J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, and More Just Stopped Using âOn-Callâ Scheduling
J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, and More Just Stopped Using âOn-Callâ Scheduling
Several major retailers have in recent weeks relieved their workers from having to spend their mornings waiting for...
Several major retailers have in recent weeks relieved their workers from having to spend their mornings waiting for their boss to tell them if and when to show up for work.
J. Crew recently joined a group of several other top retail chains in dropping on-call schedulingâthe system that requires workers to make themselves available for a shift with no guarantee of actually getting any clocked hours. Under on-call scheduling, workers generally must be ready to be called in for a shift just a few hours beforehand, and often that meant wasting valuable time by not being called in at all. In addition to J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, Gap, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Victoriaâs Secret, and various affiliated brands, have announced that theyâre phasing out on-call nationwide.
The abandonment of on-call at these high-profile chainsâaffecting roughly 239,000 retail sales workers, according to the Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI)ârepresents growing backlash against the erosion of workersâ autonomy in low-wage service sectors. The pressure for reform has been stoked by media scrutiny, labor protests, and litigation, and an investigation into on-call scheduling in New York retail stores by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
But the fight for fair labor practices isnât over in retail. Carrie Gleason, director of the FWI, a project of the advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy, says nominally phasing out on-call at a workplace may simply lead to a âwhack-a-mole situation,â pushing managers to find other ways to drive workers into erratic and unstable schedules. Your supervisor might not call you in two hours before a shift starts, but might still abruptly cancel your pre-scheduled shift, or text on an âoffâ day to pressure you to sub for a coworker. Some workplaces might have a set start time for shifts, but then pile on on-call extended hours, so the workday expands unexpectedly. Across the service sectors, Gleason says, âthereâs not a real commitment around standards around what workers experience as a predictable schedule.â
Nationwide two-thirds of food service workers and over half of retail workers have at most a weekâs notice of their schedules. Part-timers and black and Latino workers disproportionately work irregular schedules.
According to National Womenâs Law Center, over half of workers surveyedÂ
ï»żâwork nonstandard schedules involuntarily because they could not find another job or âit is the nature of the job.ââ The ânature of the jobâ reflects the nature of our current economy, which has redefined labor as a sellerâs market for employers, while union power and labor protections have disintegrated.
FWI campaigns both for stronger regulation and industry-led reforms. It presses for âhigh-road workweeks,â under which workers and employersnegotiate equitable scheduling systems, which can streamline operations and reduce turnover, while giving workers more predictable hours, along with flexibility to change schedules on a fair, voluntary basis. (Yet thereâs good reason for skepticism about voluntary corporate âsocial responsibilityâ: in a recent study of Starbucksâs scheduling reforms, workers nationwide reported irregular and unpredictable shifts, despite the companyâs promises of more humane schedules.)
On the regulatory front, as reported previously, some state laws and San Franciscoâs new Retail Workers Bill of Rights provide reporting time pay(compensation for unplanned shift changes), and safeguards for stable hours.
California, New York, and other states have recentlyintroduced fair-scheduling legislation, including reforms that provide workers with negotiating mechanisms at work to make scheduling procedures more democratic, and limits on consecutive hourly work shifts.
Nationally, the proposed Schedules That Work Act would provide similar protections for advanced notice, reporting time pay and the right to bargain schedule changes.
The basic principle that drives labor advocates is predictability in both time and earnings, which counterbalances the service industry trend toward precarious low-wage jobs, pushing workers into part-time, temporary, or unstable contract work.
ï»żÂ The opportunity cost of abusive schedules drives financial insecurity, impedes career advancement, and hurts families. Erratic hours can interfere with childcare arrangements and medical care, and are linked to increased marital strain and long-term problems with childrenâs behavioral development.
Sometimes, itâs just humiliating. Like when Mary Colemangot sent home from a shift at Popeyes and ended up effectively paying not to work. As a campaigner with FWI, the grandmother described the experience as a theft of precious time and wages: âWhen I get to work only to be sent home again, I lose money because I have to pay for my bus fare and hours of time traveling without any pay for the day.â Under a reporting time pay system, however, she might instead have been reimbursed for showing up, instead of bearing the cost of her bossâs arbitrary decisions.
âThe idea is that if you need this level of flexibility for your workforce, thatâs something that has value, being able to have a nimble workforce thatâs ready when you need them,â Gleason says. In fact, honoring the workersâ overall role in an organization, not just hours clocked, is akin to the salary system. White-collar professionals often voluntarily exceed a 40-hour workweek and feel duly rewarded with their annual compensation package.
A fairer schedule system isnât difficult to imagine if we start with the premise of honoring workersâ time in terms commensurate with the value of what theyâre expected to produceâwhether itâs impeccable service at peak-demand time, or a good cappuccino. And thatâs why unions and other worker-led organizations, which understand a jobâs real meaning in the context of workersâ lives, have historically been instrumental in shaping wage structures through collective bargaining. Though unions have withered, smart policy changes and grassroots organizing networks are carving out more autonomy and control for labor over the course of a workday.
The byzantine, unstable scheduling systems that dominate low-wage industries arenât really âthe natureâ of todayâs jobs so much as the result of a society that deeply undervalues workersâ lives, whether thatâs the value of a parentâs time with her children, or the time invested in a college degree. In a âjust in timeâ economy, employers put a premium on consumer convenience and business logistics. But as boundaries blur between work and home, the ânew economyâ challenges workers to finally reclaim their stolen time.
Source: The Nation
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Brett Kavanaugh's 2nd accuser contacted by the FBI: Lawyer
Brett Kavanaugh's 2nd accuser contacted by the FBI: Lawyer
With only a week to conduct its high-stakes investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett...
With only a week to conduct its high-stakes investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, the FBI has already contacted the second woman to accuse the Supreme Court nominee, her lawyer said.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Quit Your Job and Go to Work
This spring, Michanne was striding out of a San Francisco apartment lobby in her Google Express jacket, fresh off...
This spring, Michanne was striding out of a San Francisco apartment lobby in her Google Express jacket, fresh off delivering a mirror. Her van beckoned at the curb. It was branded in Googleâs playful primary colors and logo, and on the side was the image of a package getting dropped from a parachute, easy-peasy. Michanneâs job was to make same-day, seamless deliveries of bottled water and kitty litter for Google Express, but she doesnât actually work for Google Expressââânot directly, anyway. If you looked carefully, just below the van door, a few small, gray letters spelled out something most people didnât realize: this vehicle wasnât Googleâs after all. It belonged to a company called 1â800Courier.
That day had actually been a good one. Michanne, who is 27, had worked the full eight hour shift that sheâd been scheduled by 1â800Courierâââone of several companies that delivers for Google Express in the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York City. But full days like that were becoming rare. (She didnât want to use her last name for privacy reasons.)
When I called her back a month later and asked her to rate her job from 1 to 10, she was more upfront about her level of annoyance: âIf 1 is a nightmare, Iâm like a 1.5.â In fact, sheâd quit.
Her complaint came down to this: she says 1â800Courier had verbally assured her full-time work when she started with the company back in October. It was a paycheck the new mother was counting on, one that didnât leave her time to work another job. And in the companyâs scheduling app she was technically scheduled for 40 hours a week for weeks in advance.
Yet, increasingly, her actual hours were decided the day of work. Michanne had to check her email an hour and a half before her first shift started to see if she would actually get to work the hours sheâd been allotted. Many times she did not. She was a supposedly full-time employee who was, effectively, on-call. Sheâd put aside the day so she could work, but when it turned out they didnât need her, that meant no workâââand no pay.
In April, an email plunked into Michanneâs inbox, describing what she says was business as usual:
Even when she got the go-ahead to turn up for the day, Michanneâs shifts would often be cut once she was already at work. Around 5 p.m., as she ate in her van during an hour-long meal break, she would frequently get a call from the dispatcher, telling her to go home early without working her scheduled second shift. Sheâd still get paid somethingâ California law mandates payment of between two hour and four hours of âreporting timeâ depending on the length of a cancelled shift. But it was still a huge issue: Although she was expected to be on-call for 40 hours a week, shift changes meant she was regularly dipping down to 25 hours of paid work, and even once as low as 17 hours, she recalls. At $13 an hour, she was hoping for $520 of work each weekâââbut 17 hours is just $221.
Google pointed questions towards its contractor, which manages all scheduling for its deliveries. 1â800Courierâs California Director of Operations David Finney said that across the industry, the delivery business slows down after the holidays. âI personally empathize with that,â he said about employees whose hours get cut. âBut at the same time, look at any industry in the state of Californiaâââespecially in the service industryâââand some days itâs just like âHey, weâre sorry, we donât need you to come in.ââ
Another employee of 1â800Courier, who asked to remain anonymous so as to not irk the company, says the scheduling problems were sometimes bad for the company, too. Back in January and February, when business seemed especially slow, this worker would clock in and sit in the delivery car near the hub for hours, waiting to be dispatched. âIâd have movies picked out to watch, I got a pillow and took naps, and had stuff I wanted to read and write. Iâm getting paid to do nothing. But I wouldnât callÂ
[dispatch] and say, âI need a route.â It didnât bother me at all.â
What did bother the Netflix-watching worker was this: more than 10 times during seven months on the job, their first shift was cut while it was already happening. But the worker was booked on to a second shift, and was made to wait around until that started. Since driving the vehicle back to the parking lot in Silicon Valley from the San Francisco dispatch hub would eat up most of the time, the worker would often drive to the movies or the mall in the city to kill time until the second shift. (The worker once got written up for taking the vehicle to Safeway during that timeâââsaying they expected employees to just wait in the vehicle for the next shift, or drive it back to the Silicon Valley lot.)
The complaint is echoed by another former 1â800Courier worker who recently quit: âI was really getting irritated. They said âitâs not as high demand right now, we donât have a lot of orders coming through, so weâre cutting the hours.ââ A couple times, while the worker was in a carpool on the way to work, the dispatcher would call and say, âOh, we removed you from the 12â5 window, you can just work for 5:30 to 10. Iâd just go home and say âRemove me from the last window.ââ The current driver says things have picked up lately, especially after a major lay-off of drivers in March that has given those who remain more work to do. 1-800's David Finney wouldnât confirm a layoff, but said drivers are now regularly working overtime hours.
The whole idea behind the on-demand economyâââtouch-of-a-button delivery, often guaranteed within minutesâââcreates the potential for a sudden rush or dearth of customers at any moment. So how does a company make sure that the right amount of workers are around at the moment it needs them to be?
Youâd think that this is something that Google, the emperor of analytics, might be able to figure out. But the company it had chosen to organize the deliveries, 1â800Courier, had not. Sometimes workers lucked out and watched movies in their cars, but more often they suffered for their employerâs failure. There may have been an abundance of employees scheduled for shifts, but ultimately the people were just as on-demand as the Costco kitty litter they delivered.
Outside of Silicon Valley, American labor is looking a lot like this already. The old, sanctified status of âemployeeâ is getting egged in the face. The days of blue-collar job, suburban tract home, Disney vacay, and pension awaiting at the end of the 9â5 rainbow looks like a curious blip on the way to a more profit-maximized, capitalist future. Itâs the age of the precariat: unions are nearly kaput, many will only know pensions from history books, and most âat willâ workers can be fired as easily as Uber can kick its drivers off the app. Now many old titans of industry have latched onto this idea of on-call shift workâââwhich many call âjust-in-time scheduling,ââââa grayish labor abuse tailored for the age of the text message that has lawmakers hustling to curb it.
Since the recession, millions of workers have taken part-time gigs when theyâd prefer to have full-time onesâââespecially in hospitality and retail. And those part-time jobs increasingly jerk the workers around: In a University of Chicago study of young workers in hourly jobs, 41 percent said they got their shifts a week or less in advance. It gets worse from there: as a recent story in Harperâs Magazine laid out, companies use software to track customer flow down to the minute; resulting in managers who ask workers to be on call for work shifts, or clock out while on the job and hang around without pay during slow times to see if the workflow will pick up. Sarah Leberstein is a senior staff attorney from the National Employment Law Project, which has been monitoring the hellish scheduling practices. âThe companies want to unload all the flexibility onto the workers, but workers canât afford to live in such a state of flux.â
This spring, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters to 13 national retailers including Urban Outfitters to Target to Gap to Sears, questioning them about using software tracking systems and whether they made employees get the go-ahead for work less than a day before a shift:
Re: Request for Information Regarding âon call shiftsâ
Our office has received reports that a growing number of employers, particularly in the retail industry, require their hourly workers to work what are sometimes known as âon call shiftsââââthat is, requiring their employees to call in to work just a few hours in advance, or the night before, to determine whether the worker needs to appear for work that day or the next. If the employee is told that his or her services are not needed, the employee will receive no pay for that day, despite being required to be available to appear on the job site the next day or even just a few hours later on the same day. For many workers, that is too little time to make arrangements for family needs, let alone to find an alternative source of income to compensate for the lost pay.
If âjust-in-time schedulingâ sounds a whole lot like on-demand work, thatâs because it is.
Itâs not just in America that this practice is increasing. In Europe, itâs called the âzero hourâ jobâââyouâre promised work, but guaranteed nothing. And these contracts have been causing controversy in Britain ever since the financial crisis, which saw a dramatic rise in the number of just-in-time jobs as employers offloaded their risks onto the workforce. Today, almost 2 million jobs in the U.K. are now on-call. In some cases, workers are denied the benefits of full-time employees, or are prevented from finding other paying gigs without the permission of their employerâââeven if that employer cancels all of their shifts.
And itâs not just service industry jobs: zero hours have spread into other areas of the British economy, too. Recent figures suggest 13 percent of all healthcare workers and 10 percent of all education jobs are now in the same kind of hole that Michanne found herself in. (Finney from 1â800 said he does not consider the companyâs scheduling to fall into the âjust-in-timeâ trend.)
âThe writing on the wall is weâre going to see more of an Uber and Lyft approach to workforce management in more industries,â says Carrie Gleason from the Center for Popular Democracy, a Brooklyn-based labor and social justice nonprofit. âYou can see that in the just-in-time schedulingâââyou only want to pay for people when theyâre doing the most productive work. The cost of doing business is put on the worker, so any time theyâre not producing a car fare or a retail sale, itâs the worker paying for that time, not the company.â
On-demand companies pitch themselves as ultimate disrupters, breaking free of stuffy, old-world straitjackets of work. For many companies in this exploding area, there are no zero hour jobsâââbecause the jobs have no set hours at all. The workers are independent contractors, not employees, and, at many companies, can log into work when they choose. In fact, Silicon Valleyâs Chief Optimism Officer, Marc Andreessenâââthe venture capitalist who is funding Lyft and Instacart to build our app-based freelancer future ârecently waved away a reporterâs comment about the precarious app workers in the New Yorker:âMaybe thereâs an alternate way of living,â he said. âA free-form life where you press the button and get work when you want to.â
It also saves companies payroll taxes, wages, benefitsâââand the headache of scheduling workers. (âWhat other job out there can you just turn it on when you want to start and off when you want to stopâââwhenever you feel like it?â asked Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in his five-year company anniversaryspeech last week.)
âUber doesnât care if 100 or 200 are reporting to work because Uber will get the same percentage of the fareâ says Leberstein, the National Employment Law Project attorney. âTheyâre shifting the burden of deciding whether thereâs enough work onto the workers.â Many companies go so far as to give drivers a weekly breakdown on the most high-earning hoursâââin fact, there are entire apps dedicated to helping workers track that for themselves.
Companies claim these freedom-loving toilers will flee the moment theyâre pinned down by shifts or bureaucracy. Their own internal studies suggest this is true: one Uber-commissioned poll of drivers showed more than 70 percent preferred to be their own boss rather than work a 9-to-5. About 50 percent of Lyftâs drivers drive five hours a week or less. A survey by the Freelancerâs Union found 42 percent went freelance to have more flexibility in their schedule.
âIf everybody has to work a certain amount of hours, then it would put the model at risk because then it would be a very rigid model,â says Pascal Levy-Garboua, the head of business at Checkr, and organizer of a conference about the on-demand economy held in San Francisco last month. He has driven for Lyft in the past anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week to see how it works for himselfâââthen goes months without driving at all. âThat would be the opposite of on-demand. Demand and supply are elastic, and the model works because thereâs an equilibrium. If supplyââââthe industryâs term for what the rest of the world usually calls âworkersâââââis not elastic, the model breaks.â
Yet a survey of more than 1,000 workers released last month by Requests for Startups, a tech-booster newsletter, popped a hole in what had been the great selling point of contract work in the new economy:
Work hours are demand-dependent despite the touted schedule flexibility. Although schedule flexibility is the #1 stated reason for joining a company as a contractor, âPeak hours / demandâ ranked highest amongst influencers of their work schedules, with nearly 50% selecting it as a very important influencer (âMy Familyâ was the 2nd highest at 35%). This influence is particularly glaring when comparing current vs. ideal hours of ridesharing respondents, whose responses suggest that their ideal working hours arenât too far off from the traditional 9â5.
Among the top reasons for leaving the job were insufficient pay (43 percent) andâââspoiler alert for industry cheerleadersâââinsufficient flexibility (26 percent). In short, while the apps may be good for people who have another job and merely want to pad their income, if workers want to make a living on these apps, they actually have little flexibilityâââthey need to work full-time or more, and they better be signed into work during the peak times.
The on-demand workplace is not one-size-fits-all: while complete flexibility works well for driving services with a 24-hour demand and a ready stable of drivers, companies dependent on burritos and Thai take-out reaching hungry customers have to be a bit more organized about who is on hand at meal times.
To get around this problem, many companies have started doing to their independent contractors exactly what 1-800Courier does to its employees: schedule them onto shifts.
At Postmates, an on-demand food delivery company, contractors sign up the week before for shifts in down-to-the-hour incrementsâââthose who confirm their availability are offered potential jobs first, meaning they can end up making substantially more than those hopping on the app to work spontaneously. As further motivation, Postmates also guarantees couriers who sign up for shifts a minimum of $15 an hour on weekendsâââif their jobs donât add up to that, Postmates will pay them directly.
Scheduling contractors is a legally gray thing to doâââsince shifts are one of the IRSâ criteria in determining that a worker is an employee. (Indeed, Postmates, like many companies, is currently facing a lawsuit over classifying the couriers as contractors.)
Postmates says they arenât shifts, exactly: workers arenât bound to the hours they pre-selectâââthey could just not sign into the app during the shift. Yet there are consequences. If they miss five of their allotted hours in a week, theyâll be suspended from work for 48 hours, as this email forwarded by one courier warns:
Â
In order to avoid banishment, Postmates contractors ask for swaps on the app, much like employees have to do when they canât make a shift.
And, like ridesharing companies, Postmates has another mechanism to get unscheduled contractors out on the road during peak times: its own surge-pricing model called âblitzes.â While the courierâs take of the delivery fee always stays the same â80 percentâââblitzes increase that fee two or even three times the usual amount.
Postmates also polices the workers once signed in: one courier in New York City who asked not to be named (he didnât want to get kicked off the app) showed me texts from the company: sometimes Postmates asks him why heâs not accepting more jobs, sometimes it commands him to stop only accepting jobs that he determines will be worth his time, and sometimes it suspends him temporarily from the app entirely. A Postmates spokeswoman says the real-time texts are aimed at getting feedback on why certain jobs arenât attractive to couriers.
The take-away: as traditional jobs are looking more on-demand, on-demand contractor ones arenât looking as flexible as they claim.
So where does that leave us? Employment and contractor labor models already seem to be converging at some sort of semi-flexible purgatory.
In the eyes of those who cry that companies like Uber or Lyft or Postmates are getting rich off exploiting a labor loopholeâââblithely skipping out of paying wages, benefits, and expenses like gas because they classify workers as freelancersâcompanies like 1â800Courier are actually playing the good guy. (Or at least the less evil guy.) The company has official employees which it pays $12.50 to $13 an hour, plus workerâs comp, overtime, and expenses, including gas and the occasional parking ticket.
âI do want to go on the record to say we try really hard to do right by our employees,â Finney from 1â800Courier says. âWeâre not going to pass that cost onto someone else so we can save a buck⊠Weâre practically one of the only companies in the state of California that uses the employee model. Itâs the right thing to do, and, in the long run, it will be the best solution because weâll be able to provide the best service because we have employees. With independent contractors, thereâs a lot of control you give up because you canât tell independent contractors what to do.â
Still, 1â800Courier's own problems show that employers in the on-demand economy have to be adept at managing their workflow. Otherwise theyâll lose money on wasted labor when thereâs low demand, or be caught short when thereâs a sudden surge.
This is not impossible. Already some on-demand companies claim to have figured it out.
One vocal proponent of employees in the industry is Managed by Qâs CEO Dan Teran, who has written about the decision to employ its workers to clean and manage offices in New York City. Their workers get to choose their work days and receive a steady schedule, and the company books them at worksites that are on convenient subway routes from their home or other job sites. Still, the company gets off easy since most of the workflow is pre-determined and consistent week to week.
The San Francisco food service Munchery has been also held up as one of the good guys in the new push-button delivery businessâââone of a short list that employs its couriers. One San Francisco bike messenger named Jennifer told me Munchery pays $18-an-hour plus tips from a collective tip poolâââmuch higher than minimum wage. Still, Munchery experienced its own trip-ups. Jennifer told me that after she started working for them at the beginning of the year, there were too many messengers working the four-and-a-half hour dinner delivery window. âThey were just sitting around waiting. I was told that it had been really slow for many months,â she says.
Around the end of January, Jennifer says Munchery laid off 11 bike messengers. (CEO Tri Tran would not give details of the companyâs staffing, but says the layoffs were not a huge correction considering the size of his payroll: âTen people we need to shift aroundâââthatâs a very small number for the workforce we have.â) Munchery also gets out ahead of its demand by putting parameters on how instantaneously âon-demandâ it can be: outside of San Franciscoâs city limits, you have to have ordered dinner by 2:00 in the afternoon, and choose an hour-long delivery window.
The workflow problems seem to be resolved for now. Since the layoffs, Jennifer says sheâs delivered a steady flow of meals with little loafing.
Still, Munchery has a strong advantage: people generally eat dinner at a predictable time. Consistency is a harder promise in truly in-the-moment businesses, like Uber and Lyft, Postmates, or Google Express. How can employees ever be scheduled with perfect accuracy in those businesses? Does an hourly employee have to work rigid shifts?
Shannon Liss-Riordan is a Boston-based labor attorney suing many on-demand companies over their attempts to classify workers as contractors. She says flexible shifts arenât incompatible with employee status: âThatâs total BS. Employees can have flexible work schedules, employers are doing that all the time. All of these arguments being made are real red herrings that theyâre trying to throw out there. Itâs part of the whole âOh, the workers love this, because they love the flexibility.â You can give them flexibility, andpay their workerâs comp. It doesnât have to be one or the other.â She cites one precedent-setting California case about cucumber growers who were found in California Supreme Court to be employees, even though they could set their own hours.
Of course, salaried, white-collar workersâââwho can call their own shots and rarely earn overtimeâââoften have a great deal in flexibility at work. Thatâs harder for employees getting paid by the hour. Could part-time employees log in and out of work willy nilly, paid by the hours they actually work? Highly unlikely. If companies have to pony up for the workers, thereâs little benefit to them for allowing workers to come and go as they please. Shelby Clark, executive director of Peers, which helps on-demand workers find and manage their workload, has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the base cost of having employees. Companies only start recovering their employee costs if workers are putting in a baseline of hours, but not overtime, âso youâd probably have a floor and a cap [on hours], and then not more than eight hours a day. Youâd start to see a lot of constraints that defeat why people work in the sharing economy.â
Thatâs exactly what the disgruntled New York City Postmates courier told me. Despite getting pestered by texts to accept more jobs and bad tips, he explained why he stayed: âThe only thing I like about this job is the freedom and flexibility.â Take away that, and heâd do what companies fear the most, especially as the competition for these workers grows: heâd never sign in for work again.
Which was exactly what Michanne at 1-800Courier did, after being forced to be flexible when she wanted stable work. In late April, she quit. Ironically, even though she was an employee, her reasons for leaving were the same as all those on-demand workers who were surveyed: lack of flexibility and low pay. She now works at a car dealership, 9-to-6.
It appears 1â800, on the other hand, is only ramping up. In the last month, the company has blanketed Craigslist with job ads for Google Express drivers to deliver for a ânew upscale concierge service,â âa really cool companyâ to deliver retail items to homes and businesses around Silicon Valley. âIt makes me wonder why they fired all those people, if theyâre just going turn around and hire more,â the current employee told me while sitting in her van waitingÂ
for a second shift to begin last week. âJust so you can fire everyone again?â
Among the listed perks in the ad? âStable schedulesâ and âmultiple shift choices.â
Source: Mic
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El Centro de Democracia Popular crea fondo para afectados por MarĂa
El Centro de Democracia Popular crea fondo para afectados por MarĂa
The Center for Popular Democracy established the Community Hurricane Relief and Recovery Community Fund to assist...
The Center for Popular Democracy established the Community Hurricane Relief and Recovery Community Fund to assist Puerto Rico's most vulnerable communities.Tania Rosario MĂ©ndez, executive director of Taller Salud and affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy, said the fund will support organizations working on the ground with communities on the island, mainly low-income communities.
Read the full article here.
Islas freed pending deportation appeal; âdouble victoryâ as Malloy signs TRUST Act into law
New Haven Register â July 20, 2013, by Luther Turmelle - Jose Maria Islas returned to Connecticut Friday, after the...
New Haven Register â July 20, 2013, by Luther Turmelle - Jose Maria Islas returned to Connecticut Friday, after the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency released him from a Massachusetts jail pending his appeal of a deportation order.
A tired but happy Islas stood on the steps of the New Haven Peopleâs Center Friday evening as a small group of supporters held a rally in his honor. Islas, who has been in the United States since 2005 after entering the country illegally, began his day at a detention center in Boston with other undocumented immigrants the United States is seeking to deport
Megan Fountain, a volunteer with Unidad Latina en Accion, credited the public pressure on ICE officials created by more than 3,000 of Islasâ supporters including U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both D-Conn.
âThis movement started small and just got bigger and bigger,â Fountain said.
Islasâ case is being heard by the federal Department of Justiceâs Board of Immigration Appeals. If the board declines to overturn efforts to deport Islas, the case will then be taken to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Fountain said.
Islasâ release came on the same day Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools or (TRUST) Act into law. The TRUST Act aims to discourage law enforcement officials from detaining undocumented immigrants when they report crime, either as witnesses or victims, so they may do so without fear of deportation. The act does so by placing limits on the federal Secure Communities program, which requires local and state law enforcement officials to share biometric information such as fingerprints and immigration status of detained individuals.
âThe governor has been a longtime supporter of comprehensive immigration reform,â Andrew Doba, a spokesman for Malloy said Friday. âAll this does is extend to the local level what has been the policy of state law enforcement.â
Charges of conspiracy to commit robbery against Islas were dropped after witnesses put him elsewhere at the time of an incident in Hamden last year. Other lesser charges have been wiped from his record after he was granted accelerated rehabilitation.
Islas, who has a wife and child living in Mexico, said he came to America âout of economic necessity.â
âI did it because my mother was sick,â he said.
Ana Maria Rivera, a legal and policy analyst, called Malloyâs signing the TRUST Act and Islasâ release âa double victory.â But she said that with the ongoing federal immigration debate in Washington, those who seek to reform the law must not become complacent.
âMany advocate that increased border militarization must be part of the path to immigration,â Rivera said.
Islas, his sister, Juana, and her family will head to the nationâs capital Monday to meet with federal lawmakers about immigration reform and participate in a series of rallies with groups from all over the country.
âOther people facing detention and deportation must keep fighting,â Juana Islas Santiago said.
Herman Zuniga, director of Comunidad de Inmigrantes de East Haven, called the Obama administration âthe worst in United States historyâ in terms of immigration issues. Zunigaâs organization represents the Ecuadorean community in East Haven.
âEverybody has the right to choose where they live, where they work,â Zuniga said. âDeportation in not the solution.â
Fountain said the Obama administration has set up a quota system to deport 500,000 undocumented immigrants from the United States each year.
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Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to...
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to rescind the pay of a key senior executive.
The demands came just one day after Chief Executive John Stumpf resigned from a Federal Reserve advisory panel.
Senators had pushed for Stumpf not to be reappointed, saying it was inappropriate for someone who presided over improper sales tactics to be giving advice to an agency involved with bank regulation.
Stumpf has been under intense fire since the bank this month agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into an aggressive sales culture that led bank employees to open as many as 2 million accounts that customers didnât authorize.
The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges, and some senators have called for a Labor Department investigation into whether the bank failed to pay employees overtime when they worked late nights and weekend to meet sales quotas.
A group of Senate Democrats continued to attack Wells Fargo on Friday, publicly calling on Stumpf to stop enforcing mandatory arbitration clauses in the agreements for customer accounts that were not authorized.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had pressed Stumpf on the matter at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, arguing that it was unfair not to allow those customers the ability to file lawsuits against the bank.
Stumpf said at the time that he would have to âtalk to my legal team.â
Brown said Friday that he and his colleagues want relief for bank customers and more answers from Wells Fargo.
âIf Wells Fargo really does want to look out for the customers, if they really are in fact sorry, as the CEO said, for these unauthorized accounts, they ought to let the court system work if these people who were wronged want to bring suit,â he said.
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
The Democrats sent a letter to Stumpf on Friday, requesting more information about the arbitration clauses, including how many customer complaints about fake accounts were forced into arbitration proceedings.
Brown was among those writing to Stumpf, along with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, an activist investment group that is part of the Change to Win union federation wrote to Wells Fargoâs board, asking it to rescind at least part of the compensation earned by the executive who oversaw the employees who opened unauthorized customer accounts.
The letter from CtW Investment Group, which is a Wells Fargo shareholder, adds to the pressure on the bank to claw back some of the approximately $100 million earned by Carrie Tolstedt, the companyâs former head of community banking.
Wells Fargoâs stock has declined by about 8% since the settlement was announced on Sept. 8.
On Thursday, five senators called for Stumpf not to be reappointed to the Federal Advisory Council, a 12-member body that meets four times a year with the Fedâs Board of Governors to discuss banking and economic matters.
Stumpf had represented the Fedâs San Francisco district, where Wells Fargo is based, since 2015.
He âmade a personal decision to resignâ and notified the Fed on Thursday, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Dunn said.
âHis top priority is leading Wells Fargo,â she said.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, organized the letter to the head of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco asking that Stump not be reappointed to the advisory council when his term expires on Dec. 31.
âIt would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for âunfairâ and âabusiveâ practices that placed consumers at financial risk,â they wrote.
The letter also was signed by Warren and Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon.
Their call was backed by Fed Up, a coalition of labor, community and liberal activist groups that has pushed to reduce the influence of bankers on Federal Reserve policies.
âCommercial banks already have too much influence within the Federal Reserve System,â the coalition said Thursday. The coalition also asked its members to sign a petition calling for Stumpâs âimmediate dismissalâ from the advisory panel.
âStumpf, as the CEO of a bank accused of âunfairâ and âabusiveâ practices, should have no role advising the Federal Reserveâs Board of Governors on policies affecting working families,â Fed Up said.
By Jim Puzzanghera
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Central Bankers to Confront Stock-Market Turmoil at Fedâs Annual Jackson Hole Retreat
Gathering at the mountain getaway in recent Augusts, the stewards of global currency have contended with the looming...
Gathering at the mountain getaway in recent Augusts, the stewards of global currency have contended with the looming collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, global deflation worries in 2010, serial Greek fiscal meltdowns and other dramas. This time, they confront a big disparity between the worldâs two largest economies, the U.S. and China.
The U.S. has recovered enough from the last financial crisis that Fed officials have been preparing to raise interest rates to prevent overheating down the road. But China appears to have lost economic momentum, driving the Peopleâs Bank of China to cut rates and take other measures to boost growth. Markets have responded to these conflicting forces with turbulence, creating new uncertainties for policy makers about the economic outlook.
Before this weekâs turmoil, Fed officials had signaled they might move as soon as next month to start lifting their benchmark interest rate from near zero, where it has been since December 2008. It was shaping up to be a tough decision even before the stock-market corrections around the globe. Now, the odds of a rate increase in September appear to have diminished, though a move is still possible if markets stabilize and new economic data show the U.S. economy is strengthening despite threats abroad.
New reports on Tuesday showed increases in U.S. consumer confidence and new home sales in August and July, respectively, reasons for Fed officials not to become too glum about the U.S. outlook.
âPrior to these market events in the last few days, I thought that this was about as close to a 50/50 call as you can get,â said former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder of the odds that the central bank would raise U.S. rates in September. If markets donât stabilize, he said, the Fed would likely hold off on a rate increase.
âIf the markets are in anything close to the sort of tizzy they have been in the last few days, then the Fed will not throw a match into the fireâ when it meets September 16-17, said Mr. Blinder, a Princeton University professor and friend of Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen.
Ms. Yellen will not be attending this yearâs Jackson Hole conference, but Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer is scheduled to deliver remarks there Saturday on inflation. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi wonât be there, but the ECB and many of the worldâs other central banks will be represented by senior officials. The meeting has included top central bankers from Turkey, Malta, Sweden, South Korea and beyond in the past.
It is a fraught moment for all of the worldâs central banks. Chinaâs repeated efforts to stimulate growth donât seem to be working. Chinaâs central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Tuesday and its stock market fell.
Many other economies are trapped in the middle of a global monetary tug of war between the two economic giants, especially emerging markets and commodity-producing countries. Their economies have been hit by Chinaâs slowdown. At the same time, their currencies have been declining against the dollar as the Fed prepares for higher rates. If central banks in places such as Brazil, South Africa or Russia try to stimulate their economies by cutting interest rates, they risk capital flight and potentially destabilizing currency depreciation. If they donât, they risk deep recessions.
One potential fault line that Fed officials are watching carefully: Heavy loads of U.S. dollar debt accumulated by local companies in emerging markets. Total corporate bonds outstanding in emerging markets have almost doubled since 2008 to $6.8 trillion, according to Institute of International Finance estimates. The share of this debt issued in U.S. dollars rose from less than 15% in 2008 to more than 40% in the first five months of 2015.
Those debts become harder to pay off as the dollar appreciates. It is up more than 7% against a broad basket of other currencies so far this year.
The central banks also face skepticism about the paths they are charting. âOur global economy is fixated on central banks and the latest utterance of the monetary authorities,â said Judy Shelton,senior fellow of the Atlas Network, a free-market think tank participating in a parallel conference critical of the Fed this week, also in Wyoming. The title of her panel, âWhat Happens if Central Bankers are Wrong?â
Central banks for the major developed economies, including the Fed, responded to the post-financial crisis period of slow economic growth and low inflation by pushing short-term interest rates to near zero and launching bond-buying programs to drive long-term interest rates down, too.
Many central bankers say the economy would have been in much worse shape, possibly a repeat of the Great Depression, without the support. Critics like Ms. Shelton say the policies failed to produce the higher inflation or faster growth desired.
As the Fed considers when to start raising rates, officials are getting pressure from several sides. While many free-market advocates would like the central bank to move, liberal activists plan to press the Fed this week to hold rates near zero to promote economic growth and more hiring.
âThe economy is too weak to warrant interest-rate hikes,â said Shawn Sebastian, policy analyst at the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning group, in a statement on Tuesday.
Academics donât provide clear direction. In competing newspaper opinion pieces this week, Harvard professors Martin Feldstein andLawrence Summers, who have served as economic advisers to Republicans and Democrats, respectively, argued for and against a Fed rate increase in September.
From the maelstrom, Fed officials are trying to respond to the unfolding economic outlook.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart on Monday said he still expects the central bank to raise rates this year, but he didnât say when. That marked a subtle shift since Aug. 4, when he told The Wall Street Journal he believed the economy was ready for a rate increasein September.
Current developments like âthe appreciation of the dollar, the devaluation of the Chinese currency and the further decline of oil prices are complicating factors in predicting the pace of growth,â Mr. Lockhart said Monday. But, he noted, âour baseline forecast at the Atlanta Fed is for moderate growth with continuing employment gains and a gradually rising rate of inflation.â
Source:Â The Wall Street Journal
Arrests Made At Protest Outside UES Home Of JPMorgan Chase Exec
Arrests Made At Protest Outside UES Home Of JPMorgan Chase Exec
Hundreds of people picketed outside of 1185 Park Ave. around 8 a.m. to deliver more than 100,000 petition signatures...
Hundreds of people picketed outside of 1185 Park Ave. around 8 a.m. to deliver more than 100,000 petition signatures demanding that JPMorgan Chase stop financing immigrant detention centers and private prisons, protest organizers said. The demonstration was organized by groups such as Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change and the Center for Popular Democracy.
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Black Unemployment Rate 2015: In Better Economy, African-Americans See Minimal Gains
International Business Times - March 8, 2014, by Aaron Morrison - Cyril Darensbourg has been unemployed for 10 years....
International Business Times - March 8, 2014, by Aaron Morrison - Cyril Darensbourg has been unemployed for 10 years. As shocking as he knows that sounds to those who donât know him personally, the 48-year-old native of New Orleans had enjoyed a 15-year career managing restaurants in Chicago and New York, after taking a chance on a dream and ending his third year of studying electrical engineering in Louisiana. Years of job-application submissions and temporary work here and there has persisted for far too long. Darensbourg is one of close to 2 million African-Americans in the U.S. who are currently unemployed and looking for work.
Across the American economy, the dominant story during the past several months has been a sustained recovery that resuscitated a dormant job market and the accompanying unemployment rate that has plunged below pre-Great Recession levels. But if better days are here for many workers, this feeling is shared to a lesser degree by African-Americans, whose unemployment rate is still considered high and has long been double the rate for whites. Among black working-age people, however, the unemployment rate since February 2014 has dropped more quickly than among nonblack workers.
On the surface, that improvement should signal a triumph, but it is accompanied by an asterisk, given the fact that nonblack workersâ unemployment rates fell much earlier and faster during the recovery. Government data indicates recent job creation has been less beneficial to African-American workers when compared with whites, Asians and Hispanics: Basically, blacks had more ground to make up and their labor-force representation is skewed toward lower-wage industries in which there are higher turnover rates, one study found.
These clear-cut differences mean that for people such as Darensbourg, who have been out of work for periods of several months or several years, other factors exaggerate the length of their unemployment. Many African-Americans find it hard to dismiss completely the role that race plays in their difficulty finding work, even with federal laws making discrimination illegal. Studies have found that even when black applicants possess qualifications that are on par with white applicants, variables as simple as their names or as complex as the breadth of their professional networks can many times hold them back.
âIâve never felt secure, in my entire adult life working,â said Darensbourg, who is now married with two kids and living with his family in a New York apartment. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 eliminated his management-level job at a restaurant located within the no-traffic zone, he was forced to look for work in other restaurants, which he said wouldnât pay him at his previous annual salary of nearly six figures.
âIâve been in disbelief,â said Darensbourg, a 6-foot-5-inch, 220-pound man who is often told his presence is at worst intimidating and at best unforgettable. During an interview for a job he was certain he would get, he recalled feeling his younger, white, female interviewer was put off by his size and confidence. âOver time, I didnât know what to do,â he said of the experience.
âPeople in my situation are giving up. They are just adapting their lives to where they are. Iâm not thinking about trying to buy a home or going on vacation. I donât know how retirement is going to work,â Darensbourg said.
Unemployment Among Blacks Still High
In February, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 10.4 percent, while the comparable rates for whites, Hispanics and Asians were 4.7 percent, 6.6 percent and 4.0 percent, in that order, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday. The national unemployment rate was 5.5 percent last month. Last year, 23.7 percent of those who are black and unemployed had attended some college, 15.4 percent had bachelorâs degrees and 4.5 percent had advanced degrees.
A 2014 study by the Young Invincibles, a nonpartisan education and economic opportunity advocacy group, found an African-American college graduate has the same job prospects as a white high-school dropout or a white person with a prison record. The study attributed the gap to racial discrimination.
The experience of joblessness for African-Americans can have a lasting effect on their economic mobility, according to the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal think tank in New York that released a report on black unemployment this week. It was prepared with the technical assistance of the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute in Washington. On an hourly basis during the past 15 years, black workersâ wages have fallen by 44 cents, while Hispanic and white workersâ wages have risen by 48 cents and 45 cents, respectively, according to the report. Black wealth has also shrunk, while Hispanic and white wealth has stabilized.
Since March 2010, black employment climbed by about 2.3 million jobs, a 15.0 percent increase, and the black employment-population ratio rose to 54.8 percent from 52.0 percent, according to government data. Over the same period, white employment climbed by about 3.8 million jobs, a 3.4 percent increase, and the employment-population ratio rose to 60.1 percent from 59.5 percent. Because whites had less ground to make up, the increase for blacks, while statistically significant, still wasnât large enough to suggest that they reaped more than a modest share of the gains in the economic recovery.
Most jobs that came back during the recovery, close to 45 percent, were lower-wage jobs, such as those in the retail and service industries, according to the Center for Popular Democracyâs report. Those industries employ 1.85 million more workers today than they did at the beginning of the recession. The data indicate African-American representation is skewed toward the lower-wage end, rather than toward either the mid-wage range or higher-wage end, where fewer jobs came back.
The center said the U.S. Federal Reserveâs recovery initiative to stimulate job creation through its monetary policies has been most beneficial to workers in higher-wage industries and to workers in regions of the U.S. where those jobs exist, such as on Wall Street. Even with the apparently gloomy outlook, economists say things are improving for black job seekers. âThe economic recovery is finally beginning to take hold,â said Valerie Wilson, the director of the Economic Policy Instituteâs Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. âThe rate of growth that weâre seeing now, this has only been happening for a year.â
Economists have stressed the Fedâs focus should be on genuine full employment. Thatâs been President Barack Obamaâs argument for addressing joblessness among all Americans. But critics have said this approach ignores structural reasons -- lower educational attainment and higher rates of criminal convictions -- for African-American joblessness that is more prone to fluctuation than whites. âAssuming that monetary policy continues to function in a way that allows the recovery to proceed, the prospects for finding a job should improve for African-Americans,â Wilson said.
Education Can Make A Difference (Usually)
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 Democracyâs study, the only proven solution to this problem are those Fed programs that ideally stimulate job creation for workers of all experience and skill levels. But that still has not been robust enough to help the broadest swath of African-American workers.
Tamica Thompson said she could use preferential hiring consideration, although she didnât believe she needed it before her long-term unemployment set in. Thompsonâs difficulty in finding a job puzzles her. A 30-year-old born to Jamaican immigrants in New York, Thompson joined the U.S. Army in 2002, right after she graduated from high school. She was stationed in South Korea, and left active duty four years later to earn a bachelorâs degree in health-service management from Berkeley College in New York. She later obtained a masterâs degree in public administration from Pace University in New York.
But even with those credentials and her military experience, Thompson has struggled to find a job that values her skill set. When she did interview for a promising job at a nonprofit development corporation -- for which the hiring manager told her she was the sole applicant -- she later discovered the position was given to someone else. She also worried that the formatting of her paper resume, which received a harsh critique from a job-placement counselor, was a factor in the length of her unemployment.
âI was unemployed for a good eight months until I found myself here,â Thompson said, referring to a stipend-supported internship for Operation: GoodJobs, a work-placement program run by the Goodwill Industries for Greater New York and Northern New Jersey, an initiative that helps military veterans and their families find jobs and training opportunities. The irony of her current situation is not lost on Thompson, who works to help other veterans find jobs while she scrapes by on the stipend. âBecause I was not working, I was getting behind on my rent. I couldnât do even the simple things anymore. Money was so limited for me. That caused me to be depressed, sad and angry. Itâs a little better now, but Iâm still struggling,â she said.
Race And Class Are Factors In Unemployment
Despite federal laws protecting women and racial minorities from discrimination by employers, several studies point to racial prejudices and favoritism as big contributors to how blacks fare in the job market. A 2004 study by the American Economic Review found job seekers with resumes that had so-called white-sounding names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Names such as Jamal or Lakisha or others that are perceived as black-sounding names, received fewer callbacks. That racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry and employer size, researchers found.
Another study, conducted by the business school at Rutgers University in New Jersey, found that favoritism, or the race of the hiring manager, was a contributing factor to racial disparity in the workplace as well. The prevalence of a mind-set in the U.S. that the rich worked hard for everything they have and poor havenât toiled enough certainly doesnât help matters, said Sam Brooke, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that tracks racial disparity and hatred. âThereâs a deep, fierce resistance to setting aside that idea,â Brooke said. âThatâs an incredibly valuable part of the story that we tell about America. If you view it just through that lens, itâs hard to see how weâll overcomeâ the disparities, he said.
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 made changes to a law passed in the 1960s that protected workers from intentional employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion and national origin. It also provided monetary damages in cases of proved discrimination. But few cases are won in U.S. courts, and a comparatively small proportion are resolved by settlements, according to federal data.
Darensbourg, the unemployed former restaurant manager, hasnât considered a lawsuit against a prospective employer, even when he suspected that there was something more to its rejection of him than his qualifications. âIâm pushing my kids to do way better than I did in school,â he said. âI canât pay for them to go to school. I donât know how that would happen unless they got a scholarship. I tell my daughter that she is not just competing with the kids at her school; sheâs competing with the whole world. I try to have them see stuff that my parents didnât show me.â
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No indictment in Eric Garner police killing
Reports indicate that a grand jury has decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner,...
Reports indicate that a grand jury has decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man. Garner died in July in Staten Island of neck compression, combined with asphyxia as a result of a chokehold applied while police officers were arresting him for the suspected sale of untaxed cigarettes. The incident was captured on cellphone video by Ramsey Orta who was a bystander. Garner had broken up a fight when officers attempted to arrest him. Pantaleo put Garner on the ground by the use of force, which included the use of a headlock resulting in Garnerâs death. The cityâs medical examiner later ruled the death a homicide. The NYPD is banned from using chokeholds, however, chokeholds are not illegal.Â
At a press conference Wednesday night, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Garner's family spoke about the grand jury's decision. Sharpton announced plans for a national march in Washington, D.C. on December 13 to urge the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the string of recent police killings of unarmed Blacks.Â
"We are dealing with a national crisis," he said. "We are not advocating violence, we are asking that police violence stop. Now you have a man chocked to death on videotape and says 11 times 'I can't breathe.'"Â Garner's wife, Esaw, said she did not accept the apology give by Pantaleo on Wednesday after the grand jury didn't indict him. She said she plans to move forward to get justice for her late husband.Â
"I'm determined to get justice for my husband," she said. "He should be here celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving and he can't. My husband's death will not be in vain. As long as I have breath in my body I will fight the fight."
Several Black and Latino congressional members, including Gregory Meeks and Yvette Clark, held a press conference in Washington, D.C. after the grand jury's decision was announced. The legislatures called for the Justice Department to step into the case. The U.S. Department of Justice is going to investigate Garner's death, according to reports. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that a federal civil rights investigation would be opened in the case.Â
Mayor Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate Leticia James and several city council members held a press conference in Staten Island on Wednesday to address the issue. De Blasio said that frustration over the grand jury's decision is understandable. "It's a very emotional day for our city. It's a very painful day for so many New Yorkers," he said. "We're grieving â again â over the loss of Eric Garner, who was a father, a husband, a good man â who should be with us."Â
The decision in the Garner killing by a grand jury comes just over a week after a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo. decided to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. Peaceful demonstrations along with rioting followed the announcement of that decision. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton met with several elected officials in Staten Island before the decision was announced anticipating the reaction to the decision. Demonstrations were being announced via social media on Wednesday and took place Times Square, Grand Central and Union Square. A gathering was also planned for the nationally televised Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting set to take place in the evening.
Several groups including Communities United for Police Reform Justice Committee, Make the Road NY, VOCAL-NY, Center for Popular Democracy, Color of Change, Million Hoodies and Freedom Side announced they are organizing demonstration.
Source: Amsterdam News
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