New Report: Anti-Scaffold Law Research is Junk
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 17, 2014 Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 17, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973) 464-9224; tjhelm@populardemocracy.org
"FATALLY FLAWED": ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE REPORT IS DEAD WRONG, BIASED
NEW REPORT PROVIDES WINDOW INTO INDUSTRY FRONT GROUP AND EFFORT TO GUT SAFETY LAW
CPD, NYCOSH: Scaffold Law Saves Lives, Protects Workers; Industry-Funded Rockefeller Institute "Report" is Junk
(NEW YORK) -- Today, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) released a paper entitled "Fatally Flawed: Why the Rockefeller Institute's Scaffold Law Report Doesn't Add Up." The report is in response to an earlier "report" funded by a construction industry-front group, that sought to gut worker protections known as the Scaffold Safety Law.
"The Cost of Labor Law 240 on New York’s Economy and Public Infrastructure" was released last month by the Rockefeller Institute at SUNY-Albany, commissioned by an $82,800 check from the "New York Civil Justice Institute,"* a front-group whose address is the same as the Lawsuit Reform Alliance, which has worked for years to weaken laws that make it possible for people to assert rights against abusive or negligent landlords, employers, and other business interests. The LRA itself has frequently been criticized as being a front group for the construction industry and other corporate interests.
*SOURCE: SUNY-Albany Division of Research, “Accent on Research,” Spring 2013 Newsletter, http://www.albany.edu/research/assets/springaccent2013.pdf (page 20)
"Industry front groups are putting construction profits first when they mislead the public to obscure the real stakes of this debate: workers' lives and safety on the job," said Josie Duffy, policy advocate at the Center for Popular Democracy. "The Scaffold Safety Law saves lives. Gutting it, as some are advocating, will harm workers and disproportionately put Latino and immigrant workers at risk. These groups should be ashamed of themselves for spending $82,000 on a junk report instead of making sure the workers who build our cities have the protection they need."
The Scaffold Safety Law is a critical safety protection for construction workers, who are increasingly Latino and immigrant. In fact, an earlier review of construction site accidents by the Center for Popular Democracy, published in an October 2013 report entitled "Fatal Inequality" starkly illustrated how important the Scaffold Law is because of the ongoing rates of injury in construction in New York, and notably, how the risks are disproportionately borne by immigrant workers and workers of color:
In 60% of those fatalities, the worker was Latino and/or immigrant, disproportionately high for their participation in construction work.
In New York City, 74% of fatal falls involved Latino and/or immigrant workers.
Today's report "Fatally Flawed" makes the following points, in detail:
The Rockefeller Institute’s report is fundamentally biased.
The Rockefeller Institute's report confuses correlation with causation.
The Rockefeller Institute's report ignores key facts about New York State & the construction industry.
The Rockefeller Institute's report compares apples & oranges to make a false point.
The Rockefeller Institute's report uses faulty math to claim rising rates & lost jobs.
The conclusion is simple: New York’s strong worker health and safety laws, such as the Scaffold Law, protect workers from unnecessary risk. And it is the inherently dangerous nature of construction at an elevation—not the laws designed to protect workers —that account for injuries on the job. Any attempt to water down key worker protections will simply expose more workers, and their families, to unnecessary risk of injury. New York cannot afford to turn back the clock on protecting our workers or our public safety.
Read the full report, "Fatally Flawed: Why the Rockefeller Institute's Scaffold Law Report Doesn't Add Up" for evidence and details.
NYCOSH & CPD also released a new one-pager explaining how the Scaffold Safety Law works, read it here.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health are proud partners in the newly launched Scaffold Safety Coalition. The Scaffold Safety Coalition is a diverse group of workers, advocates and organizations committed to protecting construction workers in New York State, creating a unified front in the fight to defend New York’s Scaffold Safety Law from industry-backed efforts to gut the law. On behalf of more than 1.5 million New Yorkers, the coalition has pledged to push for increased enforcement of New York’s construction safety standards. More information and a full list of partners in the Scaffold Safety Coalition is available at the coalition website: www.scaffoldsafetylaw.com.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY: The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
ABOUT THE NEW YORK COMMITTEE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH: The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) is a membership organization of workers, unions, community-based organizations, and workers’ rights activists. NYCOSH uses training, education, advocacy, and organizing to improve health and safety conditions in our workplaces, our communities, and our environment. Founded 35 years ago on the principle that workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths are preventable, NYCOSH works to extend and defend every person’s right to a safe and healthful workplace and community. Visit NYCOSH's website at: www.nycosh.org.
Activists Call on Fed Chief to Focus on Struggles of Citizens
The China Post - November 16, 2014 - In a rarity for a U.S. central bank chief, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen met...
The China Post - November 16, 2014 - In a rarity for a U.S. central bank chief, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen met Friday with activist groups calling for a fairer economic recovery and a more transparent Fed.
About 20 representatives of community and labor organizations met with Yellen for an hour in the meeting room of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, the activists said.
The groups were banded together as “Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Strong Economy,” lobbying Yellen and her team to orient Fed policy to boost employment and wages.
In addition to Yellen, Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and board members Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell participated in the meeting.
“We had a very good conversation,” said Ady Barkan, representing the Center for Popular Democracy.
The activists presented their views about conditions in the economy to the Fed officials and “they listened very carefully,” Barkan said.
Yellen “asked people questions about their personal experiences in the economy,” he added.
The coalition gave the Fed officials a list of six proposals to make the central bank more transparent and democratic.
“The economy is not working for the vast majority of people,” Barkan said.
“The Federal Reserve has huge influence over the number of people who have jobs, over our wages ... and yet we don't have discussion and engagement over what Fed policy should be.”
Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “What recovery?” the activists criticized the Fed's isolation from the general public.
“Our wages are on a flat line for 30 years,” said Anthony Newby, director of Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which wants the Fed to give interest-free loans to cities so they can create jobs in infrastructure projects.
With two regional Fed bank presidents preparing to step down — Charles Plosser for the Philadelphia Fed and Richard Fisher at the Dallas Fed — the coalition is pressing for a transparent process for selecting their successors.
The Philadelphia Fed said on its website Friday that the executive search firm it hired has set up an email address to receive inquiries in the interest of helping the bank “in a broad search for its next president.”
“Philadelphia has hovered around eight percent unemployment for all of 2014; in the black community it's over 14 percent,” said Kati Sipp, head of Pennsylvania Working Families and a “Fed Up” activist.
“We want the Fed to spend some time in the neighborhoods where regular working people live.”
Source
How Flake came to secure Kavanaugh delay
At a crucial moment during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rancorous debate on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh,...
At a crucial moment during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rancorous debate on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) realized he had to act and ducked out of the hearing room.
Read the full article here.
Turmoil Among Progressive, Latino Groups After Julian Castro Attacked
Turmoil Among Progressive, Latino Groups After Julian Castro Attacked
Why Are Progressive Groups Slamming Julián Castro? Castro,Julian-Clinton,HillaryTexas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C...
Why Are Progressive Groups Slamming Julián Castro?
Castro,Julian-Clinton,HillaryTexas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the middle of April, POLITICO reported that several progressive groups have targeted HUD Secretary Julián Castro, questioning his vice presidential qualifications if Hillary Clinton were to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The fight between a new-school Latino group and some old-school Latino groups erupted into chatter that kept getting stronger, so much so that Castro had to address it with NBC News.
The new-school latinos campaign led to dissension among Latino organizations. Others have weighed in on the story, claiming that Castro being Latino is just irrelevant. In the midst of all this hubbub, one thing became clear — none of those old-guard Latino groups countered on the merits of the attack against Castro. Apparently, he is untouchable, regardless what he does.
Joe Velasquez, a former deputy political director in the Clinton Administration, submitted his resignation letter from the board of American Family Voices (AFV), which was part of the coalition of groups that hit Castro for a HUD policy the groups argue is too friendly to financial institutions looking to buy distressed homes.
berniesanders-hillaryclintonAnd, the Sanders campaign denied having any part in the effort to discredit Castro.
Progressive groups target Julián Castro
They say the record of the HUD secretary makes him unsuitable to be Clinton’s VP.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
The 41-year-old Julian Castro is seen by many as the perfect balance to Hillary Clinton. But the veepstakes oppo war has begun.
With Bernie Sanders’ durability exciting progressives at their potential to shape the Democratic race, a coalition of groups — many of them backers of the Vermont senator — are launching a preemptive strike against Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, aimed at disqualifying him from consideration to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
Tuesday morning, the group emailed petitions to several million people attacking Castro on the relatively obscure issue of his handling of mortgage sales and launching a website with an unsubtle address: DontSellOurHomesToWallStreet.org.
They’re just as open with their political aims: to publicly discredit Castro as a progressive, latching onto the mortgage issue to seed enough suspicion to keep him off Clinton’s shortlist.
“It’s a situation where the Clinton campaign wants Castro to be a major asset to her chances of winning the White House, and unless he changes his position related to foreclosures and loans, he’ll be a toxic asset to the Clinton campaign,” said Matt Nelson, the managing director for Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latino organizing group that focuses on social justice.
“All year, we’ve seen the candidates tripping over themselves to show how tough they’ll be on Wall Street,” said Kurt Walters, the campaign manager for Root Strikers, a 501(c4) group of Demand Progress and its 2 million affiliated activists, who is planning to deliver the petitions to Castro’s office when they’re ready. “Then to turn around and take a step backwards on that exact question, and Castro, Julian3hput someone who has been doing the exact opposite — I think it would be tough for a lot of people who care about Wall Street accountability to get excited about that pick.”
By the coalition’s calculations, HUD under Castro has sold 98 percent of the long-delinquent mortgages it acquired through a program aimed at preventing foreclosures to Wall Street banks under Castro’s watch, without anywhere near the number of needed strings attached. (HUD says that figure is way off.) And Nelson and Walters say that for a politician who’s aiming to be considered the vice presidential prospect for both progressives and minorities, Castro has done too much to help private equity firms like Blackstone, instead of black and Latino communities.
“If Secretary Castro fails to create significant momentum in terms of stopping the sale of mortgages to Wall Street, then I do think it disqualifies him. But there’s time left on the clock,” said Jonathan Westin, the director of New York Communities for Change, which was formed out of the remains of the community activist group ACORN. “I think a lot of the progressive movement would not be in support of a Castro ticket if he fails to make traction here.”
The 41-year-old Castro is seen by many as the perfect balance to Clinton — younger and Latino, with a history as mayor of San Antonio and now two years in the Obama administration, handsome and with a 2012 convention keynote speech that immediately made him a rising star to watch in the party. And people close to him say he’s a proven progressive across the board.
“Castro has a strong record at HUD fighting on behalf of progressive issues including protecting those with criminal records, standing up for LGBT rights and advocating for more inclusive communities through affirmatively furthering fair housing,” said one person close to the secretary.
But Maurice Weeks, an Atlanta-based organizer who works on housing justice in communities of color for the Center for Popular Democracy/CPD Action, said that Castro’s lack of action at HUD is breeding more gentrification and suffering in a way that should make blacks and Latinos pay attention.
“What I wouldn’t be excited about is any candidate, not just Julián, who is looking to further some of these practices,” Weeks said.
At issue is the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, started in 2010 to allow mortgages going toward foreclosure to be sold to what HUD calls “qualified bidders and encourages them to work with borrowers to help bring the loan out of default.”
The progressives attacking Castro say they believe the mortgages should be sold instead to nonprofits and other institutions that would care more about the communities involved. What Castro’s done, they say, has essentially amounted to a fire sale for Wall Street firms.
Castro,Julian3hRep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and one of Sanders’ few endorsers in Congress, complained about the program to Castro last week in a letter obtained by Politico.
“Your own Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, which was designed to help right the wrongs of the meltdown years, has been selling homes that once belonged to the families I’ve spoken with at rock-bottom prices to the Wall Street entities that created this situation in the first place,” Grijalva wrote.
HUD says that Castro has continued to meet with advocates, in the hopes of improving the policy, and points to several changes that have been made — including those that have increased the number of mortgages sold to nonprofits. An official pointed to changes made a year ago that, among other things, now require servicers buying loans to delay foreclosure for a year.
“Providing an option for homeowners to remain in their homes is one of the reasons the DASP program was created” said a HUD spokesperson. “We’ve received feedback from stakeholders which has led us to make a number of important changes to the program including the creation of nonprofit-only pools and delaying foreclosure for a year. Additionally, we are still evaluating further enhancements to the program to meet our core mission.”
But that’s not enough for the groups joining the coalition to attack Castro. Those include the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action, American Family Voices, Color of Change, Courage Campaign, CPD Action, Daily Kos, MoveOn, New York Communities for Change, Other 98%, Presente, RootsAction, Rootstrikers and the Working Families Party.
With the exception of the Working Families Party, which is backing Sanders, the groups have not formally endorsed a candidate in the presidential primaries.
Most conversations about Clinton’s prospective pick center on Castro and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and the secretary’s ambitions to be the vice presidential nominee are well known.
But among progressives, so are the suspicions about his bona fides. The red banner across the website proclaiming “TELL HUD SECRETARY JULIAN CASTRO: STOP SELLING OUR NEIGHBORHOODS TO WALL STREET!” amounts to the opening salvo in doing something about it.
“There’s a lot of hope around him,” said Brandi Collins, campaign director for the 1.2-million member Color of Change, who said she was one of the people excited by the possibilities opened up by his keynote speech.
Collins said this complaint about Castro’s leadership is reflective of a whole range of issues her organization has had with what members say is the secretary’s closeness to Wall Street and lack of attention to black and brown communities.
“If he’s not showing up for our communities while the cameras aren’t there, we don’t know that he’ll show up when he’s on his way to the White House,” Collins said.
According to Julia Gordon, formerly at the Center for American Progress and currently an executive vice president at the National Community Stabilization Trust, the coalition may have a point — if only because it is taking advantage of opaque accounting at HUD. Gordon said she’s met often with HUD about these issues but hasn’t seen the kind of progress she’d like or evidence that the program matches the claims that officials make.
“We know it’s been good for investors. According to HUD, it’s been good for the fund, although the level of detail that they release to account for it is minimal. We really don’t know how good it’s been for the homeowners, and that’s where this wave of protests is coming from,” Gordon said.
Laurie Goodman, the director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, said that the people who are attacking Castro for selling the loans to Wall Street are misinterpreting the pragmatic realities about what’s in play.
The mortgages in question tend to be delinquent for over two years, she said, and getting them out of HUD with its limited resources and tools to deal with them is a positive step for homeowners. Only big banks can take on mortgages like that, she argued, making the nonprofit issue moot.
“The only way to help these borrowers is to sell the loans. You don’t have any other buyers big enough in size,” she said. “Even if you wanted to do something different, you couldn’t.”
Within that, though, Goodman credited HUD under Castro for making “some really big improvements.”
Not nearly enough, according to Gordon.
“Both HUD and [the Federal Housing Finance Agency] have let down communities by not focusing on what they want the buyer to do with these,” Gordon said, arguing that they’ve been focused instead on offloading the debt. “They’re just like, ‘Get it away from me.’”
The idea that Castro would be the first Latino on a national ticket means something, Nelson said, though he argued that this only adds to the burden for the secretary to show leadership on the mortgage issue in the way progressives want at this moment of added attention to their concerns.
Nelson said that at Presente, they think of it like a parable — it doesn’t make it any better to be hurt if the hurt is coming from one of their own.
There are two trees in a forest, Nelson said, and they see an ax coming to chop them down. “Don’t worry,” says one tree to the other, “the handle’s one of us.”
“Basically,” Nelson said, “we’re fighting to make sure Castro isn’t the handle.”
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
Source
Watch protesters descend on 5-star resort where GOP plots against American workers
Watch protesters descend on 5-star resort where GOP plots against American workers
Scores of protesters, gathered for a march organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action in partnership with Tax...
Scores of protesters, gathered for a march organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action in partnership with Tax March, converged on West Virginia Thursday from ten different states.
Watch the video and read the article here.
U.S. Department of Education Launches Crackdown on Ohio Charters
Charter Schools are defined by their freedom from regulation and oversight, but that freedom has been so regularly...
Charter Schools are defined by their freedom from regulation and oversight, but that freedom has been so regularly abused by unscrupulous operators that it seems the U.S. Department of Education is finally deciding to crack down, under pressure in this case from Ohio’s U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.
Three months ago, on June 20, 2016, Senator Brown wrote a letter to John King, now U.S. Secretary of Education, demanding increased oversight of a large grant—$71 million—the federal Department of Education made to Ohio on September 28, 2015 to expand charter schools. The grant application had been written by David Hansen, who, by September, had already been fired by the Ohio Department of Education for hiding the abysmal academic record of the state’s so-called “dropout recovery schools” and omitting their scores from a system he was creating as the Ohio Department prepared to begin holding charter schools more accountable. Hansen had also bragged in his federal grant application that Ohio had already begun more aggressively regulating charters. After the U.S. Department of Education awarded Ohio the $71 million grant at the end of September 2015, however, it was pointed out that the Ohio legislature had not yet passed the regulations for which Hansen (in July) had given the state credit. (The Ohio Legislature later adopted the most basic and minimal charter school oversight when it passed Ohio House Bill 2 on October 7, 2015).
When Ohio Senator Brown wrote to U.S. Secretary John King in June, 2016, the $71 million Ohio grant had been put on hold for months, as the U.S. Department of Education investigated Ohio’s dealings with charter schools. In his June 20 letter, Senator Brown wrote:
“In your November 2015 response letter to the members of the Ohio Congressional delegation, you outlined a number of steps ED has taken and will continue to take to verify the accuracy and completeness of ODE’s grant application. I appreciate these steps, but more must be done to provide order to the state’s chaotic charter school sector. In light of this report, I ask that you examine the performance of Ohio charter schools who have received CSP (federal Charter Schools Program) grants to determine whether grant recipients are failing or closing at a higher rate than those in other states and how the academic performance of CSP grant recipients in Ohio compares to CSP grant recipients nationwide. I further ask that when Ohio has satisfied all necessary conditions for this grant money to be released that you appoint a special monitor to review every expenditure made pursuant to this grant in order to ensure that all funds are being spent for their intended purpose. Ohio’s current lack of oversight wastes taxpayer’s money and undermines the ostensible goal of charters: providing more high-quality educational opportunities for children. There exists a pattern of waste, fraud, and abuse that is far too common and requires extra scrutiny.”
Last Wednesday, September 14, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education finally released the $71 million grant, but, as Patrick O’Donnell reports for the Plain Dealer, there are now many conditions:
“In a letter to the Ohio Department of Education today, the grant was declared ‘high risk’ because of the poor academic performance of the state’s charters and the struggles the state has had in implementing portions of House Bill 2, the state’s charter reform bill passed last fall by the state legislature… The letter states: ‘As part of this high-risk designation, we are imposing certain High-Risk Special Conditions on ODE’s CSP (Charter Schools Program) SEA (State Education Agency) grant that will help ODE and the Department more clearly determine ODE’s ongoing compliance with applicable requirements’ so that it will be more transparent and so that any issues can be identified and fixed quickly.”
Here are the conditions as reported by O’Donnell:
“(T)he state cannot give out grants to schools as it has in the past. It must have prior approval from the U.S. Department of Education before transferring any money.
“The department must evaluate dropout recovery schools better.
“The state must report its progress four times each year.
“ODE must hire an independent monitor of the grant program.
“The state must create a Grant Implementation Advisory Committee.
“And it must do demanding ratings of the oversight agencies known as ‘sponsors’ in Ohio, but as ‘authorizers’ in most other states.”
Ohio’s problems with the controversial $71 million Charter Schools Program grant are not the first time anyone has noticed the federal Department of Education’s failure to oversee the Charter Schools Program. A year ago in June, 2015, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools—a coalition of national organizations including the American Federation of Teachers, Alliance for Educational Justice, Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, Center for Popular Democracy, Gamaliel, Journey for Justice Alliance, National Education Association, National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, and Service Employees International Union—sent a letter to then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan complaining that while the Department had granted $1.7 billion to states for expansion of charter schools since 2009, the Department of Education’s own Inspector General had been raising alarms about the Department’s own lack of any kind of quality control.
The Alliance’s letter to Arne Duncan cited formal audits from 2010 and 2012 in which the Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG), “raised concerns about transparency and competency in the administration of the federal Charter Schools Program.” The OIG’s 2012 audit, the members of the Alliance explain, discovered that the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, which administers the Charter Schools Program, and the State Education Agencies, which disburse the majority of the federal funds, are ill equipped to keep adequate records or put in place even minimal oversight. The State Education Agencies that lack capacity to manage the programs are the 50 state departments of education.
In the June 2015 letter to Arne Duncan, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools enumerates the problems discovered by the Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General: that the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) did not maintain records of the charter schools funded through grants to states, that OII “lacked internal controls and adequate training in fiscal and program monitoring,” that none of the three states selected as samples for investigation by the Office of Inspector General—Arizona, California, and Florida—sufficiently monitored the charter schools funded through the Department of Education’s State Education Agency grants, that 26 charter schools in these three states were shown by the Office of Inspector General to have closed after being awarded $7 million, and that even when the schools closed, nobody tracked “what happened to assets that had been purchased with federal funds.”
Thank you, Senator Sherrod Brown for doggedly demanding that the U.S. Department of Education improve oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program. Please keep on keeping on.
By Jan Resseger
Source
What the Campaign’s Focus on Inequality Means for New York
City Limits – September 4, 2013, by Gail Robinson - On July 21, five candidates for mayor of New York left their...
City Limits – September 4, 2013, by Gail Robinson -
On July 21, five candidates for mayor of New York left their usual beds to spend the night in a public housing project in Harlem. The sleepover made for good photo opportunities and sound bites––Council Speaker Christine Quinn likened the mold she saw in a bathroom to a horror movie––but it also helped signal that the two New Yorks of Fernando Ferrer’s failed mayoral campaigns have returned to center stage in New York politics.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s recent emergence as leader in the polls has confirmed that. “Bill de Blasio’s Surge is All About Inequality,” blared a recent headline in the New Republic.
While de Blasio has made New York’s “tale of two cities” a centerpiece of his campaign, other candidates also have targeted income inequality, and even many moderates and conservatives see the issue as an important one. “It’s a barbell economy. That’s definitely true,” says Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Sharp differences exist, however, about how New York should confront this problem and whether anything a New York City mayor can do will make a difference.
Why now
During his first term, it’s said, the word poverty passed through Michael Bloomberg’s lips once or twice. It didn’t seem to hurt him.
Now the problem has emerged as the elephant in the room. Figures released last year found the percentage of New Yorkers living in poverty had increased for three consecutive years, reaching 20.9 percent in 2011. The Economist recently noted that in New York City in 2012 “the richest 1 percent took home close to 39 percent of the income earned in the city, more than double the national figure of 19 percent.” While some of this is due to New York’s status as the home to a lot of really rich people, it also points to a decline in the middle class, as jobs paying less than $35,000 replaced the jobs the recession stripped away.
Given this, income inequality not being an issue in this year’s election “would be like terrorism not being an issue on Sept.12, 2001,” says Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. Areport by the Community Service Society (which owns City Limits) found that 70 percent of all New Yorkers––and 74 percent of those with moderate or high incomes––are somewhat worried or very worried about widening inequality in the city.
Organizing around issues such as the living wage and paid sick leave and the message of Occupy Wall Street also helped push the issue forward, as has Bloomberg’s fading presence. “People are reckoning with what New York has become on his watch, and he’s not spending $100 million to pump out an alternative message,” says Andrew Freidman, executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
De Blasio and City Comptroller John Liu have been most vocal on the issue. “Addressing the crisis of income inequality isn’t a small task. But if we are to thrive as a city, it must be at the very center of our vision for the next four years,” de Blasio said in the introduction to his position book.
“Economic inequality is ruining our chance for economic recovery,” Liu said in an Aug. 21 debate.
But all the Democratic candidates have acknowledged the problem. “As New York gets more expensive and incomes fail to keep up, millions of New Yorkers are at risk of being pushed out of the city. That’s horrible for them––and it’s bad for all of New York,” former City Comptroller Bill Thompson said in April. While keeping to his 2005 theme of fighting for those in the middle class or “struggling to make it there,” former Rep. Anthony Weiner, now calls for “an oligarch tax.”
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has tried to address the concerns of liberal Democrats concerned about the income gap without forfeiting support from the man many blame for it, in February issued a plan aimed at addressing inequality. “We will keep New York City what it has always been, a place where opportunity is given, not just to those who can afford to buy it, but to those willing to work for it,” she has said.
The discussion has given rise to a cautious optimism among some who would like to see the city government shift direction. “There are a lot of good ideas out there, and I hope some of them make it into the playbook of the eventual winner,” says James Parrott, deputy director and chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute.
“There’s very little that the Democratic candidates have proposed … that I don’t agree with,” says Berg. But, he added, the question is what their priorities turns out to be and whether they can “mobilize the base without scaring off the middle.”
The limits of power
What, though, can the mayor, any mayor, do? Many of the conditions that have contributed to a rising wealth gap in New York––loss of manufacturing jobs, reduced clout for unions, increasing globalization, the rise of technology––affect the entire nation.
“We’ve seen statistics that show that New York is not any different or any worse in equality than what’s happening in the United States of America,” Republican candidate Joe Lhota said in March. In light of that, he said he did not see any short-term, New York City solutions to the problem.
After largely ignoring poverty in his first term, Bloomberg in his second term began shifting gears a bit. In 2006, he established the Center for Economic Opportunity to look at how poverty is measured and to launch programs to fight it. He followed up with an initiative aimed at young black and Latino men in his third term. While some of these efforts have won praise, overall they have not made any real dent in the percentage of New Yorkers at or near poverty.
The mayor––who undoubtedly would take credit if income inequality abated on his watch––has blamed larger forces for the fact that it hasn’t. After the release of income figures in 2012, a spokesperson for him said the “numbers reflect a national challenge: the U.S. economy has shifted and too many people are getting left behind without the skills they need to compete and succeed … That’s why the mayor believes we need a new national approach to job creation and education.”
But many see that as an easy way out. For one thing, they say, Bloomberg could have done less harm. “Some of the Bloomberg policies have been so wrongheaded,” says Parrott, citing the administration’s opposition to living wage measures and its undermining of contracts for school bus drivers and day care workers. “It’s taking what should be good working class jobs and making them poverty jobs.”
Beyond doing no harm, a mayor can advocate for policies to help the poor, much as Bloomberg has done for gun control. And some say that the mayor of New York is so powerful that many specific policy changes fall well with his or her grasp. The mayor controls a $70 billion budget, Friedman points out and so, he says, “I can think of 100 things the mayor could do.”
In Gelinas’ view, the city can help its low income resident by doing what we expect municipal government to do––enforce laws, protect the streets. “No matter how much you make, you have the right to live in a safe, quiet neighborhood,” she says. “That’s more the city’s job than to make sure everyone earns $80,000 a year.”
Tax breaks for some, hikes for others
No plan for dealing with income inequality has attracted as much attention as de Blasio’s proposal to increase taxes on those earning $500,000 or more to fund early childhood and after-school programs. Most of the Democrats, though, have embraced some changes in the tax system. Liu also calls for a tax on high-earning New Yorkers, saying the money would fund a variety of services, including early childhood education, police and housing for the homeless. Weiner has advocated making the transfer tax on home sales more progressive and upping the tax on homes that are not primary residences. Quinn would try to end the tax on low-income New Yorkers getting the earned income tax credit and, has had said that, if she had to raise taxes, she would do so “progressively.”
Certainly taking money from affluent New Yorkers ––a kind of Robin Hood approach––would reduce income equality in an immediate sense. Many of the proposed changes would require state approval, which could prove dicey. Beyond that, experts disagree over the longer-term impact of any tax hikes.
John Tepper Marlin, who served as chief economist with the city comptroller’s office for 14 years, says he believes the tax system is stacked against those in the lower middle class, the people most experts see at risk of slipping into poverty. Yet he thinks the problem would be best addressed on a national level.
“An attempt to tax the rich will fail because they’ll get away. … You can make a lot of mistakes in New York City and not kill the city, but other cities have been killed,” Marlin says. While he does not think the de Blasio tax hike is high enough to scare people away, he fears some will view it as “an opening wedge for a confiscatory tax.”
Others doubt that, noting that federal income tax rates on high earnersinched over 80 percent in 1941 and stayed over 90 percent until the early 1960s. “The national conversation around taxes has become incredibly one-sided,” says Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights. “If we can have a leader that shows some courage and raises taxes, I highly doubt it will affect the flow” of creative energetic people to New York.
Rather than raising taxes, Gelinas says, the city could get money for programs to address the income gap by confronting its long-standing budget problem, particularly the high cost of pensions for many city workers. The Republican candidates have indicated a willingness to do this, she says, and even the Democrats appear to recognize the current system is “not sustainable.”
Where the money goes
The question, though, is not only how to raise money but how to spend it. In targeting the money for early childhood education, de Blasio puts himself squarely alongside education experts who believe early childhood education can have a huge effect on outcomes farther down the road. “For our kids to compete and become the workforce we need, our mantra has to be learning earlier and learning longer,” he said in a speech before the Association for a Better New York.
Berg says the plan would not only provide education but also give poor children two free meals a day under the federal WIC program and help parents with child care. But while Parrot says early childhood education helps “make sure there’s starting gate equality,” he cautions it “is not going to show results right away in terms of reversing income inequality.”
Candidates have proposed other investments in education that they say also will better prepare students for better jobs and incomes. Thompson, who has the endorsement of the teachers union, has called for increased funding of schools and establishing additional pathways for students to graduate from high school prepared for college or careers. He also supports expansion of pre-K.
Quinn envisions “cradle to career” technical education, as well as increased computer training–notably, a technical school for girls in every borough. She would provide more time for high-needs students to learn by extending the school day and launching summer programs, and create so-called community schools that provide an array of social and health services as well as classroom teaching.
Lhota sees education as one of the few areas where the city can make a difference. “The city’s responsibility toward educating its children is the first and foremost thing that we need to do to make sure that inequality goes in a different direction,” he has said. “Our children need to be properly trained so they can work in a global economy.”
Lhota’s Republican rival, John Catsimatidis, has proposed a plan that would create stronger links between vocational education programs and corporations. It would include tax credits and incentives for those companies that invest in career training programs.
But while no one disputes the need for quality education, some question whether increased investment in schools will affect the income gap. After all, they note, Bloomberg already has dramatically hiked spending on schools.
Berg says that Bloomberg has put forth a contradictory narrative, saying on the one hand that education is the best cure for poverty and, on the other hand, that his many education changes have been a success. “Either he’s wrong about education being the only answer” or he’s wrong in saying his education programs worked, Berg adds.
The key, others say, would be in the type of investment in education and the quality of the programs. Fernandez says training often has been too rudimentary, preparing students for low-level jobs. “There’s been a lack of vision and an underestimation of the young people of our city,” she says. Fernandez would like the city to take money from a small increase in taxes and invest it in education to prepare people for high-end jobs: not home health aide, perhaps, but registered nurse.
Freidman believes investing in immigrants, particularly in English classes for them, would have a big payback.
Raising the floor
After peaking before the recession the average annual wage in New York’s private sector, fell sharply and, at the end of 2011, remained below where its 2007 level. In the state as a whole, low-wage jobs—those paying less than $45,000—accounted for 35.6 percent of all jobs in New York State; by June 2013, lower paying jobs accounted for 38.4 percent of the state total. Meanwhile, living in New York City has gotten more expensive, making it difficult for working families to pay the rent and put food on the table. “People see a job as the road out of poverty into the middle class, and it’s not getting them up there now,” says Nancy Rankin, vice president for policy, research and advocacy at the Community Service Society.
With this in mind, the Democratic candidates have all supported hikes in the minimum wage, including the increase to $9 an hour over three years approved by the state this year. Liu has called for the wage to go up to $11.65.
As to whether such policies might cost cities jobs in the long run, that, says policy consultant John Petro will “be an eternal debate.” Gelinas says higher wages prompt employers to replace workers with technology.
On economic development
The decline of manufacturing has left government across the country looking for other sources of good jobs. Bloomberg has joined the search, trying to diversify the city beyond Wall Street. To some extent he has succeeded, boosting tourism, for one, and working to make New York more of a tech center.
Some think he has not gone far enough. “Everybody is excited about high tech, but we have to remember UPS creates jobs too,” Petro says. He would like the city to invest in the kinds of blue-collar jobs currently at Willets Points but threatened by development there as well as white-collar jobs destined for Hudson Yards.
Billionaire businessman Catsimatidis has said his experience crating jobs would transfer to generating more jobs for the city as mayor, though specifics of his plan are scarce. Quinn offers a particularly detailed plan for branching out, calling for 2,000 new manufacturing jobs in Sunset Park, developing “world-class food markets” to spur food manufacturing in the city, building a green mechanics industry in the South Bronx and so on. In some cases, this effort would involve government subsidies and other incentives.
Some question the idea of subsidies to business. Others say that if the city is to hand out money to businesses and rich institutions, it should get a better return on its investment. “We have had an economic development policy that has really amounted to making the rich filthy rich,” Liu has said.
In particular, Liu and other critics fault the Bloomberg administration for not requiring recipients of city subsidies to pay a so-called living wage. The mayor vetoed and, after the Council overrode him, went to court to block a watered-down living wage bill that passed last year; the measure requires the developers receiving certain kinds of subsidies above a high-dollar threshold pay their own employees a living wage—but does not address the larger workforces of the tenant companies who occupy, say, a city-subsidized mall. Quinn, who brokered the compromise for that legislation, has said she would “work to ensure that more of those publicly funded developments are required to provide workers with a living wage and benefits, so working New Yorkers can pull themselves up to the middle class.” De Blasio says any business receiving a city subsidy would have to have “a clear plan” for providing health care to its workers.
Parrott, for one, says such policies are vital: “They can make a real difference right away.”
Friedman would link economic subsidies to “job quality,” giving preference to businesses that don’t oppose unionizing efforts, for example, or that hire workers on a full-time basis.
Some say the city also needs to get more in return for the aid it and the state provides developers, including tax breaks and favorable zoning. This could help solve one of the major problems facing low-income New Yorkers: the lack of affordable housing.
Quinn has pledged to build 40,000 units of middle-income––though not low-income––housing units over the next 10 years. Thompson has called for 70,000 new units and the preservation of 50,000 new ones. De Blasio is promising an even more ambitious plan.
Beyond housing, the candidates have addressed other issues that impact income inequality, such as transportation, making the city more energy efficient, improving access to broadband and making the city better able to withstand another storm like Sandy. Such projects would both make the city a better place and provide jobs.
Mending the safety net
While much of the discussion in this campaign has involved how to help low-income New Yorkers, the candidates and media couch the discussion as being about income inequality, rather than about poverty. Meanwhile, by all accounts, the systems aimed at helping the poor are weaker than they once were. Parrott has written that, even though the number of unemployed people in New York City essentially doubled from 2008 to 2012, the number receiving Temporary Assistance remained relatively constant.
Despite this, there has been little discussion of welfare and other assistance programs. “People are afraid they’ll be seen as encouraging the public assistance roles to rise for its own sake,” Parrott says.
In the spring, Thompson offered a plan to help reduce poverty that included improved job training and improved access to affordable health care and childcare, as well as effort to fight childhood hunger. De Blasio would improve outreach for various assistance programs and streamline the application process. Friedman thinks such efforts could make a difference. “Having a strong social safety net is a crucial first step” in preventing more people from sliding deeper into poverty,” he says.
Right now, with politicians and media focused on the candidates in the Democratic primary–and the largely liberal voters who will choose between them––New York City seems to have evolved away from prevailing attitudes of the Bloomberg years.
“New Yorkers are not buying the argument that the way to help small business and create jobs is to cut regulation and give tax breaks,” Rankin says. Instead, she continues, they have come to realize that “if you want businesses to thrive, you want people who have money to spend.”
Others think the political winds may shift by November or when a new mayor comes to office. “At the end of the day,” says Petro, “most voters are probably still going to care about taxes, picking up the trash and crime.”
Source
Unemployed Take Their Case to Fed Officials at Jackson Hole
Reuters - August 23, 2014, by Michael Flahery - Reginald Rounds was among those present at the Federal Reserve's high-...
Reuters - August 23, 2014, by Michael Flahery - Reginald Rounds was among those present at the Federal Reserve's high-flying monetary conference here, enjoying the chance to button hole two top officials of the U.S. central bank.
The St. Louis resident is neither an economist nor a central banker. He's a 57-year-old unemployed worker, who said he is trained in the green technology field and can't find a job.
He was among a group of activists who gathered on the sidelines of the Fed's annual symposium wearing green t-shirts with "What Recovery?" on the front and a chart depicting sluggish U.S. wage growth on the back.
"From the world where I reside, there is no recovery. We need a boost. We need a jump start," said Rounds. "The key is jobs creation."
The ten activists, most of whom were unemployed and seeking jobs, were sent as emissaries for a coalition of advocacy groups that has launched an unusual campaign from the left to press the U.S. central bank to keep monetary policy easy.
The coalition, consisting of more than 70 organizations, released an open letter to Fed officials earlier this week urging them to hold off on interest rate hikes until wages were rising more swiftly.
While small in number, the activists managed to get a great deal of face time with senior officials. On Thursday, they spoke with the host of the conference, Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George, for two hours.
On Friday, Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer stepped out of the conference to spend ten minutes to listen to their plight.
Source
Influence, the power to change
Clad in a “Stand With Black Women” shirt, Mercedes Fulbright, the Texas State Coordinator at Local Progress, commanded...
Clad in a “Stand With Black Women” shirt, Mercedes Fulbright, the Texas State Coordinator at Local Progress, commanded attention during her engagement entitled, Deserving and Entitled; Engaging in Public Policy to Empower People, as part of the annual Speaking Truth To Power community activism seminar at Friendship West Baptist Church, June 29.
Read the full article here.
Silicon Valley part-time workers file petition to work more hours
Silicon Valley part-time workers file petition to work more hours
San Jose labor advocates, religious leaders and hourly workers on Tuesday submitted to city officials a proposed ballot...
San Jose labor advocates, religious leaders and hourly workers on Tuesday submitted to city officials a proposed ballot measure that would force large and mid-size companies to offer their part-time employees more hours before hiring additional temps.
Organizers submitted more than 34,700 signatures to place the Opportunity to Work Initiative on the city’s November ballot, city officials said. At least 18,852 valid signatures, as verified by the county’s Registrar of Voters, are required.
If approved by voters, the initiative would apply to all companies with more than 35 employees.
The initiative is the latest effort of the Silicon Valley Rising movement, which is trying to address the region’s growing affordability crisis for low-wage earners. Community leaders and coalition members have also campaigned for affordable housing and minimum wage increases.
“This is another step toward framing more properly the questions of the wage gap and wealth gap in Silicon Valley,” said the Rev. Jon Pedigo, board member of the Silicon Valley Rising coalition and pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in East San Jose. “We see this as a moral issue, and we see this as a unifying issue where everyone will win.”
Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, some of the biggest names in tech, have proudly touted the fact that they have done aways with gender pay gap. But that doesn't mean the tech industry overall is suddenly paying men and women equally across the board. Hired
One-third of San Jose workers earn less than the average annual rent for a one-bedroom home in the city, and families are increasingly struggling to make ends meet, according to an April report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Working Partnerships USA and the Fair Workweek Initiative.
“We’ve reached a crisis point,” Pedigo said. “There are so many people every day that are displaced.”
More than 40 percent of the estimated 162,000 people who work hourly jobs in San Jose rely on part-time work or variable schedules for their income, the report said.
Variable work schedules cause workers' incomes to fluctuate monthly, making it harder for earners to consistently support their families and pay rent. The burden falls hardest on women and minorities. More than 60 percent of hourly workers are women, according to the report. Almost 70 percent are people of color.
Alejandra Mejia, 29, makes $12 an hour as a part-time manager at a McDonald’s in San Jose. A single mother of three, Mejia depends on her monthly income to feed her kids.
The four of them live in a single room in a friend’s house. She can’t afford her own place, and she can’t depend on receiving a consistent monthly income. Over the past eight years, her weekly shifts have fluctuated — usually between 20 and 30 hours per week.
Mejia asked her boss for more work hours. Last week, the restaurant hired new people and gave Mejia only eight hours. Mejia will make $400 this month, almost $200 less than the average monthly income she depends on.
“I’m assuming I’m going to get money to support my kids, to feed my kids and to pay my rent,” Mejia said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do this month.”
Large companies consistently fail to treat employees like Mejia as people, as opposed to “cogs in a wheel,” Pedigo said. He called their choice to spread wages among part-time employees instead of hiring full-time workers “reprehensible.”
“We have a choice we have to make about how we move forward,” Pedigo said. “Do we move forward together based on the common good, or do we move forward based on the bottom line and the profit margin?”
By Jessica Floum
Source
13 hours ago
13 hours ago