Forum Held On Report That Calls For Minimum Wage Raise To $10 An Hour
NY1 - A forum was held Wednesday at the CUNY...
NY1 - A forum was held Wednesday at the CUNY Murphy Institute on a new report by United New York and the Center for Popular Democracy that recommends increasing the city's minimum wage to $10 an hour.
It also calls for earned sick leave, schedule predictability, and passing legislation that allows the city to adjust its own minimum wage above that of the state.
The report focused mostly on service industry jobs.
"This is a moment in New York City where we can finally demand that this be a city that stands up for low-wage workers and doesn't shy away from that role," said Deborah Axt of Make the Road New York.
"If we are to maintain our progressive reputation as the bright shining star, then New York City really needs to claim a lot of the recommendations that came out of this forum here today," said City Councilwoman Letitia James, whose district covers part of Brooklyn.
The report said that the city's unemployment rate rose from 5 to 10 percent since 2007, while its homeless population has doubled since 1992.
It also found that real median income is down $3,000 since 2008.
Source
5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice
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5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become...
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education next year.
Many have decried the choice as a looming disaster for public schools in America, with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia observing that DeVos' "efforts over the years have done more to undermine public education than support students. She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers--which take away funding and local control from our public schools--to fund private schools at taxpayers' expense."
Randi Weingarten, the president of AFT, stated that "Betsy DeVos is everything Donald Trump said is wrong in America--an ultra-wealthy heiress who uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda that is opposed by the majority of voters. Installing her in the Department of Education is the opposite of Trump's promise to drain the swamp."
The choice signals the President-elect's intention to put the expansion of taxpayer-funded charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools at the center of his national agenda on education.
Through her riches, Betsy DeVos has had a disproportionate influence on national and state policies affecting millions of Americans, helping to force through changes to the law that gut the rights of workers and redirect American tax dollars to fund risky charter school experiments that have repeatedly failed for America's children.
She has also applauded efforts to gut election laws that are designed to prevent corruption, recasting the issue of money in politics as free speech and her right to speak "as loudly as we please." (Her remarks about this and her praise for Tom DeLay's "honesty" begin at the 52-minute mark here.)
Here are five facts to get smart about who Betsy DeVos is and what her nomination could mean for America.
1. Betsy DeVos Refused to Send Her Children to Public Schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Betsy and her husband Dick DeVos, Jr., have four children they raised in the prosperous town of Ada, Michigan, which is the headquarters of AmWay, the multi-level marketing company that made the DeVos family billionaires. She is also an heir to the Prince Corporation fortune from sun visors and other car parts.
The public elementary, middle, and high school in Ada, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, are highly ranked, but she did not send her children to public schools. She has said that her two daughters were home-schooled for a number of years.
Instead of sending their children to public schools, for nearly three decades, Betsy and Dick have focused on pushing vouchers for private schools and bankrolling politicians to advance their agenda to redirect American tax dollars away from truly public schools.
2. She Retained a Convicted Felon to Lobby for Her Wish List of Education Reforms (and There Are Other Scandals)
In 2004, Betsy DeVos hired Scott Jensen to aid the legislative agenda of her group "American Federation for Children" (AFC), a 501(c)(4) arm of Alliance for School Choice, her 501(c)3), which push so-called education reform measures.
The problem is that in 2002, Jensen had been charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor for misconduct in office--for illegally using his office as the Republican Assembly Speaker to direct that state employees to perform campaign work at public expense. He and the others who were charged challenged the reach of state statutes in court through various appeals from 2002 through 2004, but they lost their efforts to prevent criminal trials.
But, the fact that Jensen was charged with felonies for misusing public tax dollars for partisan political purposes did not deter Betsy DeVos from hiring him in 2004 to advance her personal agenda to change American schools on behalf of AFC.
In 2005, he was tried in state court and convicted on all counts. The presiding judge told Jensen "what you did was a great wrong to the citizens of this state" because "You used your power and your influence to run an illegal campaign funding operation." The judge sentenced Jensen to five years, including 15 months of confinement along with supervised release.
That conviction and public condemnation did not end Jensen's job for Betsy DeVos. Jensen appealed his conviction, and he also lost his office in the legislature, but he had a job with DeVos.
For the next five years, Jensen was a convicted felon and DeVos' point person in pushing her school choice agenda in the states.
In 2010, after changes in the judiciary, Jensen won an appeal of his conviction and agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor crime to settle the case.
His conviction for that crime also had no impact on DeVos' decision to keep him on to push school choice.
Accordingly, perhaps it should come as no surprise that while all that was going on, another DeVos family school choice PAC was fined for $5.2 million by the Ohio Elections Board in 2008 for circumventing Ohio campaign finance laws. It was the largest fine for violating election laws in state history.
Do the ends justify the means for Betsy DeVos?
3. DeVos Has Pushed Policies Cloaked as "Choice" that Undermine Public Schools in Michigan and Nationwide
Her particular area of interest is the deregulation and privatization of the education system, initially through the introduction of education "vouchers."
The primary organizations that DeVos has bankrolled to carry out these policy goals are the dark money group, American Federation for Children (AFC), which is a 501(c)(4), and its affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, Alliance for School Choice. These groups have become major contributors to the right-wing corporate education reform echo chamber.
AFC describes itself as "creating an education revolution" through what is described as "school choice," via vouchers (tax dollars spent on private schools including religious schools), tax credits, and non-taxable "Education Savings Accounts."
AFC has gone through several evolutions since its 1998 founding including name changes. Some of these changes occurred after political controversies such as violations of campaign finance laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, as noted above.
AFC is and always has been a very important player in local state and national politics, helping to strongly support Republican candidates who move her education privatization agenda forward.
For example, AFC invested heavily in Wisconsin's recall elections to protect its political allies, including Republican Governor Scott Walker. Since 2010, AFC has spent at least $4.5 million on independent expenditures and issue ads in Wisconsin. This amount doesn't include the individual donations given by members of the DeVos family, or any spending on dark money groups trying to influence the elections without disclosing their donors.
AFC also aggressively promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where Jensen has represented AFC's lobbying agenda.
ALEC, describes itself as a voluntary association of state legislators but it operates as a corporate bill mill where the corporations that fund most of ALEC's operations and where corporate lobbyists and special interest representatives get an "equal voice and vote" with elected officials to approve "model" bills without the press or public present. AFC has been a "trustee" level sponsor of ALEC and is a member of ALEC's Education Task Force.
AFC works alongside ALEC to push so-called "model bills" promoting "school choice" and tax changes to subsidize private schools. Essentially, both ALEC and AFC want that national priority to be expanded funding for charter schools, which defunds truly public schools.
The nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the head of the Department of Education is a clear sign that the nation is about to embark on a dangerously extreme national experiment in the privatization of our education system that could deal a death blow to our public schools as we have known them.
There's little doubt that DeVos would use her power to undermine one of America's greatest innovations that helped make our country and economy so strong in the 20th century--quality public schools--and instead, use the idea of 'reform' to further subsidize private schools along with for-profit companies and non-profits operating charter schools.
The expansion of charters has marched forward despite the fact that fly-by-night charter operators that have committed more than $200 million dollars in fraud and waste in recent years, as documented by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Some of that expansion has occurred through for-profit companies, like K12 Inc., getting tax dollars for so-called "virtual schools," to operate as charters or as part of the public school system.
Dick DeVos, in a joint interview with Betsy DeVos, noted that he "commended to homeschoolers to consider is check out K12... Bill Bennett reviews the K12 personally, ... it's very consistent with our Christian world view..."
Like Betsy DeVos' AFC, K12 has had a seat and vote on ALEC's Education Task Force, and K12 has a seat on ALEC's corporate board. K12 has paid its CEO millions in stock in the company, whose revenues come overwhelmingly from public school budgets. CMD has called one of the leaders of K12 the highest paid "teacher" in America.
As the Center for Media and Democracy has detailed, the federal government has spent nearly $4 billion in tax dollars on the charter school experiment advanced by DeVos and other billionaires, like the Kochs and the Walton family.
CMD has also documented how charter schools in the DeVos backyard of Michigan have been embroiled in fraud and scandal, and how the state has even received federal tax dollars for charters that never even opened. That does not include the nearly $1 billion state spending that the Detroit Free Press has documented have gone to charters in that state.
4. Theocracy: She Has Pushed for Vouchers and More to Get Tax Money to Support Christian Schools
DeVos has approached the issue of education as a religious issue for her personally and as an area which she wants to change the law to reflect her personal views. A long-time partisan activist, she got involved in education "reform" in the early 1990s, around the time that her husband ran for a seat on the Michigan state Board of Education.
After he stepped down from that post, in 1993 she and her husband took on the "Education Freedom Fund," which, she has said, "I would define as ultimately Christian in its nature because in excess of 90% of the parents who receive these scholarships choose Christian schools to go to." EFF provides private funding for private school tuition, and is supported with significant donations from the DeVos family.
Why did she and here husband choose to get involved in the political battles over public education even though they did not send their kids to public schools and they financially support private Christian schools?
In a joint interview for "The Gathering," a group focused on advancing Christian ideology through philanthropy, she and her husband said they decided to focus on reforming public education and funding for private education because the "Lord led us there" and "God led us."
At that meeting, they were asked if it would not have been simpler to fund Christian schools directly rather than fund political efforts like vouchers to get more tax dollars to fund Christian schools, and she replied: "There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education versus what is spent every year on education in this country... So, our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's Kingdom," adding that they want "to impact our culture [in ways] that may have great Kingdom gain in the long-run by changing the way we approach things."
Her husband added: "We are working .... to allow for our Christian worldview, which for us comes from a Calvinist tradition, and to provide for a more expanded opportunity someday for all parents to be able to educate their children in a school that reflects their world view and not each day sending their child to a school that may be reflecting a world view that may be quite antithetical to the worldview they hold in their families."
When asked if they are "against public education," they have denied that charge while trying to reframe the conversation.
Betsy DeVos responded: "No, we are for good education and for having every child have an opportunity for a good education. And having grown up in families that are in the business world, we both believe that competition and choices make everyone better, and that ultimately if the system that prevails in the United States today had more competition, if there were other choices for people to make freely that all of the schools would become better as a result and that excellence would be sought in every setting. So we are very strong proponents of fundamentally changing the way we approach education ... because there are hundreds of thousands and millions of children that are forced to go every day to a school that is not meeting their needs and it's not right."
Her husband added that they are for "public education" but that's not the same as "public schools." He said public funding for education of all kinds is a "laudable concept" that should not be forced to operate through "government-run schools."
He also stated: "In my opinion, the Church has sadly retrenched from its central role in our community, to where now as we look at many communities in our country the church which ought to be in our view far more central to the life in our community has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity the center for what goes on the community...."
He added, "it is certainly our hope that churches would continue no matter what the environment whether there is government funding someday through vouchers or tax credits or some other mechanism...that more and more churches will get more and more active and engaged in education. We just can think of no better way to rebuild our families and our communities than to have that circle of church, school, and family much more tightly focused and being built on a consistent world view."
Betsy DeVos did not disagree with this statement of their shared goals and responded: "If I can just add to that very quickly, I think for many years the church in general has felt that it is important for the children of the congregation to be in the schools to make a difference but in fact I think what has happened in many cases for the last couple of decades is that the schools have impacted the kids more than the kids have impacted the schools. The young children need to have a pretty solid foundation to be able to combat the kind of influences that they are presented with on a daily basis."
(All quotes above are transcribed from their hour-long interview for "The Gathering," available here.)
5. She Bragged that Her Family Was the Biggest GOP Funder of "Soft Money," Plus They Have Funneled Millions in Dark Money
Betsy DeVos has used her family fortune to distort public policy to suit her personal agenda through direct donations and dark money because, in her own words, she wants a "return on our investment."
The DeVos family is a major funder of the Republican party. In a 1997 op-ed that DeVos wrote for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, she pointedly admitted, "my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party." She also said that she decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that they were buying influence and simply concede the point, admitting "we expect a return on our investment," to make America reflect their vision for it.
DeVos has served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and was the finance chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
In addition to the disclosed and undisclosed political spending for controversial politicians like Tom DeLay--whom Betsy DeVos has called one of the most honest men in politics--the DeVos family through the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation has been a major funder of many extreme socially conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and Coral Ridge Ministries.
The DeVos family fortune funds pro-education privatization, anti-union and pro-school voucher groups.
In 2011 alone, the DeVos foundation gave $3 million to David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group created and funded by the Koch Brothers. The DeVos Foundation gave another $2.5 million to the Koch conduit DonorsTrust from 2009 to 2010.
The DeVos foundation has also contributed millions of dollars to other right wing organizations such as the State Policy Network, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Federalist Society, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and others.
Betsy and Dick DeVos were featured at a meeting of the ALEC sibling group, the State Policy Network, which gave its highest award in 2014 to the Mackinac Center for pushing the misnamed "right to work" bill into law in Michigan, even though that think tank has claimed to the IRS that it engages in no lobbying.
Their fortune has helped to underwrite Mackinac's operations and agenda, which has included expanding powers for emergency managers to replace elected officials, which helped create the conditions for the Flint, Michigan, tragedy of kids being poisoned by lead in their water, as CMD has detailed in a history of those provision.
In 2015, DeVos money also helped fund the push for adoption of a statewide religious freedom restoration act, or RFRA law, that awards adoption agencies in Michigan the right to claim a religious exemption from having to serve LGBTQ couples. Both the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation gave money to Bethany Christian Services, which lobbied hard for passage of the controversial RFRA.
Recently, the DeVos family also helped fund two pieces of extreme state legislation in Michigan. The state preemption bill, dubbed the "death star," HB 4052, passed by the legislature in 2015 bans cities from enacting their own laws governing wages and benefits. In one fell swoop, the law preempted local regulation of nine wage and benefit policies ranging from minimum wage to worker training and organizing.
Kim Haddow and CMD researchers contributed to this article.
By Lisa Graves
Source
Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
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Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s...
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s practice of giving three days’ notice of work schedules has created a lot of stress in her life.
So, she made two trips to Salem this year with representatives of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 to lobby legislators on the workplace scheduling bill that passed June 29 with bipartisan support.
Read the full article here.
Una victoria imperfecta para los trabajadores de Nueva York
Millones de neoyorquinos están celebrando el acuerdo de esta semana que aumentó el sueldo mínimo en el estado. Este...
Millones de neoyorquinos están celebrando el acuerdo de esta semana que aumentó el sueldo mínimo en el estado. Este pacto hace que familias en todo el estado puedan aspirar a un futuro mejor y envía un mensaje importante a otros estados que contemplan incrementar los salarios.
El acuerdo es prueba del poder de la movilización. Hace apenas unos años habría sido imposible imaginarse los titulares actuales. Cuando New York Communities for Change organizó la primera huelga de empleados de restaurantes de comida rápida hace casi cuatro años, la gente pensó que estábamos locos.
Como el gobierno federal postergó varias veces incrementar de manera significativa el sueldo mínimo a nivel nacional, parecía imposible lograr un aumento de paga.
En respuesta, los trabajadores de dichos restaurantes y otros empleados con sueldos bajos decidieron luchar por mejor paga y calidad de vida, lo que dio inicio a un movimiento que se propagó a ciudades y pueblos en todo el país.
No es coincidencia que la Lucha por $15 se iniciara aquí, en la ciudad de Nueva York. El nivel de disparidad en nuestra ciudad es uno de los peores del país desde hace tiempo y, en años recientes, ha batido récords históricos.
Según una encuesta de la Oficina del Censo de 2014, el 5 por ciento de hogares en Manhattan con más altos ingresos ganaron 88 veces más que el 20 por ciento más pobre. Y el año pasado, los trabajadores con el salario mínimo no podían pagar el alquiler medio en ningún vecindario de la ciudad de Nueva York.
Desde hace tiempo no se incrementan los salarios al ritmo del costo de vida. De hecho, el Economic Policy Institute concluyó que el salario de $9.00 por hora a nivel estatal es muy inferior al que sería si simplemente hubiera aumentado desde 1970 conforme a la inflación. El mismo estudio concluyó que si se tomara en cuenta la inflación y el costo de vida más alto, el salario mínimo hoy en día tendría el mismo valor que en 1970 si este año fuera $14.27 por hora, casi el nivel acordado por la Legislatura del Estado de Nueva York.
El año pasado, el gobernador Cuomo tomó la acertada decisión de exigir sueldos más altos para los empleados de restaurantes de comida rápida, quienes estaban al frente de la lucha por reformas. Pero al movilizar un sector por uno se corría el riesgo de desatender las necesidades de muchos trabajadores. Para realmente producir un cambio, las reglas se deben aplicar a todos de manera equitativa. El acuerdo de la semana pasada hizo eso y permitió que los empleados de todos los sectores económicos finalmente puedan aspirar a algo más que el próximo cheque de pago.
El acuerdo es una victoria para los empleados de la ciudad de Nueva York. Sin embargo, pasa por alto a las familias trabajadoras de la parte norte del estado. Si bien más de un millón de trabajadores mal remunerados en la ciudad verán un aumento de sueldo a $15 por hora para fines de 2018, aquellos en Long Island solo lograrán $15 en casi seis años y los de la región norte deben esperar cinco años para llegar apenas a $12.50. Aunque el acuerdo permite que después se aumente el sueldo a $15, el índice dependerá de análisis y la inflación, y eso podría tomar varios años.
Es una espera terriblemente larga, dado el costo de vida cada vez mayor al norte de la ciudad. Por ejemplo, el contraIor del estado de Nueva York ha detectado que el costo de vivienda está subiendo drásticamente y que por lo menos una de cada cinco personas en cada condado – incluidos algunos muy al norte como Warren y Monroe– gasta más de un tercio de su salario en el alquiler. En algunos estados la mitad de los pobladores deben gastar eso. Si agregamos a esto los gastos como servicios públicos y alimentos, es casi imposible ahorrar para los estudios universitarios y la jubilación.
Es imperativo que ahora los legisladores completen la tarea y les den a todos los neoyorquinos la oportunidad de ganar un sueldo decente.
Pocos días antes de que se finalizara el acuerdo en Albany, California nos demostró que es posible tener un sueldo de $15 a nivel estatal. Nuestro estado debe cumplir con la promesa de la Lucha por $15 en todo el estado y permitir que todos los trabajadores puedan mantenerse a sí mismos y a su familia de manera adecuada. De lo contrario los neoyorquinos seguirán haciendo lo que llevan haciendo desde hace casi cuatro años: arriesgarlo todo para ofrecerle una vida mejor a su familia.
By JoEllen Chernow & Jonathan Westin
Source
‘Inflation Dynamics’ With the Fed as Ringmaster
In the center ring, Federal Reserve brass will be gathering for the closed-door conference that is hosted annually by...
In the center ring, Federal Reserve brass will be gathering for the closed-door conference that is hosted annually by the Kansas City Fed. Janet Yellen is skipping the event, as chairs of the board of governors occasionally do. The town, though, will be full of her critics.
On the right, the American Principles Project will host a separate parley on the need to reform the monetary system by restoring the gold standard as the best route to full employment.
In the left ring, a third group, called Fed Up, will argue for placing a priority on job creation. The Washington Post reports that the organization’s “teach in” will cover “income inequality, efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and whether the Fed should invest in municipal bonds.”
The Fed and its critics will be gathering as a bill to establish a Centennial Monetary Commission goes to the floor of the House. The bill would establish a commission to examine the Fed as it begins its second century.
At the Fed’s conference—the theme is “Inflation Dynamics”— one speaker will be the Fed’s vice chairman, Stanley Fischer. Earlier this month, in an interview with Bloomberg News, he seemed to suggest that the dollar wasn’t losing value fast enough for the Fed’s taste.
MarketWatch headlined the interview as suggesting that a rate hike in September is “not a done deal.” The collapse of stock markets around the world in recent days, says USA Today, gives the Fed a “new excuse” not to raise interest rates.
No doubt Fed Up, part of the Center for Popular Democracy, will make the most of it. In addition to pressing for keeping interest rates near zero, the group is lobbying for more labor and consumer advocates on boards of regional Federal Reserve banks. Fed Up also wants easy money. “Fed policy has been too tight for the past 40 years,” Fed Up Director Ady Barkan emails me. “The commitment to keeping inflation low at all costs is what has led to the elevated levels of unemployment.”
The focus of the American Principles Project—with its gathering of economists, political leaders, bloggers and activists— will be less on what the Fed should do and more on whether central banks are the problem and how Congress should use its powers for reform.
I wonder whether there might be surprising convergence between the left and right camps. American Principles is also focusing on employment but sees as critical to job creation the return to a dollar that is an honest unit of account defined in law and backed by gold.
One of the group’s presenters, Marc Miles, is likely to report on a new study showing that higher interest rates correlate to job creation. Has the Fed pursued the wrong policies as it has used its mandate, legislated in 1978 with the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, to boost employment?
When the law created the Fed’s so-called dual mandate by obliging the central bank to aim for full employment in addition to maintaining price stability, even the New York Times called the measure a “cruel hoax.” Considering whether to end the dual mandate is one of the questions that would be taken up by the Centennial Monetary Commission on which the House is preparing to vote.
So would the question of whether a rules-based system, such as that proposed by economics professor John Taylor, could solve the problem of fiat money that is not defined in law. Congress has already started looking at these matters.
Fed Chair Yellen has bridled at such ideas. Earlier this year she suggested that she would oppose any rule of monetary policy making. At Jackson Hole three years ago, then-Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress to, as the Drudge Report headlined it, “butt out” of interest-rate policy discussions.
The fear at the Fed is that Congress will politicize the formation of monetary policy. That strikes me as a weak line. The Constitution, which all Fed chairmen swear to support, grants monetary powers to Congress, precisely to the most political branch of the government.
We are approaching the end of a presidency that has been hobbled by an underperforming economy. No wonder the Fed’s most celebrated annual gathering is now bracketed by competing conferences that seek political reform of monetary policy. The big question is whether Congress and the presidential candidates are listening.
Source: Wall Street Journal Asia
Coalition Plans to Press Senate Candidates to Back Minimum Wage Rise
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Coalition Plans to Press Senate Candidates to Back Minimum Wage Rise
The minimum wage has already been an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Now, three national progressive groups...
The minimum wage has already been an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Now, three national progressive groups plan to use it to pressure Senators in tight races to back higher wages or face a backlash on election day.
The Working Families Organization, the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, and the Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund are teaming up with grassroots organizations in seven battleground states to educate voters about where lawmakers stand on a policy they say can help low-wage workers and the economy.
They also plan to pressure candidates who have opposed higher minimum wages or who haven’t picked a side. In the coming weeks, they are planning a series of actions they hope will influence swing voters, drive voters to the polls, and shame lawmakers into advocating for higher pay floors.
“There’s unprecedented momentum this year for raising the minimum wage. Voters are hungry for leaders who’ll take a strong stand in raising wages and frustrated with their Republican majorities in Congress,” said Paul Sonn, a spokesperson for the National Employment Law Project Action Fund.
While the focus is on Senate races, “partners in this effort are educating voters on where candidates for office from president down to city councilperson stand on raising wages,” said Mr. Sonn, who added that Hillary Clinton is a strong supporter of raising the federal minimum wage while Donald Trump “has been all over the map.”
With control of the Senate hanging in the balance after Republicans won the majority in 2014, the groups are betting minimum wage could be a pivotal issue in key races in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. They are in the process of scheduling protests outside of Senate debates, arranging door-to-door canvassing, organizing candidate forums and town halls and doing polling on the issue. Another tactic they plan: inviting candidates to spend a day shadowing a low-wage worker on the job, and possibly exposing those who won’t do it.
Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats this November, while Democrats are defending 10. Democrats need to win at least five net seats to gain back control from Republicans, or four if Hillary Clinton wins the White House and Tim Kaine is elected vice president and can break tied Senate votes.
Some of the lawmakers the groups plan to target because of the lack of support they’ve shown for higher minimum wages are Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who is in a contest against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, challenged by Democrat Jason Kander.
In Pennsylvania, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey could feel some heat from the groups in his race against Democrat Katie McGinty, who has repeatedly called for raising the federal minimum wage. And in Wisconsin, they will target Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in his contest with Democrat Russ Feingold, who has made raising the minimum wage a pivotal part of his campaign.
Marina Dimitrijevic, the state director of the Wisconsin Working Families Party, one of the grassroots groups involved, said the organization plans to bring a crowd to a mid-October debate between Sen. Johnson and Mr. Feingold. It will also invite Mr. Johnson to a roundtable discussion about raising minimum wages.
“I hope he comes and listens,” she said.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and leading Democrats in Congress have gained no traction on bills to increase it. Pay floors have been rising in cities and states instead to as high as $15 an hour.
Hillary Clinton has said she supports a $12 federal minimum wage but thinks states or cities should be allowed to set higher rates if they have local support. She has stopped short of backing the $15 federal minimum many unions and other left-leaning groups are calling for, but she has won many of their endorsements nonetheless.
Donald Trump has wavered on the issue, saying last year that wages were “too high,” then saying this year that he would like to see an increase in the minimum wage. He recently called for a $10 federal minimum, though he said the states should really call the shots.
By MELANIE TROTTMAN
Source
Trabajadores demandan freno a la ‘epidemia’ de robo de salarios en NYC
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Trabajadores demandan freno a la ‘epidemia’ de robo de salarios en NYC
Source:...
Source: El Diario
Freno a la epidemia de robo de salarios fue la consigna que gritaron sin cesar unas 30 empleadas domésticas y jornaleros frente a la Corte de Brooklyn. La acción, liderada por el Proyecto de Justicia Laboral (WJP), sirvió para exponer a un contratista inescrupuloso como parte de “una maquinaria que exprime a las familias trabajadoras”.
Los defensores denunciaron que la creación de’ empresas fantasma’ es una estrategia que los empleadores para esquivar a las autoridades y seguir en el negocio pese a tener casos abiertos en las cortes de la ciudad.
Samuel Just, propietario de Just Cleaning, fue arrestado el verano pasado por la Fiscalía de Brooklyn luego de que el WJP documentara varios casos de robo de salario. Pese a la presión de las autoridades y de los grupos defensores de los jornaleros, el empresario se niega a pagar a las víctimas, la mayoría mujeres latinas.
“El robo de salario es un crimen. No hay otra manera de calificarlo”, sentenció Ligia Guallpa, directora ejecutiva del WJP.
Otras organizaciones se unieron a la protesta para denunciar que el robo de salario afecta radicalmente a las comunidades inmigrantes. Gonzalo Mercado, director ejecutivo de Staten Island Community Job Center, explicó que los contratistas están creando empresas fantasmas para evadir a las autoridades y las pesquisas de los activistas.
“Hemos visto a empleadores circulando por las paradas de jornaleros con camionetas sin logotipos. Su estrategia es evitar ser identificados”, sentenció. “Muchos trabajadores no saben quién los contrata, lo que hace más difícil la recuperación de los salarios”.
El mexicano Oscar Lezama (36) contó que una compañía de Staten Island, que se dedica a la instalación de cocinas, se negó a pagarle unos mil dólares por horas extra.
“No sabía para quién trabajaba. Nunca vi nombres o logotipos que identificaran a la compañía”, comentó.
La organización Staten Island Community Job Center ayudó a Lezama a recuperar su salario mediante negociaciones directas con el propietario, pero Mercado dijo que identificar a la compañía implicó una investigación exhaustiva.
“Las organizaciones, de alguna manera, estamos tomando el rol del Departamento de Trabajo para recuperar los salarios”, dijo Mercado. “Muchos contratistas prefieren la negociación directa y así evitar comparecer en una corte, lo que reduce el tiempo de recuperación de salario, algo que beneficia al trabajador”.
Los defensores están pidiendo mano dura para los contratistas que reinciden en el robo de salario. Parte de sus esfuerzos implica que la Ciudad revoque o niegue la renovación de las licencias.
“Los contratistas recurren a subcontratistas para contratar jornaleros y luego no pagarles”, dijo Guallpa. “En las cortes se defienden argumentando que nunca contrataron al trabajador”.
De acuerdo con la activista, Samuel Just estaría recurriendo a estas estrategias para evadir su responsabilidad. El empresario presuntamente recurre a subcontratistas y empresas fantasma para continuar en el negocio y esquivar a los fiscales, algo que WJP está documentando.
La protesta frente a la Corte de Brooklyn fue la quinta acción colectiva convocada por WJP para exponer al propietario de Just Cleaning, pero también para crear conciencia acerca de que el robo de salario es un problema, que se agudizó en los últimos años, según defensores.
“La falta de denuncia, el miedo de los trabajadores indocumentados y las leyes débiles están nutriendo el abuso de los empleadores”, se lamentó Omar Henríquez, organizador de la Red Nacional de Trabajadores por Día (NDLON). “El robo de salario implica la evasión de impuestos. Es perjudicial para nuestros gobiernos y comunidades”.
El Servicio de Impuestos Internos (IRS) estima que los empleadores clasifican erróneamente a millones de empleados cada año en el país, evitando en promedio cerca de $4.000 en impuestos federales por cada trabajador.
Las víctimas de Just declinaron hacer comentarios por recomendación de sus abogados, pero estuvieron en la protesta demandando justicia. Varias llamadas al empleador no fueron atendidas al cierre de esta edición.
Un estimado de 2.1 millones de neoyorquinos son víctimas de robo de salario al año, lo que representa una pérdida de $3.2 mil millones en pagos y beneficios, según el reporte “By a Thousand Cuts: The Complex Face of Wage Theft in New York” del Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA).
Según la Fiscalía de Brooklyn, Just recogía a los trabajadores en una van en la esquina de las avenidas Marcy y Division -en el barrio de Williamsburg-, y les ofrecía entre $10 y $15 la hora. El contratista hizo trabajar a los jornaleros hasta 27 horas seguidas durante la celebración de Pesaj o Pascua Judía, que implica una intensa limpieza de los hogares.
Al menos 11 trabajadores -la mayoría mujeres- habrían sido víctimas de Just, pero sólo cinco se atrevieron a denunciarlo, según los activistas.
“El castigo de empleadores como Just motivará la denuncia y enviará un mensaje claro a otros contratistas que violan las leyes. Sólo así frenaremos la epidemia de robo de salario en Nueva York”, dijo Guallpa.
Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
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Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May...
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May Day celebrations around the city on Monday.
A dozen protesters were arrested outside JPMorgan Chase’s Park Ave. headquarters, and demonstrators also gathered in front of a Wells Fargo bank nearby, highlighting the two institutions’ financing of private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
Read full article here.
On-call Shifts String Retail Workers Along
The Boston Globe - April 19, 2015, by Dante Ramos - Because life-threatening crises arise at odd times, people in some...
The Boston Globe - April 19, 2015, by Dante Ramos - Because life-threatening crises arise at odd times, people in some fields have days when they’re on call. EMTs get called to accident scenes. Doctors have patients who might fall ill or go into labor at any moment. But do unforeseen variations in sweater sales, or in foot traffic in the housewares department, have the same urgency? Of course not.
Recently, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters demanding information from Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Urban Outfitters, and 10 other major retail chains about their use of on-call shifts — periods for which an employee must keep an open schedule but might not end up working.
Instead of simply reporting for work, the employee has to check in with a supervisor a few hours in advance. If she gets called in, she may have to scramble for a babysitter. If she doesn’t get called in, she doesn’t get paid, and it’s too late to get a shift on a second job. “People will be scheduled for eight on-call shifts in a pay period and only get called in for one shift,” says attorney Rachel Deutsch of the Center for Popular Democracy, a labor advocacy group.
Some of the retailers Schneiderman targeted have written the practice into their employee handbooks. Others, such as JC Penney, told reporters last week they have policies against it. Still others have responded cryptically to reporters’ inquires; TJX, the Massachusetts-based discount giant, told CNN Money that its schedules “serve the needs” of workers and the chain. I contacted the company to clarify, but it didn’t respond.
On-call shifts are a new frontier: They’ve proliferated at big chains because of just-in-time scheduling software, which uses up-to-the-minute data to maximize sales while minimizing the number of employees on the clock at slower times. Statistics are hard to come by, although a 2011 survey by Retail Action Project, another advocacy group, found that 43 percent of New York City retail workers were assigned to on-call shifts sometimes or often. Until Schneiderman’s office started sending out letters, the practice had attracted little regulatory attention. (In Massachusetts, the attorney general’s office is watching what happens in New York, but hasn’t taken similar action.)
Despite their relative novelty in retail, on-call shifts speak to an age-old tension. Economic life is full of uncertainty. How much should employers bear, and how much should fall on workers? Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, argues that stores face stiff competition from e-commerce and survive at the mercy of the customer who, he says, “moves on a dime.” He adds, “If you choose to work in retailing, you have to live with the consumer.”
In other sectors, though, people who work on call are often paid salaries that presume some unpredictability, or they’re paid for the time they spend waiting around. Deutsch used to work as a union rep for hospitals in the Bay Area. One hospital, she says, had a handful of technicians on staff who performed echocardiograms during the workday. After hours, there was a technician on call, who was paid half-time for those shifts even when there was no work.
A key difference: Echocardiogram techs have a specialized skill. Entry-level retail workers don’t, and those averse to on-call shifts are easily replaced.
Businesses aren’t social-service agencies. To rely on employers as guarantors of health care and retirement security, as the US government did after World War II, is to assume they and their workers want to be bound together intimately, for decades on end. But at the other extreme, companies that treat employee relationships as fleeting and transactional — the workplace equivalent of a one-night stand — will end up with lots of churn in their ranks.
Or they’ll be subject to lots of government mandates. Responding to a variety of complaints about unpredictable schedules, San Francisco last year approved a far-reaching “retail worker bill of rights” that, among other things, requires employers to post schedules weeks in advance. A proposed Massachusetts law has similar provisions. Hurst points out that parts of the bill would have hamstrung local retailers in February, when sales plunged during a four-week Ice Age.
Retail chains can forestall such rules by changing their ways. When stores train workers to do more than scan tags and say “I can help who’s next,” those workers can improvise. They might tend to customers during a sudden rush while prioritizing other jobs, like restocking shelves, at slower moments. If employers still believe they need on-call shifts, they can simply guarantee employees some pay for those periods. Ideally, chains would do so voluntarily. In practice, some will need a regulatory nudge.
When retailers can claim free options on hourly workers’ time, they have no incentive to make firm decisions in advance. But no one likes being strung along, and no one’s life is infinitely flexible.
Soure
Exigirán en Washington Ayuda a Puerto Rico a Seis Meses Después del Huracán
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Exigirán en Washington Ayuda a Puerto Rico a Seis Meses Después del Huracán
“Los manifestantes partirán desde diversos estados y Puerto Rico y harán una primera parada en la sede central de la...
“Los manifestantes partirán desde diversos estados y Puerto Rico y harán una primera parada en la sede central de la Agencia para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA), para finalizar su protesta en el Congreso. Será un día con una cargada agenda que además de la protesta incluirá reuniones con congresistas y en la que no descartan los actos de desobediencia civil para llamar la atención sobre la crisis humanitaria en la isla, dijo a Efe Sammy Nemir, portavoz de The Center for Popular Democracy. De acuerdo con la coalición, que incluye también sindicatos, la "desastrosa respuesta del Gobierno federal ha sido más devastadora y dañina que el huracán".
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
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