Steve Chucri, didn’t respond to requests for comment.) The state chamber of commerce has agreed to kick in $20,000.
In Maine, the state restaurant association has spent nearly $78,000 to fight the ballot amendment through its political action committee, but apart from small contributions from Darden ($7,500) and the National Restaurant Association ($2,500), the opposition has recorded no contributions from out of state.
It’s not clear — even to some of the principals — why Colorado became the battlefield of choice in the fight over minimum wage at the expense of media outlets in Arizona, Maine, and Washington. “Why they’re not putting money to fight it here is a mystery to me,” says Maine Restaurant Association president and C.E.O. Steve Hewins of the national organizations, though he allows that “Maine to a degree is off a lot of radar screens.”
The National Restaurant Association declined to respond directly to Hewins’s charge of neglect. But in an emailed statement, the organization’s spokesman, Steve Danon, wrote, “While we work in partnership, our state restaurant associations take the lead on these issues, as they know what works best for restaurateurs in their state. We’ve been vocal on opposing drastic increases to the minimum wage overall.” The Workforce Fairness Institute and Darden didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But Tyler Sandberg, who is managing the Keep Colorado Working campaign, suggests that perhaps national groups are drawn to the Colorado initiative because, as a constitutional amendment, it “is the worst-written of all of them.” But he also says he’s made a point of soliciting those contributions. “When we saw all the national money coming in on the other side, we realized we would have to fight fire with fire and seek national contributions as well.”
Sklar says her pro-wage-hike business group is focusing on Colorado because the Arizona and Washington measures also include paid sick leave, which is beyond her group’s scope, and in Maine a local small-business coalition is pressing the case.
In any event, the vast sums spent in Colorado appear to have made little difference. Polls in all four states show the wage increase winning by similar margins, with 55 percent to 60 percent of voters backing it.
By Robb Mandelbaum
Source
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.
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