The Tragedy of Janet Yellen
In December 2012, a new Federal Reserve governor and unseasoned monetary policymaker, Jerome Powell, told his...
In December 2012, a new Federal Reserve governor and unseasoned monetary policymaker, Jerome Powell, told his colleagues that the risks of continued stimulus likely outweighed the benefits. Vice Chair Janet Yellen, even then one of the most experienced policymakers in the Fed’s 104-year history, acknowledged the concerns but pushed back forcefully. She argued that “slow progress in moving the economy back toward full employment will not only impose immense costs on American families and the economy at large, but may also do permanent damage to the labor market.” In other words, if we don’t take risks now to get more Americans employed, the country might lose the opportunity to ever fully recover from the Great Recession. She reminded her colleagues of the promise they had made: “We communicated that we will at least keep refilling the punch bowl until the guests have all arrived, and will not remove it prematurely before the party is well under way.”
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New York City considers ban of on-call scheduling in retail
New York City considers ban of on-call scheduling in retail
Dive Brief: The New York City Council on Tuesday introduced a package of bills that would ban on-call scheduling and...
Dive Brief:
The New York City Council on Tuesday introduced a package of bills that would ban on-call scheduling and other inflexible, unpredictable scheduling practices deemed unfair by retail workers and many policymakers, according to the council's website.
The bills in some cases go further than what has been proposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said in September he would push for legislation to give fast food and retail workers advance notice of schedules and penalty pay for last-minute changes.
The state of New York has also pushed against on-call scheduling practices, with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office warning several retailers that aspects of such practices are already against state law, which prompted Urban Outfitters, Gap Inc., L. Brands, J. Crew, Pier 1 and Abercrombie & Fitch to end on-call scheduling.
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Dive Insight:
Algorithms in scheduling software have helped retailers cut costs through efficient staffing, but have also made life difficult for workers who are trying to manage households, attend school or work additional jobs. New York isn’t the only place to find growing antipathy toward the practice of on-call scheduling. Seattle, San Francisco and Bay Area city Emeryville have also passed laws limiting and penalizing the practice.
In New York, the proposed bills would ensure that when hours become available, they’re offered first to existing employees, before new workers are hired. Many part-time workers remain willing to work full-time but can’t find the positions, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This will offer a pathway to full-time work. The bills also provide remedies and protections to retail workers when on-call scheduling does occur and establish a process for employees to seek flexible work arrangements, among other provisions.
"People working in fast food and retail have made clear that higher wages are not enough without hours they can count on," Elianne Farhat, Deputy Campaign Director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement emailed to Retail Dive. "Now more than ever, parents and students need more input into their work hours so they can balance working hard with caring for their families, attending college classes and participating in our community.”
Indeed, retailers should be prepared to see more such concerns, warnings and even legislation from more states and jurisdictions across the country as on call scheduling gets more scrutiny, Gail Gottehrer, a labor and employment litigator at Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider in New York, told Retail Dive last year. “This can be especially difficult for multi-state employers,” Gottehrer said. “If you’re in a lot of jurisdictions it can be complicated to get things right.”
By Daphne Howland
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Gary Cohn publicly criticizes Trump's Charlottesville response and reportedly came close to resigning over it
Gary Cohn publicly criticizes Trump's Charlottesville response and reportedly came close to resigning over it
Top White House economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly criticized President Trump’s response to the violence in...
Top White House economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly criticized President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., and reportedly came close to resigning over it.
In his first public comments on the matter, Cohn told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday that the Trump administration “can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning” white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
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Activists Counter Federal Reserve Gathering With Push Against Interest Rate Hikes
The two-day event, ...
The two-day event, Whose Recovery: A National Convening on Inequality, Race, and the Federal Reserve, is organized by the Fed Up campaign, a coalition of groups led by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. It serves as a counter-conference to the annual Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City symposium, where Fed officials come together to discuss monetary policy -- and which is currently taking place at the same resort as the Fed Up gathering.
Fed Up’s member organizations brought over 100 primarily low-income grassroots activists from across the country for the gathering. It's a dramatic increase from its inaugural visit to Jackson Hole last year, when the campaign brought a group of 10 activists.
The size of Fed Up’s delegation of activists and presence of prominent economists -- including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz -- attests to the rapid growth of a once-unlikely campaign that began just a year ago. Fed Up has managed to turn the esoteric issue of central bank interest rates into a key element of the progressive agenda -- and a rallying cry for low-income workers.
Rod Adams, a recent college graduate from Minneapolis, said he was attending the convention because he was disappointed in the job market. Despite his college degree, he currently makes $10.10 an hour working at the Mall of America.
“I have seen Wall Street’s recovery and corporate America’s recovery -- where is ours?” Adams demanded, eliciting cheers at a spirited press conference outside the Jackson Lake Lodge on Thursday.
The activists oppose the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates before the economy creates enough jobs to generate substantial wage growth for all workers. They believe that a premature interest rate hike would be especially harmful to workers in communities of color, who continue to suffer higher rates of unemployment than the overall population. Activists say this is partly the result of discrimination in the job market. Fed Up released a report on Thursday that uses original data to show that if there was the same low unemployment rate in every community in America, African-Americans and American Indians would experience the largest income gains.
The delegation plans to present officials attending the exclusive Fed symposium with an online petition opposing an interest rate hike that bears 110,000 signatures. The petition effort was the result of Fed Up's collaboration earlier this month with online progressive heavyweights including CREDO Action, Daily Kos, the Working Families Organization and Demand Progress. Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, gave the petition drive a high-profile boost with a popular video promoting the effort.
A similar petition that Fed Up brought last year had 10,000 signatures.
The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, which convenes the annual Jackson Hole symposium for Fed officials, declined to comment on this year's parallel protest conference.
Kansas City Fed President Esther George met with Fed Up activists during last year's symposium.
Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, is not attending this year's symposium, precluding even the possibility of an impromptu encounter with protesters.
“Janet Yellen is missing a great opportunity to see what real people look like,” Adams said. “We are not data on a spreadsheet.”
Proponents of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike in the near future argue that the Fed should begin raising rates to prevent excessive price and asset inflation. The Fed has a dual mandate to maintain full employment and stable price inflation.
William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, signaled on Wednesday that they would postpone an interest rate hike that Fed officials had previously indicated would occur in September. Dudley said turmoil in China and other emerging market economies that sparked massive swings in the U.S. stock market earlier in the week made a September rate hike “less compelling.”
Josh Bivens, the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s research and policy director, applauded the Fed’s move away from an interest rate hike, but said the reason for the Fed’s decision confirmed the need for more grassroots activism.
“A week ago the case against raising rates for the labor market was clear as day, but all of a sudden when wealthy people lost money in the stock market the tide turned against a rate increase,” Bivens said at Thursday's press conference. “I’m happy rates are less likely to go up because of that, but it is a terrible reason.”
Source: Huffington Post
Workers’ groups show candidates that supporting higher wages wins votes
Workers’ groups show candidates that supporting higher wages wins votes
Several worker advocacy groups in swing states are showing senatorial candidates that according to polls, voters...
Several worker advocacy groups in swing states are showing senatorial candidates that according to polls, voters support raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for overtime pay.
The groups include the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund and the Working Families Party. They report that when voters learn that GOP incumbent senators oppose raising the minimum wage and expanding overtime pay eligibility, they often switch their support to Democratic challengers.
This might greatly influence the outcome of close U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Arizona.
Forty four Senate Republicans have signed a resolution opposing the overtime pay expansion the U.S. Labor Department plans to implement December 1.
“Voters are fed up with lack of action in Washington on raising wages for working people, and what we’re seeing is that just letting voters know where the candidates stand on these issues can have a significant impact,” Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, says.
He cited polls that found:
▪ Nationally, voters support expanding overtime pay eligibility by a three-to-one ratio. Just over half of voters say they would oppose a candidate who opposes the expansion.
▪ In Pennsylvania, three-fourths of voters say they support raising the minimum wage. Also, by an 81 to 15 percent margin, they say they approve of expanding eligibility for overtime pay. Fifty seven percent of voters say they will oppose candidates who do not support these goals. (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty has made raising the minimum wage a key plank in her race against GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.)
▪ In Missouri, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by a 76 to 16 percent margin. If a candidate opposes the idea, 53 percent of voters say it would lessen their support.
▪ In Ohio, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by an 80 to14 percent margin. And if a candidate opposes the idea, 51 percent of voters say they would lessen their support.
“Working women and men should be paid for the time they work, period. The Obama administration’s decision to increase the overtime threshold is an enormous, in many cases life-changing, win for working people, from fast-food, retail and healthcare managers to post-doctoral associates and counselors,” Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry has said.
She continued: “This action will put more money in people’s pockets and boost the economy. It will boost women, African Americans, Latinos, people who are early in their careers and people who have modest education levels – the very people hardest hit by the 40-year assault on working people built on phony trickle-down economics.”
“Raising wages includes lifting national wages, but it’s far broader than that,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has said. “We want earned sick leave and paid family leave. We want full employment, fair overtime rules and fair scheduling so people won’t have to guess whether they’ll get enough hours to pay the rent.”
The Working Families Party, the NELP Action Fund and their allies are working to inform workers about where candidates for office from president down to city councilperson stand on raising wages,” said NELP fund spokesman Paul Sonn.
By Mark Gruenberg
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Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to...
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when he was confronted in an elevator by two women who are sexual assault survivors. The women held open the elevator door, telling Flake, through their tears, that he was dismissing their pain. Soon after, Flake surprised his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee by advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination but asking for an FBIinvestigation before the full Senate vote. President Trump has now ordered an FBIinvestigation into Kavanaugh. We speak with Ana María Archila, one of the women credited with helping to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Watch the video here.
How Hillary Clinton can win in November
How Hillary Clinton can win in November
Hillary Clinton may be tempted to relax into her inevitable nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate given a...
Hillary Clinton may be tempted to relax into her inevitable nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate given a sizable delegate lead that looks likely to hold going into the Democratic convention — particularly if she wins the big prize of New York in April.
However, even after the convention, she will need to woo her opponent's supporters — many of whom claim they won't vote for her — to prevail in an unpredictable general election against an unconventional candidate like Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders has been buoyed consistently by supporters disgusted with a political system awash in big money — and dismayed by Clinton's uncomfortably close relationship to Wall Street. There is a simple move Clinton can make to prove she is willing to take bold action against Wall Street: She can bring back the Glass-Steagall Act that put up a firewall between commercial and investment banking.
Over the course of recent Democratic debates, Clinton has remained opposed to reinstating Glass-Steagall even as Sanders used the rallying cry of breaking up the banks to help lock up several Midwest and Northeastern primaries.
The division between commercial and investment banking imposed by Glass-Steagall, enacted in 1933 amid the Great Depression, prevented banks from using customer deposits to take high-octane gambles in the market that could bring on another financial cataclysm.
Then, in 1999, under heavy pressure from the financial industry, Glass-Steagall was repealed by President Bill Clinton, unleashing the rise of a number of behemoth banks with combined commercial and investment arms. Less than a decade later, most of them nearly combusted in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, requiring billions in taxpayer bailout funds to stay afloat.
Today, Wall Street continues to be riddled with systemic risks. The Dodd-Frank financial reforms enacted in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis helped reduce some of the risk, but as the new president of the Minneapolis Fed recently acknowledged, they didn't go far enough. "I believe the biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy," Neel Kashkari — a Republican – told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. last month.
An even more unlikely proponent of reining in big banks is Asher Edelman, the inspiration for Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street." In a recent interview with CNBC, Edelman called for banks to return to lending, which stimulates middle class spending and the overall economy, rather than speculation, which pads the balance sheets of the big banks, not to mention the pockets of the top 1 percent.
While the Volcker Rule — the set piece of the Dodd-Frank reforms — bans commercial banks from using customer deposits for speculative trading on the bank's own accounts, numerous exceptions permit commercial banks to engage in risky investment banking activities they would be unable to carry out under Glass-Steagall. It's not difficult to conjure a scenario in which using customer deposits to bolster market bets causes a global financial contagion on the order of — or greater than — what we witnessed in 2008.
Some argue that Glass-Steagall is unnecessary because many of the financial institutions that triggered the financial crisis, such as Bear Stearns, were purely focused on trading and didn't have commercial banking arms. But those failed investment banks were able to take their risky gambles because they could easily borrow from hybrid entities such as Citigroup. And we should not forget that commercial-investment bank hybrids like Citigroup and Bank of America were ultimately some of the biggest recipients of bailout money.
The solution must be a stronger wall between commercial and investment banking. Senators Elizabeth Warren andJohn McCain have already proposed bipartisan legislation to bring back an updated, stronger version of the Glass-Steagall legislation specifically focused on banning publicly supported banks from engaging in the type of practices that created the financial crisis.
Afraid of Congressional gridlock? A President Clinton could even avoid a dysfunctional Congress altogether by working with bank regulators to create many of the same activity limitations through executive action — but only if she appoints strong regulators dedicated to reining in Wall Street.
With an increasingly likely path to the general election ahead of her, Hillary Clinton in the next few months must strive to shed her image of being beholden to wealthy, Wall Street interests. Reinstating Glass-Steagall is a good way to start.
By Anita Jain
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Report: Women unduly harmed by unpredictable scheduling
Al Jazeera - 05-12-2015 - Irregular hours and just-in-time scheduling are pervasive throughout the low-wage...
Al Jazeera - 05-12-2015 - Irregular hours and just-in-time scheduling are pervasive throughout the low-wage economy, but they do particular harm to working women, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Women still disproportionately shoulder responsibility for child care and other family obligations, and more than 6 million women have cited those constraints as the primary reasons they are not employed full time, according to the report.
The Center for Popular Democracy argues that juggling family responsibilities with the unsteady work hours that often come with part-time employment leads to additional challenges for women.
“Women working more hours are likely to experience the stressful effects of overwork and may often have no choice but to work overtime hours or lose their job,” the report says. “However, the over 12 million women working part time in hourly jobs are at greatest risk of both highly erratic schedules and of extreme income fluctuation."
Women were found to be slightly more likely to work jobs paid on an hourly basis: 61 percent compared with 56 percent of men. As a result, their income is more likely to fluctuate based on how many hours they are assigned to work per week or month. Additionally, their off time can be difficult to control or predict because of last-minute scheduling.
Erratic hours can be particularly hard on women, who tend to spend more time than men performing household chores and caring for children. A 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey found women in households with children under the age of 6 spent roughly an hour a day attending to their physical needs, whereas men spent roughly half an hour.
On a conference call with reporters to discuss the report, Albuquerque, New Mexico, activist Kris Buchmann said she has been “treated like my life outside of work didn’t matter” while working hourly jobs in retail.
“I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to close and then turn around and come back in after five or six hours off,” she said. “It’s not enough for a full night’s sleep or showering or anything else I have to do."
Other times, “they would call me into work, I would show up, and they would say, ‘Oh, never mind. We don’t need you,’” she said. Such unpredictability made it difficult for her to know when she would need to find child care for her son.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst sociologist Naomi Gerstel, who wrote the book “Unequal Time: Gender, Class and Family in Employment Schedules” with Dan Clawson, said erratic scheduling exists “across the entire class spectrum” but falls especially hard on low-wage workers.
If you’re in a stable, full-time position, “you’re more likely to be able to say no or find substitutes” such as baby sitters and other care workers, she said. Additionally, some higher-paying workplaces are “changing occupations to make it possible for especially women workers to take on what’s defined as flexibility."
But perks such as maternity leave have not filtered down the income ladder. And long-term changes in family structure have created a “double-edged sword” for some workers, said Gerstel. Births to unmarried women have risen steadily since the 1940s, according the U.S. Census Bureau, so more single mothers have been forced to negotiate child care on top of their work schedules.
That’s beginning to change in some parts of the country. Carrie Gleason, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative director, told reporters on a conference call that 11 states “have introduced some form of work hours legislation, and this is an issue that was basically not on the map last year.”
Buchmann is part of a campaign to get predictable scheduling legislation passed in New Mexico. In November, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a legislative package known as the Retail Worker Bill of Rights, which is, in part, intended to enforce more predictable scheduling for retail workers.
Source: Al Jazeera
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over...
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over bound and unbound delegates, the Democratic National Convention is about to go headlong into a conflict over superdelegates in its rules committee this weekend.
The DNC’s rules committee is expected to convene Saturday morning, where groups are planning to gather outside the city’s convention center and urge the party to end the superdelegate system.
According to a media advisory, the pre-vote press conference with rules committee members includes a formal petition delivery of more than 500,000 signatures collected by Democratic-leaning groups working to end the use of superdelegates at the Democratic National Convention.
A superdelegate is a party official or elected official who is free to cast a vote for any candidate for the presidential nomination at the party’s national convention, regardless of whom the voters of their state prefer. This is in contrast to a “pledged delegate” who must cast their ballot in accordance to the winner of their state party’s primary.
DNC rules committee members are expected at the press conference and include Aaron Regunberg, the amendment’s chief sponsor. Groups presenting the signatures will include: MoveOn.org, Demand Progress, Daily Kos, Social Security Works, Democracy for America, New Democrat Network, National Nurses United, The Other 98%, Courage Campaign, Progressive Kick, Credo, PCCC, Progressive Democrats of America, Center for Popular Democracy, Social Security Works, and Reform the DNC.
“This is a historic moment for the Democratic Party,” said Aaron Regunberg, Rhode Island state representative and rules committee member. “Saturday we vote on whether to end the undemocratic superdelegate system. It’s time to restore democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders became frustrated with the superdelegate system, as they saw it as a way that damaged the Vermont senator’s candidacy during the party’s primary against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“The super delegate system undermines the promise of one person one vote that is bedrock of democracy,” added Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of National Nurses United and rules committee member. “It was created to block the nomination of candidates who would challenge a political system that has for far too long been dominated by corporate interests and a wealthy elite. Ending this undemocratic selection process would be a strong step forward to making the Democratic Party more responsive to those thirsting for real change and a healthier America.”
By KERRY PICKET
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Hearing on charter schools brings out varied opinions
State Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale got an earful during a daylong meeting in Philadelphia on Friday...
State Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale got an earful during a daylong meeting in Philadelphia on Friday on ways to improve the accountability and effectiveness of charter schools.
Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, warned that if Harrisburg passed pending legislation that would permit the unlimited growth of charters, the cost to the district would be so devastating that it might not be able to manage its own schools.
Lawrence Jones Jr., head of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School in Southwest Philadelphia, said the state needs to provide equitable funding for both district and charter schools.
"This grand experiment is one that is about to collapse under its own weight, because we are doing such a poor job in oversight," said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth.
Kyle Serrette, education director for the Washington-based Center for Popular Democracy, said his organization was stunned by the number of federal fraud cases involving charter officials that have occurred in Pennsylvania in recent years.
His group, which works with community groups and unions, called for "a comprehensive investigation that allows the public, regulators, and legislators to better understand the depth of the problem" to improve oversight.
And Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz told the auditor general that his office is taking another look at the district's charter school office and a group of city charter schools.
The review, which he expects to be completed in a few months, is a follow-up to a study his office completed in 2010 which found that the charter office "was not doing its job" overseeing the schools and that questionable practices were rampant at 13 charters it reviewed.
It was the fifth and final meeting that DePasquale has held across the state to gather input on improving the state's 174 taxpayer-funded charters, which enroll 120,000 students.
Philadelphia is home to 86 charters with 67,000 students.
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