Top economists rip Fed, call for letting inflation run higher than normal
Top economists rip Fed, call for letting inflation run higher than normal
Should Federal Reserve officials meet expectations and raise interest rates next week, they will be doing so over the...
Should Federal Reserve officials meet expectations and raise interest rates next week, they will be doing so over the objections of some high-profile experts, including one who used to work for the central bank.
A coalition of economists released a letter Friday urging the Fed to change the criteria it uses to make decisions. Specifically, the group, called "Fed Up," is advocating for a higher inflation rate target than the current 2 percent level. Among its members is former Minnesota Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota.
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"Give Them Hell": Exposing the Corporate Backers of Anti-Immigrant Hate
"Give Them Hell": Exposing the Corporate Backers of Anti-Immigrant Hate
Since election night 2016, the streets of the US have rung with resistance. People all over the country have woken up...
Since election night 2016, the streets of the US have rung with resistance. People all over the country have woken up with the conviction that they must do something to fight inequality in all its forms. But many are wondering what it is they can do. In this ongoing "Interviews for Resistance" series, experienced organizers, troublemakers and thinkers share their insights on what works, what doesn't, what has changed and what is still the same. Today's interview is the 61st in the series.
Today we bring you a conversation with José Lopez, one of the co-organizing directors at Make the Road New York, and Daniel Altschuler, the director of civic engagement and research at Make the Road New York.
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Advocacy group calls for more oversight of California charter school spending
Advocacy group calls for more oversight of California charter school spending
A lack of transparency and inadequate oversight can set up the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. A 2015 report...
A lack of transparency and inadequate oversight can set up the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. A 2015 report from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy, entitled “The Tip of the Iceberg,” reported over $200 million lost to fraud, corruption and mismanagement in charter schools.
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Our Fight for Health Care During Recess and Beyond
Our Fight for Health Care During Recess and Beyond
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory...
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory so far on March 24, when Speaker Paul Ryan called off his bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), because he didn’t have the votes. This was an inspiring, hard-fought win for everyone who believes health care is for all...
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After A Wave Of Bad Press, This Controversial Software Company Is Making Changes
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an ...
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the scheduling practices of 13 national retail chains, distributing a letter to the Gap, Target, J.C. Penney, and 10 other companies. The letter asked, among other things, whether these companies’ store managers use software manufactured by a company called Kronos to algorithmically generate schedules.
A few months later, Kronos was also featured prominently in an article published by the New York Times about the ill effects of erratic scheduling on Starbucks employees, especially one particular family. In a follow-up piece, the author, Jodi Kantor, points directly to Kronos’ scheduling software as the root of the problem. “I saw that her life was coming apart and that the Starbucks software had contributed to the crisis,” Kantor wrote of one of the story’s subjects.
The piece’s argument centered around the financial and scheduling unpredictability engendered by platforms like Kronos. When you don’t know if your shift might be canceled, if or when you’ll be called in, or what your hours will look like next week or the week after, it becomes very difficult to make even the most basic plans for your future. This can have devastating long-term financial and emotional impacts on workers. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., 17 percent of the American workforce is negatively affected by unstable schedules.
For their part, Kronos representatives argue that the algorithm is far from the root of the problem. “The populist view is that scheduling is evil, in that it’s causing erratic schedules for employees, and so forth,” Charlie DeWitt, vice president of business development for Kronos, told BuzzFeed News. “The fact of the matter is it’s an algorithm. It does whatever you want it to do.”
And you don’t necessarily need to work for Kronos to believe that in a competitive retail climate, the problem is more complicated than technology alone. Lonnie Golden, a Penn State economist who has extensively studied the impact of erratic scheduling, acknowledges that Kronos’ product itself is less to blame than the managers who make staffing decisions based on the data it provides. “It’s not necessarily the technology that’s responsible for minimum to no advance notice,” he said. “It’s the way in which it’s applied.”
But, he added, “where there’s a technology problem, there’s usually a technology solution.” And while Kronos maintains that managers, and not the software, are responsible for early dismissals and last-minute shift cancellations, the company is nonetheless pursuing some technological solutions.
Kronos wants to help managers better understand how scheduling adjustments affect workers and, ultimately, the bottom line. Though the company maintains that its software doesn’t produce the kind of erratic schedules that hurt wage workers, DeWitt said there was nonetheless an interest in figuring out why that perception existed — and, if possible, fixing it.
To that end, earlier this month at a retail conference in Philadelphia, the company announced that it’s working on a new plug-in that will give managers better insight into workers’ schedule stability, equity of hours worked among employees, and the consistency of schedules from week to week. In addition, Kronos is improving a feature meant to help give employees more control over their schedules: Though the software already incorporates employee availability and preferences into its scheduling calculations, improvements to a shift-swapping feature on its employee-facing web and mobile apps will theoretically allow employees to work around conflicts among themselves.
Golden said increased employee input and control would be a good thing. But some retailers, DeWitt pointed out, are uncomfortable making workers use an app outside of work hours; indeed, the practice could be seen as a shift of management responsibilities onto lower-paid individuals.
Part of the idea behind the new Kronos plug-in is to help companies tie fairer scheduling practices to reduction in absenteeism and turnover, which can be enormously costly. In other words, if Kronos can help executives see the connection between treating workers fairly and a store’s ability to increase revenue, DeWitt said, managers will have an impetus to create more predictable, stable schedules.
And just because companies are looking at this kind of data doesn’t mean they have to use it. “Companies like Kronos and Workplace Systems are starting to integrate some of these principles into their software,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, “but it’s all optional, so companies can decide not to do it.” While 12 states are currently considering legislation that would create new labor standards around the workweek, Gleason said the technology alone lacks a mechanism for enforcement.
Given market pressures and standard management practices, it’s unlikely that any change to Kronos’ technology would give workers more power — especially because, given the competitive retail climate at the moment, the bottom line tends to be the priority. “It’s not just bad managers. They have extreme pressure to increase productivity on an ever-shrinking labor budget,” Gleason said.
With these changes, Kronos has taken logical steps toward both repairing its reputation and making sure its software creates sustainable work environments. But while the company cannot control exactly how the algorithm that forecasts schedules and optimizes workforces is deployed inside different workplaces, the Kronos engineers who designed the product are nonetheless the partial architects of work environments that have been proven to be untenable for low-wage workers. The Kronos scheduling algorithm isn’t designed to serve those people; it’s designed to be sold to their bosses, and as such, will ultimately be shaped to serve the needs of management — until regulations exist that compel them to change how it’s used.
Source: Buzzfeed
Blood in the Streets: A Conversation About Gun Violence in Chicago
Gawker - July 11, 2014, by Jason Parham - Earlier this week, writing for The Daily Beast, Roland Martin proposed a...
Gawker - July 11, 2014, by Jason Parham - Earlier this week, writing for The Daily Beast, Roland Martin proposed a solution to combat the surging violence on Chicago's South and West Sides: Send the National Guard to Chicago.
Martin's essay, narrow-minded and altogether ill-considered, was sparked by the recent killings that took place over the July 4th weekend—84 people were shot, and 14 killed. The city's poor black neighborhoods have become a recurring national talking point since President Obama, who calls Chicago home, assumed office in 2008: Violence and death, it seems, are the only constants in Chiraq. Concerned that Martin's solution for military occupation ultimately presents more harm than benefit to residents, I reached out to Ernest Wilkins, a reporter for RedEye Chicago, Josie Duffy, a writer and policy advocate at The Center for Popular Democracy, Jamilah Lemieux, senior digital editor at Ebony, and Kiese Laymon, author and contributing editor at Gawker, for answers. Our conversation appears below.
Josie Duffy: I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'll start the conversation off by just saying one thing. If 84 people are shot and 16 are killed in one city in one weekend, I think it's clear the government has failed somewhere. So I think Martin is right insofar as the government has a responsibility to respond and attempt to rectify the problems plaguing Chicago.
But this sort of violence doesn't appear out of thin air—it's a response to a long history of systemic deprivation. That's why Martin's solution is deeply misguided, both on principle and practice. And while he suffers from a number of problems in this article – a memory deficiency, an overabundance of self-righteous moralism—perhaps the most pronounced is his laziness problem. He has a creativity deficiency.
This is his idea? More law enforcement? His suggestion is extreme, sure, but it's neither innovative nor intelligent.We're ahead of you, Roland. We've tried that. Law enforcement—from the police to the prosecutors to the prisons—have been working overtime for decades. Spoiler alert: It hasn't worked. In fact, it's made things worse in a lot of ways.
Somewhere along the way many people forgot that victims and residents of places like Chicago and St. Louis and Brownsville are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, so I don't want to pretend to know what's best for those residents. What I do know, however, is that violence across America and especially in Chicago is perpetuated against the poor and the black and the brown. It's not a coincidence that we're talking about the same demographics that have been not only ignored, but explicitly and intentionally prevented from access to education, economic mobility, and safety. This idea of the powerful causing the problem and then swooping in to benevolently gift us the "solution" is offensive. You can't make up for systemic deprivation through law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't have the nuance, it doesn't have the tools, and it doesn't actually work. It's reactive and not preventative. Stop trying to find a shortcut where there is no shortcut.
Do any of you think there a way, as Roland suggests, to address violence without addressing poverty? Also, has Roland heard anything about Iraq and Afghanistan lately?
Ernest Wilkins: Josie, you're so on point about the residents of Chicago being able to speak for themselves. Before we consider rolling troops down Stony Island or through the Low End, maybe we should address the lack of communication taking place between the people in these neighborhoods and the people in power in Chicago. Nothing changes without that. When I say "ignored" understand that, in a lot of cases, that's literally happening. There have been countless meetings, initiatives, caucuses, fish frys, etc. with members of the communities suffering from this violence and the people in power. You would think some insight would have been gained by now. Instead, the conversation usually goes like this:
"What is the problem here? Why is everyone killing everyone?"
"We're poor. We need money and jobs in this community."
"Ok. What's the solution to this violence though?"
"We just told you. Money and jobs in the community. A lot of this goes away with opportunities to do better in life that we currently aren't being afforded due to ignorance about our plight. Stop lumping everyone into a faceless mass of "gangbangers" and listen to us as human beings."
"Maybe you're not understanding me here. WHAT. IS. THE. SOLUTION. TO. THE. PROBLEM???"
"...We give up."
Even worse, when people from these communities define the exact issues that lead to this violence, their opinions are picked apart and not taken seriously, with the response usually being some variation of tired-ass narratives like, "You need to fix your community by pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps, not blaming the white man" or "Something something Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson" or the "solution" Roland Martin presented in that piece.
The fact is, the people who die in our streets aren't looked at as real humans. We've obsessed over the numbers and crunched the stats so much that the baseline reaction now after hearing that TRIPLE the amount of the lives lost in the Boston Marathon bombing were killed over the weekend some four miles from your house is that of numbness. You aren't sad. You aren't angry. You just post an incredulous "This has got to stop!" message to your Facebook feed, and keep it moving.
Jamilah Lemieux: Josie and Ernest, I think you've both summed up a great deal of my own frustration with the media narrative that talking heads like Roland have driven and also, the apathy that comes with being detached from the actual violence. I read this week that 85 percent of the city's violent crimes affect 5 percent of the population. That means that your average Chicagoan doesn't know anyone who has been harmed or killed, nor do they live in an area that has been affected by the violence—which is primarily concentrated in two of the cities 60 zip codes.
Fourteen homicides in a weekend is a tragedy no matter what the circumstances, but I believe that so much of the reporting on these shootings has to do with 1) the 24-hour news cycle that didn't exist when the murder rate was significantly higher in the 90s and 2) the president's connection to the city. There is something so wrong about Roland implying that the entire South and West Sides are on fire. I am tired of trying to explain the culture and the geography of my hometown to people who have never set a foot outside of O'Hare Airport because they are somehow experts on all things black and terrible. And as someone who left here—I just happen to be in town this week—12 years ago for college and never moved back and never intends to do so, I recognize my own limitations in identifying some of the shifting dynamics that have brought us from being known as "Chi-Town" to "Chiraq." However, when someone says something as reckless as 'send in the National Guard' to police American citizens who have never had the honor of being treated as such, it makes it plain that folks aren't even trying to understand what is at play here.
My parents can tell you stories of black Chicagoans being terrorized by the National Guard during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the riots that ensued under the regime of the late and notorious Mayor Richard Daley (the first one). That any black man over the age of 40 would see this as a viable solution makes me question his knowledge of history and also, just what he thinks the National Guard does. They are trained to shoot and kill, to mobilize for war. How does that serve the people of this city? Who does that help? I do believe that government intervention—on a federal and local level—is appropriate, but coming in with guns to fight guns only increases the likelihood that innocent black people will find themselves incarcerated, maimed, or worse. What a solution looks like, I don't know, but as Ernest said, we should be looking to the people who are HERE and fighting that fight daily, as opposed to a tired police chief from Newark and the Army, to decide what that should be. People are poor, jobs are scare, the "you aren't welcome here anymore" gentrification is making it difficult for people to commute to the jobs they do have, to afford the rent and groceries that may have already been a challenge. But some cat from the South thinks that what we need are tanks and guns? That's infuriating.
Kiese Laymon: Thank y'all for breaking all of this down with plenty care, introspection and imagination. I'm not sure I have much to add other than more questions. Half of my family moved to Chicago, Indiana, and Racine a few decades ago to escape Mississippi.
I remember my Aunt Daisy—who lost a daughter to violence, and lost her son to years in prison after he was found guilty of violence—saying that there are more folks on the ground fighting to keep kids alive than anywhere else she ever lived. But those folks, Daisy claimed, are the least well-paid folks she knew.
I'm wondering what happens if we really invest in the work of folks in Chicago really fighting to ward off what white supremacy and unexplored sexist culture has produced. And if we can't allow or expect adequate compensation for those folks, should we find creative ways as black folks to fairly compensate and fairly train the folks in our community who want to do this work? What would a communal creative financial commitment to fighting the consequences of white supremacy look like?
And what role should black folk who don't live in those communities anymore play?
My other question is a tougher one. I come from a place very similar to Chicago. Jackson's murder rate is routinely higher proportionately than Chicago's. Like a lot of folks who grew up there in the 80s and 90s, I feel lucky to be alive. I know part of that is because of small classes, committed freedom fighters who let me know over and over that killing and fighting each other was playing into the hands of the worst of white folks, and a grandma I never wanted to let down. I'm not in Jackson anymore. And while I write words that I know some young folk in Jackson read, do we have the responsibility to go back to the communities we come from and commit to learning and teaching and fighting for the future of our people?
I work with young middle schoolers and high school kids in Poughkeepsie, but that's not home. Should we go home and commit to loving our people, especially when folks are talking bout unlovingly sending in men with guns to discipline them if they don't act right. Should we go home and fight?
Jason Parham: The answers we're looking for won't be easy. And while I don't agree that the National Guard is necessary to help mitigate the violence sweeping across the South Side and West Side of Chicago, I do agree that an increased level of authority—via residents who wield some sort of influence, community organizers, etc—might help subdue a portion of the terror taking place. But even then, we are not really unearthing the root of the problem.
As Ernest pointed out, there are a lot of variables at play here, the most horrific realization being: black life doesn't account for much in America. And the statistics Jamilah offered reinforce this. People who visit Chicago via a CNN news broadcast or a clip uploaded to YouTube see us, but they don't really see us. This, of course, is nothing new. But it is something that I think about often, and I wonder how a similar situation would play out in an area populated by, say, middle class whites. I accept this reality, though—a reality, I should say, that we are forcibly trying to alter, stubborn as it might be—and understand that there are cultural structures in place that allow for the continued devaluation of black and brown life (doubly if you're poor, triply if you're black, poor and a woman).
I don't have the one true solution to any of this. I'm a black man and I find value in our existence, in our love and support and uplift of each other. But I know that it begins with us. I take responsibility for my brothers and sisters. I acknowledge that what these young men are doing is wrong and hurtful, but I also understand that it comes from a place of anger and self-doubt and not wanting to be unloved. I am reminded of Kai M. Green's words: "What do we do with the scars, those of us who did not die, but still aren't free?" I don't want anybody to misinterpret what I'm saying: I am not making excuses for the violence, killing is a cowardly and terrible evil, but many of these young men are reckoning with traumas, tangible and intangible, they don't fully comprehend. A black man is born with a target on his back. That is our starting point. That some of us have made it this far is a miracle.
So to answer your question, Kiese: should we go home and fight? If we have the means to do so, absolutely. It begins with us; it begins with better and more sustainable community building. Why is it that these young men feel like joining a gang is their only option for acceptance and survival? Why is it that these kids are merely trying to "make it out" instead of trying to "live"? Obviously these issues are rooted to larger systemic problems within the context of America—the lingering residue of Jim Crow-era segregation, disinvestment in areas populated by poor black and Latino populations, inadequate schools in "urban" neighborhoods, the fracturing of the black family, etc etc—but not unsolvable. As Jamiliah noted, I don't want the readers to think we are speaking in absolutes here, this isn't the entire reality of communities at war—there are individuals doing great and important things on Chicago's South Side, and in neighborhoods like Brownsville and Compton—but the violence is a reminder that there is ever more work to be done.
Jamilah Lemieux: Do we have the responsibility to go back to the communities we come from and commit to learning and teaching and fighting for the future of our people?I struggle with this question often. On some level, I feel some guilt for leaving the place that nurtured my development and taking whatever talents or gifts I have to become part of this large New York machine. One of millions of transplants who, depending who you ask, either drain that city dry, or make it richer than its own natives could on their own. But on the flip, what does coming home look like? How do I make things better here? And do the unique challenges facing my hometown mean that I'm not entitled to the pursuit of happiness that led me to leave in the first place? Because I decided to leave long before "Chiraq" was something struggle rappers used to lend credence to careers that would have been felled by their lack of skills some 15, 20 years ago.
I'd like to believe that on some level, my work as a writer and editor who focuses on issues of race, gender. and sexuality is a contribution to my community—the black community, from Chicago, to Brooklyn and beyond. If I can figure out ways to help these South Side girls feel better about their sexual agency, or to address the flaws in the media narrative around Chicago from the place I've adopted as my home, is my absence still a betrayal?
In April, activist Leonore Draper was killed in a drive-by outside her home after leaving an anti-violence fundraiser. I honor her sacrifice, but I am not willing to give my life to Chicago. And while I understand the city well enough to know that the violence is largely contained to certain areas, and that Americans must be prepared to be shot at any time (see: Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook), I do feel that relocating back here comes with the increased possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—especially if I were to return specifically to "help make things better." I have a child, she needs me and she needs to be safe. My ex is also from here, and when she is visiting the city without me, I just pray that the desire to go see Cousin or Auntie So-and-So in a rougher part of town takes a backseat to keeping our child away from harm. I worry over her being in shopping malls and on subway trains or anywhere that people can be found. I don't have what it takes to deal with her being down the street from where Chief Keef stays.
I try and do my best to be an ambassador for my city, to tell the Roland Martins of the world, "Look, you've got this wrong!" and to remind people that Chicago is not a city of savages, but one that has been criminally underdeveloped by structural racism and inequality. But I'm not willing to return, at least not now.
Ernest Wilkins: My family is from the Robert Taylor Homes. The environment that molded thousands of black lives—including my father's—literally doesn't exist anymore. The housing project was finally demolished in 2007. I've never been there and I never will. Still, there's still a sense of responsibility within me to do right by my people. I love Chicago. The city made me who I am. One of the main reasons I moved back home after college and living in Atlanta for a few years was to try and contribute to making the city better. As black people, I think the whole point is to recognize that situations like this affect all of us, no matter how much we might want to distance ourselves or feel like it isn't our responsibility. If you live in Brooklyn and have access to a few million, you can do more than I can on the ground here in the immediate sense. However, I can go talk to these kids and donate my time. Everyone can do something.
I think there's a sense of hopelessness and a feeling that the job is too big. The society that can save Chicago is the same one that's out here giving a man 20k to fund a goddamn potato salad on Kickstarter. We have the tools. These neighborhoods need awareness to the real issues, not rhetoric, posturing, and lack of empathy. No matter what though, the solution ain't troops, my guy.
Source
Tipped Workers Fight for Higher Wages
Amsterdam News - July 17, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, a new coalition of food delivery workers, low-wage...
Amsterdam News - July 17, 2014, by Stephon Johnson - Last week, a new coalition of food delivery workers, low-wage tipped workers and women’s rights leaders across New York called for an end to subminimum wages for tipped workers. This campaign begins right when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is preparing to appoint a Wage Board charged with recommending an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers.
The broad coalition fighting for subminimum wage workers includes Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, Fast Food Forward, the Labor-Religion Coalition, the National Employment Law Project, New York Communities for Change, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Strong for All, United New York and other community groups.
On July 10, Domino’s delivery workers rallied outside of a Manhattan Domino’s restaurant to call for an end to subminimum wages for tipped workers, citing wage theft, and demanding an administrative wage order that requires companies to directly pay tipped workers the state’s minimum wage, with tips as an addition.
“The public might think we do well, but the reality is that many times we don’t even get a tip,” said Alfredo Franco, a tipped Domino’s delivery worker in New York City. “Delivery fees are often confused with a tip for the drivers. We never see a penny of that. Many of us have to work two or three jobs just to get by, sacrificing everything, including time with our families. We need a reliable income. The tipped [sub]minimum wage has to go.”
According to a report released on July 9 by the National Employment Law Project, a wage order eliminating the tipped subminimum wage would benefit close to 229,000 low-wage tipped workers in New York. Women make up more than 70 percent of the low-wage work force. The wage order would benefit working women and, according to the report, make progress in addressing the gender pay gap in New York.
Michael Stewart, executive director of United NY, released a statement championing the NELP’s report. “As New York faces one of the worst economic inequality crises in the nation, it should put an end to the subminimum wage for tipped workers that leaves so many of our neighbors living in extreme poverty,” said Stewart. “The minimum wage is already too low. Allowing employers to pay below it does further damage to workers and our economy.”
As a result of legislation signed by Cuomo last year, New York’s minimum wage is scheduled to go up to $9 an hour by Dec. 31, 2015, and the minimum wage for tipped food service workers is still stuck at $5 an hour, with tipped hotel workers earning slightly more at $5.65 an hour.
Zenaida Mendez, president of the National Organization for Women of New York State, said the gender pay gap needs to close, and no longer allowing the subminimum wage for tipped workers would help it along.
“The poverty rate for waitresses is three times the rate for the American workforce as a whole,” said Mendez. “For this reason, the National Organization for Women is seeking to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. This pay inequality must end.”
Source
Unpredictable Work Schedules: As Companies Shave Costs With Just-In-Time Scheduling, Workers, Regulators Fight Back
Unpredictable Work Schedules: As Companies Shave Costs With Just-In-Time Scheduling, Workers, Regulators Fight Back
Brianna Roy-Rankin, 23, is just the kind of worker Target would like to retain and promote. She says she loved her job...
Brianna Roy-Rankin, 23, is just the kind of worker Target would like to retain and promote. She says she loved her job at the retailer's store in Champaign, Illinois. She had great bosses, got along well with her co-workers and enjoyed the employee discounts. But last week, after two years as a sales associate, Roy-Rankin quit her job.
“I couldn’t really plan. I was at the mercy of the scheduling system,” she says. “Otherwise, I honestly, probably, would’ve stayed.”
Roy-Rankin went to college nearby, at the University of Illinois. Before she graduated in May, she says it was a constant challenge to balance her studies and social life with her part-time job -- usually around 20 hours a week at just under $10 an hour.
Target has an unforgiving scheduling system. Roy-Rankin says she would have to submit requests to take time off for spring break or visit her parents weeks, if not months in advance -- otherwise she’d be slotted to work without recourse. She would learn about her weekly work schedule three weeks in advance, which wasn’t too bad. But then her hours would fluctuate drastically. One week, she’d be scheduled for a 8 a.m.-to-noon shift on a particular day; the next, it might be a 5 p.m.-to-11 p.m. closing shift. Eventually, it became too much to juggle.
Roy-Rankin's situation is hardly unique.
A Common Trend
Nearly three in 10 hourly workers in the United States say they rarely get consistent work schedules, according to a study released Tuesday by WorkJam, a firm that specializes in workforce scheduling technology.
What’s more, an astounding 56 percent say they get their schedules a week or less in advance. Both trends run rampant in the fast-growing service sector, especially in low-wage fields like retail and fast food. And while policies of this sort save companies money by allowing them to tailor schedules to an expected flow of customer traffic, workers say it's the source of headaches.
Joshua Ostrega, chief operating officer and co-founder of WorkJam, admits the 56 percent figure came as a bit of a shock. “I think it’s extremely high,” he says. “We were actually quite surprised.”
Workers Employed in the Retail Trade Industries (Seasonally Adjusted) | FindTheData
An especially harsh practice among retailers is what’s known as just-in-time or on-call scheduling. Under this system, workers are required to be “on call” to come in and work on a particular day even if they’re not scheduled to do so.
The industry’s profit margins are tight, says Ostrega, and companies are looking to extract savings however they can. Software-based scheduling systems do the trick by linking labor supply to consumer demand. When store traffic is low, the system calls for fewer employees; when the system projects more patrons, it demands more workers. Employers like it because it keeps them from racking up unnecessary labor costs.
Now, unpredictable scheduling is increasingly drawing the interest of public authorities.
'The Pressure's Mounting'
In April, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters to major retailers that inquired about their on-call scheduling and asked whether their policies violated state law. Like seven other states and the District of Columbia, New York has so-called reporting-time laws that require employees to be paid when they report to work, even if no work is provided.
Since the letters went out, a number of high-profile companies have announced changes to their policies. The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, which both received the notices, said they would end the practice of on-call scheduling. And Starbucks promised last year to provide more consistent scheduling to baristas. But as a recent story in the New York Times revealed, the cafe chain has failed to do so.
Robert Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at Demos, a progressive think tank, expects the positive trends to continue -- even if Tuesday’s survey suggests employers overall aren’t relenting on tough and irregular scheduling demands. “I think it’s a slow burn, but the pressure’s mounting,” he says.
It’s in part a question of economic self-interest, Hiltonsmith says. Burned-out workers tend to quit their jobs fairly quickly, and high turnover is expensive. That’s one of the reasons why Walmart, the nation’s largest private-sector employer, and its top competitors voluntarily hiked wages earlier this year, according to Hiltonsmith. In fact, when Walmart announced it was boosting starting pay to at least $9 an hour, it also promised to notify workers of their schedules at least two and a half weeks in advance.
Reforms like this and others -- shifts that are scheduled the same time every week -- could prevent retailers from losing employees like Roy-Rankin, the kind of people who are otherwise content at work.
There’s also mounting political pressure, which stems from growing public concern over the livelihood of service-sector workers. Hiltonsmith attributes this to the “seismic shifts in the labor force” -- the decades-long decline of manufacturing and growth in service-sector employment.
Contrary to the popular image, retail workers are not teenagers looking to make a quick buck. The median age of a retail trade employee is 38, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I think people had less concern when it wasn’t people trying to support their families,” Hiltonsmith says. “For better or worse, the service economy is the economy of the country’s future.”
Source: International Business Times
Downtown Protest Held Over Racial Disparity in Employment
KMOV St. Louis - March 5, 2015, by Steve Savard - About 12 people rallied outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis...
KMOV St. Louis - March 5, 2015, by Steve Savard - About 12 people rallied outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Thursday to protest the racial disparity in employment in the St. Louis region.
White unemployment in the St. Louis area is 5.7 percent, African American unemployment is 14.1 percent. Organizers said they want the Fed to adopt policies focused on getting more people get back to work.
“It’s not easy getting a job, when you are qualified even when you look the part,” one demonstrator said.
Organizers said the story of one attendee demonstrates the problem.
“When you do get the job, it’s something to get you buy, but it’s not a livable wage,” Ray Rounds said.
Rounds said he left a low paying job to go back to school at the Green Technology Training Program at St. Louis University.
“I’m certified in lead remediation, mold, asbestos, permit required confined spaces, hazardous material. I’ve got 17 of those certificates I was really proud of and I was ready to go to work,” Rounds said.
Rounds said he has not been able to land a job in the two years since he finished school.
“It’s pretty frustrating because with all I thought that I had accomplished. It’s meaningless because there are no jobs,” Rounds said.
Rounds has been attending rallies, working with churches and other organizations to try and make a difference. He hopes the contacts he has made will help him land a job.
Demonstrators also said they want to see more diversity on the Federal Reserve Board.
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Economic Inequality: Safe Words, at Last
OZY - December 23, 2013, by Pooja Bhatia - For decades, talk about economic inequality was taboo. Those who tried were...
OZY - December 23, 2013, by Pooja Bhatia - For decades, talk about economic inequality was taboo. Those who tried were met with accusations of sour grapes, inciting class warfare, or — gasp! — advocating socialism.
But such rhetorical bludgeons appear to have lost force in recent years, and words like “inequality” and “economic fairness” have at last found a place at the table of mainstream American political discourse. It’s not quite the head of the table, but it’s not the servants’ quarters either.
Words like “inequality” and “economic fairness” have at last found a place at the table of mainstream American political discourse.
“The core issue of economic justice has been getting more traction now than during most of my time in organizing,” says Andrew Friedman, who’s been a progressive organizer for more than 15 years and now co-directs the Center for Popular Democracy in New York. Derecka Mehrens, executive director of labor-oriented think tank Working Partnerships USA in San Jose, Calif., agrees: “There’s been a sea change in how and even whether we talk about inequality.”
The signs are everywhere. In his November apostolic exhortation, the pope warned of the “tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and called “an economy of exclusion and inequality” sinful. Clear majorities of Americans support hiking the minimum wage and other policies that aim to reduce the wealth gap. Earlier this month, President Obama positioned inequality and lack of social mobility as the “defining issue of our time.” Mayors-elect of major cities all made economic inequality central to their platforms. And this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction went to George Packer’s The Unwinding, which chronicles rising social and economic inequality in the United States.
Inequality talk is no longer off-limits for a simple reason: The lot of many has stagnated or worsened over the past decade, in some cases severely.
Some credit the 2011 Occupy movements for popularizing economic inequality. (Or blame it, depending on their perspective.) But the main reason inequality talk is no longer off-limits is probably simpler: The lot of many has stagnated or worsened over the past decade, in some cases severely. Some 10 million people lost their homes in the Great Recession. Although unemployment is at a five-year low, the decline is partly because many have stopped looking for work.
As OZY noted a few weeks ago, the lag between technical “recovery” and job growth is lengthening, and these days it’s lingering four to five years. No wonder the Great Recession’s rough ride seems endless. Moreover, while worker productivity has increased over the past decade, real wages have stagnated or declined — leaving the average worker to wonder just where the gains from productivity are going.
“They hear the news that the stock market is climbing and say, Oh really?” Mehrens says.
Lovely A. Warren won election as mayor of Rochester last month with a campaign lamenting what she called the “two Rochesters,” challenged by crime and poverty, but also boasting prosperous neighborhoods.
Economic inequality has been growing since at least the early 1980s. But it was harder to complain about during the Clinton years, when broad-based growth lifted all boats, yachts and dinghies alike. Economic inequality grew during the Bush years too, but those were the days of subprime homeownership and plasma TVs for all. Five years after the collapse of that easy-credit economy, most Americans are still hurting. The average household has recovered less than half the wealth it lost during the recession.
As a result, income inequality has become a winning issue in some cities. The mayors-elect of New York, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis made economic justice a central plank of their platforms — and did so despite naysayers and with newfound success. New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s “tale of two cities,” for instance, was not much different from Fernando Ferrer’s campaign theme in 2005 or Ruth Messinger’s in 1997 — but only in the New York of 2013 did it resonate.
It was harder to complain about during the Clinton years, when broad-based growth lifted all boats, yachts and dinghies alike.
Not that the discursive war has been won, mind you. Plenty of people and conservative think tanks still argue that inequality has nothing to do with poverty. Winning a war of words wouldn’t be enough anyway, organizers say: “We need to figure out how to use this sea change in how we talk about inequality to how we act against inequality,” says Mehrens.
The newfound cache of certain phrases has had some perverse effects. Developers and other big employers have latched onto terms like “living wage” but not always with worker-friendly intentions, says Lee Strieb, a researcher with labor organization Unite Here. Developers have “attempted to wrap themselves in the flag of the living wage, almost as a shield to avoid unionization,” says Strieb. ”There is a heightened sensitivity to the need to address [the wage] issue — but to the extent they can address it in a superficial way, they will.”
Mr. de Blasio’s relentless critique of economic inequality in New York seemed to resonate with voters, who elected him in a landslide.
The shift could signal a readiness to engage meaningfully with issues like the living wage or tax increases on top earners.
It’s unclear whether 2014 will set in motion changes to our income distribution. Mayors alone may have little power to tackle the issue. They usually can’t run big deficits and, in cities like San Francisco and New York, space for affordable housing is hard to find. Most important, mayors can’t singlehandedly restore the middle-class jobs that disappeared during the recession.
Yet the shift in tone and rhetoric is significant and could signal a readiness to engage meaningfully with issues like the living wage or tax increases on top earners. Consider Cam Kruse, 72, a mostly retired civil engineer who is active in ISAIAH, a social justice organization of about 100 churches in metropolitan Minneapolis. Kruse believes in small government. When working full time, he perched in the top one to three percent of earners. And he was a Republican for most of his adult life.
But earlier this year he found himself urging the state legislature to raise tax rates on top earners, which, he said, had fallen through the decades. Growing “gaps” in education, health, housing and transportation worried him. “My success, and that of all the other top earners in Minnesota, has been based on the investments that people before us made,” he testified. “It is our turn to give back and make investments for those who will be our future.”
The tax increase passed.
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