CPD IN THE NEWS

Several worker advocacy groups in swing states are showing senatorial candidates that according to polls, voters support raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for overtime pay.

The groups include the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund and the Working Families Party. They report that when voters learn that GOP incumbent senators oppose raising the minimum wage and expanding overtime pay eligibility, they often switch their support to Democratic challengers.

This might greatly influence the outcome of close U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Arizona.

Forty four Senate Republicans have signed a resolution opposing the overtime pay expansion the U.S. Labor Department plans to implement December 1.

“Voters are fed up with lack of action in Washington on raising wages for working people, and what we’re seeing is that just letting voters know where the candidates stand on these issues can have a significant impact,” Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, says.

He cited polls that found:

    ▪    Nationally, voters support expanding overtime pay eligibility by a three-to-one ratio. Just over half of voters say they would oppose a candidate who opposes the expansion.

    ▪    In Pennsylvania, three-fourths of voters say they support raising the minimum wage. Also, by an 81 to 15 percent margin, they say they approve of expanding eligibility for overtime pay. Fifty seven percent of voters say they will oppose candidates who do not support these goals. (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty has made raising the minimum wage a key plank in her race against GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.)

    ▪    In Missouri, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by a 76 to 16 percent margin. If a candidate opposes the idea, 53 percent of voters say it would lessen their support.

    ▪    In Ohio, voters approve expanding overtime pay eligibility by an 80 to14 percent margin. And if a candidate opposes the idea, 51 percent of voters say they would lessen their support.

“Working women and men should be paid for the time they work, period. The Obama administration’s decision to increase the overtime threshold is an enormous, in many cases life-changing, win for working people, from fast-food, retail and healthcare managers to post-doctoral associates and counselors,” Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry has said.

She continued: “This action will put more money in people’s pockets and boost the economy. It will boost women, African Americans, Latinos, people who are early in their careers and people who have modest education levels – the very people hardest hit by the 40-year assault on working people built on phony trickle-down economics.”

“Raising wages includes lifting national wages, but it’s far broader than that,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has said. “We want earned sick leave and paid family leave. We want full employment, fair overtime rules and fair scheduling so people won’t have to guess whether they’ll get enough hours to pay the rent.”

The Working Families Party, the NELP Action Fund and their allies are working to inform workers about where candidates for office from president down to city councilperson stand on raising wages,” said NELP fund spokesman Paul Sonn.

By Mark Gruenberg 

Source

New York Daily News – Thursday, October 24, 2013 -

Just 41% of all construction workers in New York City identify themselves as Latino — but they account for 74% of the fatalities from accidents.

One worker was pouring concrete in a construction site on Brooklyn’s Brighton 5th St. when the building’s fourth floor collapsed, smashing down to the second floor and crushing him to death.

Another was removing pipe from a warehouse when it suddenly shifted, causing him to fatally fall 10 feet to the ground.

A third was up on a ladder installing safety gear for a construction site when he accidentally touched a live electrical wire and fell through the building’s ceiling. He dropped 92 feet to his death.

All of these incidents happened in New York City in 2011, and when inspectors looked into the deaths, they found multiple workplace violations and, on a form, checked the same box — identifying the workers as “Latino and/or immigrant.”

Latino and immigrant construction workers are dying on the job in New York City in disproportionate numbers, according to a new study set to be released Thursday.

A review of all of the fatal falls on the job investigated by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2003 to 2011 found that 74% of construction workers who died were either U.S. born Latinos or immigrants.

According to census figures, just 41% of all construction workers in New York City identify themselves as Latino.

“The data we have demonstrates that Latinos and immigrants are more likely to die in these types of accidents,” said Connie Razza from the Center for Popular Democracy, which compiled the report.

Safety violations are more common at job sites run by smaller, non-union contractors — which in turn are more likely to hire immigrant day laborers, the report’s researchers said, citing a New York State Trial Lawyers Association study.

“Contractors aren’t taking simple steps to protect their workers,” said Razza. “They are not providing the training and the safety equipment that are required by law.”

Immigrant workers — especially day laborers — may be reluctant to report safety hazards because they are afraid of being told to leave for the day or losing their job altogether, advocates say.

Razza’s group is fighting potential changes to New York state’s scaffold law, which holds owners and contractors who did not follow safety rules fully liable for workplace injuries and deaths. They say the law gives businesses a strong incentive to keep workplaces safe.

“We really see that law as a necessary stopgap for the workers who work at elevations,” she said.

But contractors who are seeking to modify the law — so that jurors can consider evidence from contractors when making monetary decisions instead of holding them strictly liable — say it goes too far and has caused their insurance costs to skyrocket.

State Assembly leaders have historically blocked proposed changes.

“All we’re looking for is the ability to have the same right as anybody else would in the American jurisprudence system,” said Louis J. Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.

“Over the last 3 years, insurance costs for general liability on the private sector have increased over 300%.”

Source

Progressive groups are launching a national campaign this week to pressure the Federal Reserve not to raise interest rates until wages begin growing more significantly. And they are getting some help from popular liberal economist Robert Reich.

The groups, led by the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign -- a foundation-funded nonprofit committed to a more "pro-worker" Federal Reserve -- inaugurated the effort in earnest over the weekend with mass email blasts and solicitation on other digital platforms of a petition, “Tell the Fed: Don’t Raise Interest Rates!” 

Participating organizations, which include online progressive heavyweights CREDO Action, Daily Kos and the Working Families Party, will send the petition to an increasing number of activists over the course of the week. The groups, a complete list of which you can find in the petition, have a combined email list and website visitor reach in the millions.

Activists will deliver the petition signatures they amass in the coming weeks to Fed officials at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, onAug. 27-29. Fed Up is sending a delegation of low-income workers and representatives from communities of color to the symposium with the goal of raising awareness of working families’ concerns about Fed monetary policy. The Fed Up campaign formally began with a similar visit to Jackson Hole last year.

Some of the emails to activists will include a video from Robert Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley and former secretary of labor, that is likely to give the effort a high-profile boost. Reich posted the video, along with a link to the petition, on his Facebook page on Friday. As of Monday afternoon it already had been viewed over 142,000 times -- and shared by more than 3,600 people. Reich relies on a production team to make his videos, but does the illustrations featured in them himself.

The new online campaign aims to influence the Fed at a pivotal moment: The central bank is indicating that it will raise interest rates as soon as September. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, who sits on the FOMC, confirmed on Monday that the Fed would soon raise rates, saying the "the point of 'liftoff' is close." Lockhart's remarks come after July jobs numbers Friday showed relatively steady job gains.

Robert Reich’s Federal Reserve 101

The progressive groups pushing back against a rate hike are betting that if the public knew how much they stood to lose if rates go up, they would be willing to speak out against a hike. They could then generate pressure to change the Fed’s calculus.

For that to happen, though, people need to understand what the Federal Reserve is -- which activists acknowledge is rare. 

So Reich’s five-minute video starts at square one, explaining how the Federal Reserve works and why it affects Americans’ lives -- before articulating the case against a rate hike. The Fed cuts interest rates, or keeps them low, he explains, in order to stimulate the economy. “The lower the [Fed’s] rates, the easier it is to borrow,” Reich says in the video. “The easier it is to borrow, the more active the economy becomes.”

Reich then elaborates on the virtuous cycle that takes hold when low rates leave people with more disposable income, as graphics illustrating his points whiz by onscreen. Consumers spend more, Reich explains, growing businesses and increasing demand for labor. And if there is enough demand for workers, he continues, employers raise wages to compete for those workers.

Why Do Progressives Think A September Rate Hike Is Premature? 

Reich, like the campaign he is backing, makes the case that the Fed should wait until demand for workers is high enough to increase wages substantially before raising interest rates. Although the official unemployment rate of 5.3 percent is low by historical standards, it has yet to translate into substantial wage growth. Average wages have risen 2.1 percent in the past 12 months -- not much higher than the rate of price inflation, which, as of June, was 1.8 percent (not including energy and food).

Economists like Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argue that wage growth has yet to take off because there are still too many job seekers for the number of jobs available. The official unemployment rate does not account for the 6.3 million underemployed workers, who have part-time work but want to work full time, or the 668,000 jobless workers, who have given up seeking work altogether.

Although the progressive groups’ petition does not explicitly demand that the Fed wait for a specific wage growth figure before raising interest rates, the Fed Up campaign and its partners have largely coalesced around a wage growth target of 3.5 to 4 percent. The liberal-leaningEconomic Policy Institute, which is participating in the new petition campaign, estimates that with that type of wage growth, price inflation will not “significantly exceed” the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target.

These progressives warn that a Fed interest rate hike that occurs before significant wage growth takes hold would disproportionately hurt people of color and women. Both groups face routine discrimination in the job market that they are more likely to overcome in a high-demand economy buttressed by low rates. And people of color are much more likely to be workers on the lower side of the earnings spectrum, who have the least leverage vis-à-vis employers. That means they are often the last people to get hired or get a raise when the job market heats up, and the first to lose their jobs when it cools down. For evidence of this, they say, look no further than the shockingly high African-American unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

What About Inflation?

The Fed balances its mandate to maximize employment with an obligation to prevent excessive inflation. That is why it raises interest rates when it believes prices are at or near its target inflation rate of 2 percent. Some economists also believe that even when consumer prices are below the target rate, the Fed should raise rates if housing and stock prices are getting unreasonably high.

Reich -- and the many economists and activists with whom he finds common cause -- appreciate the Fed’s obligation to prevent runaway inflation. But they note that inflation has remained consistently below the Fed’s target rate of 2 percent. And they believe that for the sake of job creation and wage growth, the economy can tolerate slightly higher inflation than the current Fed target.

“More jobs and better wages are more important than theoretical worries about accelerating inflation,” Reich concludes.

Reich and allies point to the late 1990s as a model for Fed monetary policy. They credit then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan for refusing to raise interest rates even as the official unemployment rate dipped, against the wishes of other Fed officials concerned about inflation. As a result, wage growth was widespread enough to produce significant gains for workers at the bottom of the earnings spectrum.

A New Progressive Priority?

The petition campaign against a Fed rate hike is something of a coup for advocates who, asHuffPost reported at length in June, have long argued that Fed monetary policy should be a higher priority for the political left. Although the foundation-funded Fed Up campaign has been agitating for a more “pro-worker” Fed for nearly a year now, this is the first time it is collaborating with major progressive players like CREDO Action, Daily Kos and the Working Families Party. The Economic Policy Institute, which is a member of the Fed Up campaign’s founding coalition, is also activating its email list for a Fed Up petition effort for the first time.

A broad array of liberal-leaning organizations joined forces in the summer and fall of 2013 to torpedo President Barack Obama’s nomination of Lawrence Summers as chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Summers united economic progressives concerned about his Wall Street ties and women’s advocates angered by his remarks about women. Their efforts succeeded in winning the appointment of Janet Yellen as chair instead of Summers.

But since that time, the Fed has largely faded from the progressive foreground. Higher-profile fights like the movements for the $15 minimum wage and against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal have taken up the lion’s share of progressive energy and attention, dwarfing more esoteric causes. To the extent progressives have publicly pressured the Fed, it has been to police Wall Street more carefully, not maintain a dovish monetary policy.

“In general it’s clear that the Federal Reserve gets far less attention from progressives than it should in light of the tremendous influence it has over the economy and Americans’ quality of life,” said Josh Nelson, communications director for CREDO Action.

This relative inattention is evident in how little Federal Reserve monetary policy has come up in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The topic has not been discussed widely on the campaign trail. Of the major Democratic presidential candidates, only former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley responded to a request for comment last week on a possible Fed rate hike. O’Malley agreed with progressive activists that the Fed should wait for more robust wage growth before raising rates. 

By contrast, the right wing has relentlessly trained its fire on the Fed for “debasing” the dollar with its quantitative easing program -- its now-defunct multitrillion-dollar asset purchasing program -- and low interest rates. Republican members of Congress regularly grill Yellen for printing too much money.

To the extent that Republican presidential candidates have broached the subject, they have weighed in in support of raising rates. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and ersatz Republican presidential candidate, warned last week that the Fed’s low interest rates are causing an asset bubble. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has also slammed the Fed’s “easy money” policies for endangering the economy.

But the petition effort raises advocates’ hopes that a  progressive movement with the power to match the right's Fed lobby is finally taking shape.

Haedtler said that CREDO Action, Daily Kos and the Working Families Party were eager to get involved.

“They were very enthusiastic about targeting a new institution that was not accustomed to outside pressure by working families,” Haedtler said, adding that he thought soliciting these groups’ involvement “would be more challenging than it was.”

They were receptive to the argument, Haedtler said, that the Federal Reserve can “wipe out a lot of progress” on more visible issues like the minimum wage, if the Fed “does not recognize that the economic recovery has not benefitted everybody.”

CREDO Action did not specify how many activists it would target, but said that the petition would reach “many of the economic justice activists” on the group’s 3.8 million-person email list.

“The traditional obscurity [of the Fed] is why we must organize around it,” CREDO Action’s Nelson said. “People assume they can't influence the Fed. But that's wrong. These are people and they are open to both pressure and input. Pointing out that many communities still suffer is an essential role for advocates.” Nelson added that progressive input is a “necessary counterweight” to Wall Street influence on the central bank.

Chris Bowers, the Daily Kos’ executive campaign director, is confident that the Fed rate hike is not too esoteric for Daily Kos members. “One thing we've learned over the years is that Daily Kos readers tend to be very sophisticated, highly engaged activists who know a great deal about all manner of political issues,” Bowers said in an email. “In fact, some of our best-performing campaigns have focused on topics that might seem surprisingly obscure, such as net neutrality and filibuster reform. So we expect that our readers will readily grasp what's at stake here.”

Daily Kos is soliciting signatures for the petition through a splash screen some people see when they visit the site. Bowers estimates that 20,000 people a day will see the splash over the course of a campaign that will last at least two weeks. He said Daily Kos is gauging the “intensity” of their members’ interest in the Fed based on their engagement with the petition. If enthusiasm is high, it will send the petition to its much larger email activism list.

Beyond Stopping A Rate Hike

Ultimately, the Fed Up campaign and its allies are on a larger mission to make the Federal Reserve more accountable to working people. That means not only preventing an interest rate hike before greater wage growth takes hold, but also pushing the Fed to rebalance its dual mandate toward genuine full employment and higher wages, and away from what they believe is excessive concern about inflation. The theme of this year’s Jackson Hole symposium is“Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy,” which Fed Up points to as a typical sign of the Fed’s inflation bias.

“We want to reframe the narrative” at the symposium, Haedtler said. Inflation, he explains, “is not what is on the minds of low-wage workers who have been suffering through a very slow economic recovery.”

“We think of our campaign less as a left/right divide, and more as an effort to bring the voices of working families to the Federal Reserve for the first time,” Haedtler noted. “Ultimately our members are fighting for a broader recovery, better wages and better working conditions.”

Fed Up can point to concrete progress toward this goal since its inaugural action at the Jackson Hole symposium last August. Their protests there led to a meeting between Fed Up activists and Kansas City Fed President Esther George. That in turn opened the door to meetings with four other regional Federal Reserve bank presidents. Fed Up has also met with Yellen and several members of the Fed Board of Governors in their Washington offices.

The meetings have enabled working people organized by Fed Up to share their economic experiences with Fed officials, who make decisions that will affect these people’s lives. 

Haedtler believes these meetings are already bearing fruit. The Fed created a Community Advisory Council in January to solicit more diverse views on the state of the economy.

“Even very hawkish regional presidents -- like James Bullard, the St. Louis Fed president -- really seem to take to heart some of the stories we convey to them,” he said.

The Fed Up campaign also wants to reform the selection process for regional Federal Reserve bank presidents, which it says reflects the narrow interests of the bankers that dominate their boards of directors. They are asking regional Fed presidents that they meet with for a timeline of their selection process and a list of candidates being considered. 

Fed Up claims credit for the Minneapolis regional Federal Reserve Bank’s decision to disclose the process through which it would select its next president.

“We know something about congressionally confirmed Fed board governors, but very little about regional fed presidents, other than that they are overwhelmingly white, male and have close ties to the financial sector,” Haedtler said.

Source: Huffington Post

A scheduled protest march by a host of progressive advocacy groups as part of the Still We Rise convention downtown came with an added dose of tension and scrutiny a day after a protest in Dallas culminated in the shooting of five police officers.

The “People’s March” scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Friday is part of the opening festivities for Still We Rise, a convention organized by the Center for Popular Democracy that’s brought 1,500 people to the city to gather over various causes such as workers' rights, climate change, criminal justice reform and many others.

They’re causes that overlap with the protest march in Dallas over recent police shootings in Minnesota and New Orleans. At that march Thursday, snipers targeted police officers, killing five and wounding seven others, according to various reports.

The People’s March is expected to protest against UPMC, Bank of New York Mellon and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a parade that will trail from the David L. Convention Center hosting Still We Rise to the U.S. Steel Tower, headquarters for UPMC, then to One Oxford Centre and across the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Pittsburgh office of Pat Toomey.

A spokesman or BNYMellon declined comment on the event. A representative for UPMC did not return a call seeking comment.

A statement by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police laid out the public safety strategy and acknowledged calling on law enforcement resources beyond Pittsburgh.

“The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is committed to keeping people safe during this afternoon’s planned People’s Convention March that begins at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. There will be a visible presence of uniformed officers along with a not-so-visible presence of plain clothes officers,” reads the statement, quoting the event organizers’ intention of protesting growing inequality and “a toxic atmosphere of hate.”

“Officers will exercise extreme caution to ensure the safety of both our officers and the public,” continued the statement. “The Public Safety Department has been and will continue to be in communication with the FBI. The Police Bureau will work closely with law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels.”

The event otherwise marked a modest convention event for the city, in which the 1,500 attendees represent 2,587 room nights at downtown hotels such as the Omni William Penn, the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown, the Westin Convention Center and others.

The Still We Rise proceedings come on the same weekend that the city of Pittsburgh is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its incorporation as a city, including a Bicentennial Parade scheduled for Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m., just one of what’s expected to be more than 100 affiliated events throughout the city in the coming weeks.

Yet the city’s celebration of its birthday has been overshadowed by the shootings in Dallas and by the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that helped to trigger them.

Anticipating the anger and sadness from the shootings, on Friday Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, working with Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald, called for “communitywide peace summit” to be held sometime next week.

“We are all affected by the violence in our communities – whether it be here in Pittsburgh, in Dallas, or so many other cities – and we all must do everything we can to stop it,” he said in a prepared statement. “Pittsburgh is a strong and resilient place, and our bonds are even stronger when all of us in the city work together.”

Peduto announced the plan for the summit without a determined date at a meeting today of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials and other organization leaders from throughout the country.

By Tim Schooley

Source