Another Victory for Workers in Seattle—This Time It’s Their Schedules
Another Victory for Workers in Seattle—This Time It’s Their Schedules
Although she was hired on as a full-time employee at Domino’s Pizza, Crystal Thompson had a schedule that became...
Although she was hired on as a full-time employee at Domino’s Pizza, Crystal Thompson had a schedule that became erratic and unreliable shortly after she began working there in 2009. One day she’d start at 9 a.m. and work until 9 p.m.; and then she’d get a call asking her to work the morning shift the next day.
“It’s so hard trying to plan your life.”
The single mother of three relied on the job to pay over $1,200 a month in rent, utilities, food, and child care, but during the most volatile weeks, she was lucky if she got even 20 hours in shifts. Moreover, it was difficult to find a babysitter or make doctor’s appointments when she sometimes received her schedule only a day in advance. At a loss, Thompson moved one of her children into the living room and found a roommate to shoulder the part of the rent that she couldn’t afford.
“It’s crazy,” Thompson says about her schedule. “It’s so hard trying to plan your life.”
But thanks to an ordinance passed in Seattle last month, Thompson and other workers in the service and retail industries will finally have the freedom to think more than one day ahead. The new law, known as “secure scheduling,” will take effect in July 2017 and will impact large retail, service, and drinking establishments with a minimum of 500 workers globally, as well as full-service restaurants with more than 500 workers and 40 or more locations.
The measure requires that employers post work schedules at least two weeks in advance, offer additional hours to existing workers before hiring new employees, and provide at least a 10-hour break between closing and opening shifts. Thompson says that anything less than that doesn’t leave enough time to rest, shower, care for her children, and be alert enough to work another shift.
The Seattle measure comes on the heels of similar legislation passed in San Francisco in 2014, which labor activists call a game changer for the labor movement. It provides that hourly workers have the ability to better budget their expenses, take on second jobs, and plan for education and family time.
Workers in the service and retail industries will finally have the freedom to think more than one day ahead.
Working Washington, a Seattle-based labor advocacy organization that led the efforts, attests that, much like legislation for a $15 minimum wage that passed in Seattle in 2014, predictable schedules will likely spread to other cities and states too. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced that he and other city officials plan on drafting legislation to ensure secure scheduling for fast-food workers.
Thompson’s plight is common for workers in the service and retail industry nationally, as shown in a report co-authored by associate professor Susan Lambert at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. About 3 out of 4 early-career adults in hourly jobs report fluctuations in the number of hours they’ve worked in a month, and nearly half of part-time workers said that their employers gave them a week’s notice or less when their schedules changed.
Photo courtesy of Working Washington.
The problem is especially severe among African Americans and Latinos in Seattle. Another study, this one commissioned by the city itself in July, revealed that the two groups were the most likely to receive their schedules with less than a week’s notice, be required to be on-call, or to be sent home during slow shifts. They also reported higher rates of having difficulty attending classes and working second jobs because of their schedules.
Sejal Parikh, executive director of Working Washington, says that erratic scheduling has proliferated in the past two decades with the advent of scheduling software programs. After her group pushed for a $15 minimum wage and won, a campaign for secure scheduling seemed like a natural next step, she says. “The $15 minimum wage is about money, and the secure scheduling campaign is really about power.”
A stable schedule allows workers to spend time with their families, have hobbies, and further their careers.
But the measure is not immune to opposition. The advocacy group Washington Retail Association issued a press release in August stating that the measure undermines the fluctuating nature of business and would lead to layoffs. But Parikh counters that companies are already staffing leanly and that there’s usually not an excess of workers during one shift. A secure schedule simply allows a barista who lives an hour away from work to get eight hours of sleep at home instead of sleeping inside of the coffee shop, she contends.
It’s important that the more than 75 million people who work hourly jobs nationally have some say in their own schedule, says Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy. A stable schedule allows workers to spend time with their families, have hobbies, and further their careers. Gleason adds that the legislation “ensures that Seattle workers can have a voice” in determining how many hours they work, which is something she hopes catches on in other cities.
In Seattle, Thompson is already planning out the time she’ll enjoy once she has a more predictable schedule. She is now working part time because she’s caring for her 9-month-old baby, but Thompson says she plans on going back to school to get a degree in Spanish and to become an interpreter. The new ordinance will also allow her to figure out child care and to budget for the rent in her new Section 8 housing, which takes 30 percent of her income.
More than anything, Thompson says she’s looking forward “to more peace of mind.”
By Melissa Hellmann
Source
Activists offer ideas to police charter schools
A pair of activist groups, the Alliance for Quality Education and Center for Popular Democracy, is out with a guide —...
A pair of activist groups, the Alliance for Quality Education and Center for Popular Democracy, is out with a guide — or rather suggestions — for better policing and monitoring finances of the state’s charter schools, which serve some 90,000 students, mostly in New York City.
The report states that since charters aren’t subject to all the reporting requirements required of public schools, there has been waste and abuse.
It contends the state could lose $54 million to fraud at charter schools this year, based on an accounting system used by fraud examiners that assumes 5 percent of that kind of mismanagement and tomfoolery.
To be sure, these groups are not exactly charter-friendly: AQE is funded in part by the state teachers union; the Center for Popular Democracy is also aligned with the national teachers union, AFT, among other groups.
They want a moratorium on charter expansion — which could become a high-profile issue during the next legislative session.
Here is their release and report: One note: some of these problems outlined below including the issues at Harriett Tubman Charter School occurred several years ago and under different administrations.
Today, the Center for Popular Democracy and Alliance for Quality Education released a report titled Risking Public Money: New York Charter School Fraud that reveals vulnerabilities in the state’s charter oversight system that could potentially cost New York state taxpayers as much as $54 million in charter fraud this year alone.
“Our governor and other school privatization advocates have pushed relentlessly to expand the charter industry at the expense of public school communities in New York State,” said Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education. “But the proliferation of charters hasn’t been matched by the oversight needed to ensure that public money intended for students doesn’t instead get lost to fraud, waste and abuse.”
The report finds that state agencies have audited just a quarter of New York’s more than 250 charter schools since 2005, largely relying on them to police themselves instead. Yet in a startling 95 percent of the charters examined, auditors found mismanagement and internal control deficiencies that have occasioned $28.2 million in known fraud, waste, or mismanagement. Recognizing that the industry cannot be trusted to monitor itself for problems, the report’s authors have offered common sense interventions to remedy the problem, and have called for a moratorium on charter expansion until meaningful public oversight has been put in place.
“We can’t afford to have a system that fails to cull the fraudulent charter operators from the honest ones.” said Kyle Serrette, Education Director at the Center for Popular Democracy. “Given that New York spends over $1.5 billion on charter schools and more than 90,000 children are enrolled, a lot is at stake. We can’t afford to wait for tens or hundreds of millions more dollars to be lost before policymakers address this glaring issue.”
Here are only a few statewide examples among the dozens in the report:
IN NEW YORK CITY: Harriett Tubman Charter School issued credit cards to its executive director and its director of operation. They charge more than $75,000 in less than two years. The charges were never approved or explained.
IN LONG ISLAND: Roosevelt Children’s Academy Charter School paid four vendor a total of $521,197 for significant public work and purchase contracts without fair competition.
IN ALBANY: Albany Commuity Charter School lost between $207,000 to $2.3 million by purchasing a site for its elementary school rather than leasing it.
IN ROCHESTER: Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School failed to enter into a competitive bidding process for several instructional contracts. Instead the school awarded contracts to board members, relatives and other related parties.
IN BUFFALO: Oracle Charter High School entered a 15-year building lease with Oracle Building Corporation, agreeing to pay them more than $5 million at a 20 percent interest rate.
Source: Times Union
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in...
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who’ve “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, will be heeding the call of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Sanders’ endorser and convention delegate.
“We need people running for school boards,” Ellison told the New York Times in May. “We need people running for City Council. We need people running for state legislatures. We need people running for zoning boards, for park boards, to really take this sort of message that Bernie carried and carry it in their own local communities.”
Fortunately of those seeking relevant political advice, former Seattle City Councilor Nick Licata has just published Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, & Advice For Changing Our World (Sasquatch Books, 2016). His book draws on several decades of experience as a progressive elected official and varied campus and community organizing work before that.
Like Sanders, Licata was a Sixties’ radical. He belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Bowling Green State University and learned retail politics, at the dormitory level, when he ran successfully for student government president.
Like some Sanders supporters who may become candidates in the near future, Licata had an unconventional resume when he first sought public office. He had lived in a well-known Seattle commune for twenty years and founded two alternative publishing ventures, the People’s Yellow Pages and the Seattle Sun. A Democrat with Green Party sympathies, he defeated a candidate who was backed by the mainstream media and out-spent him 2-to-1.
“In the previous 128 city council elections, only two candidates had won when both daily newspapers endorsed their opponent,” Licata reports, so “the odds didn’t look good.” Fortunately, his message that the city should invest more resources “in all neighborhoods and not concentrate them in just a few” resonated with an electoral coalition of “young renters” and “older home-owners.” Licata’s own track record of neighborhood activism gave him the necessary name recognition and grassroots street cred to win.
NIMBYism or More?
Becoming A Citizen Activist is full of useful tips about how activists and allied politicians can collaborate on issue-oriented campaigns. His book makes clear that “going local” is different from backing a presidential campaign focused on national and international questions. According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things.” By that, the author means linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
He describes how Seattle’s four years of skirmishing over plastic bag regulation originated in one neighborhood’s opposition to a new waste transfer station. What might have been just another exercise in NIMBYism evolved into a city-wide push for waste reduction, at its source, plus much greater recycling. A plastic bag fee, imposed by the city council, was overturned after a plastic bag industry-funded referendum campaign but the city’s ban on Styrofoam containers survived. In 2011, the city council passed a broad ban on single-use plastic bags, which the industry opted not to challenge either in court or at the polls.
Licata’s other examples of progressive policy initiatives include raising local labor standards, strengthening civilian oversight over the police, providing greater protection for undocumented immigrants, decriminalizing marijuana possession, and using cultural programs to foster a sense of community.
Several of his most interesting case studies reveal the tendency of legislators—even liberal-minded ones—to be overly timid and skeptical about policy initiatives that push the envelope. In 2011, for example, Licata tried to lower the expectations of constituents who met with him about a paid sick leave mandate opposed by local employers. “I cautioned that it was not likely that we’d see it anytime soon,” he admits in the book.
Yet, less than nine months later, he was “shown to be wrong.” Not only was there sufficient public support but “well organized advocacy groups” marshaled “a wealth of data to prove that the sky wouldn’t fall if paid sick leave passed.”
Several years later, when some Seattle fast food workers staged union-backed job actions to highlight their minimum wage demand, it was the same story:
“....Politicians like me were sympathetic but also felt that fifteen dollars was way too big a lift. In my own case, I thought there were more readily achievable goals—like fighting wage theft. I found myself initially offering cautious verbal support and not much more.”
What made Seattle’s “fight for fifteen” winnable was grassroots organizing by local labor organizations and left-wing activists, who were able to inject the issue into the 2013 mayoral race between incumbent Mike McGinn and his challenger, state senator Ed Murray. Shortly before the election, Murray endorsed a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour while McGinn insisted that Washington state should take action instead of the city.
Key Socialist Presence
That year, it also made a big difference to have an energetic and charismatic socialist candidate running for city council under the “Fight for Fifteen” banner. Kshama Sawant took on Richard Conlin, “a well-liked liberal politician” who cast the city council’s lone vote against paid sick leave and opposed raising the minimum wage without further study. According to Licata, Conlin, like McGinn, was defeated due to the votes of “many disaffected Democrats who wanted more aggressive council members willing to speak out on issues.”
Once elected, Sawant was quick to utilize what Licata calls “the unique means that public officials have to help mobilize the public.” Among these are holding public hearings, forming issue-oriented or constituency-based task forces and commissions, and backing ballot measures like the threatened popular referendum on “15 Now” that kept Mayor Murray and his allies from weakening minimum wage legislation more than they did in 2014.
Yet when Sawant—a generation younger than Licata—first ran against his longtime colleague, Richard Conlin, the council’s most left-leaning member didn’t support her. In Becoming a Citizen Activist, Licata now acknowledges Sawant’s unusual strengths as a radical politician, including her social media savvy, “dedicated following,” and ability to project “a message that resonated with the public.” Her tweets, blogging, and website use “helped her obtain 80 percent citywide name recognition after a year on the council, far surpassing all the other council members,” Licata reports.
According to the author, local pollsters surveying the relative popularity of city councilors prior to Seattle’s 2015 election found that Sawant’s “numbers were higher than all the others but mine, and I beat her by only one point.” These results might explain why Mayor Murray and the Seattle business community failed to unseat their Socialist Alternative critic when she ran for re-election last year, with Licata’s backing this time. (Licata himself chose to retire from the city council.)
New Forms of Organization
Readers interested in further detail about their over-lapping council careers will have to wait for American Socialist, a political memoir by Sawant (to be published by Verso next year) or Jonathan Rosenblum’s forthcoming book for Beacon Press about labor and politics in Seattle. Rosenblum worked on Sawant’s re-election campaign which, in his view, demonstrated “the indispensability of organization” and an “independent political base.”
Unlike Licata’s own more typical electoral efforts in the past, Sawant’s “campaign strategies and tactics were not directed by a single candidate or campaign manager.” Instead, Rosenblum points out, they were “developed through collective, thoughtful discussions” among Socialist Alternative members who live in Seattle and “are connected to a broader base of union and community activists.” (See http://www.alternet.org/activism/socialist-win-seattle-anomaly-or-harbinger)
One limitation of Licata’s book is the absence of any discussion about fielding slates of progressive candidates who are committed to a common platform that includes rejection of corporate contributions. To his credit, Licata did play a major role in creating the multi-city network of progressive elected officials known as Local Progress. In the Bay Area, this group includes Richmond, CA. city councilor (and former mayor) Gayle McLaughlin, whose Richmond Progressive Alliance only runs candidates who spurn business donations.
Nationally, about 400 mayors, city councilors, county supervisors, and school board members use Local Progress as a “think tank” and clearing house for alternative public policies. Assisted by the Center for Popular Democracy in New York, the group distributes a 60-page handbook for improving labor and environmental standards, housing and education programs, public safety, and municipal election practices. At annual conferences—like its national meeting in Pittsburgh on July 8-9—local victories of the sort Licata describes in his book are dissected and their lessons disseminated. (For details, see http://localprogress.org/)
Local Progress leaders believe that neither street politics nor electoral victories alone will make a sufficient dent in the status quo. As Licata told his fellow “electeds” when they met in New York two years ago, municipal government changes for the better only when progressives have “an outside and inside game...people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.” Licata’s new book provides many useful examples of that necessary synergy.
(Steve Early is a longtime labor activist and author of a forthcoming book about progressive politics in Richmond, California entitled Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Beacon Press, 2017). A version of this review appeared originally in Working In These Times, He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com)
By Steve Early
Source
Activists confront Fed leaders to warn against rate hike
The liberal Center for Popular Democracy has launched a "Fed Up" campaign to urge the central bank’s chairwoman, Janet...
The liberal Center for Popular Democracy has launched a "Fed Up" campaign to urge the central bank’s chairwoman, Janet Yellen, and her team of policymakers against raising interest rates.
Many Fed watchers anticipate Yellen and her team to increase the interest rate, lowered to zero percent following the 2008 economic crisis to spur economic growth as soon as September, citing steady growth.
But the campaign, whose board includes members of the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), says that the economy hasn't recovered enough to adopt such a policy.
"The economy remains far too weak to slow it down. We shouldn't mince words — when the Fed raises interest rates, it's doing that to slow the economy down," said Ady Barkan, Fed Up campaign director, on a conference call with reporters.
He called the prospect of the Fed raising interest rates "an insane perspective to take and an insane policy to take at the moment."
The group is sending about 50 activists to the annual Economic Policy Symposium, which includes members of the Federal Reserve, global bankers and top economists. The activists will hold "Teach Ins" that coincide with the annual summit.
Among the planned events is one titled, "Do Black Lives Matter to the Fed?" — a nod to the national movement to highlight policies that disproportionately hurt the African-American community.
Some progressives criticized Yellen’s testimony in the House last month, when she was asked what Fed officials could do to lower the African-American unemployment rate.
At 9.5 percent, the African-American unemployment rate remains significantly above the 5.3 percent national unemployment rate.
"There really isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do to affect the structure of unemployment across groups," Yellen answered at last month's hearing. "There’s nothing we can do about any particular group.”
Barkan said that Yellen "was wrong to say there's nothing the Fed can do to help African-Americans."
He argued that Fed officials could help African-Americans and minorities by adopting an agenda that focuses less on pricing bubbles in the markets and more on lowering unemployment, a tactic that would mean keeping interest rates low.
Activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement have grabbed headlines in recent months for its aggressive questioning tactics to Democratic presidential candidates.
"We hope very much to engage with Federal Reserve officials into these conversations," Barkan said.
Source: The Hill
New York’s Progressive Experiment Tees Up
Politico - November 4, 2013, by Edward-Isaac Dovere - Even New York liberals weren’t expecting things to go this...
Politico - November 4, 2013, by Edward-Isaac Dovere -
Even New York liberals weren’t expecting things to go this well.
Tuesday, voters in America’s most prominent city are poised to elect Bill de Blasio mayor and turn over every major lever of municipal government to a new breed of politics that’s been on the rise but never close to this level of power: a mix of young progressives, reconstituted ’60s- and ’70s-era lefties, newly active minority voters and deep-pocketed unions that have transformed themselves into expert campaign organizers.
What that will mean as they try to translate that ideology into a governing philosophy is a question that even people who’ve been leading the charge are still asking. And in New York, where there are more than 8 million residents (plus close to a million more who come in daily for work), 300,000 city employees and a $70 billion-plus budget, there’s a lot riding on the answer.
These are the people who formed the labor-funded, liberal-favorite Working Families Party and sparked Occupy Wall Street. They say government shouldn’t just allow for change — it should force new change on the city and private sector. That means universal pre-K; closed tax loopholes; pensions divested from fossil fuel companies; family-friendlier work policies, including financial support for single parents; and paid sick leave requirements. And on the housing front: more market regulation, leveraging of privately owned real estate that’s in trouble and greater community power over developers’ plans.
The reaction of the city’s business, real estate, finance and high-tech industry leaders to its new governing class-in-waiting has ranged from panic to scoffing at the stuff they say pipe dreams are made of. The political establishment in the city is skeptical any of it can work, especially without igniting a budget disaster. And the progressives in charge are superstitious enough that, despite their candidates’ long and overwhelming lead in the polls, they’ve avoided doing too much planning before election night.
One thing all sides agree on: A new era has arrived. Barring major upsets, former political-labor strategist de Blasio will be the mayor, longtime Upper West Side official and political maven Scott Stringer will be the city comptroller, and Tish James, a product of Brooklyn African-American activism and politics, will be the public advocate, roughly the equivalent of the city council president.
The city council speaker most likely won’t be picked until January, but even the conservative choices are liberal Democrats. And whoever gets the job will face a newly empowered City Council, in which the rapidly multiplying Progressive Caucus members include many unconnected to the traditions of go-along legislators, and have made clear they’re going to push for their own changes.
That array of progressive victories is “a dream,” de Blasio said on his way out of a late September fundraiser for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the godfather of this strain of progressivism in the city, that seconded as an advance celebration for the impending takeover.
“For a lot of progressives who’ve spent a whole lot of time on the steps of City Hall, this is the chance to get inside City Hall,” Stringer told POLITICO. “The challenge for all of us is to come together and govern and build our city for every New Yorker.”
Expectations are high, and made higher by the spirit of achieving what seemed impossible with unexpected election wins including de Blasio’s late surge and Stringer’s fending off Eliot Spitzer.
So what happens next, when these are the people confronted with a complicated and tight city budget, multiple costly labor contracts that are coming due for renewal, a crime rate that seems like it will statistically have to edge up at some point? How do they manage when they’re in charge, and not the outside instigators? And what happens when they’re heading into office promising major changes in rent costs and education, realignment of investments in city services and a detailed agenda of “broadly shared prosperity” — along with other liberal priorities like confronting climate change and improving senior care? When many competing interests are all going to be demanding attention from people who’ve never before been in positions of major power?
“There’s a lot you can do with really good leadership throughout the city that shares this agenda,” said Brad Lander, a city councilman who leads the progressive bloc and helped organize “Toward a 21st Century for All,” a collection of policy essays that’s become one of the main touchstones of progressive planning. “New York City is going to be an exciting laboratory.”
“What a pleasure it will be to have a city administration united with people who believe that you can increase the minimum wage, who believe that you can have paid sick leave, who believe that it doesn’t harm the city to treat workers and low-income people right, who believe that the purpose of an economy is not just to get the numbers on television but to help people live their lives, and who believe that the purpose of city government is to help all people — not just the 1 percent or the 5 percent or the 10 percent,” Nadler said, riling the crowd at an Upper West Side rally over the weekend.
At the rally, the talk was of how subway tokens cost only $1.25 and that Miley Cyrus wasn’t yet born the last time a Democrat was elected mayor. But that was a very different type of Democrat than what’s coming now — much more rooted in traditions of government spending and programs than the current strain’s emphasis on activist intervention, rethinking budget priorities and reeling in what they see as runaway wealthy interests.
“‘Liberal’s’ too soft,” actor-singer-activist Harry Belafonte declared at the rally to describe what he said was the most exciting political moment in his life in New York. “’Radicals.’ It’s time for radicals.”
There are limitations. Taxes — including the one on high-income earners that would pay for de Blasio’s signature expanded pre-kindergarten proposal — have to be approved by the state government, which also has the authority to take over city finances at any point if they begin to veer off track.
“It should be a comfort to people who are worried about the city going off the rails in a crazy far-left direction that Albany is not going to let that happen,” said Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents business and financial interests across the city.
“I don’t think the primary concern is whether the mayor’s a lefty,” she said, reflecting the private-sector leaders she’s talked to. “It’s whether we’re going to have a mayor who can effectively manage 300,000 city workers and an $80 billion budget and not allow the city to run off the rails.”
“We have to govern,” Stringer said. “We have to do things through the lens of what we can afford and also what we can’t afford.”
At a meeting of municipally elected progressives in Washington state in late October, the same “tale of two cities” line that’s dominated de Blasio’s campaign kept coming up as people talked about how they could build support for many of the ideas that de Blasio’s about to have the power to do.
“It’s happening all over the country,” de Blasio said in a taped message to the Local Progress conference. “This is a tremendous moment for progressive activism.”
The mayors of Richmond, Calif., and Fitchburg, Mass., both attended, but as people there acknowledged, the importance and size of New York make de Blasio and the incoming officials a much bigger deal for the movement, in both spotlight and potential.
“It’s easy to talk on the outside than to be on the inside, actually preparing the meal, so that means they’re going to be judged on what kind of meal they prepare,” said Nick Licata, a former Seattle City Council president who’s the chairman of Local Progress. “It’s going to be a challenge — it’s always a challenge for any advocate group, left or right, when you go from proposing something to actually implementing it.”
John Del Cecato, a political consultant who was one of the main architects of de Blasio’s campaign, said there’s a clear reason why the revolution started in New York.
“There aren’t just pockets of extreme wealth and pockets of poverty anymore. We’ve got close to 400,000 millionaires, while half the city lives at or near the poverty line,” Del Cecato said. De Blasio’s appeal, he said, is the fact that the current state of affairs “is deeply troubling not just to those who are living the struggle every day, but to those who’ve done quite well who fear that New York is losing what’s made it such a special place for generations.”
Recalibrating the enormous city government to focus on pre-K, after-school programs, community hospitals, better wages and affordable housing is going to be difficult, and certainly won’t be fast, Del Cecato said.
But this year’s elections, he argued, are an important start to “move New York in a direction that acknowledges where we’re slipping behind, puts us on a new path and establishes a mind-set that we’re a city that leaves nobody behind.”
Source:
‘Patriot’ Dimon dodges calls to disavow Trump policies
By Ben McLannahan Jamie Dimon endured a rough ride at the annual meeting of America’s biggest bank on Tuesday morning,...
By Ben McLannahan
Jamie Dimon endured a rough ride at the annual meeting of America’s biggest bank on Tuesday morning, as shareholders repeatedly attacked the JPMorgan Chase chief over his ties to the administration of Donald Trump.
In December Mr Dimon was named chairman of the Business Roundtable, a group of almost 200 CEOs which is among the most prominent lobbying groups in Washington. Mr Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan for the past 11 years and chairman for 10, is also a member of Mr Trump’s strategic and policy forum, which meets regularly to shape the economic agenda.
At the meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, a succession of shareholders challenged Mr Dimon to publicly disavow some of Mr Trump’s policies, such as his curbs on immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and his building a wall on the border with Mexico. One shareholder noted that users had sent more than 4000 messages to a website, backersofhate.org, urging Mr Dimon to “distance himself from hateful policies of human suffering”.
After staying silent throughout several speeches from the floor, Mr Dimon defended the bank’s record on Mexico, its support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and its funding of private prisons.
Finally, he said of Mr Trump: “He is the president of the United States, he is the pilot flying the aeroplane. I’d try to help any president of the US because I’m a patriot. That does not mean I agree with every policy he is trying to implement.”
Mr Dimon has long been the most outspoken of the big-bank chiefs in the US, often using his shareholder letter as a platform for taking positions on matters of public policy, and for challenging the regulatory framework put in place since the 2008 crisis.
In the weeks after the presidential election, the 61 year old was approached by members of Mr Trump’s transition team to serve as Treasury secretary but declined, saying he was unsuited to the role, according to people familiar with the discussions.
As hostile questioning resumed after his remarks at the Tuesday meeting, Mr Dimon tried to lighten the mood, saying “you’re starting to hurt my feelings”. The shareholder admonished him by saying that just by hearing him out, the chief executive would earn more than $100.
“I hope it’s worth it!” said Mr Dimon, who was paid $28m last year.
“This is not a laughing matter,” the shareholder replied.
The meeting stood in contrast to the peaceful gathering at the Goldman Sachs building in Jersey City at the end of last month, when chief executive Lloyd Blankfein faced just two questions from the floor, both of them friendly. Mr Blankfein, who is also chairman of the board, closed the meeting within just 24 minutes.
Mr Dimon wrapped up Tuesday’s proceedings by saying the entire board “takes this feedback seriously”.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said after the meeting that until Mr Dimon takes a stronger stand her organisation would continue to associate JPMorgan Chase with Mr Trump’s “anti-immigration” agenda.
Ms Archila arrived in America 20 years ago to reunite with her father, who had fled political violence in Colombia.
“I don’t think we have a plan to really inflict economic damages on the bank just yet,” she said. “But what we do have a plan for, is to force them to clarify whose side they’re on.”
Activists: Fed Has Power to Spur Recovery in Poor Communities
The Charlotte Post - March 6, 2015, by Herbert White - America’s economy may be in recovery, but Simone McCray can’t...
The Charlotte Post - March 6, 2015, by Herbert White - America’s economy may be in recovery, but Simone McCray can’t see it.
McCray works at a Charlotte warehouse where she earns $8.10 an hour and lives with family to stretch her budget. A 2010 UNC Charlotte graduate with a degree in psychology, she has yet to land a job in that field.
“You don’t think you’re going to make $8.10 when you go to college,” she said. “That is not what they tell you.”More Americans are working than before the Great Recession of 2008, but African Americans are lagging. Figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor Friday showed the national unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent in February, an improvement over the previous month.“With another strong employment report, we have now seen 12 straight months of private-sector job gains above 200,000 -- the first time that has happened since 1977,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. “Moreover, 2014 was the best year for job growth since the late 1990s and 2015 has continued at this pace. But additional steps are needed to continue strengthening wages for the middle class.”But for African Americans, the jobless rate is double that of whites and the wage gap between the ethnic groups is getting wider.The Federal Reserve, which sets national policy on interest rates, is debating whether to boost the rate as a hedge against inflation. Progressive activists, however, are pushing the Fed to hold the line, arguing low rates will spur a jobs rebound, especially for low-income Americans.“Don’t put any brakes on the economic recovery,” said Pat McCoy, director of Action NC, which held a press conference Thursday to press the Fed. “Not only has it not yet been a full recovery, but in community of color, particularly in the African American community, unemployment rates, underemployment rates remain extremely high.”A study authored by the Center For Popular Democracy found that women and people of color are more likely to struggle to find work that pays a living wage. African Americans are especially hard hit with unemployment rates double the nation as a whole and plummeting wages.“Creating a strong American economy must include prioritizing a genuine recovery for the African American community,” the report summarizes.McCray wants to get in on the recovery. Saddled with debt from student loans, she’s looking for work that will allow her to meet financial obligations. Until then, she’s struggling to make ends meet.“My student loans are going to start going back into repayment and you have to have a way to repay them,” she said. “With jobs that are just above minimum wage, it’s kind of hard to stay afloat and pay your student loans, so you have to stay with family longer and not be out on your own and be independent sooner.”The Fed can help, activists insist, by resisting calls to raise interest rates. Corporate America and conservatives are pushing for an increase to prevent inflation, which is the simultaneous increase in consumer prices and devaluation of currency.“We need to continue to stimulate the economy through low-interest rates in order to serve these communities that need recovery,” McCoy said.As the Fed wrestle with the pros and cons of raising rates, Americans struggling to find work with a living wage are yet to be part of the nation’s limited recovery. Without a robust economic program, millions will be left out.“Only by pursuing genuine full employment will the Fed ensure that the recovery reaches Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard – and communities of working people throughout the country,” the CPD report’s authors wrote. “As the Fed makes crucial monetary policy decisions in the months and years to come, it must ensure that all communities can share in the prosperity of a functional economy.”
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Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it....
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it.
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Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the...
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the Federal Reserve’s prestigious annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were unfairly singled out when their 13 room reservations were canceled.
The group, which is pressing the U.S. central bank to appoint more minorities and women to its leadership, said most of its attendees would have been black and Latino. It has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and other government officials. The group believes it lost the rooms because of “specific targeting of the Fed Up coalition.”
Fed Chair Janet Yellen is the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank and it remains under pressure to become more diverse. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined calls for reform in May and the central bank has taken fire from Republicans, who warn its low interest rate policies risk inflating another asset bubble.
The Fed Up coalition, which wants rates to stay low to boost hiring and lift wages, has discussed its concerns with Fed officials, including Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, which hosts the annual Jackson Hole monetary-policy conference in late August.
Faced with criticism that it doesn’t look out for the interests of poorer Americans, the Fed has been making efforts to change. The Kansas City Fed said on Thursday that it will hold a conference on the challenges low- to moderate-income communities face on Sept. 7-8 at its headquarters.
Booking Error
Alex Klein, vice president and general manager of Grand Teton Lodge Company and Flagg Ranch, said the reservations were canceled because “an error in the booking system” resulted in the Jackson Lake Lodge being oversold by 18 rooms. “We worked proactively and diligently with guests to relocate them to our nearby Flagg Ranch property,” he said in a statement.
The Kansas City Fed has a contract to provide rooms for guests at the symposium and “has no input regarding any decisions that the Lodge makes outside of its contract with us,” said bank spokesman Bill Medley.
The symposium, which gathers policy makers and economic-thought leaders for a three-day retreat in the heart of the Grand Teton mountains, is probably the most important event of its kind on the central-banking calendar. Yellen will attend and plans to address the conference on Aug. 26. This year’s meeting, which is invitation only, is focused on the topic “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future.”
The hotel, while remote, is open to the public and Fed Up representatives have made the trip for the past two years. In 2015, Fed Up held an alternative conference at the Lodge which was addressed by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
By Steve Matthews & Jeanna Smialek
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Push for Immigrants to Become Citizens
Mayors of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago Launch 'Cities for Citizenship' Wall Street Journal...
Wall Street Journal, Michael Howard Saul, September 17, 2014 - The mayors of the nation's three largest cities—New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—plan to launch a new effort on Wednesday to increase citizenship among legal permanent residents, an effort officials hope will spread across the country.
The initiative, titled "Cities for Citizenship," will help the three cities expand naturalization programs and other ventures dedicated to helping immigrants secure their financial footing through counseling, legal assistance and microloans.
Citigroup, the founding corporate partner, is contributing more than $1.1 million.
The initiative comes as the number of legal immigrants becoming citizens is on the rise. Last year, naturalizations in the U.S. increased to 779,929, up nearly 3% from 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration.
In the New York metro area, naturalizations have increased at the greatest pace among metropolitan areas nationwide, up roughly 37% in 2013 compared with 2011. In the Los Angeles metro area, naturalizations climbed about 12% between 2011 and 2013, while in the metro region that includes Chicago, the number of naturalizations has remained stagnant, mirroring many other places nationwide.
"Citizenship is a powerful poverty-fighting tool because it brings huge economic benefits to families and to communities," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "More than that, it helps keep families together."
A report to be released Wednesday—from the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans, two nonprofit groups, and the University of Southern California—shows the economic benefit that citizenship brings to local economies.
According to the report, the increase in earnings to immigrants, who otherwise wouldn't have become citizens, is estimated to add between $1.8 and $4.1 billion over 10 years to New York's economy; between $1.6 billion and $2.8 billion in Los Angeles; and between $1 billion and $1.6 billion in Chicago.
Among the nearly nine million permanent residents nationwide who are eligible for citizenship, there are currently about 450,000 New Yorkers who are "one step away" from becoming naturalized, Mr. de Blasio said. Many haven't completed the process because of the cost, Mr. de Blasio said, but the new initiative will help them navigate the legal process and obtain financial assistance.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said his goal is to make Chicago "the most immigrant-friendly" city in the country.
Almost half of all new businesses are started by immigrants, Mr. Emanuel said. "So, you can't be pro-small business and anti-immigrant," he said. "They're inconsistent."
Bob Annibale, global director of community development at Citigroup, said statistics clearly show poverty levels are much higher among foreign-born residents than those who have become citizens.
"So, there really is a value in helping people not only to build a national identity, but with that, their financial identity," Mr. Annibale said. "And that's sort of the role where we felt we could be part of this."
As part of the initiative, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs in New York City will issue a study on the economic impact of citizenship programs for mayors across the country in hopes of demonstrating the value of funding naturalization programs as a way to combat poverty.
"Immigrants are the backbone of our economy," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "It's time we encouraged their successful integration into our social and political tapestry to continue boosting our economy and not stand in the way of it."
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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