How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly...
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly celebrated America’s history of welcoming immigrants and their contributions to our country. But Mr. Obama’s legacy on immigration is mixed. He has both deported more people than any prior president and acted in America’s best traditions by letting the Dreamers - undocumented youth brought to the United States as children – emerge from the shadows. There is one final step that President Obama can, and should, take to cement his legacy on the side of history we know is in his heart.
Most immigrant families in the United States are mixed status, meaning most have children who are citizens and immigrant parents, including Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs). The incoming administration’s promise to deport 2-3 million people with legal infractions threatens to rip these American families apart, because the threshold for deporting legal permanent residents is so low. Experts argue that this 2-3 million number cannot be reached without deporting people for minor offenses, such as traffic tickets. This is why I recently joined 60 local elected officials from across the country in asking President Obama to grant a blanket pardon to legal immigrants who have minor infractions and pose no threat to the country. He can prevent the breakup of these American families.
Pardoning this group of immigrants fits with the president’s recent actions on criminal justice and immigration. His clemency initiative and Deferred Arrival for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program seek to fix the broken criminal justice and immigrant systems that harm American families.
Having already designated Legal Permanent Residents with minor convictions as low priorities for deportation, President Obama could protect these American families further with a presidential pardon.
Some will object, arguing that America is a country of law and order. We agree, and support the deportation of those posing a risk to our community. We also support the American belief that punishment should fit the crime. Someone who had a minor infraction such as shoplifting or excessive traffic violations as a teenager could be eligible for deportation 20 years later as a responsible adult with children who are citizens. These deportations make no sense, and hurt families and children without enhancing the wellbeing of the country.
The group making this request, Local Progress, is composed of local elected officials that know, work with, live in, represent, and are part immigrant communities. We know that deportations cripple families and harm neighborhoods and the economy. We also know that the American Dream lives in our communities and that the country benefits from these newcomers and their children. Pardoning this group would prevent the unnecessary breakup of our American families, and allow parents to stay where they belong, raising their children in the communities they have helped build.
Watching President Obama’s farewell speech, I could not help but think about the many families in my Brooklyn district that have lost a family member to deportation. The effects are harsh. When a father gets deported, the family loses income and can lose their apartment. The education of children can be disrupted, and those remaining long to be with their missing family member. For the children – citizens, immigrants, or both – it is a hurt that does not go away. It is a step the U.S. government should not take lightly, or for symbolic political reasons.
I stand with my fellow elected officials to ask President Obama to grant these pardons. I also call on my fellow New Yorkers to call the president’s office and tell him to grant clemency to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who stand to lose under President Trump. Before he leaves office, President Obama can help cement his legacy with such a pardon. He has the power, and should use it, as other presidents have done in the past. There is still time.
By Carlos Menchaca
Source
Report: Starbucks Scheduling Problems Remain Despite 2014 Pledge
Starbucks officials asked store managers to ...
Starbucks officials asked store managers to "go the extra mile" to improve employee scheduling in the aftermath of a scathing report issued by an advocacy group this week.
The nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy alleged that the company largely failed to deliver on its promises to alter scheduling practices in 2014.
More than a year ago, a New York Times report chronicled the havoc wreaked on Starbucks' baristas by its sophisticated scheduling technology.
In response, the coffeehouse giant vowed to establish more consistent hours, provide more notice regarding schedules and prevent workers who close stores from having to reopen again just hours later.
According to the CPD report, however, nearly half of 200 employees surveyed reported receiving schedules with one week or less of notice.
Employees also said that although schedules generally followed the previous week's pattern, dramatic fluctuations could happen in any week.
One in four respondents, meanwhile, said that either they or their coworkers still were scheduled to "clopen" stores.
"Many Starbucks scheduling policies fail to reflect the company’s human-focused values, while other policies designed to promote sustainable schedules have been implemented inconsistently," the group wrote in the report.
Company spokeswoman Jamie Riley told the Times this week that the CPD report "doesn’t align with what we’re seeing," but that the company is "the first to admit we have work to do."
Meanwhile, Cliff Burrows, Starbucks’ U.S. chief, responded with a memo to store managers calling for a "consistent schedule — free of back-to-back close and open shifts that are less than 8 hours apart — that is posted 2 weeks in advance."
Source: Manufacturing.net
Hundreds rally in a DC church for DACA solution
Hundreds rally in a DC church for DACA solution
Hundreds of people rallied Wednesday inside of a church near the U.S. Capitol demanding legislation to protect young,...
Hundreds of people rallied Wednesday inside of a church near the U.S. Capitol demanding legislation to protect young, undocumented immigrants and replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Read the full article here.
Ana Maria Archila On Confronting Jeff Flake
Ana Maria Archila On Confronting Jeff Flake
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy about her widely-publicized...
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy about her widely-publicized confrontation with Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona in a Capitol Hill elevator.
Listen to the interview here.
How Municipal ID Cards Make Cities More Inclusive
This week Newark, New Jersey, ...
This week Newark, New Jersey, became the latest in a growing number of cities to adopt a municipal ID program. The IDs, available to all residents 14 and older, will be especially useful to undocumented immigrants, the homeless, formerly incarcerated people, and other populations who may not be able to present documents typically required for state-issued cards.
One notable addition to this list: transgender people. Unlike other forms of state and federal identification, Newark’s new card will not list the holder’s gender. The omission is expected to benefit those who do not identify with the gender listed on their birth certificate or other official documents.
Gender sensitivity is a relatively new development within the relatively newphenomenon of municipal IDs. In 2007, New Haven, Connecticut, became the first city in the U.S. to offer city IDs, followed by several cities in California (including San Francisco and Los Angeles), Washington, D.C., New York City, and a few others. In every case, undocumented immigrants were the main target group for the cards. But when San Francisco launched its ID program in 2007, the city made a point of omitting a gender marker (“male” or “female”) from the card, and in 2014 New York City became the first jurisdiction to allow local ID card holders to self-designate their gender.
Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, hopes that more cities will embrace self-designation on municipal IDs. “Since transgender people face so much discrimination based on sex, it’s important that they have ID that matches who they truly are and how they appear to the outside world,” he says. It’s a human rights issue, since IDs confer access to virtually every aspect of public life. When applying for jobs, public benefits, or other services that require identification, the option to affirm one’s gender identity (or omit it) can be significant. Sometimes, Silverman says, ID is the “only layer of support” for a person’s gender identity.
Gender markers are just one battleground in the struggle for gender-flexible documentation, however. Most states don’t allow people to change the gender on their birth certificates unless they undergo sex-reassignment surgery—difficult-to-define procedures that many transgender people either do not want or cannot afford. TLDEF has represented transgender people in West Virginiaand South Carolina who were asked to remove wigs, makeup, and other items associated with female gender expression before taking their driver’s license photos, and the ACLU recently sued the state of Michigan for requiring proof of reassignment surgery to change gender markers on state IDs.
But Silverman senses a sea change in public attitudes on gender identity, buoyed by the high-profile stories of Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner. In Newark, New York, and San Francisco, gender identity has become part of the conversation surrounding municipal IDs—one that has so far focused on the legal rights of undocumented immigrants. Silverman predicts that, moving forward, “municipalities will look to what other similar cities have done, and will take the concerns of the local transgender population into account when they plan these types of programs.”
In a 2013 report on municipal ID programs across the U.S., the Center for Popular Democracy wrote that “cities that offer ID to their residents regardless of immigration status are making a powerful statement of welcome and inclusion.” The same goes for cities who do so regardless of gender identity.
Source: The Atlantic's CityLab
The United Cities of America: What Seattle's Minimum-Wage Deal Means
The Atlantic - May 2, 2014, by Eric Liu - On Wednesday, a Senate...
The Atlantic - May 2, 2014, by Eric Liu - On Wednesday, a Senate filibuster blocked President Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10. Then on Thursday, Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle announced a business-labor deal to raise the city minimum wage to $15.
Procedurally, these two things had nothing to do with each other. Substantively, Seattle’s action is a direct result of the Senate’s inaction—and it portends the acceleration of two trends in public policy today: a growing willingness to reckon with radical inequality and wage stagnation, and the emergence of networked localism as a strategy for political action.
Let’s first unpack what happened in Seattle. The mayor appointed a committee of citizens to develop a proposal for $15. I was a member of that task force, which included union leaders and businesspeople and nonprofit heads and chamber-of-commerce chiefs. We gathered data. We commissioned studies. We held a big public symposium. Negotiations were complex and often heated and the committee missed its deadline, but we eventually got a deal that won the support of 21 of 24 members.
The grassroots “$15 Now” activists who helped propel a socialist to the city council and helped put this issue on the map last year are unsatisfied with the number of years and the accommodations. They aim to go to the ballot directly with a plan that’s closer to, well, $15 now. And the city council still must vote to enact this or any plan, and may come under pressure to amend it many ways.
The deal is nobody’s picture of perfect. It’s a compromise. It phases in minimum-wage hikes so that an employer has to get to $15 in three years (for businesses with more than 500 employees), four years (same, but offering healthcare), or seven years (for businesses with fewer than 500). The under-500 businesses also get several years to count a portion of worker tips and healthcare toward the wage requirements.
But pull back from the substantive details and the process hoops ahead. This is, as the vice president might say, a big f-ing deal. It’s not just the $15 figure, which sets the floor higher than in any other city or state. It’s the fact that a broad coalition with significant business support made it happen.
That makes this deal a model for other cities—and further evidence that norms are changing. It suggests that it’s becoming less acceptable in America to run a business in a way that relies on poverty wages. It’s becoming less acceptable to suggest that the go-to remedy for the pain of working people should be tax cuts for the wealthy. And though a minimum-wage increase is not an innovative tool, its revival is part of a widening repertoire of policy ideas for closing the opportunity gap.
We brought in leaders and experts from Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York—all cities that have raised the wage or taken steps to.
Perhaps more significantly, Seattle’s action shows we’re entering a new age of bypass. Washington is stuck and will be for the foreseeable future. So it falls increasingly to cities to act—and in increasingly coordinated ways. As the Seattle task force explored possible pathways to $15, we brought in elected leaders and experts from San Jose, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York, all cities that have raised the wage or taken steps to. We all shared tactics, policy proposals, lessons, and language.
Groups like Local Progress have emerged to link up politicians and policy entrepreneurs from disparate cities, not just on wages but also on criminal-justice reform, immigrant rights, voting rights, climate change, and other issues. The cities of the United States are beginning to web up into an archipelago of policy experimentation and problem-solving.
This networked localism is distinct from the mere downward distribution of national political dollars to local campaigns. It’s also distinct from the Koch brothers’ strategy of creating wholly owned political subsidiaries in small towns to push agendas. And it’s not just about having mayors who are skillful, important as that is. Networked localism is a form of citizenship from the middle out and the bottom up, where residents decide to act together and to learn in real time from their counterparts in other places.
Thus far, perhaps owing to the progressive tilt of big cities, networked localism seems to be practiced mainly by progressives. That may place a political limit on its ultimate reach. Another limit, of course, is structural: On most issues, even well-woven webs of cities cannot do what a well-run national government can. A $15 wage will directly benefit tens of thousands of low-income workers in my city. It does nothing for millions of others in my country.
Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that Seattle’s $15 moment is a sign of a shift in self-government. The last century rewarded political leaders like TR or LBJ who knew how to centralize the local into the national. This century may belong to those who can decentralize the national—but into a new kind of national. Call it the United Cities of America.
Source
Low-wage workers pick their next battleground
Low-wage workers pick their next battleground
Just four years ago, fast food workers in New York City walked off the job, launching the first strike to ever hit the...
Just four years ago, fast food workers in New York City walked off the job, launching the first strike to ever hit the industry and a movement that has had rapid success. Calling for a $15 minimum wage and the right to form a union, the Fight for 15 started staging strikes and protests in a growing number of cities — the last day of action reached 320 — that drew in workers beyond fast food, including adjunct professors, childcare providers, and retail workers.
That fight is by no means over, but it has led to surprising victories. Today, two states have passed increases to bring their minimum wages to $15 an hour, as have a number of major cities.
Now workers are pushing forward on a new demand: the right to consistent and predictable schedules.
In many ways, advocates see this as a natural extension of the Fight for 15. After all, higher hourly pay means little if you never know you’ll have enough hours to make ends meet or if a last-minute change disrupts your plans for childcare or transportation.
“Workers who have experienced their wage increase and then see their hours cut the next week more than anything know that their paycheck is their wages times hours,” pointed out Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Erratic and unpredictable scheduling has become a more and more common problem. “The erosion of unions, compounded by the accelerated pace of change and the nature of work, has only increased the need for updating our standards around hours,” she said.
At least 17 percent of all workers have irregular schedules, including changing or on-call shifts or working two shifts in one day. Over 40 percent of workers don’t find their schedules out until a week in advance, while 40 percent say their hours vary week to week. It’s especially prevalent in service sector jobs; huge numbers of retail workers in New York City and food service workers in Washington say they don’t get enough notice of their hours each week.
“The fight for just hours is definitely the next movement for people trying to achieve security for their families.”
“The fight for just hours is definitely the next movement for people trying to achieve security for their families,” Gleason added. “New energy has been generated with the Fight for 15, and as policymakers have raised the minimum wage and passed paid sick days across the country, they’re turning their attention to the crisis around hours finally.”
The movement has already notched victories. In 2014, San Francisco became the first city to pass legislation regulating schedules, enacting a law that requires retail chains to give employees two weeks notice of their schedules, pay them if shifts change at the last minute, give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before new hires are brought in, and to treat part-time workers similarly as full-time ones.
Then on Monday evening, the Seattle city council voted unanimously to pass a law that looks very similar. It will require large employers in retail and food service to give employees two weeks notice of schedules, extra pay for last-minute changes, and input into what their schedules will look like. It will also get rid of “clopenings,” or when employees work a closing shift one day only to come in early the next morning to open.
Seattle workers had already helped secure a $15 minimum wage increase in 2014. And it was after that victory that the conversation around scheduling began.
“It really became apparent during the 15 campaign that workers not only needed a higher minimum wage, but they needed more stable schedules,” said Sejal Parikh, executive director of Working Washington. After that campaign resulted in a victory, “workers started talking about what the next campaign would be: Making sure the minimum wage is enforced, and figuring out how to get to more secure schedules in the city.”
It’s “the natural other half of the 15 dollar campaign,” she added.
It’s “the natural other half of the 15 dollar campaign.”
That effort also coincided with one targeted at Starbucks. In the summer of 2014, shortly after a New York Times exposé on the company’s scheduling practices, Starbucks announced that it would make changes such as ending clopenings and posting schedules three weeks out.
But a year ago this month, Starbucks baristas in Seattle launched a campaign accusing the company of unevenly implementing these practices and still allowing workers’ schedules to be erratic.
Those two groups of workers got together and began talking to the city council late last year, and Parikh said they got a warm reception. The issue “really resonated with people,” she said. “Many of us have worked in retail or fast food or coffee and could recall times when we didn’t know what our schedule would be.” Workers were deeply involved in crafting the legislation, too: it was built around answers to surveys sent out to fast food employees and baristas asking them about their priorities.
It helped to be able to work with those in San Francisco who worked on the passage of the bill there and have been implementing it since. “Because San Francisco went first, we have a piece of policy where we’ve learned a lot of lessons,” she said.
“It’s really catching on,” she added. “I think it’s going to be one of the next pieces of labor policy across the country.”
It’s already reached the other coast. Seattle’s victory came just a week after New York City said it would start working on being the next. Last Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced that he, along with legislators and advocates, would begin crafting legislation aimed at improving scheduling for fast food workers. While the details will be hashed out in the months to come, he focused on two weeks advance notice, compensation for last-minute changes, and cracking down on clopenings.
“It’s really catching on.”
“It’s time for us to use the power of city government to make sure that people are treated decently,” he said at the press conference announcing the new effort.
New York City, home to the first fast food strike, now has a $15 minimum wage thanks to the state increase. “If [workers are] making 15 an hour, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t know when they’re actually making that money,” said Freddi Goldstein, deputy press secretary for the mayor. Scheduling “just felt like a natural next step.”
And as Seattle looked to San Francisco for guidance, New York will work with people in those two cities to see what worked and what didn’t.
The city is only looking at the fast food industry so far because, Goldstein said, it’s a workforce that is rarely unionized and “highly abused.” But it’s possible the focus could expand beyond that industry in the future, and as the effort to craft the legislation unfolds new planks could also be added. “I wouldn’t say we haven’t decided to do or not do anything at this point,” she said.
The scheduling movement hasn’t met with a totally unbroken string of successes: On Tuesday the D.C. city council voted to table a bill that would have addressed scheduling, killing it for the current session. Councilmember Elissa Silverman vowed to introduce a new version of the bill in the next one.
But the idea is starting to spread. It’s cropped up in Minneapolis, MN and Emeryville, CA. A scheduling bill has also been introduced in Congress, although it hasn’t advanced. “We’re already seeing policymakers step up across the country,” the Center for Popular Democracy’s Gleason said.
“The movement for the Fair Labor Standards Act was about wages and the 40-hour workweek,” she added. “It’s only natural that we’re seeing the demand for just wages and hours back again.”
By Bryce Covert
Source
100 groups call for Climate Investment Funds to sunset
100 groups call for Climate Investment Funds to sunset
Ahead of this week's meeting of the trust funds of the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, 100 groups have called...
Ahead of this week's meeting of the trust funds of the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, 100 groups have called for the CIFs to finally sunset, now that the Green Climate Fund is clearly operational. Two-thirds of the groups are from developing countries.
Here's the letter.
June 14, 2016
Dear Trust Fund Committee Members of the Strategic Climate Fund and Clean Technology Fund:
Now that it has approved projects and is beginning to disburse money, the Green Climate Fund is clearly operational. It is thus also unambiguously clear that it is time for the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds to sunset.
Since their inception, the CIFs were meant to be interim funds. In 2008, the sunset clauses of the Strategic Climate Fund and the Clean Technology Fund said, “…the SCF will take necessary steps to conclude its operations once a new [UNFCCC] financial architecture is effective…” and “the CTF will take necessary steps to conclude its operations once a new [UNFCCC] financial architecture is effective.”[1] That new financial architecture – the Green Climate Fund – is now indisputably effective. The CIFs’ raison d'etre has expired; attempts to reinterpret the obvious must cease.
Unlike the multilateral development bank-driven CIFs, the GCF was set up according to the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. With a governance structure evenly split between developed and developing countries, the GCF is founded on a “country-driven approach” accountable to the institutions and people in developing countries, and has placed a premium on direct access to funds by developing country entities. The GCF promotes a gender-sensitive approach to its funding – the first climate fund to do so from the outset of its activities.
While lessons learned from the CIFs should be applied to the GCF, efforts to spin the CIFs as complementary to the GCF are disingenuous. Resources directed toward the CIFs are resources that should instead be directed to the GCF. Any effort to raise new sources of finance for the CIFs should cease immediately, and there should be no new investments.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
11.11.11-Coalition of the Flemish North-South Movement, Belgium
ActionAid International
Aksi for Gender, Social and Ecological Justice, Indonesia
All Nepal Peasants Federation, Nepal
All Nepal Women’s Association, Nepal
Alliance Sud, Switzerland
Alyansa Tigil Mina (Alliance Against Mining), Philippines
Aniban ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, Philippines
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Thailand
Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development, Regional
ATTAC Japan
BankTrack, Netherlands
Beyond Beijing Committee, Nepal
Both ENDS, Netherlands
Bretton Woods Project, United Kingdom
Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Philippines
Campaign for Climate Justice, Nepal
Carbon Market Watch, Belgium
Center for Biological Diversity, United States
Center for Environment, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Center for Popular Democracy, United States
Center for Socio-Economic Research and Development, Nepal
Centre for 21st century Issues (C21st), Nigeria
Centre for Social Impact Studies, Ghana
Centre pour l'Environnement et le Développement, Cameroon
Centro Humboldt, Nicaragua
Centro Salvadoreño de Tecnologia Apropiada/Friends of the Earth El Salvador
Christian Aid, United Kingdom
Civic Concern Nepal
Climate Action Network Europe, Regional
Climate Change & Development NGO Alliance, Azerbaijan
Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), Mexico
CNCD-11.11.11, Belgium
Consumers Protection Association, Lesotho
Digo Bikas Institute, Nepal
Ecological Christian Organisation, Uganda
Ecological Society of the Philippines
Environics Trust, India
Farmers Forum South Asia, Regional
Finance & Trade Watch, Austria
Food & Water Watch, United States
Foundation HELP, Tanzania
Freedom from Debt Coalition, Philippines
Friends of the Earth - England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Friends of the Earth United States
Gender Action, United States
Global Catholic Climate Movement Pilipinas, Philippines
Green Development Advocates, Cameroon
Haburas Foundation/ Friends of the Earth Timor Leste
Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America
Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, India
Human Rights Alliance Nepal
Indian Social Action Forum, India
Indigenous Environmental Network, United States/International
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, United States
Institute for Policy Studies, Climate Policy Program, United States
Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), Regional
International.Lawyers.Org, Switzerland
Jagaran Nepal
Jamaa Resource Initiatives, Kenya
Jeunes Volontaires pour l'Environnement, Niger
Kitanglad Integrated NGOs, Inc., Philippines
Korea Federation for Environmental Movements, South Korea
KRuHA – Peoples Coalition on Water, Indonesia
Labour, Health and Human Rights Development Centre, Nigeria
LDC Watch, International
Leads Nigeria
Les Amis de la Terre France
Migrant Forum in Asia, Regional
National Coastal Women's Movement, India
National Hawkers Federation, India
National Women Peasants Association, Nepal
Nepal Youth Peasants Association, Nepal
Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Nigeria
NOAH Friends of the Earth Denmark
PALAG Mindanao, Philippines
Panay Rural Development Center, Inc., Philippines
Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, Philippines
Philippine Network for Rural Development and Democratization, Philippines
Policy Analysis and Research Institute of Lesotho
Population, Health, Environment Ethiopia Consortium, Ethiopia
Practical Action, United Kingdom
Reacción Climática, Bolivia
River Basin Friends, India
Rural Reconstruction Nepal
Sahabat Alam Malaysia/Friends of the Earth Malaysia
Sanlakas Philippines
Solidaritas Perempuan, Indonesia
South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication, Regional
South Asia Food Sovereignty Network, Regional
South Asia Peasants Coalition, Regional
Southern Oregon Climate Action Now, United States
Students for a Just and Stable Future, United States
SustainUS, United States
Third World Network, Malaysia
Trade Union Policy Institute of Nepal
VOICE Bangladesh
WomanHealth Philippines
Women Welfare Society, Nepal
Worldview-The Gambia
By Karen Orenstein
Source
No, 2016 Won't Be the Year of the $20 Minimum Wage
Bloomberg Businessweek - November 13, 2014, by Josh Eidelson - In the midterm elections, four red states—Alaska,...
Bloomberg Businessweek - November 13, 2014, by Josh Eidelson - In the midterm elections, four red states—Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota—passed minimum wage increases. Those votes mean that, starting next year, a majority of states will have minimum wages higher than the federal rate. The last time that happened, in 2007, Democrats newly in control of Congress used their power to pass the first national increase in a decade, from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. It’s extremely unlikely the Republicans who took back the Senate in the midterm elections will do the same. “Waiting for Congress to act is frustrating and, at this point, pointless,” says Ed Flanagan, a former Alaska labor commissioner who spent a year campaigning for his state’s new increase, from $7.75 to $9.75.
Already, labor organizers in Oregon are considering a ballot initiative for 2016 that would raise the state minimum to $15 an hour, matching the leap taken this year by Seattle and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, where Mayor Eric Garcetti signed an ordinance mandating a $15.37 wage floor for some hotel workers in October, 6 of the 15 members of the city council have asked for a vote in early 2015 on a proposal to increase the city’s rate to $15.25 across the board by 2019.
Voters in most states shouldn’t expect to see pushes for higher rates than that anytime soon. Labor activists say they want to end the exclusion of tipped workers such as restaurant wait staff from minimum wage laws and add worker protections, like requiring employers to give workers advance notice of schedule changes or offer paid sick days. That approach worked this year in Oakland, where voters approved a referendum on Nov. 4 that lifts wages only to $12.25 but requires employers to offer paid leave above what the state requires. “When you combine them together, it’s actually more popular,” says Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a union-backed community organizing group. “People appreciate that you are trying to actually solve the problem.”
Not all the coming fights will be put directly to voters. In California, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed a compromise bill last year increasing the statewide minimum from $8 to $10 by 2016. Some Democratic state lawmakers say that’s not enough to help workers make ends meet. “It will still allow the legal payment of a poverty wage,” says Mark Leno, the state senator who sponsored a bill that would have increased minimum pay to $13 by 2017 and then indexed future wage levels to inflation. That passed the state senate in May but failed by a single vote in an assembly committee. Leno plans to revive the issue in the next legislative session.
In some cities, Democrats are pitting themselves against the Republicans who control their state governments. Louisville has held hearings about raising wages to $10.10 after a statewide increase died in the Republican-controlled state senate. City officials in other states are hamstrung by laws prohibiting municipal governments from raising minimum wages above state levels. In June, business-friendly Democrats in Rhode Island’s statehouse killed efforts by the Providence city council to raise hotel pay to $15 an hour with a budget rider barring cities from setting their own minimum wages. In New York, where state law denies cities authority over pay rates, Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed to support changing that statute, along with a statewide increase to $10.10, to win the endorsement of the progressive Working Families Party in the November gubernatorial election. “He made a promise on this,” says Bill Lipton, the party’s New York director. “We expect him to fulfill it.”
Source
Aboard flight, dad battling ALS pleads with Sen. Jeff Flake to vote no on tax bill
Aboard flight, dad battling ALS pleads with Sen. Jeff Flake to vote no on tax bill
A 33-year-old father battling ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was flying home last week after traveling to...
A 33-year-old father battling ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was flying home last week after traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the tax bill when he came face-to-face with one of the lawmakers he most hoped to influence.
Ady Barkan and others had spent a week trying to get lawmakers' attention and giving speeches outside their offices.
Read the full article here.
3 days ago
3 days ago