“Llevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracán María”
“Llevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracán María”
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta...
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta ejecutiva de la Federación de Maestros de EE.UU. , Jordan Haedtler , director de campaña del Centro para la Democracia Popular, y Tatiana Matta , puertorriqueña que aspira al Congreso por el distrito 23 de California.
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Activists Descend on Fed’s Jackson Hole Meeting, Amid Anxiety About Rate Rises
Liberal and conservative groups of central-bank critics plan to hold events to coincide with the Fed symposium, which...
Liberal and conservative groups of central-bank critics plan to hold events to coincide with the Fed symposium, which runs Thursday through Saturday.
The left-leaning group, called Fed Up, will be gathering in the same Jackson Lake Lodge as the Fed attendees, arguing the central bank shouldn’t raise short-term interest rates anytime soon. The right-leaning group, the American Principles Project, is holding a separate gathering nearby to discuss the effect of Fed policies on the dollar and to urge the current crop of presidential candidates to pay more attention to Fed policy issues.
Fed officials also are getting plenty of advice from other experts on the sidelines. Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary and one-time candidate for Fed chairman, warned in an opinion article this week that raising rates soon would be a “dangerous mistake.” Martin Feldstein, another Harvard professor, used an opinion article to blame the stock market’s current woes on past Fed policy mistakes and urge the Fed not to delay rate increases beyond September.
The Kansas City Fed conference takes place amid considerable turmoil in global financial markets. Stocks, bonds and currencies have gyrated in recent days as investors try to make sense of China’s economic slowdown and what that could mean for the U.S., the global economy and markets. The anxiety has occluded the outlook for Fed policy: Whereas market participants were recently looking to a possible mid-September Fed rate increase, it now appears the odds have diminished.
The liberal Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition says it is planning to bring 50 or more activists to the Jackson Lake Lodge for meetings on Fed policy, economic inequality and racial disparities. The group also went to Jackson Hole last year.
Fed Up plans to hold a news conference Thursday and panel discussions with names such as, “Do Black Lives Matter to the Fed?” and “Who’s Afraid of High Wages? A History of the Inflation Bogeyman.” The group says its events are open to all and it hopes attendees at the Kansas City Fed event stop by.
Fed Up has seen successes in gaining one-on-one meetings with regional Fed bank leaders—they recently sat down with the chiefs of the Atlanta and New York Fed banks. It will bring folks to Jackson Hole who are affected by central-bank policies, but whose voices are rarely heard in the debate.
Atlanta resident Dawn O’Neill, a 48-year-old married grandmother, plans to go to Jackson Hole with the Fed Up group. Her unemployed husband struggles to find day work in the construction industry, and she works as teacher’s assistant in a day-care facility for $8.50 an hour.
“When the Fed says the economy is in recovery, and they want to raise the interest rates, I look around and I don’t see recovery,” Ms. O’Neal said. “I see lines of black men that want work, but there is no work.”
The group says that if the Fed keeps its benchmark short-term rate near zero for longer, it will generate more economic growth that creates more jobs among low-wage earners as well as higher-paid workers. The group also believes that better job growth will help benefit minorities and make discrimination harder.
“We have leaders of the Fed who don’t think slow wages and underemployment are problems,” said Ady Barkan, who leads Fed Up’s activities. “When you have leadership like that, you get policies that don’t advance the needs of working families,” he told reporters in a conference call on Monday.
Fed chiefs for years have acknowledged the painfully slow recovery of the labor market and rising income inequality. Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen gave a speech on inequality last October that garnered her criticism from congressional Republicans who believe such matters are beyond the Fed’s official mission.
Fed officials say their easy-money policies aimed at stimulating the economy are intended to benefit all Americans, not just the wealthy. Last year, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pointed to the recovery of the housing and labor markets as evidence the Fed’s efforts were helping the middle and lower classes.
Even now, Fed officials generally say raising their benchmark short-term rate target by a quarter-percentage point from near zero won’t offer much restraint to growth. The see a small move as reducing the amount of economic stimulus they are providing, akin to lightening the pressure on the accelerator rather than tapping the brake.
They believe that while inflation remains too low, the unemployment rate has fallen enough to start the process of getting short-term interest rates back to more historically normal levels. Some worry that if the Fed sticks with ultralow rates much longer, it could create financial-market bubbles that could wound the broader economy.
The Fed also will be challenged by the American Principles Project, which is holding its event near the central-bank conference and will count participants from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both Washington think tanks. In a news release, Steven Lonegan, the group’s monetary-policy director, said, “We will challenge prevailing wisdom and show how the Federal Reserve’s policies have negatively impacted wage growth and contributed to the rising cost of living.”
Wage growth has been tepid in recent years, despite Fed officials’ hopes their easy-money policies would spur stronger gains. Inflation has fallen well short of the Fed’s 2% target for years.
The Kansas City Fed declined to comment on the activity of outside groups around its conference.
Source: iBloomberg
Avoiding 'Regressive Mistake,' Fed Holds Off on Rate Hike — For Now
Update 3 PM EDT: In a decision that aligns with progressive demands, the Federal Reserve ...
Update 3 PM EDT:
In a decision that aligns with progressive demands, the Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that it would keep interest rates near zero in light of "recent global economic and financial developments" and in order to "support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability."
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders issued the following statement today after the Federal Reserve announced that it would hold off on raising interest rates:
“It is good news that the Federal Reserve did not raise interest rates today. At a time when real unemployment is over 10 percent, we need to do everything possible to create millions of good-paying jobs and raise the wages of the American people. It is now time for the Fed to act with the same sense of urgency to rebuild the disappearing middle class as it did to bail out Wall Street banks seven years ago.”
The New York Times reports that the Fed’s decision, "widely expected by investors, showed that officials still lacked confidence in the strength of the domestic economy even as the central bank has entered its eighth year of overwhelming efforts to stimulate growth."
Progressives cheered the news, with Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute saying, "Today’s decision by the Federal Reserve to keep short-term rates unchanged is welcome. [...] We hope they continue their pragmatic, data-based approach and allow unemployment to keep moving lower, and only tighten after there is a significant and durable increase in inflation."
He continued: "Tightening before the economy has reached genuine full-employment is not just a mistake, it’s a regressive mistake that would hurt the most vulnerable workers—low-wage earners and workers from communities of color—the most."
However, Reuters reports that "the central bank maintained its bias toward a rate hike sometime this year, while lowering its long-term outlook for the economy."
Which means that pro-worker organizations, which have largely opposed a rate increase that they say would slow the economy and stifle wage growth, will have to keep up the fight.
"We applaud Chair Yellen and the Federal Reserve for resisting the pressure being put on them to intentionally slow down the economy," said Ady Barkan, campaign director for the Fed Up coalition, which rallied outside the Federal Reserve on Thursday.
"Weak wage growth proves that the labor market is still very far from full employment," Barkan continued. "And with inflation still below the Fed’s already low target, there is simply no reason to raise interest rates anytime soon. Across America, working families know that the economy still has not recovered. We hope that the Fed continues to look at the data and refrain from any rate hikes until we reach genuine full employment for all, particularly for the Black and Latino communities who are being left behind in this so-called recovery."
Earlier...
Progressives are cautioning the U.S. Federal Reserve against slowing the economy by raising interest rates "prematurely"—a decision the Fed will announce Thursday.
The U.S. central bank will issue its highly anticipated short-term interest rate decision following a two-day policy meeting, with a 2 pm news conference led by Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
As CBS Moneywatch notes, "[t]he decision affects everything from the returns people get on their bank deposits to how much consumers and employers pay for credit cards, mortgages, small business loans, and student debt." That's because a higher rate makes it more expensive for individuals and businesses to borrow, with rising bank lending rates shrinking the nation's money supply and pushing up rates for mortgages, credit cards, and other loans.
Just before the announcement, the advocates, economists, and workers of the Fed Up coalition will be joined by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) at a rally outside the Fed, calling on the central bank to keep interest rates low to allow for more jobs and higher wages.
"The point of raising rates is to rein in an overheating economy that is threatening to push inflation outside the Fed’s comfort zone," explained Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. "But inflation has been running below the Fed’s target for years—and its recent moves have been down, not up."
Furthermore, wrote economist Joseph Stiglitz at the Guardian earlier this month: "If the Fed focuses excessively on inflation, it worsens inequality, which in turn worsens overall economic performance. Wages falter during recessions; if the Fed then raises interest rates every time there is a sign of wage growth, workers’ share will be ratcheted down—never recovering what was lost in the downturn."
Progressive activists opposed to an interest rate hike overwhelmed the Fed's public comment system on Monday in a last-minute effort to sway the central bank. Raising the rate, they said, would be catastrophic for working families, particularly in communities of color that are still struggling. The Fed Up campaign, which includes groups like the Center for Popular Democracy, Economic Policy Institute, and CREDO Action, say the central bank "privileges the voices and needs of corporate elites rather than those of America's working families."
"A higher interest rate means that fewer jobs will be created, and that the wages of workers at the bottom will remain too low to live on," wrote Rod Adams, a member of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change in Minneapolis, in an op-ed published Wednesdayat Common Dreams. "That’s because when the Fed raises rates, they are deliberately trying to slow down the economy. They’re saying that there are too many jobs and wages are too high. They’re saying that the economy is exactly where it should be, that people like me are exactly where we should be."
However, at this point, "many observers believe the Fed will not raise rates this week," analyst Richard Eskow wrote on Wednesday.
"The Fed is really the central bank of the world. If the Fed raise rates a little bit, it will have an impact all over the world, particularly in emerging markets," billionaire private equity professional David Rubenstein told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday.
"I think the Fed is sensitive to that," Rubenstein said, "and I think therefore the Fed is likely to wait for another month or two to get additional data and probably telegraph a little bit better than it has now that it's about ready to do it at a particular time."
Meanwhile, global markets are fluctuating wildly in anticipation of Yellen's announcement and subsequent news conference.
But as Eskow noted, Thursday's real surprise "is that there’s any question at all what [the Fed] will do. That suggests that our economic debate is not yet grounded in economic reality, at least as most Americans experience it."
While the Guardian is providing live updates on the Fed's decision, others are making comment under hashtags that reflect the unbalanced economic recovery:
Source: CommonDreams
One Word Could Be Worth a Million Jobs
One Word Could Be Worth a Million Jobs
Supporting a strong job market is a big part of the U.S. Federal Reserve's mandate. Fed officials, though, interpret...
Supporting a strong job market is a big part of the U.S. Federal Reserve's mandate. Fed officials, though, interpret that goal differently than most observers do. For the economy's sake, Congress should step in to resolve the discrepancy.
Specifically, the Federal Reserve Act instructs the central bank to promote "maximum employment" and "stable prices." Most people understand these instructions as meaning the Fed should seek to generate as much demand for workers as possible without causing an unduly large increase in prices.
The website of the Fed's Board of Governors, however, makes a slight modification to the jobs mandate: "maximum sustainable employment." Innocuous as it may seem, that one word can make a big difference.
How? Well, suppose inflation is running below the Fed's 2 percent target and the unemployment rate is at 5 percent, which officials consider to be its long-run level (pretty much the current situation). They can choose between two monetary policies, which are expected to result in the following paths for the unemployment rate:
Most observers would opt for the second policy. It's more aggressive, so it will get inflation back to target sooner. Even better, the unemployment rate is the same or lower every year, and by a significant amount: One percentage point is worth more than a million jobs.
The word "sustainable," however, means that the Fed views any deviation from the long-run unemployment rate -- up or down -- as undesirable. When officials speak of the economy “overheating” or “running hot” in the absence of inflationary pressures, this is what I think they have in mind. So they would see unemployment as running too low under policy 2.
Some Fed officials worry that “overheating” could trigger a recession. (I don’t understand the precise economic mechanism, but let’s leave that aside.) They think policy 2 might generate the following path for the unemployment rate:
Policy 2: Possible Recession Outcome
In 2019 and 2020, the economy falls into recession. From the Fed’s perspective, this unemployment path is terrible, because the rate is either too low or too high for the next four years.
It's easy to imagine, though, that many people would be willing to trade the risk of recessionary pain in 2019 and 2020 for the near-term gain of 2017 and 2018. They might even believe there's some chance that policy 2 will generate an outstanding outcome -- if, for example, the long-run unemployment rate is actually lower than the Fed thinks it is. Here's how that would look:
This interpretational divide was on full display last month, when Fed officials met with representatives of the pro-employment activist group Fed Up. The activists largely assumed that the central bank was contemplating near-term interest-rate increases to keep inflation in check. But most of the officials downplayed inflation, invoking instead the need to keep the economy from running too hot (which some said could lead to a recession).
I find it hard to believe that the Fed's approach is consistent with Congress's intent as expressed in the Federal Reserve Act. That said, it's really up to legislators to provide an unequivocal answer, which could matter a lot for the economy over the next few years.
By Narayana Kocherlakota
Source
Battleground Texas: Progressive Cities Fight Back Against Anti-Immigrant, Right-Wing Forces
Battleground Texas: Progressive Cities Fight Back Against Anti-Immigrant, Right-Wing Forces
Sarah Johnson, the executive director of Local Progress, a group that works with Casar and other local politicians on...
Sarah Johnson, the executive director of Local Progress, a group that works with Casar and other local politicians on passing progressive legislation, told Salon that the initiative "brings together the way that policing impacts both immigrant communities and more broadly communities of color that are overcriminalized."
Read the full article here.
The next labor fight is over when you work, not how much you make
Washington Post - 05-08-2015 - If there’s one labor issue that’s come to the forefront of political agendas over the...
Washington Post - 05-08-2015 - If there’s one labor issue that’s come to the forefront of political agendas over the past few years, it’s the minimum wage: Cities and states around the country are taking action to boost worker pay, as federal efforts seem doomed to fail.
But a new wave of reform is already in the works. Instead of how much you earn, it addresses when you work -- pushing back against the longstanding corporate trend toward timing shifts exactly when labor is needed, sometimes in tiny increments, or at the very last minute. That practice, nicknamed “just-in-time” scheduling, can wreak havoc on the lives of workers who can’t plan around work obligations that might pop up at any time.
Right now, community groups and unions in Washington D.C. are formulating a bill that will address the problem of schedules that can be both shifting and inflexible. The legislation hasn’t been hammered out yet, but the labor-backed group Jobs with Justice says it will likely include a requirement that employers provide workers with notice of their schedules a few weeks ahead of time, and that additional hours go to existing employees, rather than spreading them across a large workforce.
“The one thing we’re finding overwhelmingly is that people aren’t getting enough hours to make ends meet,” says Ari Schwartz, a campaign organizer at D.C. Jobs with Justice, which is now tabulating the results of a survey of hundreds of hourly workers in the city on scheduling issues. “People aren’t getting their schedules with enough time to plan childcare and the rest of the things in their lives.”
When a proposal reaches the D.C. Council in the coming months, Washington won’t be the first: Following the passage of landmark legislation in San Francisco, bills have been offered in Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut, California, New York, Michigan and Oregon. Along with new proposals to expand paid sick day legislation, they are a bid to give employees more control over how they spend their time.
“These scheduling reforms are getting really popular, because it makes no sense that for example you’re required to be available to work by your employer and you’re not picked for that time,” says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “People who don’t suffer these abuses already understand what it’s like to juggle work and family, so people really identify with that as being a problem.”
Carrots and sticks
Twenty years ago, schedules weren’t as much of a problem. Working in retail, especially, tended to be a solid 9 to 5 job.
But then retail hours grew longer. And then came computerized scheduling, which allowed employers to best fit staffing to demand. Here’s what that looks like in practice: Handing out schedules based on what times of day or the month you expect the most business, splitting up hours across a large workforce that’s available on a moment’s notice and sometimes sending people home if traffic is slow.
That helps companies optimize their labor costs, but it wreaks havoc on the lives of low-wage workers, who don’t know how much they’re going to make from week to week, and often can’t schedule anything else around work.
One worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is still employed there, has worked in the hot food prep section of the Whole Foods at 14th and P streets in Washington for 12 years. She liked it; the pay wasn’t bad, and the people were friendly. She worked consistently from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and took a second job as a nanny in the afternoons, which added around $300 a week to her income — more money to send home to her father in El Salvador, and to support her daughter in college in Tennessee.
But then, a new manager cut back hours; some people left and weren’t replaced. The schedule posted on the wall started to shift the worker’s days off, or tell her to come in from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. instead. Usually she got a week’s notice, but once in a while she’d come to work and the schedule had already changed, so she’d have to go back home. After that happened on too many days, she had to drop the afternoon job. So once again, she was just squeaking by.
“She would come and say ‘I really need you to cover this shift,’ and it is what it is,” the worker says in Spanish, through a translator. “Lots of us have lost lots of jobs.”
It’s been better over the past few months, she says. And that’s not by accident: As public complaints surfaced about Whole Foods’ scheduling practices, the company rolled out a new system that allows employees to see their schedules for two weeks in advance and prevents managers from changing them at the last minute or scheduling “clopenings”-- both closing the store and opening it in the morning -- without an employee’s consent. The policy has been in place nationwide since early April, spokesman Michael Silverman says.
Whole Foods isn’t alone. Walmart has also introduced a system of “open shifts,” which allows workers to pick their own hours. Starbucks curbed some of its practices in the wake of a New York Times article last year that described their effect on one barista. The Gap is working with the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco to set up pilot projects around the country that would measure the impact of giving employees stable schedules and more hours. Many companies haven’t taken into account how much their scheduling practices are actually costing them in the form of employee turnover, professor Joan Williams says.
“If you don’t count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models."
— Professor Joan Williams, Hastings College of Law
“If you don’t count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models," says Williams. "Our hypothesis is that if you provide people with more stable schedules, you’ll see lower turnover [and] absenteeism and higher worker engagement.”
In time, the business case may grow clear enough that more companies move toward stable schedules on their own. But Williams says legislative efforts are needed as well: A recent national survey found that 41 percent of early-career, hourly workers get their schedules less than a week in advance. In a survey of retail and restaurant workers in Washington, Jobs with Justice found that employers like Forever21 and Chipotle are among the worst offenders. (Forever21 did not respond to a request for comment. Chipotle says it publishes schedules four days in advance, with shifts lasting seven hours on average.)
And now, there’s legislation to benchmark against. Last year, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction to pass comprehensive scheduling reform, with a set of companion bills that require “formula retailers” (i.e., large chains) to give workers two weeks notice of their schedules, pay workers for the shifts when they’re on call and give hours to current employees instead of hiring more, among other provisions. The law went into effect in January, but won’t be enforced until July.
Meanwhile, scheduling legislation is in the works around the country. National groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Womens Law Center are helping to build coalitions where scheduling reforms could prove politically palatable, in places like New York — where the union-backed Retail Action Project has been advocating for “just hours” for years — and Minnesota, where the AFL-CIO-affiliated Working America has been building support among non-union members for measures that would benefit all workers.
Scheduling legislation even exists on the federal level. A federal bill introduced in Congress last summer would require employers to make schedule accommodations for health or childcare needs, unless there is a “bona fide business reason” for denying it. Yet another bill, proposed last month, would prevent employers from firing workers for requesting a schedule change.
But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the scheduling reform movement. A Maryland bill failed this year, in the face of employer opposition. And though there isn’t even a bill yet in Washington, businesses are voicing skepticism.
“Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes DC less attractive to businesses, than I’m concerned about that."
— Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce
“Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes DC less attractive to businesses, than I’m concerned about that,” said Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. “The D.C. chamber is concerned about any restrictions on free enterprise.”
It’s perhaps more concerning to employers than even raising the minimum wage: That’s just extra cost. Scheduling, by contrast, impacts the very core of how they’ve learned to do business.
Making it real
Laws, of course, are only as good as their enforcers. And scheduling laws, with their far-reaching impact, could be particularly difficult to follow up on.
Just ask unions, which already have many of the proposed scheduling rules in their contracts. Making sure employers stick to them is a big job, even though union dues pay for far more inspectors — in the form of business agents and shop stewards — than city and state governments ever will.
“The union has this exact set of provisions in its contracts, and they are extremely important for making sure that if you have the seniority you can get the fullest work week possible,” says John Boardman, president of UNITE-HERE Local 25, which represents 6,500 mostly hotel workers in the D.C. area. “But it also takes a very, very strong enforcement mechanism in order to make these provisions of the contract viable and living.”
Jobs with Justice already knows this. A few years ago, D.C. passed laws requiring employers to pay for a minimum of 4 hours in a shift, even if a worker was sent home early, and to pay an extra hour’s worth of wages for every “split shift” (with a long break in the middle) that an employee works. In its survey, Jobs with Justice found that workers were sent home early and asked to work split shifts just as much as they were in 2010, when another survey was done, suggesting the laws hadn’t had much effect.
That’s why they’re hoping the city will put more resources into enforcement, in the form of inspectors and people to process claims. But it’s also going to have to involve a massive education campaign to make workers aware they even have these new rights.
"It is easier to enforce these things when you have a union contract and a grievance procedure, and a shop steward and union infrastructure to back that up,” says Schwartz. “But we can’t keep relying on that as our only model. Because there’s so many workers in the growing retail and restaurant sectors that need those protections, too.”
Source: The Washington Post
Protesters Demand a Voice in Selection of Next President of Philadelphia ‘Fed’
CBS Philly - December 15, 2014, by Steve Tawa - Just as the Federal Reserve is about to hold a key policy meeting in...
CBS Philly - December 15, 2014, by Steve Tawa - Just as the Federal Reserve is about to hold a key policy meeting in Washington, DC, a group of activists is calling for a more transparent process to replace Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
The group, which staged a march this morning from Independence Hall to the Federal Reserve at Sixth and Arch Streets, says the Fed’s replacement process is dominated by major financial firms and corporations.
Members of Action United, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, and Pennsylvania Working Families say there are no community, labor, or consumer representatives on the board of directors of the Philadelphia Fed, so working folks are shut out of the process.
They are part of a grass-roots coalition across the country that met last month with Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, demanding that the central bank hear the concerns of ordinary Americans as it prepares to raise interest rates.
Who are those ordinary Americans?
“The unemployed, the underemployed, the working and barely-working working class,” says Kendra Brooks of Action United.
“We just need some people at the Fed to step up and pay attention to us,” adds Chris Campbell (far right in photo), a graduate of Orleans Technical Institute who has been doing multiple odd jobs to scrape together income.
Dawn Walton, who had been one day away from becoming a permanent worker with benefits at a local auto dealership when she was laid off after 89 days, said, “And now (we’re) out here pounding the pavement with millions of other people. It looks like there’s no way out.”
While the unemployment rate has declined to a six-year low, the activists challenge the Fed to visit poorer neighborhoods in Philadelphia and elsewhere before raising rates, because many are not experiencing a recovery.
Plosser, the Philadelphia Fed president since 2006, was among those known as a “hawk” for casting dissenting votes against the Fed’s prolonged low-rates policies.
The Philadelphia Fed says it is following a process for the selection of the bank’s next president outlined by Congress, and its senior executives have met with representatives of groups who have expressed interest in the process.
Source
Protesters roll loudly through Senate office buildings, 155 arrested
Protesters roll loudly through Senate office buildings, 155 arrested
The chants of vocal activists echoed through the hallways of Senate office buildings Wednesday, as hundreds staged sit-...
The chants of vocal activists echoed through the hallways of Senate office buildings Wednesday, as hundreds staged sit-ins to protest the Republican health care plan that's already on shaky ground.
Clashing with the shouting was the sound of two-way radios from a larger-than-normal police presence to arrest those refusing to heed warnings to stop.
Read the full article here.
NYTimes Letter to the Editor: Deportations for Minor Offenses
New York Times - April 13, 2014 To the Editor: Re “...
New York Times - April 13, 2014
To the Editor:
Re “More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Data Shows” (front page, April 7):
It’s a mistake to focus the debate about immigration enforcement on the question of which immigrants are sufficiently “criminal” to deserve deportation. When the Obama administration talks about deporting people with convictions, they are talking about people who have already served their sentences for those convictions.
If you are a citizen who commits an offense, you pay the penalty issued by the criminal legal system, and then you are free to try to rebuild your life. If you are a noncitizen who commits that same offense and pays that same penalty, you can be subjected to the double punishment of permanent exile from your home and family.
This two-tiered system of justice is morally abhorrent regardless of how serious the underlying offense may have been. It’s an unfairness compounded by the well-documented unfairness of the criminal legal system itself, which disproportionately targets poor people and minorities.
Let’s not rely on our corrupt criminal justice system to justify the operations of our corrupt immigration system.
EMILY TUCKER Brooklyn, April 7, 2014
The writer is staff attorney for immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Source
For Some Starbucks Workers, Job Leaves Bitter Taste
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (...
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (SBUX) in New York City, is fed up.
"Starbucks' attitude is that there's always someone else can who can do the job," she said in running through her complaints about life at the java giant.
If that isn't necessarily the consensus among Starbucks workers, interviews with nine current and former baristas at the company make clear it's not an isolated opinion, either. Even those who say they like their job paint a picture of a business that underpays front-line workers, enforces work rules arbitrarily and too often fails to strike a balance between corporate goals and employee needs.
Of course, such complaints are nothing new in retail, where low pay and erratic schedules are the norm. But by its own account, Starbucks is no ordinary company and is ostensibly a far cry from the fast-food outlets now facing a nationwide uprising by employees tired of working for peanuts.
That's evident in the company's recruitment pitch. Starbucks invites job-seekers to "become a part of something bigger and inspire positive change in the world," describing it as a chance to discover a "deep sense of purpose."
Damage control
That image suffered a serious blow last month after The New York Times vividly chronicled a Starbucks worker struggling with the company's scheduling practices. The story, which centered on a 22-year-old barista and single mother, amounted to a public relations nightmare for Starbucks. Perhaps not coincidentally, within days of the story's publication top executives were promising reform.
In a memo to employees earlier this month, for instance, Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead vowed to "transform the U.S. partner experience," referring to Starbucks' more than 130,000 baristas. Inviting worker feedback, he said Starbucks will examine its approach to employee pay, revisit its dress code, make it easier for people to ask for time off, and consider other changes aimed at helping baristas balance work and their personal lives.
Among other changes, the company said it would end the practice of "clopening," when an employee responsible for closing a store late at night is also assigned to open it early in the morning.
"We recognize that we can do more for our partners who wear the apron every day," he wrote.
Some baristas did not feel this August memo from Starbucks went far enough in proposing ways to improve work conditions, so they marked it up with their own ideas.
Although Starbucks workers welcome this pledge to respect the apron, they fear the company is more intent on dousing the PR flames than on genuinely improving employees' experience. After the retailer last month sent an email to workers outlining possible solutions to the kind of scheduling problems and related issues detailed by the Times, a group of baristas gave the proposal a C- and posted online a marked-up version of the memo listing their own demands (image above).
"We hope you're ready for a commitment to give us schedules that don't mess with taking care of kids, going to school or holding onto that second job we need because Sbux wages don't make ends meet," wrote the baristas, who are working with a union-backed labor group, the Center for Popular Democracy.
Retail jungle
Despite the recent media focus on Starbucks, the company's labor practices are generally no worse than those of many large retailers. In some ways they're better, with the company offering health care to part-time, as well as full-time, workers; unusually generous 401(k) matching contributions; annual stock grants to employees; and tuition reimbursement.
Starbucks highlights such benefits as an example of its commitment to employees. "Sharing success with one another has been core to the company's heritage for more than 40 years," Alstead said in the September memo.
Meanwhile, some baristas say they enjoy their work and feel valued by Starbucks. "It's a decent place to work, and my manager and co-workers are great," said one employee who asked not to be identified.
But other current and former workers claim Starbucks has changed in recent years, saying that corporate leaders' intense focus on slashing costs has short-circuited its professed commitment to workers. Mostly, they say Starbucks doesn't listen to employees and even punishes those who identify problems.
"The biggest problem is that baristas don't have a voice," said Sarah Madden, a former Starbucks barista who left the company this spring after two years with the coffee vendor. "They can't speak to issues that they know exist. Workers know how to fix them, but when [they] speak up there are serious repercussions -- your hours get cut, you're transferred to another store or isolated from other people."
Employees interviewed for this article said one result of Starbucks' cost-containment push is that stores are frequently understaffed, hurting customer service and forcing managers to scramble to find staff. That problem is common across the big-box stores that dominate the retail sector, experts said.
"One the one hand, retailers overhire, but they're also understaffed, so everybody's running around and then there aren't enough people on the floor," said Susan Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago and an expert in work-life issues. "Companies are effectively loading all the risk onto workers so that they're not the ones incurring the risks inherent in business."
Starbucks denies that its stores are short-staffed. "We're proud of the level of service we provide in our stores," said Zack Hutson, a spokesman for the company. "We know that the connection our partners have with customers is the foundation of the Starbucks experience. It wouldn't be in our best interest. We want our customers to have the appropriate service level when they come to our stores."
To be sure, Starbucks is hardly the only U.S. corporate giant to keep a gimlet eye on its bottom line -- among Fortune 500 companies that approach to management is the rule, not the exception, and CEOs across the land defend it as an inviolable fiduciary duty to shareholders.
But baristas say Starbucks' focus on profits and cost-cutting has increasingly led its leadership to tune workers out. Locke, who has worked for the company since 2006 and who earns roughly $16,000 a year, said she yearned for the Starbucks of old.
"When I started they had a training program and taught you how to be a coffee expert. There was more of a culture of supporting each other as co-workers. Store managers were sympathetic. I really enjoyed it."
Asked why she stays at Starbucks, Locke said her employment options are limited because she lacks a college education and because her only professional experience is in retail.
Living wage?
According to workers, the best thing Starbucks can do for its apron-wearers is to raise their pay and offer full-time hours instead of the 20 to 30 hours that most employees work.
Samantha Cole, a barista in Omaha, Neb., said she struggles to get by on her supervisor's salary of $11.25 an hour. Such pay may be better than what she would earn working for other retailers, but the 30-year-old mother of two say it's still not a living wage.
"I'm definitely not making enough money," said Cole, who has been with the company for six years. "A lot of us are right there with what fast-food workers are making."
Such frustrations are also evident in comments on the Facebook page Starbucks uses to communicate with employees and where it is asking baristas for input regarding the company's labor practices. Wrote one employee: "I've worked for the company for 7 years in January, and I don't make enough to support myself on one job so I work 2 jobs, 6 days a week.... I've seen a lot of amazing partners leave because they don't make enough."
Starbucks declined to disclose compensation data, citing competitive reasons and saying that pay varies widely according to workers' experience and where in the U.S. stores are located. It didn't respond to emails requesting clarification regarding other aspects of its labor policies.
It's worth noting that low pay isn't unique to Starbucks -- in retail it is the norm. As of 2012 (the latest year for which data is available), the median hourly income for retail salespeople is $10.29 per hour, or $21,410 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hourly pay for full-time retail workers range from a high of $14.42 to $9.61 for lower-paid people, according to Demos, a liberal-leaning think tank in New York. Part-timers typically make much less, with the average cashier earning $18,500 a year.
"Until [Starbucks] gives a living wage to every employee, they can't claim to be a good employer," Locke said, who added that it has been roughly two years since her last pay raise.
"Race to the bottom"
Another priority for baristas: stable, regular schedules. Like most large retailers, Starbucks uses scheduling software to try to match the number of workers it has in a store at any given time to the amount of business it gets. Workers also may be scheduled according to the sales they generate or their facility in promoting certain products. The technology also can enable other savings, such as limiting overtime.
For employees, however, that approach -- known as "just-in-time" or "on-call" scheduling -- often results in lower income and chaotic hours.
Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at City University of New York's Murphy Institute, characterizes the widespread adoption of scheduling and so-called workforce optimization technologies as a "new race to the bottom."
"Companies that have already reduced operating costs by making deals with irresponsible subcontractors and using the cheapest available materials are now cutting corners in the form of the 'just-in- time scheduling' of their workforce," she and her co-authors wrote in a recent report. "These 'lean' manufacturing practices take advantage of sophisticated software and an increasingly desperate workforce to cut labor costs to the bone."
By the same token, tighter control of worker schedules helps Starbucks contain payroll costs. But it also means employees who had expected to work a certain number of hours every week can see their schedules dramatically cut back and fluctuate wildly. The result? Smaller paychecks and a disturbance to family life.
"It makes it very hard for parents to participate in an intimate family routine and structure it in such a way that experts agree is good for children," Lambert said.
Irregular schedules also make it hard for workers who do need extra income to work a second job, schedule appointments and plan other aspects of their lives.
Baristas said Starbucks posts their schedule only days in advance and that they are often subject to change. Following the Times story, Starbucks said it would post schedules at least one week in advance. That's not enough time, several workers said, asking the company to provide at least two or three weeks notice, as retailers ranging from Walmart (WMT) and H&M to Victoria's Secret (LB) do.
Meanwhile, despite Starbucks' promise to end clopening, the practice continues, some workers said, although the company insists that this is only in cases when people request such shifts.
"Partners should never be required to work opening and closing shifts. That policy is clear," Starbucks' Hutson said, adding that the company is studying ways to give workers more input in their schedules. "If there are cases where that's not happening, we want to know about that."
Given the scrutiny on Starbucks, the company can count on baristas to do just that.
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