CPD IN THE NEWS

In the coming days, our nation’s media will focus enormous attention on the formal anointment of Donald Trump as the GOP’s candidate for president at the Republican National Convention. Endless ink will be spilled on Mr. Trump’s entrance, his appearances, and his words. But, as the Republican Party prepares itself to nominate the most anti-immigrant and racist presidential candidate in at least a generation, Americans should not just be watching Mr. Trump—we must pay attention to those who follow him.

It’s no secret that Mr. Trump has defined himself politically, from the very launch of his campaign, by scapegoating immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists,” and doubling down on his bigotry with proposals to, among other things, deport eleven million undocumented immigrants and ban all Muslim immigrants. Mr. Trump’s dominant strategy has been to animate the nativist portion of the Republican primary electorate—a strategy that proved quite successful in the primaries, and that Mr. Trump will continue (albeit in modified fashion) in the general election.

None of this is new. And Republicans will likely lose the White House because Trump has so alienated Latinos, communities of color, and other groups, including women.

But as Latinos and immigrants, we can’t just watch Trump. Our fight is not just about defeating Trump: it’s also about defeating “Trumpism,” the anti-immigrant and hateful policies and rhetoric he embraces.

That’s why have to, and we will, watch who follows him in contested Congressional races around the country. These “down-ballot” elections will determine the prospects for critical federal legislation in 2017 and beyond on issues including: reforming our out-of-date immigration system and ensuring that millions of immigrant families can remain together, ending police brutality, and raising the federal minimum wage.

What we will if we watch the candidates in these congressional races over the next few days is as simple and scary: the lion’s share of one of America’s two principal parties, including hundreds of sitting Congressional representatives, will embrace Trump’s hateful campaign strategy and applaud him as he formally becomes their standard bearer.

Their embrace will take two forms.

First will be incumbents and candidates who wholeheartedly endorse Trump. Hundreds of Republican elected officials have said openly that they will support him, and they will double down through November. Their ranks will grow during and after the convention. These Trump acolytes are people like Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, who has endorsed and then repeatedly stumped for Mr. Trump. At the RNC, voters should pay careful attention to figures like Mr. Zeldin. Despite representing a moderate district where people of color represent roughly 20 percent of the voting-age population, Rep. Zeldin has acknowledged the racism in Trump’s words, but refused to withdraw his support.

Second will be legislators who are uncomfortable with the Trump brand, but quietly copy his playbook. Many Republicans are concerned that Trump’s divisive rhetoric may hurt the Republican brand and their poll numbers—so they stop short of full-throated endorsement, and in some cases are skipping the convention—but will mirror his demagoguery. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania offers a perfect example. Locked in a re-election fight with Democrat Katie McGinty, Toomey has not endorsed Trump for fear of its political downside. Instead, he has echoed Trump’s nativist appeals, leading efforts in the Senate to punish localities that have sought to improve community-police relations and public safety for all residents by distancing local law enforcement from immigration enforcement. To justify this politically-motivated policy fight, Sen. Toomey has suggested that immigrants are criminals and murderers—despite research consistently showing that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born residents. 

This behavior from legislators like Zeldin and Toomey will not be lost on Latinos, voters of color, and other voters who stand for inclusion and diversity. 

Latino and immigrant voters across this country are angry and we are energized. This is why residents protested outside Rep. Zeldin and Sen. Toomey’s offices this past weekend. And it is why, over the coming months, community organizations across the country, working with national groups like the Center for Community Change Action and Center for Popular Democracy Action, will be talking to millions of voters in our communities to make sure that they know the importance of voting all the way down the ballot. 

No number of photo ops at local cultural events will erase the damage that legislators like these are doing to themselves, and to the Republican Party writ large, by embracing the politics of Trump.

As the GOP prepares for its convention, let there be no mistake: our communities are watching. And, to those who have embraced the politics of Trump, we say: we see you. And, in November, we will hold you accountable for vilifying us. 

By ADANJESUS MARIN AND WALTER BARRIENTOS

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CBS News - March 3, 2015, by Jonathan Berr - Want another sign of the economic rebound? Small-business hiring is on the rise.

The Paychex/IHS Small Business Job Index posted a 0.19 percent monthly increase in February, rising to 100.84. That follows January's 0.09 percent gain and marks the second straight month of advances. On a year-over-year basis, the index, which measures hiring at businesses with 50 or fewer workers, slipped 0.31 percent.

"Small businesses are off to a solid start in 2015 when it comes to job growth," said Martin Mucci, president and CEO of Paychex, in a press release. "While it's still early in the year, the first two months have seen consistent positive improvement."

Nationally, signs of increased small-business hiring abound. Only two regions that were measured in February showed a decline, and 13 of the 20 states analyzed have index levels topping 101. The Pacific Region had the best performance in February, while New England, which has gotten pounded this winter with record-setting snowfall, showed the worst one-month performance.

Indiana edged out Texas and Florida to become the leading state for small-business hiring, and Dallas led all metropolitan areas.

The index is calculated using aggregated small-business payroll data on 350,000 small businesses and with a base year of 2004 because it was a period of expansion before the start of the economic downturn. Although politicians often refer to small businesses as an engine of economic growth, economists have disputed this notion in recent years.

Nonetheless, the report does underscore positive job market trends. During 2014, 37 states and the District of Columbia showed statistically significant improvements in employment. Texas had the largest gains (457,900), followed by California (320,300) and Florida (230,600). The biggest job losses were in Minnesota (5,200), Idaho (1,700) and New Mexico (1,600). The strengthening continued in January, when the nation's overall unemployment rate slipped to 5.7 percent.

According to the Federal Reserve, economists believe the "long-run normal" unemployment rate would be between 5 percent and 6 percent over the next five to six years in the absence of "shocks."

Jobless rates for certain categories of workers, though, remain stubbornly high. Unemployment for Millennials, for instance, was 14 percent as of January. According to Fivethirtyeight.com, this generation is poorer than people their age were in 1989 because so many are deeply indebted with student loans and are less likely to own a house.

The national jobless rate for African-Americans was 10.3 percent in January. In the two-thirds of states for which data are available, the median real wages of African-Americans fell between 2000 and 2014, while pay for whites rose 2.5 percent during the same period. Two liberal think tanks, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Research Institute, argued in a report released today that these job-market disparities indicate the Federal Reserve should resist pressure to raise interest rates.

"America needs the Federal Reserve to concentrate on labor market stability and ensure that wages are rising with productivity, so that workers reap the benefits from their efficiencies and hard work; that means prioritizing a wage growth target, rather than inflation," the report said. "A Federal Reserve dominated by banks and major corporations will produce an economy that works for them, at the risk of leaving tens of millions of working families -- particularly Black working families -- with little hope of a better life."

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“What’s happening in Texas is arguably a phenomenon unique to the state, but it also has national implications. The kind of work Brown’s organization does for local communities can be replicated elsewhere, argued Asya Pikovsky, who works with the Center for Popular Democracy Action. “Groups like [TOP] are demonstrating how to win power in red and purple states: focus on city elections, lean into progressive principles, and mobilize voters who have long been marginalized by fielding candidates who can effect real change,” Pikovsky told ThinkProgress. “We should expect to see the same dynamic repeated over and over again this year as organizers find new ways to leverage local elections to win far-reaching national change.”

Read the full article here.

Salon - October 29, 2013, by Josh Eidelson -

If the potential president does business's bidding on a new scaffolding bill, workers will die, an advocate warns.

Industry groups hope New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo – a presumed presidential aspirant who’s frequently defied liberals on economics – will back their push to “reform” the country’s toughest law holding contractors responsible when workplace falls end in injury or death.

“I think we’d be picking workers up off the street,” if the state’s “scaffold law” is gutted, said Joel Shufro, who directs the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. “Because I think employers would cut corners in ways that would result in workers being injured or killed.” Cuomo’s office did not respond to inquiries.

In an Oct. 16 letter, dozens of business groups and the New York Conference of Mayors urged Cuomo to reform the stat’s “scaffold law,” a move they said would “help alleviate fiscal stress by saving taxpayer dollars, creating jobs, and increasing revenue to the state and localities.” Signatories included the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, whose director Tom Stebbins told Salon that the group has made the issue a priority because “insurance rates put people of business, they take jobs away, and as we’re finding out more and more, it’s costing us more and more in our public projects.”

The 128-year-old “scaffold law” allows contractors to be held liable for “gravity-related” injuries suffered by their employees when management failed to comply with a safety rule, even (with certain exceptions) if the employee was also at fault. Stebbins contended there was “no data that supports” the claim that it improves safety, and argued that what he called the law’s “absolute liability” standard means “you’re assigned fault without negligence,” and actually “makes job sites less safe.”

“If you absolve employees from responsibility for their actions, they’re less responsible,” said Stebbins. “And if employers are guilty under almost any circumstances, they’re not as incentivized.”

NYCOSH’s Shufro countered that the law holds employers liable “if they violate OSHA regulations or other city, state ordinances, do not provide appropriate training, do not provide appropriate personal protective equipment … But if they are in compliance … they are not liable, they will not be found at fault.”

Stebbins acknowledged that “if you were the only cause of your injury, then that absolute liability doesn’t apply,” but he told Salon that “even the responsible contractor can’t stop every situation.” Stebbins cited the case of a worker who he said intentionally “jumped off the building in order to make a scaffold law claim.” Under current law, he said, a contractor “could be a fraction of a percent responsible and be held liable for 100 percent of the judgment,” rather than having “liability apportioned by fault.” He argued that the law also hurt workers because cash devoted to insurance costs is “money that’s not being spent on jobs, not being spent on union labor.”

Labor groups rejected such claims. “Opponents claim that the Scaffold Law drives up costs and is a job killer; the reality is that it helps prevent a job from being a worker killer,” New York AFL-CIO president Mario Cilento told Salon in an email. Cilento credited the law with “placing responsibility for providing adequate safety equipment and measures squarely in the hands of contractors and owners, ensuring that there is absolutely no ambiguity in who is responsible for maintaining a safe workplace in a very dangerous occupation.” He added that “insurers and contractors try to gut the Scaffold Law and in turn workplace safety” over and over, but “they’ve been rebuffed because the Legislature has recognized that there is no price tag on the lives and well-being of New Yorkers.” Cilento’s Illinois counterpart, state AFL president Michael Carrigan, emailed that the labor federation “regrets the repeal” of the similar Illinois Scaffolding Act, prior to which “Illinois had been the second safest state in construction deaths and accidents.” (The business groups’ letter to Cuomo credited the repeal of Illinois’ law for a subsequent 53 percent decline in construction injuries and said it gave the state “the 10th lowest injury rate in the country”; NYCOSH attributed the decline in injuries to overall national trends.)

“All this law says is that the employers shall be liable if they do not follow rules and regulations that govern safety on these jobs,” said NYCOSH’s Shufro. “So it seems to me that the best way of reducing their costs is to require employers to follow the law.” An NYCOSH analysis of OSHA data on New York state construction found that “At least one OSHA fall prevention standard was violated in nearly 80 percent of accidents in which a worker fell and was killed.”

A study released Thursday by progressive Center for Popular Democracy argued that the industry’s death and injury toll is disproportionately borne by immigrant workers and Latinos. CPD found that Latino and/or immigrant workers made up 60 percent of “fall from elevation fatalities” investigated by OSHA in New York State, and reported that “In 2011 focus groups, Latino construction workers reported fearing retaliation as a key deterrent to raising concerns about safety.”

While business groups have long sought changes in the scaffold law, both sides said this year’s showdown on the issue could be particularly acute. “More and more we’re seeing the cost to the public,” said Stebbins, including insurers “leaving because they can’t sustain an absolute liability and it’s impossible for them to gauge risk.” Shufro countered that insurers “have refused” when asked by legislators to “open the books” and document their losses; NYCOSH also notes that New York experienced only a 9.1 percent drop in construction employment from 2006 to 2011, while the national decline was 28.4 percent.

Cuomo has previously clashed with labor on issues ranging from public workers’ pensions to an expiring (ultimately partially extended) millionaire’s tax. Salon’s Blake Zeff argued in a January BuzzFeed essay that Cuomo’s “approach to balancing two competing interests – piling up points to advance in a Democratic primary for president, while steering to the center in key areas (and carefully avoiding antagonizing monied interests who fund campaigns and influence elite opinion) – has consisted of aggressive advocacy of ‘cultural’ or ‘social’ progressive causes, while downplaying economic ones.” Cuomo this month appointed GOP former Gov. George Pataki to co-chair a commission on reducing tax rates, a move that Michael Kink, who directs the labor-backed coalition A Strong Economy for All, compared in a Capital New York interview to “bringing in Godzilla to oversee the rebuilding from a Godzilla attack.”

Shufro said the scaffold question would “be one of the major political battles that will go on and dominate Albany for the next session,” and so Cuomo was “going to have to make a certain decision about which side he’s going to come out on … I know that this is an important issue to labor, just as it seems to be an important issue to the business community.” Shufro predicted Cuomo’s approach to the scaffold law would be “one of the major issues that will help unions make decisions about how they see him going forward.” He added, “It’s not an easy place to be in.”

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