Car wash activists release report on John Lage
Amsterdam News - June 20, 2013 - According to a recently released report by car wash workers and their advocates, the...
Amsterdam News - June 20, 2013 - According to a recently released report by car wash workers and their advocates, the owner of several car washes with labor law violations is still paid by the city to clean city-owned cars.
Created and distributed by Make the Road New York, Center for Popular Democracy, New York Communities for Change and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the report includes public documents that they believe show that city taxpayers have “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting” John Lage and his associate Fernando Magalhaes.
According to the report, between 2007 and 2013, Lage Car Wash Inc. had contracts with the New York City Police Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) worth over $300,000 combined. Also, the city paid Lage Car Wash at least $135,924 for the past three years for car wash services and almost $38,000 to other entities that are controlled by Lage or Magalhaes. Last year, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation in Lage’s business practices.
Currently, car wash employees of Lage’s report that they work over 50 hours a week for an hourly wage of $6 without tips or about $7.30 including tips and including overtime. Back in 2005, the U.S. Labor Department sued Lage on charges he and 15 of his companies “willfully and repeatedly” violated wage laws. The suit ended with Lage paying $4.7 million in wages and fines.
None of this was of much surprise to Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum.
“This report is proof that Lage Car Wash Inc. and its treatment of workers is not fair to the workers, nor do these conditions uplift and sustain our communities,” said Appelbaum. “New York City should quickly take action and truly reconsider doing business with a company who operates in this manner.”
Last week, car wash workers and supporters attended the Car Wash Workers General Assembly, where they discussed their experiences working for Lage-owned companies.
“We learned from the strike at Sunny Day [in the Bronx] and the struggle at Soho [in Manhattan] that we can defend our rights and win, and we are no longer going to accept mistreatment and poverty wages,” said Hector Gómez, a car wash worker who worked at the recently closed Lage Car Wash in Soho and currently works at Sutphin Car Wash. “Just think how much more we can win when all the car washes in New York City are organized and united.”
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These Organizations Are Working To Help Puerto Rico's Recovery Efforts
These Organizations Are Working To Help Puerto Rico's Recovery Efforts
Puerto Rico was badly damaged by Hurricane Maria. The storm caused billions of dollars worth of property damage....
Puerto Rico was badly damaged by Hurricane Maria. The storm caused billions of dollars worth of property damage. Efforts to repair and rebuild houses, roads, and telecom infrastructure are going to take months. Around half of the U.S. territory's residents lack cell phone service. More than eight out of every ten people in Puerto Rico still don't have electricity.
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Charters’ exorbitant fees hinder efforts to obtain public info
Public records requests made to 10 publicly funded Boston charter schools have been thwarted by demands for fees...
Public records requests made to 10 publicly funded Boston charter schools have been thwarted by demands for fees totaling $91,440 from seven of the schools, according to Russ Davis, director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice and a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.
The requests for information were made on behalf of the MEJA, a coalition of labor, faith and social justice organizations, and concerned whether information on parents of charter school students was provided to two pro-charter advocacy organizations.
“The demands for absurdly high fees to comply with our requests underscore an appalling lack of transparency on the part of these publicly funded Commonwealth charter schools,” said Davis.
This issue underscores problems that would be addressed in a public records access bill that Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the State House News Service may come to the floor for a vote next week.
Kyle Serrette, the director of education justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, who has issued similar requests to both public school districts and to charter schools in other states, said that schools typically charge very little or no money to respond to public information requests.
“Exorbitant requests for fees like this by large school companies limit transparency and reduce public trust in these schools,” Serrette said.
MATCH Charter Public Middle School demanded the most for the information: $36,015 (click here to see letter). Roxbury Preparatory Charter School quoted the second-highest fee estimate, $12,500. To date, Boston Renaissance Charter Public School and Boston Preparatory Charter Public School have failed to respond.
UP Academy Dorchester, an in-district Horace Mann charter school, was the only one to respond with the information requested, providing its student records policy free of charge and stating that it has not engaged in any of the actions for which information was requested.
“These fee estimates from seven of the eight schools that responded are exorbitant and beyond our capacity to pay,” said Davis. “These charges violate the spirit and letter of our public records law.”
The MEJA requests were made in an attempt to determine the relationship between these Boston charter schools and two charter advocacy organizations —Families for Excellent Schools and the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. Specifically, the coalition is trying to determine whether the schools had any contracts with these groups, any policies related to providing outside groups with contact information for students’ families, and any record of providing these two outside groups with that contact information.
“We were concerned about reports that the charter schools may have been giving these corporate-backed, pro-charter organizations parent contact information so that parents could be enlisted to lobby on behalf of the charter school agenda,” said Davis. “If that has been going on, we believe the public has a right to know. Charter schools are publicly funded. We do not believe that public funds should be used to persuade parents to lobby on behalf of the private charter school industry.”
Families for Excellent Schools is a New York-based organization that supports Unify Boston and Great Schools Massachusetts, both of which are pro-charter advocacy groups. FES has received millions of dollars from corporate foundation groups, including the Broad Foundations and the Walton Family Foundation.
This chart indicates when the charter schools queried responded to the request for information, which was made in a letter dated Aug. 20, 2015. It also lists the fee estimate from each school and the name of the law firm, if any, that responded to the request.
School Response Date Records Produced Fee Estimate Firm Boston Collegiate Charter 21-Aug-15 $7,250 Krokidas & Bluestein KIPP Academy Boston Elementary and Middle 28-Aug-15 $9,560 Krokidas & Bluestein Brooke Roslindale Charter 28-Aug-15 $7,500 Krokidas & Bluestein Neighborhood House Charter 28-Aug-15 $8,615 Krokidas & Bluestein Excel Academy - East Boston 28-Aug-15 $10,000 Krokidas & Bluestein UP Academy Charter - Horace Mann 01-Sep-15 04-Sep-15 $0 None Roxbury Preparatory Charter 22-Sep-15 $12,500 None Match Charter Public Middle 25-Sep-15 $36,015 Krokidas & Bluestein Boston Renaissance Charter Public Boston Preparatory Charter Public
Excerpts from guidance from the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office on what fees may be charged for providing public records:
“In the interest of open government, all records custodians are strongly urged to waive the fees associated with access to public records, but are not required to do so under the law.” “A records custodian may charge and recover a fee for the time he or she spends searching, redacting, photocopying and refiling a record. The hourly rate may not be greater than the prorated hourly wage of the lowest paid employee who is capable of performing the task. A records custodian may not recover fees associated with record organization.”Public Records Request made by the service Muckrock on behalf of MEJA on Aug. 20.
Dear Records Officer:
Pursuant to Massachusetts Public Records Act § 66-10 et seq., I am writing to request the following records:
Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, a/k/a Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of all communication, including email, between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, or any agent thereof, inclusive of all attachments and memoranda. For purposes of manageability, you may limit this request to only those communications from the previous 24 months. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any contracts between your organization and Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, if applicable. Copies of any policies relating to the transmission of student records to a third party, promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any school policies relating specifically to the disclosure of student “directory information” to third parties promulgated since 2012, including revisions. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., and/or Families for Excellent School Advocacy, Inc., if applicable. Copies of any parental notifications regarding transmission of student information to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. and/or Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc. in the previous two years, if applicable. Documentation of any payments made to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association in the previous two years, if applicable.Source: Massachusetts Teachers Association
Dumpster Tapes showcases local Latinx talent at the second annual Demolición
Dumpster Tapes showcases local Latinx talent at the second annual Demolición
One of America's largest banks, JPMorgan Chase, is quietly financing the immigration detention centers that have...
One of America's largest banks, JPMorgan Chase, is quietly financing the immigration detention centers that have detained an average of 26,240 people per day through July 2017, according to a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York. Through over $100 million loans, lines of credit and bonds, Wall Street has been financially propping up CoreCivic and GeoCorp, America's two largest private immigration detention centers.
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Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Immigrant group targets Wells Fargo for supporting ‘Trump campaign of hate’
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the...
Advocates for undocumented immigrants gathered outside 3 Wells Fargo Center in uptown Charlotte Wednesday to demand the bank cut all ties with companies that profit from deportations.
Hector Vaca of Action NC says the goal of the event is to get Wells Fargo to pull its money out of private prisons and immigrant detention centers. The protesters are also demanding the bank use its political influence to stop plans for a wall along the Mexican border.
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Big Demand for NYC Municipal ID Cards
Aljazeera America - January 14, 2015, by Wilson Dizard - New York City’s municipal identification card, launched...
Aljazeera America - January 14, 2015, by Wilson Dizard - New York City’s municipal identification card, launched Monday, quickly became a hot ticket, with thousands of residents eager to receive one lining up at distribution centers across the city — a volume that prompted city officials on Wednesday to start processing card applications by appointment only.
The nation’s largest city joins a handful of other municipalities — from San Francisco to Mercer County, New Jersey — that in recent years have issued their own ID cards to make life easier and safer for large populations of undocumented immigrants and anyone else in need of identification. Available free of charge to anyone 14 years or older in New York City, the cards also provide discounts at businesses and free access to some of the city's museums.
“It’s something good they should have done a long time ago," Alice King, 46, originally from Trinidad but a Brooklyn resident for the last 15 years, told local news site DNAInfo.
Based on its size alone, New York City’s program could become a model for municipal IDs in other U.S. cities, civil liberties advocates say. There are about 500,000 undocumented immigrants in New York City.
“It remains to be seen, but I think the intended effect is that New Yorkers will have a lot easier time accessing city services and being part of the economic life of the city,” said Emily Tucker, senior staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group that published a report in 2013 hailing the use of municipal ID cards across the nation.
So far, nine U.S. municipalities issue ID cards, with most in the San Francisco or New York City metropolitan areas. Washington, D.C., has a version as well. Other cities — including Chicago and Phoenix — are looking into launching similar programs.
Supporters of municipal IDs, which were piloted in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, say that issuing the cards to undocumented residents fills a gap left by a lack of immigration reform in Congress.
They also say the IDs make everyone safer by allowing such residents to no longer be afraid to report crimes against them or others to police. Without identification, many undocumented immigrants fear risking deportation by speaking to authorities.
In New York City, police say they will accept the cards as an adequate form of identification, which Tucker said will “make interactions with police smoother.”
“Now police can issue a summons instead of arresting a person without ID for something like an open container violation, instead of taking them to the precinct to spend a night in jail,” she added.
The cards can help undocumented residents do simple things like open bank accounts, rent apartments, board flights and access medical help — tasks made far more difficult or even impossible without identification.
“We’ve heard of school districts where parents without ID are not able to pick up their kids from extracurricular activities,” said Layla Razvani, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “These parents are part of the community.”
Still, not everyone supports municipal ID programs. Their most vocal opponents argue that by issuing cards, municipalities are flagrantly disobeying federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration, aiding the undocumented by providing IDs to people who can’t prove they’re citizens.
“We don’t know who these people really are. We have to take their word for it. It makes it more difficult to enforce federal immigration law,” said Ira Mehlmann, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that opposes the continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
“They say it’s to stop them [undocumented immigrants] from being treated like second-class citizens. It’s an oxymoron. They aren’t citizens. They don’t have a legal right to be in the country,” he added.
Mehlmann particularly fears that undocumented residents could exploit municipal ID card programs to carry out acts of violence. Although he could not point to a single instance of a city ID being used in the commission of a crime, he said, “the fact that nobody with one of these IDs has committed a terrorist act yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t pose a threat.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union has also expressed skepticism about the city’s municipal ID program, wary that authorities might misuse the information provided by undocumented residents who are some of society’s most vulnerable.
NYCLU spokeswoman Jen Carnig said that the cards could make life easier for people but that police don’t have to provide the same level of probable cause to access the municipal IDs as they do for regular driver’s licenses. She credited the city with saying it would inform people whose information police have accessed, but she argued that the protections should be as strong as they are for citizens.
“No one should be subject to having their personal documents accessed by law enforcement or become subject to an investigation based on a hunch, and it’s possible that could be the case for some people,” she said.
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Retail and restaurant workers have the worst schedules. Oregon plans to change that.
Retail and restaurant workers have the worst schedules. Oregon plans to change that.
In the next upcoming battle for workers’ rights, activists aren’t asking for more money or more time off. They just...
In the next upcoming battle for workers’ rights, activists aren’t asking for more money or more time off. They just want workers to get a little advance notice about what their schedule will be.
Activists for better working conditions have scored victories lately. This year, 19 states increased their minimum wage — the result of a coordinated state-by-state campaign to take action on an issue that the federal government has basically ignored for a decade. And a handful of cities and states have passed laws requiring employers to offer workers paid parental leave.
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Regional Feds’ Head-Hunting Under Scrutiny Over Insider Bias, Delays
New York/Washington. Efforts to fill top positions at some US Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight...
New York/Washington. Efforts to fill top positions at some US Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform.
Patrick Harker took the reins as president of the Philadelphia Fed this week, in an appointment that attracted scrutiny because he served on the committee of directors that interviewed other prospective candidates for the job he ultimately took.
The Dallas Fed has been without a permanent president for more than three months as that search process stretches well into its eighth month. And the Fed’s Minneapolis branch abruptly announced the departure of its leader, Narayana Kocherlakota, more than a year before he was due to go, with no replacement named to date.
The delays and reliance on Fed employees in picking regional Fed presidents can only embolden Republican Senator Richard Shelby to push harder for a makeover of the central bank’s structure, which has changed little in its 101 years.
A bill passed in May by the Senate Banking Committee that Shelby chairs would strip the New York Fed’s board of its power to appoint its presidents. And it could go further, given the bill would form a committee to consider a wholesale overhaul of the Fed’s structure of 12 districts, which has not changed through the decades of shifting US populations and an evolving economy.
The bill is part of a broader conservative effort to expose the central bank to more oversight, and some analysts saw the Philadelphia Fed’s choice as reinforcing the view that the Fed needs to open up more to outsiders.
Nine of 11 current regional presidents came from within the Fed, a proportion that has edged up over time. Twenty years ago, seven of 12 were insiders.
“The process seems to create a diverse set of candidates in which the insider is almost always accepted,” said Aaron Klein, director of a financial regulatory reform effort at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Since it was created in 1913, the central bank’s decentralized structure was meant to check the power of Washington, where seven Fed governors with permanent votes on policy are appointed by the White House and approved by the Senate.
The 12 Fed presidents who are picked by their regional boards usually vote on policy every two or three years, and they tend to hold more diverse views.
Former Richmond Fed President Alfred Broaddus told Reuters the regional Fed chiefs have more freedom “to do and say things that may not be politically popular” because they are not politically appointed. “On the other hand, there is the question of legitimacy since they are appointed by local boards who are not elected.”
“Tone deaf”
Two-thirds of regional Fed directors are selected by local bankers, while the rest are appointed by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington.
Critics question how well those regional boards — mostly made of the heads of corporations and industry groups meant to represent the public — fulfill their mission.
Last year, a non-profit group representing labor unions and community leaders organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, urged the Fed’s Philadelphia and Dallas branches to make the selection of their presidents more transparent and to include a member of the public in the effort.
Philadelphia’s Fed in particular proved “tone deaf” in its head-hunting effort, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Harker was a Philadelphia Fed director when the board started looking to replace president Charles Plosser, who left on March 1, and he was among the six directors who interviewed more than a dozen short-listed candidates for the job, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
But on Feb. 18, Harker floated his own name, recused himself from the process and a week later his colleagues on the board unanimously appointed him as the new president.
While the selection follows Fed guidelines and was approved by its Board of Governors, it raised questions of transparency and fairness.
“The Philadelphia Fed’s search process might have made perfect sense in a corporate environment, but is obviously problematic for an official institution,” said Crandall.
The board’s chair and vice chair, Swathmore Group founder James Nevels and Michael Angelakis of Comcast Corp, respectively, declined to comment, as did Harker.
Peter Conti-Brown, an academic fellow at Stanford Law School’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and an expert witness at a Senate Banking Committee hearing this year, proposed to let the Fed Board appoint and fire regional Fed presidents or at least have a say in the selection process.
In the past, reform proposals for the 12 regional Fed banks have focused on decreasing or increasing their number and their governance.
Changes to the way the regional Fed bosses are chosen could strengthen the influence of lawmakers at the expense of regional interests.
For now, delays in appointments of new chiefs force regional banks to send relatively unknown deputies to debate monetary policy at meetings in Washington, as Dallas and Philadelphia did last month when the Fed considered raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
The Minneapolis Fed still has time to find a new president before Kocherlakota steps down at year end.
“For now the Fed criticism is just noise, mostly from Republicans,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group. “But once the Fed begins to raise interest rates … then the left will weigh in as well.”
Source: Jakarta Globe
Bankruptcy lenders say 'no' to more cash benefits for fired Toys 'R' Us workers
Bankruptcy lenders say 'no' to more cash benefits for fired Toys 'R' Us workers
Wachtell's letter said there's $180 million set aside for unsecured creditors with administrative claims. The two...
Wachtell's letter said there's $180 million set aside for unsecured creditors with administrative claims. The two advocacy groups, which include the Center for Popular Democracy and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, estimated the workers should have received $75 million in severance under the company's policy, and are asking for contributions to meet that sum.
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Advocacy Groups Call for Closer Scrutiny of Charter Schools
Trib Total Media - October 1, 2014, by Megan Harris - Three groups with union affiliations on Wednesday pointed to the...
Trib Total Media - October 1, 2014, by Megan Harris - Three groups with union affiliations on Wednesday pointed to the criminal case against ousted PA Cyber Charter School founder Nick Trombetta as an example why the state's nearly 180 charter schools need better oversight and stronger accountability.
The Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and Action United of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh issued a report that alleges Pennsylvania charter schools defrauded taxpayers out of more than $30 million. That figure is an aggregate of cases brought by whistleblowers and media exposés, according to the authors.
Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools executive director Robert Fayfich said in a prepared statement that “the report draws sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years, while ignoring numerous alleged and actual fraud and fiscal mismanagement in (traditional) districts over that same time period.”
Trombetta, who investigators allege illegally funneled $1 million from school coffers and deferred taxes on an additional $8 million in personal income, pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of mail fraud, bribery, tax conspiracy and filing false tax returns last year. Hearings are ongoing.
Fayfich said, “Fraud and fiscal mismanagement are wrong and cannot be tolerated, but to highlight them in one sector and ignore them in another indicates a motivation to target one type of public school for a political agenda.”
The groups' report urges state officials to temporarily suspend the approval process for new charter schools, investigate existing ones, and shift from standard audits to forensic audits.
School districts paid more than $853 million in tax dollars to charters serving 128,712 students in 2013-14. Almost 4,000 Pittsburgh students attended 33 charter schools the same year.
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