CPD IN THE NEWS

The selection of a regional Federal Reserve bank president normally takes place in relative obscurity, followed only by local business leaders, financial executives and analysts who track monetary policy.

But amid concerns about a lack of diversity at the highest levels of the nation’s central banking system, great attention is being focused on who will be chosen as the next head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

The search is being watched closely by members of Congress and advocacy groups that have complained publicly in recent months that the Fed’s top leadership is nearly all white.

The Atlanta region, which has a large African American population, presents the perfect opportunity to start changing that, they said.

 “This would be historic,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who would like the Fed to make the next Atlanta chief the first African American to lead one of the 12 regional banks. “It would be very important, and it’s long overdue.”

As the Fed has taken on a larger role in the economy in the wake of the Great Recession, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among key decision-makers has sparked concerns that monetary policy decisions haven’t taken into account the higher unemployment rates among African Americans and Latinos.

“Communities of color have not yet experienced full economic recovery,” said Shawn Sebastian, field director of Fed Up, a campaign by labor, community and liberal activist groups that wants the Fed to enact pro-worker policies.

“As a really important economic policymaker, the Fed needs to actually reflect America,” he said.

Leading African American lawmakers have called on Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen, the first woman to lead the central bank, and the Atlanta Fed to conduct a broad search.

Fed officials have promised to do that. But they’ve made no commitment to a diverse appointment for a complex job that includes overseeing about 1,700 employees in the Atlanta region and participating in monetary policy deliberations in Washington.

During an October webcast on the search, Tom Fanning, chairman of the Atlanta Fed’s board of directors, was asked whether the bank had “a special opportunity” to break the regional bank “color barrier.”

“That would be a great thing. We’re all for it,” he said. “We want the best person as well.”

The U.S. labor force's guy problem: Lots of men don’t have a job and aren’t looking for one »

Fanning, chief executive of Atlanta-based energy firm Southern Co., is leading the bank’s search committee. The committee is reviewing candidates and doesn’t have a timetable for a decision, Atlanta Fed spokeswoman Jean Tate said.

The five sitting members of the Board of Governors and 11 of the 12 regional bank presidents are white. Since the central bank was created in 1913, three African Americans have served as governors, but there have been no Latinos. There never has been an African American or Latino regional Fed president.

“They just need more diversity,” Waters said.

Regional Fed presidents rotate onto the Federal Open Market Committee, where they join Fed governors in setting the level of a key interest rate that affects business and consumer loans.

The committee has started nudging up the rate as the unemployment rate has fallen below 5%. But many liberals are worried the job market isn’t fully healed, pointing to higher unemployment rates for African Americans and Latinos.

Last spring, Waters was among 116 House members and 11 senators who wrote to Yellen criticizing what they called “the disproportionately white and male” leadership at the central bank.

“Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated,” said the letter, organized by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

At congressional hearings, lawmakers have pushed Yellen to do more to improve diversity among the regional bank chiefs.

The president nominates Fed governors, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Yellen and her colleagues on the Board of Governors give final approval for regional bank president selections, which are made by the board of directors of each bank.

“It’s our job to make sure that every search for those jobs assembles a broad and diverse group of candidates,” Yellen told Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) last winter after he pressed her to consider “getting an African American, for the first time in history, to be a regional president of a Federal Reserve bank.”

That was before Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart announced his resignation in September, effective Feb. 28.

Shortly afterward, Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, joined Conyers, Scott and Rep. John Lewis, another Georgia Democrat, in writing to Yellen and Fanning urging the Fed to “consider candidates from diverse personal backgrounds, including African Americans, Latinos and women.”

The letter said that “grave racial disparities exist across our nation in unemployment wages and income.” It also said that the unemployment and poverty rates for African Americans in the Atlanta region — Alabama, Florida, Georgia and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — were about double those for whites.

For the first time, the Atlanta Fed’s search committee has asked the public to submit names of potential candidates. The Atlanta Fed also has tried to make the process more transparent by posting details on its website, including holding the October webcast in which Fanning answered the public’s questions.

Asked about the importance of diversity for addressing “the special concerns of minority communities,” Fanning said he thought the Fed already did a good job on the issue, but “increasing our cultural bandwidth” was important.

“It is incumbent upon the person that gets this job to have the broadest perspective possible,” he said. “That’s why valuing diversity is really a critical component here.”

By Jim Puzzanghera

Source

Fed Up, a coalition of unions and community groups, said it would deliver a giant “Thank You” card to the Fed on Friday afternoon to celebrate Ms. Yellen’s success in reducing unemployment.

Read the full article here.

An Arizona employer is stiffing a small-business owner on a completed job, affecting dozens of low-income employees.

Sounds like the kind of greedhead Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families is targeting with its campaign to raise the minimum wage, right?

Wrong — the employer is Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families. The campaign refuses to pay the last $65,000 of a $965,000 bill to Sign Here Petitions, the company that hired the people who gathered the signatures that put the measure on this November's general-election ballot.

Sign Here owner Bonita Burks sued the campaign on September 21 to recover the balance due. In the meantime, Burks says, she has been unable to distribute final paychecks to the 45 to 50 petition gatherers she hired to get Prop 206 onto the ballot.

It's not as if the minimum-wage campaign can't afford to pay Burks, a Maricopa resident who has owned her own business for 12 years. Though the campaign ran short of money over the summer, its spokesman, Bill Scheel, confirms that Arizonans for Fair Wages expects to receive an influx of $1.5 million in donations any day now.

Scheel says the campaign intentionally shorted Burks' company because it didn't do its job well enough, resulting in tens of thousands in unexpected expenses.

If Arizona voters approve the minimum-wage measure in November, the state's minimum wage would go up to $10 an hour next year and rise to $12 in 2020. Waitresses and others who expect tips would see their wages increase from $5.05 to $7 by 2017, and to $9 by 2020. The ballot initiative also mandates that workers can take between three and five days of earned sick leave annually.

Much of the money for the campaign has come from out-of-state donors as part of a national effort by activists and labor unions. Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), the largest donor, is itself being funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Popular Democracy. The Commercial Workers union Region 8 States Council and California-based Fairness Project are also major contributors.

As New Times reported in August, a member of the political-strategy firm hired by the campaign, Javelina, loaned the campaign $100,000 after it ran short of cash while defending itself from a legal challenge that could have kicked the measure off the ballot.

Scheel, a cofounder of Javelina and spokesman for the campaign, said in August that he gave the campaign the loan on August 4 to cover unexpected expenses from a legal challenge by the Arizona Restaurant Association.

The restaurant owners behind the ARA, an influential organization led by Steve Chucri, one of five Maricopa County supervisors, doesn't want to see minimum wage go up and sued the campaign in an attempt to deny voters the right to decide the question. The ARA's lawyers argued that many of the campaign's signature gatherers were felons or had filled out their forms incorrectly, meaning tens of thousands of signatures should have been tossed. The workers are typically paid $3 to $5 for each signature they collect.

The ARA identified up to 85,000 signatures they claimed were no good, and expected to find even more invalid ones. At least 150,642 valid signatures were needed out of the 271,883 turned in by the campaign.

Yet before a deeper probe of the campaign's signature-gathering process occurred, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joshua Rogers dismissed the ARA's complaint because it hadn't been filed on time. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the ruling on appeal.

The campaign had apparently run out money before the lawsuit was filed, though. On July 19, about two weeks after the July 7 deadline to turn in signatures to the state, Sign Here and the campaign — represented by Scheel — drew up a one-page amendment to their original contract. In the amendment, Burks made clear that the campaign owed $186,884.60 and would assess a late fee of $1,000 per day starting on July 18.

The campaign "understands and agrees that the final invoice amount is requires for [Burks] to pay individuals already-earned monies," the contract states, adding that if Burks is sued by the signature gatherers, the campaign will cover the costs.

Scheel signed the amended contract.

About a month later, Burks says, Scheel promised falsely that the money was on the way.

Burks provided New Times with a screenshot that shows a text exchange with Scheel on Friday, August 19:

"Bill, Please send me a text once the wire has been. Thank you," Burks texted.

"The wire has been initiated," Scheel texted back.

But the following Monday, the money had not materialized in Sign Here's account.

"Sorry," Scheel informed Burks in another text. "We have been on conference calls with the national funders all morning. We've been instructed to hold off any further wires till after the Supreme Court rules on the appeal, which we hope will be Friday."

The state Supreme Court upheld Rogers' ruling on August 30, clearing its final hurdle to make the ballot.

Scheel says Sign Here invoiced the campaign a total of $965,000, of which the campaign paid $900,000.

"We paid 93 percent of everything that was due," he says.

The campaign contracted with Sign Here for more than just making the ballot, he argues: "It was about making sure circulators were qualified. She promised 80 percent validity — it came in at barely 50 percent. That's not acceptable."

The lawsuit cost the campaign $70,000 in legal fees, and Burks' company "nearly put the campaign in jeopardy," he says.

Scheel admits that he doesn't know whether Judge Rogers would have thrown out enough signatures to void the measure, had the ARA's challenge been filed on time.

"No one ever did the math on our side," he says.

But that isn't the issue, Scheel maintains. Burks didn't properly vet the signature gatherers, which cost the campaign $70,000 by leaving a potential vulnerability for the ARA to exploit.

The campaign recouped $33,500 of the legal fees via a settlement with the ARA, Scheel says. Arizonans for Fair Wages could have asked for up to $55,000 in legal fees, but decide to settle rather than prolong the fight, he says.

Scheel also confirms, as he told New Times in August, that the campaign is about to receive $1.5 million in donations from its national backers to pay for marketing and promotion of the measure in the final weeks before the election. Some of that money has already trickled in, he says, and the campaign has used it to pay 15 of the signature gatherers who haven't received checks from Sign Here.

Burks did such a poor job, Scheel says, that according to the campaign's calculations, she owes the campaign $35,000.

Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.

Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.

"She's a small-businessperson who unfortunately and sadly dropped the ball," he says.

Burks says she's upset and frustrated by the situation. Signature gatherers keep contacting her, asking when they'll get their last checks.

"They're hurting bad," she says. "My phone's blowing up every day."

By her account, adding in the $1,000-a-day late fee, Arizonans for Fair Wages now owes her company $143,000.

"I'm standing firm: You owe the money, you need to pay it," she says.

Burks says she doesn't have the money to pay the petition gatherers the remainder of what they're owed and says she made "no profit" on the project. Campaign officials took advantage of Sign Here to make a strong final push to collect more signatures before the July 7 deadline, even though they were broke at the time, she adds.

"They told me in the last week: Get as many as you can because our volunteer efforts suck," she says. The workers came up with an additional 35,000 signatures.

"My team and I, we worked so hard in the 120-degree heat," she says. "I was paying bonuses. I haven't made one damned dime on it. I really wanted to see it happen, for the people."

At least one signature gatherer is suing Burks in Maricopa County Justice Court.

Donna Fox worked for Sign Here before returning home to Kingsport, Tennessee. She has been staying in Scottsdale for the past couple of weeks, making the nearly 2,000-mile trip to resolve the issue.

Fox says her work for Sign Here was impeccable, and that Burks' company owes her $1,320 for her last week's work. She is suing for three times that amount, as allowed under state law.

She could probably make a deal to get her money from Arizonans for Fair Wages, Fox says. "But I don't trust them."

Even if she wins her suit, Fox says she's not sure whether she'll ever see her money. But she's hoping Burks wins her suit against the campaign, which Fox believes treated Sign Here badly.

"This is like Donald Trump strategy," Fox says of Arizonans for Fair Wages. "You can do the work, but we're not paying you. They don't walk the walk they're talking. This is nothing more than business for them."

As for Burks, with whom Fox says she shares a friendly, albeit contentious, relationship: "I chew her out all the time. I tell her she's a complete shithead because she led people to believe the check was in the mail."

The campaign offered to settle the suit for $32,500, Burks says, but she turned them down because it wouldn't cover the money she owes to the petition gatherers.

"My circulators really need their money to pay rent and put food on the table," Burks says. "I believe Arizona Fair Wages just don't care about the people who worked so hard to get their issue on the ballot."

By BY RAY STERN

Source

As of November 26, 2017, fast food companies in New York are required to post worker schedules 14 days in advance. If they change the schedule within that window, they will pay an extra fee to the workers who are affected. And before they hire more people, they must offer the available hours to their existing part-time workers.

Read the full article here.