Top Fed Officials Meet Protesters on Sidelines of Jackson Hole
Top Fed Officials Meet Protesters on Sidelines of Jackson Hole
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and 10 of his colleagues met Thursday with a coalition of activists to...
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and 10 of his colleagues met Thursday with a coalition of activists to hear complaints about the U.S. central bank, in a first-of-its-kind event on the sidelines of an annual policy retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“Even when we disagree, we do it with mutual respect.,” said Esther George, president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve, who hosts the high-powered symposium in the heart of the Grand Teton National Park that draws central bankers from all over the world. “We are pleased to have this conversation.”
Esther George speaks with Shawn Sebastian, field director of the pro-worker Fed Up coalition, an initiative of the Center for Popular Democracy, following a meeting with a coalition of activists on the sidelines of the Jackson Hole economic symposium on Aug. 25.
Esther George speaks with Shawn Sebastian, field director of the pro-worker Fed Up coalition, an initiative of the Center for Popular Democracy, following a meeting with a coalition of activists on the sidelines of the Jackson Hole economic symposium on Aug. 25. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Faced with criticism that it doesn’t look out for the interests of poorer Americans that have been sharpened in this U.S. presidential election year, the Fed has been going out of its way to show that it’s getting the message.
Fischer and George were joined by New York Fed chief William Dudley, Boston’s Eric Rosengren, Cleveland’s Loretta Mester, Neel Kashkari from Minneapolis, Governor Lael Brainard, the Atlanta Fed’s Dennis Lockhart, Robert Kaplan from Dallas, John Williams from San Francisco, and Richmond Fed boss Jeffrey Lacker.
The pro-worker Fed Up coalition, an initiative of the Center for Popular Democracy, is pressing for more diversity among the leadership of the central bank and for policies that take into account the needs of low and middle income families. Several speakers explicitly urged the Fed not to raise interest rates to fight a threat of inflation that they didn’t believe was real.
Got to Go
Fed Up protesters wearing green T-shirts chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, these Wall Street banks, they’ve got to go” at a rally prior to the meeting at the Jackson Lake Lodge, where the symposium will hear a speech Friday from Chair Janet Yellen.
Dudley said that the Fed had done a “pretty lousy” job of delivering better diversity and added that “I want to look at all changes people are suggesting.”
Fed Up says the central bank is dominated by white men -- Yellen is its first woman chair -- and takes issue with the fact that private banks select two-thirds of the members of the 12 regional banks’ boards of directors.
The Richmond Fed responded to those complaints this week -- economic writer Helen Fessenden and economist Gary Richardson on Tuesday published an economic brief addressing Fed Up’s concerns, and they say monetary policy isn’t well-suited to the end goal the activists have in mind.
By Steve Matthews & Jeff Black
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One city’s crime-fighting quandary: Where exactly to invest?
One city’s crime-fighting quandary: Where exactly to invest?
Chicago spends 39 percent of its municipal budget on policing, while New York spends just 8 percent and Los Angeles...
Chicago spends 39 percent of its municipal budget on policing, while New York spends just 8 percent and Los Angeles spends 26 percent, according to a report released last year by the Center for Popular Democracy. This means the city has less funds for things like schools and social services. The proposed $95 million academy comes just five years after the city announced the biggest mass closing of schools in US history, shutting down 50 schools because of a $1 billion budget shortfall.
Read the full article here.
Pittsburgh marchers decry racial, economic injustice
Pittsburgh marchers decry racial, economic injustice
The message was often strident, but the mood of Friday afternoon’s “Still We Rise” march was spirited. More than 1,500...
The message was often strident, but the mood of Friday afternoon’s “Still We Rise” march was spirited. More than 1,500 demonstrators, some in strollers, marched down Grant Street under the wing of a gold-crested phoenix, a mythical bird whose rebirth from its own ashes captured the march theme.
“It was beautiful, it was powerful, and it was peaceful,” said Erin Kramer, the head of local activist group One Pittsburgh.
The march drew support from People’s Convention, a two-day gathering of left-leaning community activist groups from 30 states. Demonstrators wielded caricatures of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and UPMC head Jeffrey Romoff, in complementary shades of red-orange. And they made frequent stops along Grant Street, where speakers denounced what they saw as cases of racial and economic injustice.
Check back for more updated video with interviews and more scenes from the "Still We Rise" march to protest growing inequality and hate. (Video by Pam Panchak; edited by Melissa Tkach)
A key concern was rising distrust between police and minority groups nationwide. This week, two African-American men, Louisiana resident Alton Sterling and Minnesota resident Philando Castile, died at the hands of police. Five officers were killed by a sniper during a Thursday protest in Dallas.
Outside the Allegheny County Courthouse, demonstrators chanted “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” Still, while a stepped-up police presence was noticeable during the march, there was little tension.
“I’m not feeling any concern” about the marchers, said Police Chief Cameron McLay, who was on hand for the event. Police, he said, were watching for “what else is out there,” including possible attacks on the marchers themselves. The chief called the event “a positive demonstration of First Amendment rights.”
Michelle Tremillo, executive director of the Texas Organizing Project, said members of her organization had participated in the Dallas protest. "It took us until 1 a.m. to make sure that all of our people were home safely," she said. "I was struggling to be here."
"My heart aches for Alton’s family, my heart aches for Philando’s family, and my heart aches for those police officers and their families," Ms. Tremillo said.
But she and others said they hoped shock over the Dallas shooting wouldn’t obscure the racial- and economic-justice issues raised by the march. "I'd hate for that to get lost."
Outside the federal courthouse, demonstrators called for the release of Martin Esquivel-Hernandez, a Mexico-born Pittsburgh resident facing deportation. In May, the Department of Justice said Mr. Esquivel-Hernandez had previously been removed from the United States four times. But Friday his wife, Alma, held aloft his shoes and through an interpreter called him a “father of a U.S. citizen [and] a hard worker. The system has failed him and all of us.”
The march ended outside Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s office in Station Square, where demonstrators decried fracking for natural gas.
“We wanted to display unity and make the connection between racial justice and economic justice,” said Ana Maria Archila, a co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which is hosting the convention. “And the march really achieved that.”
By Chris Potter
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The Business of Change: Consumer Movements Pour on the Pressure
The Business of Change: Consumer Movements Pour on the Pressure
Consumer campaigns have existed for more than a century, but the Trump presidency has galvanized activists and...
Consumer campaigns have existed for more than a century, but the Trump presidency has galvanized activists and accelerated their work.
Read the full article here.
Peralta pushing to pass Carlos’ Law
Peralta pushing to pass Carlos’ Law
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four...
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four victims in fatal construction accidents in the United State were immigrants or U.S.-born citizens of Latino heritage.“Among the cases investigated by [the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration] in New York state that number is 60 percent,” Peralta said. “In New York City it’s 74 percent. And in Queens it’s 88 percent.
Read the full article here.
We’re onto the phony education reformers: Charter school charlatans and faux reformers take it on the chin
2015 will forever be remembered as the year the political establishment was shaken by the populist-driven presidential...
2015 will forever be remembered as the year the political establishment was shaken by the populist-driven presidential candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. But it should also be remembered as the year another established order was forever altered by change, dissent and revelations of its corruption.
For years, an out-of-touch establishment has dominated education policy too. A well-funded elite has labeled public education as generally a failed enterprise and insisted that only a regime of standardized testing and charter schools can make schools and educators more “accountable.” Politicians and pundits across the political spectrum have adopted this narrative of “reform” and now easily slip into the rhetoric that supports it without hesitation.
But in 2013 a grassroots rebellion growing out of inner city neighborhoods from Newark to Chicago and suburban boroughs from Long Island to Denver began to counter the education aristocracy and tell an alternative tale about schools.
The education counter-narrative is that public schools are not as much the perpetrators of failure as they are victims of resource deprivation, inequity in the system and undermining forces driven by corruption and greed. In other words, it wasn’t schools that needed to be made more accountable; it was the failed leadership of those in the business and government establishment that needed more accountability.
The uprising has been steadily growing into an Education Spring unifying diverse factions across the nation in efforts to reverse education policy mandates and bolster public schools instead of punishing them and closing them down.
2015 became the year the uprising reached a level where it forever transformed the hegemonic control the reformers have had on education policy.
Most prominently, No Child Left Behind, the federal law that’s been driving education policy since 2001, was replaced with a new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, thatreverses many of the edicts of NCLB or leaves them up in the air for states and courts to decide.
Also, comments made by establishment presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will reverberate through the election in 2016. Specifically, at a town hall held in South Carolina, broadcast by C-SPAN, Clinton responded to a question about charter schools by saying, “Most charter schools, I don’t want to say every one, but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them.” A week or so later, Clinton transgressed the status quo again by remarking, in a conversation with members of the American Federation of Teachers, “I have for a very long time also been against the idea that you tie teacher evaluation and even teacher pay to test outcomes. There’s no evidence. There’s no evidence.”
Organizations and individuals connected to wealthy donors to the Democratic Partywere appalled, but the truth is out, and skepticism about education policy prescriptions touted as necessary “reforms” to the system has now left the fringe and become mainstream.
The bigger, more important story emerging from 2015 is that the American public is increasingly at odds with a reform movement that seeks to remake schools into an image promoted by wealthy private foundations, influential think tanks and well-financed political operations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC).
The evidence against the education establishment’s case piled up as the year rolled on, and the narrative of public education policy will never be the same.
Blows to the Testocracy
Take the issue of standardized testing. The idea that school improvement should be about enforcing uniform measures of test score outcomes across the nation had a particularly bad year in 2015.
As Seattle classroom teacher and public school activist Jesse Hagopian explains in an article for the National Education Association, standardized tests became the focal point of widespread scorn and dissent.
More than 620,000 public school students around the U.S. refused to take standardized exams. Also, numerous states ended high school graduation tests, and dozens of universities and colleges reduced or eliminated test requirements for their admissions process.
The backlash to standardized testing prompted changes in federal policy as well, including the revision of NCLB. As Hagopian writes, “ESSA deposes one of the cruelest aspects of the test-and-punish policy under NCLB: the so-called ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’ annual test score improvement requirement that labeled nearly every American school failing.”
Also, as Hagopian notes, President Obama, acknowledging the growing resistance to testing, “announced in October that ‘unnecessary testing’ is ‘consuming too much instructional time.’ This announcement came as a surprise given Obama’s support for policies like Race to the Top that contributed to the proliferation of high-stakes testing. The reversal of rhetoric was a result of the mass opt-out movement and will surely embolden authentic-assessment activists in the coming year.”
“Pressure from parents, students, teachers, school officials, and community leaders began turning the tide against standardized exam overuse and misuse during the 2014-2015 school year,” declares a report from the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest.org).
FairTest’s report highlights “assessment reform victories” in numerous states where officials suspended or significantly revised testing policies and created “alternative systems of assessment and accountability” that “deemphasize standardized tests.”
Think Progress, the action center of the left-leaning Beltway think tank the Center for American Progress, also reports on the overturn of the testocracy in its review: “these education protests got results in 2015.”
Noting the growing opt-out movement in Colorado, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, the Think Progress writer highlights New York in particular, “where 20 percent of students opted out of tests in 2015. The number of New York students opting out quadrupled from [2014].”
Reform Is Losing the Left
New York in particular provides an example of how education reform may fare in the near future, at least in left-leaning states where leaders have been persuaded by big-money donors to crack down on public schools and educators.
Led by Governor Andrew Cuomo and his former state education chief, now currently acting U.S. Secretary of Education, John King, the Empire State had been a model for reform ideology, being among the first to implement the Common Core and its associated tests and pursuing a harsh new model for evaluating teachers, in which 50 percent of teachers’ performance rating was tied to students’ test scores.
But recently Cuomo made “a complete about face” on education, observes a recent op-ed in a New York press outlet. The writer – Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a progressive New York state organization – notes that Cuomo had made his test-based teacher evaluation system the “top legislative priority in 2015″ and had claimed it was ”one of the greatest legacies for me and the state.”
But the evaluation system had angered teachers and parents and helped spur the test boycotts noted above. Seeing his public approval numbers plummeting, Cuomo engineered, according to Easton, a redo on the evaluation system that prompted the state education authority to place a moratorium on test-based teacher evaluations.
Easton believes Cuomo’s actions in New York are likely too little, too late – arguing that he has been “the author of his own demise on education issues.” That may be, but far more likely, other Democratic Party governors are bound to notice how reform policies like those carried out in New York have now lost the left and are rapidly growing out of favor with the public at large.
Of course, in states and districts where test-based teacher evaluations are already established in the policy landscape, teachers will likely feel the effects of these systems for some time. So the fight over teacher evaluations will go state by state in the years ahead.
But as new reports continue to call these flawed and unfair evaluations into question, there will be more examples of these systems being overturned.
Reform Fads Don’t Work
Using test scores to evaluate teachers – one of the pillars of the reform movement – is not the only policy idea going out of favor. Using the scores to evaluate the viability of local schools is running into more opposition as well
In Tennessee, also an early adopter of reform fads, leaders had put into place a system that used student scores on standardized tests to pronounce schools as “failing” and provide the rationale for the state to take over management of the schools by an appointed board. What follows these takeovers, invariably, is that the agency, whose officials are handpicked by conservative lawmakers, transfers the schools to privately operated charter management organizations.
In Tennessee, the state takeover agency is called the Achievement School District, but the model is being adopted under other guises by many other states.
Now Tennessee’s much-lauded takeover program has run into “political trouble” according to a recent article in Education Week.
“Several Democratic state lawmakers,” according to the article, “will propose bills this upcoming legislative session to either shut down the turnaround district, which mostly is based in Memphis, or severely limit its authority to take over schools.”
The legislature’s Black Caucus, the representatives of the communities most often targeted by the takeovers, are helping to lead the pushback.
In Memphis, where the ASD has charterized more than two dozen schools, parents are leading the fight as well. As Chalkbeat Tennessee reports, members of the district’s neighborhood advisory councils have called the takeover process a “scam” and claimed the method for taking over their neighborhood schools “was rigged in favor of pairing struggling schools with charter operators.”
But the trouble with the ASD isn’t purely “political.” The takeover effort is also in trouble because it doesn’t work. The EdWeek article points to a recent Vanderbilt University study that showed district-led turnaround efforts had performed better than the the ASD. The study concluded, “Until the state-run district can begin to show academic progress, it shouldn’t be allowed to take over more schools.”
These events and others prove 2015 marks the year that standardized testing – and all its associated uses for unfairly judging teachers and schools – has now become a policy pariah. So what will reformers rally around now?
A Year of Charter School Scandals
For sure, charter schools provided reform fans with some cause to celebrate in 2015, as more than 500 new public charter schools opened during the school year, enrolling nearly 3 million students nationwide, according to charter industry reports.
As a recent report from a consulting group that works with the charter industry found, 2015 was a year in which charter schools reached impressive new benchmarks. These schools are now the most rapidly growing form of schools in America, with enrollments expanding by an average of 12 to 13 percent annually over the past 10 years. Charters now educate one in 16 children nationally and, in a number of big cities, now rival traditional school districts as the major provider of public education. Three of the nation’s five largest cities enroll more than 20 percentof their students in charter schools.
What’s growing particularly rapidly are large charter school chains, which have expanded at roughly twice the pace of the charter industry overall, increasing their student enrollments by 25 percent annually.
But charter school expansions come with a significant negative to the reform movement. As the numbers and influence of these schools grow, so do the scandals associated with them and so do the divisive fights in communities where these schools are proliferating.
The scandals and malfeasance associated with charter schools rose to levels in 2015 beyond what emerged in 2014.
Early in the year, a report from the Center for Popular Democracy looked at charter school finances in Illinois and found “$13.1 million in fraud by charter school officials … Because of the lack of transparency and necessary oversight, total fraud is estimated at $27.7 million in 2014 alone.”
One example the CPD report cited was of a charter operator in Chicago who used charter school funds amounting to more than $250,000 to purchase personal items from luxury department stores, including $2,000 on hair care and cosmetic products and $5,800 for jewelry.
In April, another report from the Center for Popular Democracy, along with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), uncovered over $200 million in “alleged and confirmed financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement” committed by charter schools around the country.
Authors of the report called $200-plus million the “tip of the iceberg,” because much of the fraud “will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.”
Then, in October, the Center for Media and Democracy published a new reportrevealing that the federal government has spent over $3.7 billion in taxpayer money on charter schools with virtually no accountability for the funds.
According to the report, the federal government, state governments and charter authorizers have generally not provided the public with ready information about how federal funds for charters have been spent. Attempts to trace federal grant money to recipients are apt to encounter “substantial obstruction” from states reluctant to reveal how charter money is spent and how state government handles charter oversight.
The report contends, “Unlike truly public schools, which have to account for prospective and past spending in public budgets provided to democratically elected school boards, charter spending is largely a black hole.”
In Michigan, for instance, where four out of five charters are run by for-profit management companies, CMD found “ghost schools“ that had received millions in federal funding but either never opened or were quickly closed with no account for the money. Some charter operators in the state have been accused, and convicted, of crimes, including felony fraud and tax evasion. But most often, no perpetrators of the malfeasance are brought to justice.
Interspersed among these massive reports are news stories from local press outlets, too numerous to count, about charter school frauds, financial and academic, that boggle the mind in their outrageousness.
In May, an Ohio paper began its news story about Ohio charter schools, “No sector – not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals – misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.” Reporter Doug Livingston wrote, “State auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.”
Charter school malfeasance in the Buckeye State has gotten so bad it’s even drawn the attention of FBI investigators.
More recently, Florida press outlets reported the state has given about $70 million to charter schools that later closed and returned virtually none of the money to taxpayers. While the state is able to recover computers and other equipment these schools purchased with taxpayer money, the far more substantial costs for purchasing and improving property and making lease payments stays in private pockets after the schools close.
Why Charter Schools Won’t Save Reform
Scandals will continue to dog charter schools because of the way they are organized and operated. As a recent policy brief from the National Education Policy Center explains, the very structure of the charter school business introduces new actors into public education who skim money from the system without returning any benefit to students and taxpayers.
In one of the more bizarre schemes the authors examine, charter operators use third-party corporations to purchase buildings and land from the public school district itself, so taxpayer dollars are used to purchase property from the public. Thus, the public ends up paying twice for the school, and the property becomes an asset of a private corporation.
In other examples, charter operators will set up leasing agreements and lucrative management fees between multiple entities that end up extracting resources that might otherwise be dedicated to direct services for children.
These arrangements, and many others documented in the brief, constitute a rapidly expanding parallel school system in America, populated with enterprises and individuals who work in secret to suck money out of public education.
Meanwhile, charter expansions continue to be met with increased community resistance wherever they roll out.
In Nashville, Tennessee, Jefferson County, Colorado, and across South Florida, every new charter school expansion is now met with fierce opposition from the community.
As the Los Angles Times reported in September, a plan devised in secret by a billionaire and his foundation would pay for the capital costs and lobbying to force through a plan to convert as many as half of the city’s schools into charters. The community has responded with outrage.
In what is likely to be an important legal precedent, the supreme court of the state of Washington found that charter schools are unconstitutional because they aren’t truly public schools.
Now calls for charter school moratoriums are becoming practically ubiquitous in state legislatures and local district school boards.
The mounting controversy surrounding charter schools is a strong indicator that if education reform proponents collect all their policy eggs in the basket of “school choice,” they are missing the main reasons why their movement is spurring increased resistance.
What Reform Fans Don’t Get
Indeed, resistance to the education reform agenda is not as much a rejection of its various policy features as it is a rejection of the philosophy that drives it.
This philosophy puts little stock in democratic governance of schools, believing instead that really smart people, armed with the right data and algorithms, are what it takes to determine education policy from New York to Nevada.
This core philosophy makes infinite sense to folks with backgrounds in law, business management, finance, or economics, but tends to rub educators and parents the wrong way because of its failure to acknowledge that teaching and learning are primarily relationship-driven endeavors and not technical pursuits.
To teachers, it makes about as much sense to base their actions exclusively on a data set or a marketing principle as it would for husbands and wives to conduct their marriages on that basis or for parents to raise their children that way. Sure, knowing some objective “things” about how students are doing is important, but there’s way more important stuff to attend to.
And parents will grow ever more skeptical of the false promise of “school choice” because it doesn’t deliver what they really want: the guarantee of good neighborhood schools that are free and equitable to all children.
But too few reformers get this. Instead, what we can expect in 2016 is for the current education establishment to use the considerable financial resources at its disposal to mount yet more marketing and public relations efforts, while the pushback from grassroots public education advocates will grow even stronger, and political leaders will be increasingly pressured to decide where they stand.
Source: Salon
Signature gathering begins for $12 minimum wage initiative
Signature gathering begins for $12 minimum wage initiative
PHOENIX (AP) - A group advocating for worker’s rights is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Arizona that...
PHOENIX (AP) - A group advocating for worker’s rights is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Arizona that would increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020, at the same time Republican lawmakers are proposing their own ballot measure that would give the Legislature sole authority to set the wage in the state.
The fight over Arizona’s minimum wage has grown amid widespread worker frustration over sluggish wage growth that has fueled presidential campaigns and led to legislative battles on both sides of the country - California and New York lawmakers are poised to pass bills lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years.
The Fair Wages and Healthy Families Initiative incrementally increases minimum wage in Arizona to $12 per hour by 2020 and requires employers to provide earned paid sick time.
The initiative campaign has less than four months to collect more than 150,000 valid signatures necessary to get on the November ballot. Arizona’s current minimum wage is set at $8.05 per hour and is increased annually based on inflation.
Campaign manager Tomas Robles said his group has worked with people on both sides of the issues to find a compromise that offers workers a livable wage without putting too much of a burden on employers.
“We feel that this wage increase is that happy medium that protects small business and helps workers who can’t pay their rent at the end of the month even though they work full time,” he said.
The campaign committee has received backing from the Latino rights organization Living United for Change and the Center for Popular Democracy, a social and economic justice advocacy organization, Robles said. The campaign aims to collect more than 250,000 signatures using a combination of paid and volunteer petitioners to ensure they can get on the ballot.
At the same time, Arizona Republicans have proposed to increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2020 with annual adjustments based on inflation - in a bid to stymie an increase in wages they say small businesses could not handle.
“This offering is kind of a counter-balance to the insane socialism we hear in other quarters,” said Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, during a committee hearing in March.
It would also prevent cities, towns and counties from setting their own minimum wage, which Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has said would “drive our economy off a cliff.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed the measure on a 5-3 party-line vote. It will now undergo a standard review before going to a Senate vote. If passed, House Concurrent Resolution 2014 could go before voters this November.
If both measures end up on the ballot and both pass, the initiative with greatest number of “yes” votes would win.
By RYAN VAN VELZER
Source
Latino Construction Workers Continue to Die on the Job Because of Unsafe Conditions
Fox News Latino - January 16, 2015 - A new analysis of federal safety data found that while overall jobs in the...
Fox News Latino - January 16, 2015 - A new analysis of federal safety data found that while overall jobs in the construction industry are getting safer, Latino workers are still getting injured at alarming rates.
According to the data, between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in the construction industry rose from 181 to 231. The number of deaths also rose in the industry overall, from 774 to 796, but that increase is attributed entirely to Latinos. During the same period, deaths for non-Latino construction workers fell from 593 to 565.
Each day across the country, hundreds of day laborers and migrant workers wait in street corners waiting to get hired. They are sometimes picked up by contractors or subcontractors looking to cut corners by hiring cheap labor that won’t expect benefits – most undocumented workers live in the shadows and, in general, don’t qualify for any federal benefits.
"There’s a clear correlation between low-wage jobs and unsafe jobs," said Occupational Safety and Health Administration chief David Michaels, according to the Nation. "Workers in low wage jobs are at much greater risk of conditions that will make it impossible for them to live in a healthy way, to earn money for their family, to build middle class lives."
Another reason for the spike in deaths is a rise in safety violations on job sites run by smaller, non-union contractors and an unwillingness by some undocumented workers to report violations, according to a 2013 study by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.
"Contractors aren’t taking simple steps to protect their workers," Connie Razza, from the Center for Popular Democracy, told the New York Daily News. "They are not providing the training and the safety equipment that are required by law."
Advocacy groups are working to combat any changes to New York’s scaffolding law, which organizations like the Center for Popular Democracy say gives incentive to keep workplaces safe. The law holds owners and contractors who did not follow safety rules fully liable for workplace injuries and deaths.
Contractors argue that it has driven up insurance costs to record levels.
Lawmakers, however, have historically blocked any of the proposed changes to the law.
"All we’re looking for is the ability to have the same right as anybody else would in the American jurisprudence system," said Louis J. Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers' Association.
In an attempt to make their work environments safer, some day laborers have joined together to seek protection through collective action. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, some day laborers in New York City turned to one another about the dangerous conditions, and decided together how to deal with them.
The Bay Parkway Community Job Center in Brooklyn brought in safety experts for guidance; community groups and foundations rallied around the laborers, helping them buy their new trailer with several grants.
With the help of organizations such as the Worker’s Justice Project, laborers learned about wage and hour laws, the hazards of exposure to certain building materials and what kinds of actions or treatment by the people who hire them constitute abuse and violations.
"When something isn’t right, at that moment, you may not realize it or attach much significance to it," Rafael Tecpanecatl, a laborer who came from Mexico 11 years ago told Fox News Latino. "I’ve worked many jobs that I realized later were hazardous to my health. I’d get on ladders that were not steady, I’ve sanded walls and cut plywood and had debris go into my eyes and lungs."
Source
Zara Latest ‘Cool’ Retailer in Hot Water for Alleged Discrimination
Spanish fashion chain Zara is among several “hip” retailers making headlines recently for alleged discrimination...
Spanish fashion chain Zara is among several “hip” retailers making headlines recently for alleged discrimination against employees.
Ian Miller, a former attorney for the mega-retailer, claims he was harassed and discriminated against for being Jewish and gay. In his $40 million lawsuit against the company, which is owned by Inditex SA, Miller alleges that he was excluded from meetings, given smaller raises than other employees and subjected to discriminatory remarks.
In addition, the Center for Popular Democracy released a survey of New York–based Zara employees, titled “Stitched with Prejudice: Zara USA’s Corporate Culture of Favoritism.” The report found that black employees are more dissatisfied with their hours than white employees, are reviewed more harshly by management and are least likely to be promoted.
When it comes to people who shop at Zara, black customers are seven times more likely to be targeted as potential thieves than white customers, the report found.
A spokesperson for Inditex refuted the claims in the Center for Popular Democracy report in a statement to FOXBusiness.com.
“It fails to follow an acceptable methodology for the conduct of a credible objective survey on workplace practices, and instead appears to have taken an approach to achieve a pre-determined result which was to discredit Zara. Zara USA believes that the claims made in the report are completely inconsistent with the company’s true culture and the experiences of the over 1,100 Zara employees in New York City and over 3,500 in all the US,” said the spokesperson.
Perhaps even more high profile is a discrimination case involving Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), which made its way to the Supreme Court. The preppy retailer known for its presence in American malls was sued by Samantha Elauf, a young Muslim woman who wore a headscarf to a job interview at the company seven years ago.
“Ms. Elauf never informed Abercrombie before its hiring decision that she wore her head scarf, or ‘hijab,’ for religious reasons,” the ruling stated.
The Supreme Court recently overturned that decision.
A spokesperson for Abercrombie & Fitch told FOXBusiness.com in a statement that although the Tenth Circuit decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, it was not determined that the company discriminated against Elauf.
“We will determine our next steps in the litigation, which the Supreme Court remanded for further consideration. A&F remains focused on ensuring the company has an open-minded and tolerant workplace environment for all current and future store associates. We have made significant enhancements to our store associate policies, including the replacement of the 'look policy' with a new dress code that allows associates to be more individualistic; changed our hiring practices to not consider attractiveness; and changed store associates' titles from 'Model' to 'Brand Representative' to align with their new customer focus. This case relates to events occurring in 2008. A&F has a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion, and consistent with the law, has granted numerous religious accommodations when requested, including hijabs,” the spokesperson said.
Nasty Gal, a self-described “global online destination for fashion-forward, free-thinking girls,” is being sued for illegally firing Aimee Concepcion and several other employees either before taking or during maternity/paternity leave.
The lawyer for the former employee that filed the suit, who will represent three other female ex-employees in arbitration hearings, said “they were the only pregnant females who provided notice of maternity leave before being terminated, and …their jobs were taken over by other employees.”
"The accusations made in the lawsuits are false, defamatory and taken completely out of context,” a Nasty Gal spokesperson told FOXBusiness.com. “The layoffs in question were part of a larger restructuring of departments we completed over nine months ago. The lawsuits are frivolous and without merit."
When it comes to the likelihood of this case succeeding in court, it is worth looking to similar prior verdicts for perspective.
“Shortly before they filed the Nasty Gal lawsuit, a $7.7 million verdict in favor of a pregnant (at the pertinent time) Price is Right model was affirmed by a California appellate court,” said Jeff Trexler, associate director at Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute.
On the flip side, “If Nasty Gal can show that it actually provided the requisite notices, offered reasonable accommodation to her (Concepcion’s) pregnancy, wasn't motivated to fire her because of her pregnancy, and did not treat pregnant women differently from other employees in similar positions, there's a substantial possibility that the company will prevail,” said Trexler.
Retail stores have also received flack in recent months for selling discriminatory merchandise. Urban Outfitters (URBN) was condemned by organizations including the Human Rights Campaign and the Anti-Defamation League for a gray- and white-striped tapestry imprinted with a pink triangle that was sold at a store in Boulder, Colorado. The groups said the item projected Holocaust imagery, specifically of the uniforms gay men were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. Calls for comment to Urban Outfitters were not returned by the time of publication.
Despite the extent of public outcry over the merchandise, Urban Outfitters is technically allowed to sell whatever it wants.
“Designs evocative of Nazi imagery may be offensive, but they're no more illegal than the Confederate flag; ultimately, the decision to stop selling designs with either image comes down to ethical and reputation management concerns,” said Trexler.
In recent weeks, several retailers including Wal-Mart (WMT), Sears (SHLD) and Amazon (AMZN) announced they would stop selling Confederate battle flag merchandise following the mass shooting in June at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
No stranger to controversy, Zara was also accused of selling discriminatory merchandise. A 2014 white-and-blue striped shirt, which featured a six-pointed star, came under fire for its resemblance to uniforms worn by Jewish prisoners at Nazi concentration camp. The “sheriff shirt” was pulled from the retailer’s site after it issued an apology.
So, is outcry over discrimination becoming more common in the retail industry, or is it simply that intense media scrutiny is making it seem like it is?
“Allegations of discrimination are nothing new in fashion, as with any business, but what's particularly noteworthy now is their potential to have a substantial negative impact on a brand,” said Trexler. “One could say that the way people characterize discrimination is shifting from incident to identity, and in this fashion reflects a broader cultural trend that has emerged alongside advances in communications technology.”
When asked if changes in the law are making discrimination lawsuits easier to file, Trexler said that enforcement has shifted “in ways that arguably encourage people to take legal action.”
Most notably, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has worked to make pregnancy discrimination an enforcement priority, and a Supreme Court decision also raised awareness on the issue.
“Acts that might have gone unchallenged in years past now might be more likely to spark a lawsuit,” said Trexler.
Source: Fox Business
One vote will turn America’s path away from liberal socialism
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2015 – What difference will my vote make? Too many will say: I am only one person. When asked why...
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2015 – What difference will my vote make? Too many will say: I am only one person. When asked why they do not exercise our constitutional right to vote for our governmental representatives they wonder if their one vote makes a difference.
But that is foolish as history has shown that “one person” can prevail.
It was one brave soldier standing alone during a mass protest who stopped a column of armed tanks in China on Tiananmen Square in 1989; one frail man named Mahatmas Gandhi who was the driving force behind banishing the British Empire from India; one conservative, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who was the black community’s conscience when it needed someone to articulate the horrors inflicted upon blacks by a racist Democratic South.
Even before these 20th century [peaceful] activists, back in the 1860s, there was one conservative black Frederick Douglass. Douglas stood out as a champion of an enslaved people, the fight for their civil rights.
Frederick Douglass made it his life’s mission to rally others to join in with him in the liberation of his oppressed people. Born a slave, he died a millionaire in today’s terms.
Other men and women of courage, conviction and destiny have made a difference: Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Booker T. Washington, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner.
Today America is in need of such sons and daughters, born of virtue, courage and conviction to take the smallest action. They need to vote.
Many see that the United States is drifting towards the edge of ruination. At the helm is a president who happens to preside over our moral and economic collapse while pressing on relentlessly with the left-wing agenda. Same-sex marriages, illegal aliens, an under-employed America and a potential $19 trillion deficit do not bode well for our future and this country’s stability.
Barack Hussein Obama has met with numerous world leaders, many of them not so friendly to this country, either then or now.
Yet, in his adopted home city of Chicago, where gangland shootings take place regularly, where body bags fill up, by the hour, where black on black crime runs rampant, this president has yet to seriously address the issue.
As the first black president, he could have met these gang leaders at a presidential sponsored summit to appeal to them on a personal level, and to impress upon them how dangerous and detrimental their life of crime is impacting their own neighborhoods in a negative way.
How bad is it in Chicago? Just over the Fourth of July weekend of this year, alone, 10 people were killed and 55 wounded by gunfire. Shootings rose by about 40 percent during the first three months of this year, according to March statistics released by Chicago Police Department. The mayor, Rahm Emanuel, seems clueless on how to decrease these figures.
Make no mistake; this is largely black on black crime. Yet, when a white person, or a white cop, kills a black anywhere in America, the president cannot get to the podium fast enough to denounce it; neither can race baiters such as Jackson and Sharpton.
This is when the clueless come out with signs chanting “Black Lives Matter.” They ignore the subject of innocent black fetuses being aborted, thanks largely to the efforts of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger and uninformed blacks who work for and support this organization.
Though serving his last year in office, the president has opted to focus on, and press for, immigration reform. This is an agenda that will further impact the black community in a negative way in terms of employment opportunity.
African-Americans who have achieved higher-education degrees, a key investment leading to the middle class, still find themselves more likely to face long-term unemployment than their white, Hispanic and Asian counterparts, according to the Center for Popular Democracy.
Some believe the president’s end game is granting amnesty for over 30 million illegals and resettling hundreds of thousands of Muslims here in the United States. Not surprisingly, his party supports this president’s efforts while the Republican leadership does not.
And the Supreme Court — they have been missing in action for the past three years when it comes to defending, preserving and upholding the United States Constitution and the laws of the land.
So you ask, What can we do about it?
Americans can express their dismay and anger by voting in the next primary and election. Only then can we make a difference. History has shown that one man can effect positive change. Conservatives in this country number around 45 million strong, so if all would step up and vote, there’s immense power in those numbers.
Up until now, politicians, Sunday morning news pundits and Washington bureaucrats have an open microphone to sway voters, thanks to 24-hour news programs.
It’s time for Americans to really listen to what is being said and recognizing what is unrealistic, not sell low-information voters a bad bill-of-goods.
Forbes writes (We’ve Crossed The Tipping Point; Most Americans Now Receive Government Benefits):
..perhaps 52 percent of U.S. households—more than half—now receive benefits from the government, thanks to President Obama. And Mr. Entitlement is just getting started. If Obamacare is not repealed millions more will join the swelling rolls of those dependent on government handouts.
Conservatives have long dreaded the day when the U.S. crossed the halfway mark because of all the implications for individual and fiscal responsibility. As Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” They learned that from the 2008 election and turned out in big numbers again in 2012.
One popular agenda being pushed by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is free college tuition – Bernie wants it at every academic institution, Clinton is calling for free public colleges.
Remember what Franklin said above:
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
And college tuition is off the charts, most can agree. So maybe free college tuition is a great idea; however, no one is explaining who is going to pay for the professor’s salary, buildings, campus maintenance, food, books and the necessary technology infrastructure necessary to support a child seeking the college experience.
Look at the reasons parents choose private over public schools. They want a better eduction, higher test scores, smaller class size and more. If parents see that many [not all] public schools fail their children, why would we want to see college follow that same model?
And how many of those students taking that free college will be looking not for education but a continuation of the high school experience and a delay of entering the work force. College should be something a student works for with grades, service participation, sports and learning to be a well-rounded person – a lesson that begins in the home.
Now it is our turn to voice our opinions at the ballot box, for conservatives, independents and libertarians to band together to make a difference in saving this republic. Even if the person presented by the GOP is not the person you want over others,
…we still need to vote for the party otherwise, liberals and progressives continue to rule the day.
The path will not always be smooth and easy. Most things worthwhile ever are. Just remember this.
As former military men, George Washington fought the good fight, Andrew Jackson fought the good fight, Ulysses S. Grant fought the good fight and Theodore Roosevelt fought the good fight while serving in the armed forces.
Professional military leaders such as Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. George S. Patton fought the good fight, as well, and all of these men did it against overwhelming odds and all of them prevailed.
Some say, and truly believe, that the American political system is rigged, that the powers that be, like powerful fathom puppet masters, have often manipulated the results of elections so that it does not matter what the voter does, they still pull the strings.
It doesn’t matter who the president is when Valerie Jarrett is pulling the strings.
There is some truth in every urban legend, but it will take voters to weed out these myths and uproot these puppet masters and make the necessary changes to insure the integrity of our political system and our republic. We must all make a stand.
This is a nation with a history of breeding courageous fighters, and right now America needs fighters.
The next generation is counting on you showing up at the polls. including your children and grandchildren. Your decision to get involved and vote will impact their future in many ways.
That is why now is the time America. Not next time, but now!
Unless conservatives from all corners vote to change the ownership of the White House, there may not be a next opportunity to save America.
Source: Communities Digital News
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