CPD IN THE NEWS

But six months later, the Times reported that Starbucks had not entirely stamped out clopening. And baristas frothing lattes aren’t the only ones who struggle with a very different meaning of the phrase “work-life balance.” Millions of people across the U.S. have to deal with erratic work schedules and/or on-call shifts — at least 17 percent of the workforce, according to an estimate from liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute. Further, EPI found that these scheduling practices are most likely to be felt by low-income workers.

On the heels of several minimum wage increase victories, advocates are also pushing the issue of unstable workweeks as the next big legislative fight in reducing worker inequality. Over the last year, legislation about employee scheduling has been introduced all over the country, in cities — including Minneapolis, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco — and 10 different states, which would restrict or banish policies subjecting workers to uncompensated on-call scheduling, shift changes with less than a week’s notice and limitations on swapping work hours.

The fight for such change has been recently flared in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a bill introduced in June, the Fair Workweek Act, would have done all of that — plus added additional regulations like allowing part-time employees to accrue 56 hours of paid sick leave a year. Throughout the summer, debate surrounding the bill grew so heated that detractors leaked emails showing city councilors discussing the bill’s language with pro-worker organizers, as if the correspondence had been evidence of a Benghazi-level cover-up and collusion.

Albuquerque ranks 99th out of the top 100 largest metropolitan areas in terms of recovery from the recession. Its 6.8 percent unemployment rate is a point and a half worse than the national average, and there were some 30,000 fewer jobs in the area than in 2008, according to a Brookings analysis that said that Albuquerque was perhaps the only metro enduring a double-dip recession as of last year.

Business interests in the city have argued that the tenets of the Fair Workweek Act would be especially damaging in this fragile economic climate. “The real misunderstanding is not the plight of low-wage workers, but the economics of job creation,” says Carlo Lucero, a vice chair of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. “Things like paying … if a shift is eliminated, those are costs that are not affordable.”

To hear it from local business owners, they’re the ones trying to create jobs, and yet, simultaneously being dinged with regulation on top of regulation — from minimum wage increases (passed by ballot initiative in 2012) to requirements of the Affordable Care Act to changes to the state-run employment insurance program. “We no longer control the wage we pay and we no longer control the healthcare benefits we pay, so one of the last areas of control is our work schedules,” says Lucero. Further, he adds, “This is the worst bill in the history of our Chamber.”

But employees in the service, restaurant and retail industries say irregular scheduling practices are one reason why there are 6.5 million “involuntary part-time” workers nationwide who are unable to accumulate the amount of hours they want. Take the experience of Kris Buchmann, for example. When she worked at American Eagle in Albuquerque a few years ago, she was assigned to only one regular shift — along with up to four on-call shifts per week from 6 to 10 o’clock at night. Each day, she’d be expected to call in an hour beforehand to find out if she was working or not.

“Whether on-call workers would be necessary was directly tied to the sales of the day,” says Buchmann, who now works in the beauty industry and is an organizer for OLÉ, one of the main groups campaigning for the Fair Workweek Act in Albuquerque. Only if the store looked like it would exceed sales goals for the day would the on-call workers be brought in. Otherwise, they’d get no compensation. And without the semblance of workweek normalcy, planning for childcare or school became nearly impossible.

Later, when Buchmann served as manager of a New York & Company store, she had to institute on-call scheduling. From the management’s perspective, the staffing tactic was built on the “assumption that some of these people were going to quit.” But Buchmann found irony in the scenario: By hiring twice the number of workers as shifts available, it simply encouraged more people to quit. “It becomes this weird catch-22 where nobody ever becomes invested in the job, so you don’t have to worry about giving people raises or benefits.”

Advocates for fair workweeks point to employers like Costco and Trader Joe’s as examples of worker-friendly scheduling that can be enacted by chains. It appears that the public in Albuquerque agrees this should be the norm, at least according to one pollconducted in May that found a majority of citizens in favor of the main tenets of the Fair Workweek Act.

“It’s all well and good to have a stable, hourly wage, but if you can’t get enough hours to live on, that’s not helpful,” says Rachel Deutsch, a senior staff attorney for worker justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, which has been advocating in Albuquerque and nationwide on the topic.

In San Francisco, the Retail Workers Bill of Rights took effect last month — the first major movement from a municipality. But national interest continues to grow, as evidenced by the Senator Elizabeth Warren-championed Schedules That Work Act.

In Albuquerque, the Fair Workweek Act was withdrawn this month, after Mayor Richard Berry publicly guaranteed he’d veto it. “We made it very clear from the get-go that we were going to sponsor amendments,” says City Councilor Klarissa Peña, a co-sponsor of the bill. She says that there were provisions of the act — like paying idle employees for their time — that never sat well with her, but without the opportunity to tweak its language now, the Mayor’s declaration muzzled the opportunity for a compromise. “It cut us off at the knees,” Peña says.

Now, both sides expect the fight to culminate in a ballot initiative in 2016 — a path that will not allow room for amendments. Both the Chamber of Commerce and pro-worker groups concur that this summer’s debate was the opening salvo in a prolonged fight. Don’t be surprised if you see that battle coming to a city near you.

“Let’s say you get a minimum wage in one place,” Deutsch says, “this is the next step to address growing income inequality.”

The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

Source: Next City

A day after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, two of most powerful men in the state, said they are interested in passing major criminal justice reforms during next year's legislative session.

There is no need to wait that long to take significant action, says a coalition of groups operating under the banner "This Stops Today" (after words spoken by Eric Garner shortly before his death), that includes Communities United For Police Reform, Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road NY and the NYCLU, among others. The coalition and other advocates are calling on Cuomo to veto a bill passed in both houses of the Legislature that would allow the rules for police disciplinary action to be decided in collective bargaining with unions rather than by elected officials.

The bill, S7801/A9853, and Cuomo's veto of it, is a major platform item for those involved in action across New York City in response to the grand jury decision. For a second straight night on Thursday, protesters flooded streets, chanting, shutting down major roadways and staging 'die-ins.' The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and Assembly. The only votes against in the Senate came from Sens. Liz Krueger and James Seward.

On Thursday, Gov. Cuomo told Susan Arbetter on The Capitol Pressroom that he wants to look at reforming police training and the grand jury system, and at instituting body cameras for police across the state. "I think long term this is something we have to look at this session," Cuomo said. "I think we need a comprehensive look."

Speaker Silver issued a statement saying he is committed to "working with Governor Cuomo, my colleagues in the Legislature, Mayor de Blasio and with law enforcement to improve the manner in which we police our streets and to restore the people's faith in our legal system."

Neither Cuomo nor Silver discussed the police conduct bill. The governor's office did not return a request for comment for this story.

New York City Council members including Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams have also called on Cuomo to veto the bill. "If signed into law, this bill would severely undermine the City's ability to hold police officers accountable for their actions," said the two in an August statement.

"The Council Member and many of his progressive colleagues are on record calling on the Governor to veto the bill. The need for strong civilian oversight of police discipline is more important now than ever," a representative from Lander's office told Gotham Gazette on Thursday.

The legislation has been pushed through the Legislature with the support of law enforcement unions only to be vetoed by Govs. David Paterson, Eliot Spitzer, George Pataki, and Mario Cuomo.

The Brooklyn NAACP is asking constituents to call and write to Cuomo to urge his veto. "This bill would strip local public officials of disciplinary authority over the police officers they employ, which would have a detrimental impact on the accountability of local police departments, and thus safety and public confidence in the police," reads the form letter offered by the group.

Cuomo did not veto any legislation before Election Day this year, but has used some controversial vetoes since.

The state's Court of Appeals ruled once in 2006 and once in 2012 that police discipline should be left in the hands of public officials and not determined during collective bargaining with unions.

"Police officers – who put themselves in harm's way for the sake of public safety – have the right to fair treatment and due process," reads the August statement from Lander and Williams, who co-authored the controversial NYPD-related Community Safety Act which passed in 2013 over a veto by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "At the same time the authority to investigate police misconduct, and pursue discipline when appropriate, must be held by government officials who are accountable to the public. As we saw just last week in the police union press conference blaming Eric Garner for his own death, the unions' inclination is to protect their members at all costs."

Source: Gotham Gazette

Message delivered, message received — Queens-style.

Outerborough activist Ana Maria Archila, after angrily confronting Sen. Jeff Flake in a Capitol Hill elevator over his support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, said the accounts of America’s abused women were no longer falling on deaf ears after the Arizona Republican delayed a vote on the judge’s candidacy for a week.

Read the full article and watch the video here.

The Federal Reserve offered a slightly more upbeat assessment of the economy but provided little insight into when it will raise its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade.

Fed officials voted unanimously to keep the target rate at zero for now, after wrapping up their regular two-day policy-setting meeting in Washington on Wednesday afternoon. In a carefully worded statement, the central bank noted that the economy has expanded “moderately.” It pointed to solid job gains and lower unemployment as signs that the labor market has improved, adding that underemployment has also diminished.

Perhaps most important, the Fed characterized the risks to its outlook for the economy as “nearly balanced” — the same description it used after its previous meeting. Some analysts believe that the Fed will move once the risks are weighted more evenly.

U.S. stock markets spiked after the release of the Fed statement but quickly settled back down. Both the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 average were up about half a percentage point in mid-afternoon trading.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said several times that she expects the central bank will raise its benchmark federal funds rate before the end of the year, a move that would herald the end of the central bank’s unconventional — and controversial — efforts to resuscitate the American economy.

Many investors and economists believe the moment will come during the Fed’s meeting in September, which would be followed by a news conference allowing Yellen to explain the central bank’s decision more fully. But a vocal minority think the Fed will wait to move in December, the next meeting with a scheduled news conference. A few economists — including two officials within the central bank — believe the Fed should hold off until 2016 to be sure the recovery is solid.

Fed officials have debated how strong of a signal to send as the moment of liftoff nears. But the central bank has repeatedly emphasized that its decision will depend on the evolution of economic data — and so investors should look to the numbers for the green light for action.

A key figure will be the government’s estimate of second quarter economic growth slated for release Thursday. Falling oil prices, a strong dollar and a sharp slowdown in the growth of consumer spending helped drive an unexpected contraction in the economy over the winter. Fed officials are hoping that second quarter GDP growth will prove the dip was merely temporary.

A stronger reading would also align with the pickup in hiring over the past two months. Unemployment is nearing its lowest sustainable level, making some officials antsy for the Fed to start tapping the brakes on the economy.

But others have argued that exceptionally low inflation means the Fed has plenty of time to act. Price growth remains well below the central bank’s 2 percent target, and officials have said they want to be “reasonably confident” it is moving up before tightening policy. In June, the central bank had stated that energy prices “appear to have stabilized.” But on Wednesday, it cited further declines in energy prices, along with the falling price of imports, as reasons inflation has remained low.

The Fed slashed its target interest rate to zero when the country was in the grips of the financial crisis in 2008, and it has stayed there ever since. In addition, it pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in an effort to lower longer-term rates and spur borrowing among consumers and investment among businesses. Unwinding those policies will likely take years.

Meanwhile, the Fed is facing renewed scrutiny in Congress. The House Financial Services committee on Wednesday passed a bill that would require the central bank to explain when it deviates from certain monetary policy models, disclose more information on salaries and allow for audits of the Fed's decision-making process. Another bill sponsored by Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady would create a commission to examine the Fed, which recently celebrated its centennial.

“The Fed is trying to do too much,” Brady said in an interview. “It can be the right tool, but not for everything and everybody.”

The central bank is also facing pressure from the other end of the political spectrum. A coalition of community activists and labor groups is urging the Fed to leave its target rate unchanged amid elevated unemployment rates among minorities.

“Until we reach genuine full employment, there is no reason for the Fed to contemplate putting people out of work and slowing down our economy via interest rate hikes,” the Fed Up campaign said in a statement.

Source: The Washington Post