Interviews for Resistance: New Progressive Coalition Calls for “Millions of Jobs”
Interviews for Resistance: New Progressive Coalition Calls for “Millions of Jobs”
A coalition of unions and other progressive organizations is pushing lawmakers on a jobs and infrastructure bill that would put millions of people to work.
...
A coalition of unions and other progressive organizations is pushing lawmakers on a jobs and infrastructure bill that would put millions of people to work.
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States May Copy California’s Law to Give Employees Right to File Class Actions
States May Copy California’s Law to Give Employees Right to File Class Actions
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether employees have the right to bring class actions against their bosses. With the court’s Republican majority restored this year by President...
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether employees have the right to bring class actions against their bosses. With the court’s Republican majority restored this year by President Donald Trump, labor advocates aren’t holding their breath.
Instead, they’re pursuing a work-around pioneered on the West Coast. A decade-old California law allows people to act as “private attorneys general,” bringing cases against companies on behalf of the government. Activists are urging other states and cities to follow suit.
Read the full article here.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Challenger Has a Chance
During the presidential primary, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has managed the impressive feat of angering virtually every liberal in America. Bernie Sanders ...
During the presidential primary, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has managed the impressive feat of angering virtually every liberal in America. Bernie Sanders supporters think she displays a transparent biasfor Hillary Clinton. Party stalwarts, including Clinton fans, criticize the decision tohide primary debates on weekend nights, ceding hours of free media time to Republicans in the formative stages of the election. And in a recent interview with the New York Times Magazine, Wasserman Schultz insulted millennial women for being “complacent” about abortion rights. This is an incomplete list.
In two separate petitions, more than 94,000 people have demanded that Wasserman Schultz resign as DNC chair. But back in her district, in Hollywood, Florida, Timothy Canova has another idea: vote her out of office.
Last Thursday, Canova, a former aide to the late Sen. Paul Tsongas and a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law, jumped into the Democratic primary in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. It’s Wasserman Schultz’s first primary challenge ever, and with frustration running high against her, it’s almost certain to draw national attention. But Canova first became interested in challenging Wasserman Schultz not because of her actions as DNC chair, but because of her record.
“This is the most liberal county in all of Florida,” Canova said in an interview, referring to Broward County, where most of Wasserman Schultz’s district resides (a small portion is in northern Miami-Dade County). But she more closely associates with her significant support from corporate donors, Canova argued. He listed several of Wasserman Schultz’s votes, such as blocking the SEC and IRS from disclosing corporate political spending (which was part of last month’s omnibus spending bill),opposing a medical marijuana ballot measure that got 58 percent of the vote in Florida, preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from regulating discrimination in auto lending and opposing their rules cracking down on payday lending, and supporting “fast track” authority for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“I think anyone who voted for fast track should be primaried. I believe that ordinary citizens have to step up,” Canova said.
Canova espouses many of the populist themes that attract the left: fighting corporate power, defending organized labor, and reducing income inequality. But this is not just a Bernie Sanders Democrat. You have to go back further. Tim Canova is a Marriner Eccles Democrat.
Eccles chaired the Federal Reserve during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. And Canova believes the central bank should revisit Eccles’s unorthodox strategies to jump-start a broad-based economic recovery. “In the 1930s, the regional Fed banks made loans directly to the people,” Canova said. “Instead of purchasing $4 trillion in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, [the Fed] could buy short-term municipal bonds and drive the yield to zero for state and local governments. They could push money into infrastructure, making loans to state infrastructure banks.” Canova has even suggested that the government create currency outside of the central bank, breaking their monopoly on the money supply, as President Abraham Lincoln did with the “Greenback” in the 1860s.
During World War II, FDR directed Eccles’s Fed to finance American war debt at low rates, eventually producing a stimulus that helped to end the Great Depression. It was a time when the Fed was far more accountable to democratically elected institutions, one that Canova looks back upon fondly. “People like to talk about the Fed’s independence, that’s really a cover for the Fed’s capture,” he said. “They look out for elite groups in society, and the hell with everybody else.”
A growing faction of progressives are beginning to return to their roots, asking whether Fed policies truly support the public interest. The Fed Up campaign, with which Canova has consulted, seeks to pressure the Fed to adopt pro-worker policies. A surprise movement in Congress just cut a 100 year-old subsidy the Fed handed out to banks by $7 billion. Even mainstream figures like economist Larry Summerswonder whether the Fed’s hybrid public/private structure, which critics believe makes it beholden to financial interests, makes sense.
Progressive debates on central banking are not as advanced here as in Europe, where British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wants a “quantitative easing for people,” where the central bank injects money directly into the economy rather than filtering it through financial institutions. But Canova, who says his views were most influenced by an undergraduate economics professor who taught with one book—John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—bridges this gap. Twenty years ago this week, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Timesopposing the reappointment of Alan Greenspan as Fed chair because of his support for high real interest rates. If elected this fall, he would instantly become the strongest advocate in Congress for a people’s Fed.
While Debbie Wasserman Schultz has few known views on the Federal Reserve, Canova’s populism offers a strong counterweight to her corporate-tinged philosophy. And even before that contrast plays out, the hunger for any challenge to Wasserman Schultz is palpable.
“The money is coming in more rapidly than believable,” said Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America PAC, which raises money for progressive Democrats. Wasserman Schultz has been on Klein’s radar since she, as chair of the “Red to Blue” campaign for electing House Democrats, refused to campaign against three Republicans in Florida because of prior friendships and their joint support for the state sugar industry.
Klein sent a Blue America fundraising email shortly after Canova’s announcement, and raised $7,000 within 12 hours, and over $10,000 at last count. The intensity of support reached beyond the PAC’s traditional donor base. “Our average donation is $45, but in this case we’re getting $3, $5,” Klein said. “For people who our donors have never heard of, it can take three-four months to do that. It’s just because ofDebbie Wasserman Schultz.”
Similarly, Canova says he’s seeing tens of thousands of visits to his website andFacebook page, suggesting support beyond south Florida. However, he wants to localize rather than nationalize the race. The district, initially drawn with Wasserman Schultz’s input when she served in the Florida state Senate, is now more Hispanic and less reliable for a politician who Canova believes has lost touch with her constituents.
“You talk to people at the Broward County Democratic clubs, they say she takes us for granted,” Canova said. The political model for his campaign is David Brat, another academic who took on a party leader—then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor—and defeated him, on the grounds that Cantor ignored his district amid constant corporate fundraising.
If there’s one thing Wasserman Schultz can do, it’s raise money—that’s why she chairs the party. She will have a big cash advantage and the power of incumbency. But Canova thinks he can outmatch her by riding the populist tide. “There’s a tendency to get so down about the system, but this is an interesting moment we’re living in,” Canova said. “This is a grassroots movement. We’re tapping in without even trying yet.”
Source: The New Republic
City Council Votes to Create Municipal ID Cards
NY Daily News - June 26, 2014, by Erin Durkin - The City Council voted to create municipal ID cards Thursday, giving the city’s half a million undocumented immigrants a way to prove their identity...
NY Daily News - June 26, 2014, by Erin Durkin - The City Council voted to create municipal ID cards Thursday, giving the city’s half a million undocumented immigrants a way to prove their identity.
The 43 to 3 vote will launch the largest local ID program in the nation - also allowing transgender, homeless, and elderly people who sometimes struggle to get driver’s licenses to secure an ID. Two members abstained from voting.
“Plain and simple, this is an ID for everyone,” said Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “We don’t accept that some people will simply be left out because of their immigration status, how they identify their gender, or whether they may be homeless.”
The cards are expected to start being issued in late 2014 or early 2015, and will cost $8.4 million to launch over the next year and $5.6 million a year to keep running after that.
To get an ID, an applicant will have to prove their identity with documents like a birth certificate or passport from any country, and prove they live in New York through papers like utility bills and pay stubs.
The cards will be accepted by city agencies from residents seeking services, let parents enter school buildings, and give people an ID to present to police if they are stopped, which sometimes spells the difference between spending a night in jail and being released.
The city is aiming to get banks and landlords to accept the card from people trying to open bank accounts or sign leases, but private institutions will not be legally required to accept it.
Critics say the bill does not make requirements for the ID secure enough to ensure it won’t be abused.
“There are legitimate security concerns that have not been adequately addressed,” said Minority Leader Vincent Ignizio (R-Staten Island), who voted no. “There are ways we can tighten it up, and there are ways we should tighten it up.”
He added the city should “want to encourage people to come here legally.”
Others feared the cards would become a scarlet letter of sorts identifying people as undocumented.
Councilman Alan Maisel (D-Brooklyn), who abstained, said he fears the cards could be used by a future anti-immigrant federal administration to mount a crackdown on the undocumented. “We are basically presenting and preparing a list of undocumented workers,” he said. “I don’t think people should be placing themselves in the position where they can be identified when they are not here legally.”
Officials say they’ll try to combat that stigma by putting benefits such as museum discounts on the card to encourage a broad group to sign up, but details of that plan have not been worked out.
Cards will include a holder’s name, picture, address, and date of birth. Applicants will get to choose whether to have the gender they self-identify with listed on the card, answering a demand from transgender advocates who say they will be able to have an ID that matches their gender identity for the first time.
Other cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Haven currently have municipal IDs.
Councilman Mark Weprin (D-Queens) advised those with concerns about the program to “relax” and predicted the card would have broad appeal.
“We live in the coolest city in the world, and now we have a membership card,” he said. “People are going to want to be part of that club.”
Update: Mayor de Blasio, a strong backer of municipal IDs, said in a statement:
“Every New Yorker deserves an official identification that allows them to prove who they are and access core services. I thank Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Councilmembers Daniel Dromm and Carlos Menchaca, and the entire City Council for quickly enacting this critical legislation, and all of the advocates who have worked so hard to make community voices heard. The municipal ID is more than just a card – it provides New Yorkers who are currently living in the shadows with dignity and peace of mind. My administration is fully ready to develop this plan and to swiftly implement a secure and accessible Municipal ID Card program.”
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Illinois African-American Jobless Rate Among The Nation's Highest
Illinois African-American Jobless Rate Among The Nation's Highest
The African-American unemployment rate in Illinois is improving, but it is still one of the highest in the nation, shows a ...
The African-American unemployment rate in Illinois is improving, but it is still one of the highest in the nation, shows a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
The jobless rate among African Americans in Illinois declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, which covered April through June. The rate ticked down from 12.5 percent during the first quarter of 2015.
To put that 11.5 percent in perspective, the statewide unemployment rate in Illinois was 6 percent during the second quarter of 2015. In that quarter, African Americans in Illinois had the highest jobless rate followed by Hispanics at 7.9 percent, Asians at 4.8 percent and whites at 4.6 percent, according to EPI's review.
Illinois is one of only eight states in which African-American unemployment rates were at or below pre-recession levels in the second quarter of 2015. The other states were Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri.
But a closer look at the numbers shows that nearly all of those states had the highest African-American unemployment levels in the nation before the Great Recession hit.
For example, Illinois had an African-American jobless rate of 12.2 percent before the recession in the fourth quarter of 2007.
"African Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state," EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis, said in a statement. "We need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal."
EPI's analysis covered 23 states and the District of Columbia. Only two states, New Jersey and South Carolina, and the District of Columbia had higher African-American unemployments rates than Illinois in the second quarter of 2015.
Overall, the African-American unemployment rate was the highest in the District of Columbia, 14.2 percent, and the lowest in Tennessee, 6.9 percent. The rate was below 10 percent in 11 states examined by EPI.
Nationwide, the African-American unemployment rate dropped to 9.1 percent in July, the lowest level in seven years. Still, the jobless rate for African Americans remained about twice as high as the white unemployment rate of 4.6 percent.
EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) are at least two groups that say African Americans would benefit greatly in terms of employment and wage growth if the country were to achieve full employment. They have called on the Federal Reserve to pursue "genuine full employment" before raising short-term interest rates.
At some point this year, the Fed could begin to raise the rates, which were cut to near zero percent during the Great Recession to support the economy.
In a recent statement on the full employment issue, CPD's director of strategic research Connie Razza stressed that "Black America is still in the middle of a Great Recession."
"When [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good paying jobs," she said. "The direct consequences of the Fed's projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers."
"Instead," Razza continued, "the Fed could continue to push toward a tight labor market, in which the number of people looking for work more closely matches the number of jobs available. A full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace."
Source: Progress Illinois
Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth Nicolas, a worker’s rights attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy,...
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth Nicolas, a worker’s rights attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, and former staff attorney for the Empire Justice Center, talk about continuing discrimination, harassment and bias in the office and in court.
Listen to the conversation here.
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a ...
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a series of May Day protests scheduled to take place throughout the city (and beyond) on Monday.
The specific targets of this action, according to organizers from Make The Road New York, are the Wall Street banks that help finance private prisons and immigrant detention centers. To that end, organizers said twelve protesters were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience while blocking the entrances outside of JPMorgan Chase, which is one of the companies named in Make The Road's and the Center for Popular Democracy's Backers Of Hate campaign.
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Explosion of Gig Economy Means There’s an App for Juggling Jobs
Explosion of Gig Economy Means There’s an App for Juggling Jobs
One of the reasons Mustafa Muhammed finally broke down and bought a smartphone was because he needed to find a job.
The 57-year-old cook was tired of using a...
One of the reasons Mustafa Muhammed finally broke down and bought a smartphone was because he needed to find a job.
The 57-year-old cook was tired of using a library computer to look for work and watching friends get a jump on leads via alerts on their phones. After picking up his first phone about two years ago, he downloaded a mobile app called Snagajob. This summer he landed a gig at a new IHOP opening in Harlem after seeing it pop up in his inbox.
“This is job No. 2,” says Muhammed, who also works in the dining hall at Fordham University. “I wanted to pick up a little something extra for the summer. I don’t like to be lazy.”
Snagajob is one of a slew of apps that have sprung up in recent years to serve the so-called gig economy. This year alone human-resources startups have attracted $1.2 billion in venture capital, with much of the funding going to companies designed to profit from the fluid nature of temporary or contract work, according to research firm CB Insights. In an election year dominated by concerns over economic inequality, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are pledging to generate more full-time jobs. But Silicon Valley is betting the gig economy is here to stay.
“Two or three years ago, it was pretty rare to have more than one job” says Snagajob.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Peter Harrison. “Now it’s really very common. What we are really building our business on is the blurring of the line between snagging a job and snagging a shift.”
Founded in 2000 as an online job board focused on “lightly skilled” hourly work, Snagajob says it has nearly doubled revenue derived from employers in the past three years. It claims 10 million unique monthly users and about 425 employees. In June, the Virginia company unveiled a mobile messaging app that lets employers assign shifts and lets workers trade them.
Snagajob charges employers for the number of clicks, applicants, interviews and hires it lines up. It also sells annual subscriptions for use of its hiring software. Harrison, 53, declines to specify revenue but says Snagajob is breaking even. In February, the startup raised $100 million to develop new features and fund acquisitions. The same month, Snagajob announced a partnership with LinkedIn, which has typically represented salaried professionals, to share research and data on hourly workers.
Similar apps are taking off in Europe, as well. Spain, with a large service sector and 20 percent unemployment, has become a testing ground for startups bringing the simplicity of swipes, geolocation and people-matching algorithms to hourly job recruitment. Three of them -- Job Today, Jobandtalent and CornerJob -- have raised some $87 million combined this year.
Job Today helps restaurants and retail mom-and-pops find and interview waiters, sales associates and drivers. Employers can post as many jobs as they like and have 24 hours to shortlist candidates, after which they use a chat feature to discuss the job and schedule face-to-face interviews. Posting a position on Job Today is gratis for now. Eventually, it plans to sell subscriptions that will let employers browse candidates and post jobs on an unlimited basis. The startup says it has about 100,000 business customers and has processed 15 million job applications since its founding a year ago.
Workforce trends are moving in favor of these apps as more people prefer to choose their own hours. In the U.S., even if they would rather work full-time, government policy has increased the incentive for companies to hire temps and contract workers, Snagajob’s Harrison says. To avoid providing health care as mandated by Obamacare, many businesses deliberately ensure workers toil less than 30 hours a week. They may also prefer temps to avoid paying overtime now that the Obama administration has expanded eligibility to millions more Americans.
According to research from Harvard and Princeton universities, “alternative work arrangements” -- including temp work, on-call work, contractors, and freelancers -- accounted for all the net employment growth in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015. That trend is widely expected to continue.
“These new labor platforms are helping people deal with the volatility of their income and the volatility of work,” says Louis Hyman, a professor of economic history at Cornell University’s ILR School and author of a forthcoming book on the rise of temp work in the U.S. “The tech reflects social reality.” Snagajob’s Harrison says companies are “essentially sharing workers” much the way consumers are sharing car rides and vacation rentals.
A handful of large deals, crowned by Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, has fueled investor enthusiasm. In June, Monster Worldwide Inc. bought San Francisco-based Jobr, which applies Tinder-like matching algorithms to job hunters and employers. Last month, Tokyo’s Recruit Holdings, which controls top-ranked job search site Indeed Inc., bought Simply Hired, which operates a global network of job search engines.
Of course, not everyone is as enamored of the gig economy as the tech industry. “This glorification of flexibility is not in line with the reality of what most working people really want,” says Carrie Gleason, who runs the Fair Workweek Initiative, a network of activist groups that has pushed for laws to support predictable scheduling and guaranteed hours in low-wage industries. Shift-swapping is “a survival tool,” she says. “It is not the ideal.”
By Polly Mosendz
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Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it.
...
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it.
Read the full article here.
Rate Hike Opponents Overwhelmed The Fed's Phone System
Left-leaning groups affiliated with the Fed Up campaign, including CREDO Action, the Working Families Party and Daily Kos, estimate that over...
Left-leaning groups affiliated with the Fed Up campaign, including CREDO Action, the Working Families Party and Daily Kos, estimate that over 400 of their members called the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ public comment hotline and the phone numbers of the Fed’s special economic advisers late last week and early this week to express opposition to an interest rate hike. The activists, along with many liberal economists, believe the Fed should wait for higher wage growth before raising rates.
Around 9 a.m. Monday, activists reported being unable to record additional messages on the public comment hotline because it apparently was full, according to Fed Up. This continued for another two to three hours.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ communications office declined to confirm the account or otherwise comment on the calls.
The Fed Up campaign’s opposition to an interest rate hike is part of a broader goal of making the Fed more accountable to average workers and their concerns. Fed Up convened dozens of grassroots activists to make their case to Fed officials in person at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium in late August.
The Fed’s inability to receive more phone calls confirms it is "unused to actual public engagement," Fed Up campaign director Ady Barkan wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.
The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee is meeting on Wednesday and Thursday to decide whether to raise its benchmark interest rate, and plans to announce its decision Thursday afternoon. The Fed has indicated it may decide to raise the rate slightly above the near-zero level, where it has remained since December 2008.
Proponents of an interest rate hike note that the official unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent and argue that although inflation is well under the Fed’s 2 percent target, it is better to raise rates gradually sooner to avoid having to take more dramatic action later.
Opponents of a rate hike, however, observe that the official unemployment rate does not account for people who have given up looking for work or are working part-time involuntarily. That is why they believe the declining unemployment has not been accompanied by more significant wage growth.
"Millions of working families know from their own experiences that the economy is still struggling," said Murshed Zaheed, deputy political director of CREDO Action, in an email statement. "Intentionally slowing down the economy now would reduce job creation and prevent wage growth. It’s the last thing the Fed should be doing."
Source: Huffington Post
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