As the Stock Market Swings
Yet it’s hard to escape a vague sense of unease. The swoon that began a week before last was quickly attributed, at...
Yet it’s hard to escape a vague sense of unease. The swoon that began a week before last was quickly attributed, at least in part, to China’s economic problems. Just as quickly, many investors and policy makers concluded that China’s leaders would manage those problems in ways that would allow the global economy to chug along. But what if they don’t? A prolonged slowdown is more likely to provoke social unrest in China than in other developed economies, because stability there has been based on high growth rather than political and other institutional arrangements. The prospect of social unrest, in turn, raises economic and national-security concerns not raised by economic crises elsewhere.
Closer to home, market volatility has significantly reduced the odds that the Federal Reserve will begin to raise interest rates at its next meeting in mid-September. A delay is nothing to lament, because the still significant slack in the labor market would make an increase this year premature. The Fed has generally played down the potential impact of China and other international headwinds, while asserting that the negative effects of low oil prices and a strong dollar were likely to be temporary. But these forces are proving potent and long lasting — further reason to give the Fed pause.
Renewed stock market downdrafts could disrupt the economy, and the Fed’s plans, in other ways. The recovery in housing is an important gauge of economic health. But this year, the big increases in sales and prices have come at the high end of the market, where investment wealth is assumed to be more of a factor in the decision to buy than wages and salary. The very real possibility is that if the stock market falters again, so too will the housing market.
Economic fundamentals today are no different than they were before the market took a walk on the wild side. Inflation is well below the Fed’s target of 2 percent. Unemployment is still higher than it was before the last recession and wages have shown no signs of rising. The economy is being propelled forward by consumers and other advantages, and being held back by insufficient government spending and other disadvantages.
It all works out to an economy growing at 2.5 percent. At that modest pace, the United States cannot be of much help if other economies falter. But it can rebound from a market swoon, at least for now.
Source: New York Times
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of...
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of bankers in key central bank positions on Thursday, marking a major coup for national progressive groups championing reform.
“The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the wellbeing of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”
The campaign also provided insight into the type of Federal Reserve governors that Clinton would appoint.
“Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry,” Ferguson said.
The announcement brings the Democratic presidential front-runner closer to the position of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders proposed barring financial executives from sitting on the boards of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks in an op-ed in The New York Times in December.
The Clinton campaign statement came in response to a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen from 11 Democratic senators and 116 House Democrats. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the Fed to appoint more women and people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while expanding the representation of consumer and labor groups on regional Fed bank boards.
Currently, the vast majority of Fed bank board directors are white men. People representing either the financial industry or other major business sectors also occupy most of the seats.
It appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities.
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
The Fed’s control over monetary policy allows it to raise borrowing costs to head off inflation and reduce them to maximize employment. The members of Congress who wrote to Yellen argue that the disproportionate influence of financial officials and the lack of diversity at the Fed hamper its sensitivity to groups with a more precarious position in the job market.
Clinton had said virtually nothing about her agenda for the powerful central bank until now.
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy that has been at the forefront of recent efforts to make Federal Reserve reform a key part of the liberal agenda, confirmed that it has been in talks with the Clinton campaign for months.
“Secretary Clinton did the right thing today by coming out in favor of reforming the Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, director of Fed Up. “We’re very excited that she listened to the voices of community leaders from around the country who have said that we need a Federal Reserve that reflects and represents the American people and that creates a strong economy for all.”
Some liberal economists previously noted that Clinton’s reticence about the Fed was inconsistent with her stated plans to return the country to the prosperity of the late 1990s, which enabled widespread wage growth. They argue that the era’s well-distributed economic gains were due in no small part to the permissive monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Dean Baker, one such economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was elated to hear about Clinton’s remarks.
“Holy shit — that’s great news,” Baker said in an email upon receiving the news.
“While Senators Sanders, Warren, and others on the left side of the party took the lead, it appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities,” Baker continued. “There is also agreement that the Fed’s current archaic structure needs to be changed.”
By Daniel Marans
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A Life Without Papers
New York Times - March 2, 2015, by Ehiracenia Vasquez - The birth certificates for my children, born here eight and...
New York Times - March 2, 2015, by Ehiracenia Vasquez - The birth certificates for my children, born here eight and four years ago. The receipts that prove I paid property taxes on the trailer home where we used to live. My children’s medical records. A stack of documents that show I’ve lived in Texas for more than 12 years, and that my son and daughter are United States citizens.
I keep all these papers in a drawer next to my bed, so I will have easy access to them as soon as I need them. These are the documents that were supposed to allow me to apply for a new program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans — the documents that would protect me, for a time, from deportation, and give me some relief from the constant fear that comes with life as an undocumented immigrant.
“Why do you need those papers?” my son asks me one day in January, as he watches me search through plastic bags and backpacks I’ve kept for years on the top shelf of my closet, looking for one more bill, one more certificate, one more piece of paper that might help with applications for my husband and me.
He knows I’ve kept the television tuned to Univision ever since President Obama announced his executive action in November. I listened closely as the news anchor Jorge Ramos explained the application requirements, and realized we qualified. I was watching when, two weeks ago, a federal judge here in Texas put a temporary stop to the program. Now I am waiting to see what happens next.
My son doesn’t understand why I am so anxious. He is 8 years old. He has a Social Security number and could travel out of the country if he wanted.
So I tell him: I want to be able to travel, too. I want to take him to the Rio Grande Valley, where his grandfather lives — the grandfather he has never met, because we need to pass an immigration checkpoint to get to that part of Texas. I want him to play with his abuelo under the tall palm trees that dot the landscape of that border town.
There is more, of course. I want to drive the short distance to the grocery store without worrying that the police car in the lane of traffic behind me is going to pull me over and demand documents I don’t have. I want to be able to look for a good job so that I can help provide for my family. I want to take my kids to school in the morning without worrying whether that day will be the last one I have with them.
Their childhood here in Houston is already so different from mine.
I was born and raised in Río Bravo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. I was 12 when my mother told me she couldn’t send me to school anymore. She needed me at home helping her with my siblings and keeping the house clean. When I was 17, one of my older sisters, who had already moved to Houston, invited me join her. She was 20 and asked me to take care of her baby so that she could work. Knowing there was little to lose, I crossed — without documents, but with my mother’s blessing.
I quickly realized that life as an undocumented person in the United States was not what I had imagined. Without documents, school did not make sense. The only job I could find was taking care of other people’s kids, earning me a few dollars in cash at the end of each day.
Eventually, I met my husband, also an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. He found work as a mechanic. We live with my in-laws and I currently stay home with our children. We have stitched together a beautiful family. But that’s 12 years of living cautiously, on the margins.
In November, it seemed we would be able to move, however slowly, out of those margins. We would have temporary relief. I gathered my documents together and kept them safe. We were prepared.
Then the judge put it all on hold. Everything we had been working toward — a break from life in the shadows — is now on pause, in limbo, maybe never to be a reality.
I allowed myself to feel a little disappointed and a little bit sad. But I am not going to let myself feel defeated. I am still trying to organize people to go to meetings so that they can be ready when the program moves forward.
I make phone calls, trying to get them to show up. I hear a lot of doubt. Why learn about a program that may never come to be?
I tell them what I have been telling myself: that we need to be prepared for when the good news comes. I have my documents ready, in that drawer near my bed. I’m not giving up hope.
Ehiracenia Vasquez is a member of the Texas Organizing Project, a partner of the Center for Popular Democracy. This article was translated by Mary Moreno from the Spanish.
Source: The New York Times
New York City Increases Its Resistance to Federal Entreaties on Foreign-Born Detainees
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Kirk Semple - For years, New York City correction officials routinely...
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Kirk Semple - For years, New York City correction officials routinely provided federal immigration authorities with information about foreign-born detainees in their custody. The city, in response to federal requests, would transfer many of those detainees into federal custody, often leading to their deportation.
But a series of laws passed by the City Council over the past two years sought to restrict this cooperative agreement.
And according to new city statistics, the laws appear to be achieving their goal, prompting celebration — albeit guarded — among immigrants’ advocates.
From July, when the most recent of the restrictive laws went into effect, to September, city officials responded to 904 federal hold requests, known as detainers, according to the statistics. Of those detainers, the city declined to honor 331, or 37 percent.
In contrast, until the laws were passed, the city customarily honored every detainer, according to city officials.
“We feel good about the impact that this legislation has had because it has stopped the deportation of a lot of New Yorkers,” Javier H. Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, an advocacy group, said on Thursday.
“Our hope,” he said, “is that with the new administration we can increase the number of New Yorkers who will not be turned over to immigration.”
Even with the new city laws, New York’s restrictions are still not as tight as those of other major cities, like Chicago and Washington, advocates said.
Cooperation between local governments and federal immigration authorities has been a deeply contentious issue around the United States.
Some jurisdictions, convinced that the federal government has not done enough to enforce immigration laws, have increased their role in immigration enforcement. But others, concerned about the impact of deportations on their communities, have tried to put distance between themselves and the immigration machinery of the federal government.
Much of the recent debate has surrounded the federal Secure Communities program. The initiative allows Homeland Security officials to more easily compare the fingerprints of every suspect booked at a local jail with those in its files. If they find that a suspect is a noncitizen who is in the country illegally or has a criminal record, they may issue a detainer.
The Secure Communities program, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement strategy, has been vehemently opposed by some elected officials around the country, who have sought to limit their jurisdictions’ participation.
In November 2011, the City Council passed a law that narrowed the range of detainers the city would honor. Among other terms, the law prevented correction officers from transferring immigrants to federal custody if the inmates had no convictions or outstanding warrants, had not previously been deported, were not suspected gang members or did not appear on a terrorist watch list.
The effect on the detainer system was immediate: Correction officials went from routinely honoring all detainers to, according to the recently released statistics, about 75 percent of them.
In February, the Council imposed additional restrictions, including blocking detainers for immigrants facing all but the most serious misdemeanor charges, like sexual abuse, assault and gun possession.
Under these new guidelines, the percentage of detainers the city rebuffed rose to about 37 percent from about 25 percent. The rates may have even been higher had the federal government not concurrently altered its own detainer policy, limiting the range of immigrants it would seek custody of.
Still, immigrant advocates said they would press for more restrictions and have reoriented their lobby toward Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who has vowed to end the city’s cooperation with federal immigration detainers except for detainees convicted of “violent or serious felonies.”
Newark, San Francisco and Santa Clara, Calif., are also among the cities that have more restrictive detainer policies than New York, according to Emily Tucker, staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group in New York.
“New York City can do much better than these numbers show we are doing at the moment,” she said.
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Scarlett Johansson recauda medio millón para Puerto Rico
Scarlett Johansson recauda medio millón para Puerto Rico
Las compañías Marvel y Disney donaron todos los costos de producción al igual que una aportación económica de $350,000...
Las compañías Marvel y Disney donaron todos los costos de producción al igual que una aportación económica de $350,000 dólares los cuales estarán destinados a la ayuda a Puerto Rico organizados por el Hurricane María Community Recovery Fund.
Read the full article here.
Practices of 13 Retailers Questioned by New York Lawyers
The Market Business - April 14, 2015, by Rachel M - The lawyer at New York has initiated inquiry against 13 retailers,...
The Market Business - April 14, 2015, by Rachel M - The lawyer at New York has initiated inquiry against 13 retailers, inquiring them if workers are asked to come on call for short notice shifts and spend less than 4 hours when employees are required to report to operate, stating the practice as illegal in NY.
On-call scheduling requires workers to call in just a few hours in advance or the night before to see if they need to come in to work. If not needed, the employee will receive no pay for the day.
“For many workers, that is too little time to make arrangements for family needs, let alone to find an alternative source of income to compensate for the lost pay,”
A New York state law requires that employees who are asked to come into work must be paid for at least four hours atminimum wage or the number of hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, even if the employee is sent home.
California has a similar law that says employees must be paid for half of their usual time — two to four hours — if they are required to come in to work but are not needed or work less than their normal schedule.
The letter was also sent to J. Crew Group Inc.; L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works; Burlington Stores Inc.; TJX Cos.; Urban Outfitters Inc.; Sears Holdings Corp.; Williams-Sonoma Inc.; Crocs Inc.; Ann Inc., which owns Ann Taylor; and J.C. Penney Co.
The letters ask the retailers for more information about how they schedule employees for work, including whether they use on-call shifts and computerized scheduling programs.
Rachel Deutsch, an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York worker advocacy group, said on-call scheduling can make it difficult for workers to arrange child care or pick up a second job.
“These are folks that want to work,” she said. “They’re ready and willing to work, and some weeks they might get no pay at all even though they set aside 100% of their time to work.”
Danielle Lang, a Skadden fellow at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, said the attorney general’s action could have repercussions in other states.
“The New York attorney general is a powerful force,” she said. “It’s certainly an issue that’s facing so many of our low-wage workers in California, and anything that puts a highlight on this practice and really pressures employers to think about these practices is a good thing.”
Sears, Target and Ann Inc. said in separate statements that they do not have on-call shifts for their workers. J.C. Penney said it has a policy against on-call scheduling.
TJX spokeswoman Doreen Thompson said in a statement that company management teams “work to develop schedules that serve the needs of both our associates and our company.”
Gap said in a statement that the company has been working on a project with the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law to examine workplace scheduling and productivity and will see the first set of data results in the fall.
“Gap Inc. is committed to establishing sustainable scheduling practices that will improve stability for our employees, while helping toeffectively manage our business,” spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson said.
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John Williams named to take over key New York Fed president post
John Williams named to take over key New York Fed president post
Fed Up, a group of economists and former Fed officials, and other organizations have been critical of the selection...
Fed Up, a group of economists and former Fed officials, and other organizations have been critical of the selection process as well as the approach the central bank has taken to policy-making. "The NY Fed should go back to the drawing board and draw from the deep, diverse, and highly qualified list of candidates provided to it by the Fed Up coalition (as well as surveying the views of other public interest groups)," the Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens said in a recent statement. "This is too important a decision to make on institutional autopilot."
Read the full article here.
Advocates Rally to Eliminate ‘Sub-Minimum Wage'
Brooklyn Daily Eagle - October 23, 2014, by Matthew Taub - Hundreds of tipped and low-wage workers and advocates...
Brooklyn Daily Eagle - October 23, 2014, by Matthew Taub - Hundreds of tipped and low-wage workers and advocates, including fast food, car wash and other low-wage workers, rallied outside a Domino’s Pizza location in Harlem before marching to the second public hearing of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Wage Board, where they testified and called on the Wage Board to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for the 229,000 tipped workers in New York state.
“In an increasingly unaffordable city, tipped workers remain among the lowest-paid hourly workers,” said New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, who joined the workers at the rally and wage board hearing. “An hourly wage of $5 an hour is simply not sustainable for an individual or a family. Now is the time to ensure that low-wage workers receive a fair and sustainable income. I join the many voices today calling on Gov. Cuomo to help bring fair wages to these industries.”
Employers in New York are allowed to pay less than the minimum wage — just $5 an hour — to restaurant servers, delivery workers and other service workers. Employers are legally required to “top off” a tipped worker’s pay when it falls short of the regular minimum wage, but lax enforcement enables employers to routinely violate minimum wage, overtime and other wage and hour laws with minimal repercussion.
“We work very hard and deserve a raise, just like other minimum wage workers in this state,” said Juana Tenesaca, a tipped worker and member of Make the Road New York. “I have worked as a waitress for years, earning the tipped minimum wage, and it’s impossible to raise my children never knowing how much money I’ll bring home at the end of the day. My daughter had to get a job while she was still in high school to help support our family and that breaks my heart.”
A July report by the National Employment Law Project finds that eliminating the sub-minimum wage would benefit an estimated 229,000 tipped workers in New York.
“Tipped workers are employed in industries like hospitality that are among the fastest growing in today’s economy,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “If we want to stimulate consumer spending and boost our local economies, we need to make sure that the growing number of New Yorkers relying on these jobs actually have money to spend on basic necessities at their neighborhood stores.”
“Having to live entirely off tips means the customer is always right, which means I’ve had to put up with unwanted advances and uncomfortable situations from guests,” said Ashley Ogogor, a tipped worker and member of Restaurant Opportunities Center-United. “The guest shouldn’t have to feel pressured at the end of the night to pay me a decent wage. If seven other states can require restaurant owners to pay their employees a full minimum wage, so can New York.”
As part of last year’s legislative deal to increase New York’s minimum wage to $9 an hour by Dec. 31, 2015, the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers was set to automatically rise in proportion to the full minimum wage whenever the latter is raised with one exception: workers in the hospitality industry. The final deal froze these workers’ wages at $5 an hour and instructed Gov. Cuomo’s Department of Labor to convene a “wage board” to determine whether these workers will get a raise, and if so, by how much.
“We call on Gov. Cuomo and the wage board to do whatever it takes to lift up working families in the Empire State,” said Tony Perlstein, campaigns co-director for the Center for Popular Democracy. “Wealthy restaurant employers shouldn’t receive special treatment that allows them to pay poverty wages to working New Yorkers, including the women who make up more than two-thirds of the tipped wage workforce. Seven states have already eliminated their sub-minimum wages, and more are seriously considering it. Their restaurant sectors are not suffering for it, and in fact are thriving.”
The wage board, consisting of Timothy Grippen, Retired Broome county executive; Heather C. Briccetti, president and CEO of the Business Council; and Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel Trade Council, heard hours of testimony detailing how New York’s tipped subminimum wage fuels unstable paychecks and poverty for thousands of workers, particularly women, across the state.
“People want to work hard at a place where they feel valued,” said Amado Rosa, a tipped worker at a Thai restaurant and a member of Make the Road New York. “Being paid $4 or $5 an hour does not make a worker feel validated and does not generate enough income to support a single person or a family. I have faced many hardships over the years, and my anxiety stemmed from not knowing what my take-home pay would be in a given week.”
The poverty rate among New York’s tipped workers is more than double that of the regular workforce. Seven states across the country have adopted policies requiring employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage and have shown that eliminating the sub-minimum wage reduces poverty without slowing job growth. In fact, according to projections by the National Restaurant Association in their 2014 Industry Forecast, all of the states that require employers to directly pay the full minimum wage to tipped workers are expected to have greater restaurant job growth than New York in the next decade — in most cases, much greater. Tipped workers are already being paid $9 or more in California, Washington and Oregon, and will soon be getting raises to over $9 in Minnesota, Hawaii and Alaska.
“More than 3 million New Yorkers work low-wage jobs, and they need our state government officials on their side,” said Michael Kink of the Strong Economy for All Coalition. “New York needs a one-two punch for good jobs: a big increase in the minimum wage, and elimination of the second-class sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. This combination could boost the paychecks of millions of workers and help revive the New York economy from the ground up — the Wage Board should take direct action to provide one fair wage to a quarter-million tipped workers to get us moving now.”
Advocates who testified at today’s hearing are members of Raise Up NY, fighting for #1FairWage, a coalition comprised of tipped workers, the National Employment Law Project, Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, Fast Food Forward, New York Labor-Religion Coalition, New York Communities for Change, ROC-NY, ROC-NY affiliate of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, Strong for All, United New York, Citizen Action New York, Tompkins County Workers Center, Worker Center of Central New York, Metro Justice, Coalition for Economic Justice, Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse (ACTS) and other community groups and advocates around New York State calling for the elimination of New York’s sub-minimum wage for tipped workers.
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Más ciudades deben tomar las riendas sobre el salario mínimo
Source:...
Source: El Diario
Ete mes, el alcalde de la ciudad de Nueva York Bill de Blasio anunció un sueldo mínimo garantizado de $15 para todos los empleados del gobierno municipal para fines de 2018. Esta es una gran victoria para más de 50,000 empleados en toda la ciudad que pasan apuros para mantener a su familia, incluidos aquellos directamente en planilla y decenas de miles que trabajan en organizaciones sin fines de lucro contratadas por la ciudad.
A diferencia de Seattle y Los Ángeles, donde los funcionarios municipales tienen el poder para aumentar el sueldo mínimo de todos los empleados de su ciudad, el alcalde De Blasio no puede aumentar los salarios de todos los trabajadores de la ciudad de Nueva York unilateralmente. El gobernador Andrew Cuomo y la legislatura estatal tienen ese poder. Los esfuerzos del gobernador por incrementar el salario mínimo a $15 se están viendo obstaculizados por el Senado estatal, que está controlado por los republicanos.
La decisión de De Blasio de aumentar los sueldos de los empleados municipales es un paso independiente crucial hacia una ciudad más equitativa y debe inspirar a otras ciudades en el país. También refleja el poder e ímpetu de un movimiento revolucionario encabezado por los trabajadores que exigen salarios más altos en todo el país.
Incluso mientras los gobiernos estatales y el gobierno federal arrastran los pies con respecto al asunto inevitable de un salario mínimo decente para las familias trabajadoras en los Estados Unidos, el audaz paso que dio De Blasio muestra que las ciudades pueden y deben tomar las riendas del problema.
El aumento del salario mínimo por el alcalde se produjo poco después de su anuncio el mes pasado de que a los 20,000 empleados no sindicalizados de la ciudad se les otorgaría seis semanas de licencia remunerada por maternidad/paternidad y hasta 12 semanas, cuando se combine con licencias existentes. El alcalde ahora ha pasado a negociar los mismos beneficios con los sindicatos de la ciudad. Nuevamente, los trabajadores del sector privado de la ciudad de Nueva York deben esperar a que Albany o Washington, D.C. tome medidas con respecto a licencia familiar pagada para todos.
Las medidas recientes del alcalde De Blasio apoyan su objetivo de sacar a 800,000 neoyorquinos de la pobreza durante los próximos diez años. Más de 20 por ciento de la población de la ciudad vive en condiciones de pobreza, un enorme sector de una ciudad normalmente relacionada con extraordinaria riqueza.
En los dos últimos años se ha visto un ímpetu sin paralelo de parte de los propios trabajadores exigiendo sueldos decentes, desde la ciudad de Nueva York hasta Los Ángeles y Chicago, lo que resultó en aumentos salariales para los trabajadores de negocios de comida rápida y otros grupos.
Los trabajadores no esperan pacientemente a los funcionarios públicos; se están organizando de manera sin precedente. Alcaldes progresistas como De Blasio están respondiendo con políticas sensatas, mientras los funcionarios que no desean responder ya saben lo que se viene. Ciudades como Los Ángeles, Nueva York y Chicago están preparando el terreno y mostrando que es posible actuar independientemente de gobiernos estatales y el gobierno federal.
Además, varios estados han promulgado leyes que aumentan el salario mínimo por encima del mísero estándar de $7.25 por hora. Actualmente se realizan campañas en 14 estados y cuatro ciudades para aumentar el sueldo mínimo y los estándares a favor de los trabajadores. El ímpetu se está convirtiendo en una avalancha que tendrá consecuencias profundas en las elecciones presidenciales del 2016.
Casi la mitad de los trabajadores del país ganan menos de $15 por hora y 43 millones se ven forzados a trabajar cuando están enfermos o tienen la necesidad urgente de cuidar a alguien, o de lo contrario, ponen en peligro su empleo. Es el momento de que las ciudades escuchen a sus trabajadores y pasen por encima de la pasividad estatal y federal a fin de permitir que millones de estadounidenses que trabajan muy duro mantengan a sus familias.
-JoEllen Chernow es directora de la campaña a favor del salario mínimo y licencia pagada por enfermedad en el Center for Popular Democracy.
Disney, PacSun, and Other Major Retailers Give Surprise Christmas Present to Employees
Disney, PacSun, and Other Major Retailers Give Surprise Christmas Present to Employees
This season, nearly 50,000 employees at six major retailers nationwide are getting a gift that will reduce their work...
This season, nearly 50,000 employees at six major retailers nationwide are getting a gift that will reduce their work stress and get them some holiday cheer: An end to on-call scheduling.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and eight other attorneys general announced this week that Disney, PacSun, Aeropostale, Carter's, David's Tea, and Zumiez have agreed to stop using on-call scheduling after an investigation was opened into the welfare concerns of this business model.
The six retailers said they have migrated to a "pool arrangement system."
On-call scheduling forces employees to call the store they work at one to two hours ahead of their schedules to find out if they will or won't be needed at work that day. Companies have used this system to keep labor costs low over the years.
"On-call shifts are not a business necessity and should be a thing of the past," said Schneiderman in a statement. "People should not have to keep the day open, arrange for child care, and give up other opportunities without being compensated for their time."
"I am pleased that these companies have stepped up to the plate and agreed to stop using this unfair method of scheduling," he said.
"When working parents are forced to hold large parts of their days up until the last minute — with no guarantee of work or pay — it is impossible for them to plan ahead for things like spending time at the dinner table or helping [kids] out with homework," said Elianne Farhat, Deputy Campaign Director in the Fair Workweek Initiative at Popular Democracy. "The research is clear that when employees have reliable schedules with adequate hours, retention and productivity go up."
Related: Shift Change: Just-in-Time Scheduling Creates Chaos for Workers
In April 2015, Schneiderman's office sent letters to 15 major retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, American Eagle, Uniqlo, Vans, Coach, and BCBG Max Azria, addressing his concern over the welfare of on-call workers and the legal wage in certain states like New York, where employers must pay employees at least four hours of pay for being on call.
The letters and investigation prompted Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, J.Crew, Urban Outfitters, Pier 1 Imports, and L Brands (parent company of Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret) to swiftly end their on-call practices.
Social media users celebrated Schneiderman's announcement with appropriate holiday spirit, thanking him for giving "a voice" to those who struggled to be heard, and ending a "horrible practice."
The letters were signed and supported by the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island
by DAKSHAYANI SHANKAR
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6 days ago
6 days ago