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Jobs and Wages

Low Wage Walk Off Jobs In 300 Cities

December 1, 2016 Sam Sacks, www.districtsentinel.com , ,
By Sam Sacks for The District Sentinel - Low-wage workers across the country walked off the job on Tuesday to agitate for an increase in the federal minimum wage, in what were the first major labor actions launched since the election of Donald Trump. Organized by the “Fight for 15” campaign, McDonalds employees in more than 300 cities rallied for better pay. They were joined by other fast-food workers, home health care workers, and Uber drivers. In addition, baggage handlers and cabin cleaners at nearly 20 airports nationwide, including Chicago’s O’Hare, participated in the day of action.

Black-White Earnings Gap Returns To 1950 Levels

November 29, 2016 Staff, www.scienceblog.com , , ,
By Staff of Science Blog - After years of progress, the median earnings gap between black and white men has returned to what it was in 1950, according to new research by economists from Duke University and the University of Chicago. The experience of African-American men is not uniform, though: The earnings gap between black men with a college education and those with less education is at an all-time high, the authors say. The research appears online this week in the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series.

Business Associations Urge No Lame Duck Vote On TPP

October 9, 2016 Coalition for a Prosperous America and American Sustainable Business Council, , , ,
By Coalition for a Prosperous America and American Sustainable Business Council. Washington ~ The Coalition for a Prosperous American (CPA) and the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) released a letter to Congressional leadership today urging against holding a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement after the November elections. ASBC and CPA collectively represent over 250,000 American businesses across the country, including farms and ranches. CPA also includes labor organization members. The letter states in part: American voters’ trust in national leaders has been ebbing. Both major party presidential candidates oppose the TPP. A lame duck session vote on the TPP would further erode citizen’s trust in government. Legislators who have been defeated or are retiring would vote, but are no longer accountable to voters.

Black White Wage Gap Worse Than In 1979

September 23, 2016 ,
Above Photo:  Low wage workers take part in a protest organized by the Coalition for a Real Minimum Wage outside

What Explains Median Wages Rising?

September 20, 2016 Chuck Collins, www.inequality.org ,
By Chuck Collins for Chuck Colllins - Good news can be elusive when reporting on the steady rise of inequality. So its heartening to see that median household incomes in the past year jumped more than 5 percent in the past year, now up to $56,500 according to a just released Census report. The income boosts were felt across economic spectrum, a sharing of gains rarely seen since the shared prosperity decades between 1947 and 1977.

California First U.S. State To Promise Overtime To Farmworkers

September 16, 2016 Sharon Bernstein, www.reuters.com , ,
By Sharon Bernstein for Reuters - SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept 12 (Reuters) - California will become the first U.S. state to require farmers to pay overtime to field workers and fruit pickers under a bill signed on Monday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. The bill would phase in overtime pay for farmworkers from 2019 to 2022. In an industry where a work week during the harvest season can be as long as 60 hours, the measure requires farmers to pay overtime after eight hours per day or 40 hours per week.

A Triumph Long In Coming In Fair Pay Fight

August 4, 2016 Shirley Leung, www.bostonglobe.com ,
By Shirley Leung for The Boston Globe - At first, Dorothy Simonelli didn’t want to come, or see her name or photo in the newspaper. The wounds still stung two decades after losing a bitter case that was the first legal test of the state’s equal pay law. She was among 41 lunch ladies who sued the Everett Public Schools alleging their work was comparable to the male custodians yet the women were paid only half as much.

The Fight Isn’t Over For Farm Worker Overtime

July 6, 2016 David Bacon, www.capitalandmain.com , , , ,
By David Bacon for Capital and Main - For the state’s first hundred-plus years, certain unspoken rules governed California politics. In a state where agriculture produced more wealth than any industry, the first rule was that growers held enormous power. Tax dollars built giant water projects that turned the Central and Imperial Valleys into some of the nation’s most productive farmland.

Expanded Suit Alleges Alabama Violated Voting Rights Act

July 1, 2016 Anna Susman, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Anna Susman for Popular Resistance - Birmingham, Ala. – A lawsuit filed in April against the state of Alabama for blocking Birmingham’s minimum wage increase expanded Thursday with the filing of an amended complaint that includes additional plaintiffs and defendants and a new claim that the bill signed by Gov. Robert Bentley nullifying the pay hike violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and nine individual black Alabama state legislators added their names to a suit initially brought by fast-food workers, the Alabama NAACP and Greater Birmingham Ministries charging the state acted illegally...

Low-Wage Workers Earn So Little They Must Rely On Public Assistance

February 17, 2016 David Cooper, www.epi.org , ,
By David Cooper for Economic Policy Institute - There is an enduring myth that people who rely on public assistance are unwilling to work. However, there are 41.2 million working Americans (nearly 30 percent of the workforce) who receive public assistance—and nearly half of these workers (19.3 million) have full-time jobs. Not surprisingly, these workers are concentrated in jobs paying low hourly wages. A majority (53.1 percent) of workers earning less than $12.16 per hour—the bottom 30 percent of wage earners—earn so little on the job that they must rely on public assistance to make ends meet.

Fast-Food Workers Plan Wave Of Strikes For 2016 Primaries

January 15, 2016 Giovanna Vitale and Jack Temple, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
By Giovanna Vitale and Jack Temple for #FightFor15. Fast-food workers announced Friday that an unprecedented wave of strikes and actions calling for $15 and union rights will hit this primary season to hammer home to candidates that the nearly 64 million Americans paid less than $15 an hour are a voting bloc that cannot be ignored. Workers will also continue to collect signatures on their Fight for $15 Voter Agenda, a five-point platform that launched late last year and calls for $15 and union rights, affordable child care, quality long-term care, racial justice and immigration reform—issues identified by underpaid workers as key factors in whether they will go to the polls for a candidate.

Tufts Univ. Report: TPP Means Inequality, Lost Jobs, Lower Wages

January 15, 2016 Staff, www.ase.tufts.edu , , ,
By Jerome Capaldo and Alex Izurieta with Jomo Kwame Sundaram of GDAE. Boston, MA - Proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), the trade and investment treaty recently agreed by the United States and eleven Pacific Rim nations, emphasize the prospective economic benefits, with economic growth increasing due to rising trade and investment. Widely cited projections suggest GDP gains for all countries after ten years, varying from less than half a percentage point in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam. In this GDAE Working Paper, the authors employ a more realistic model that incorporates effects on employment excluded from prior TPP modeling.
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