Wages

Terri Sewell, The Worst Of The Black Caucus, Subverts $15 Wage Bill

April 20, 2019 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Reform, Wages

Rep.Terri Sewell, who has wallowed at the bottom of the barrel of the Congressional Black Caucus ever since she won election to her Alabama Black Belt seat in 2010, is stooping to new lows. Sewell this month introduced a bill crafted to nullify Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Rep. Bobby Scott’s legislation to boost the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2024. The Sanders/Scott Raise the Wage Act would also ensure that the federal minimum wage will rise further as median pay increases.

How Momentum Is Growing To Tax The Rich And Reduce Inequality

April 15, 2019 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Congress, Taxes, Wages, wealth inequality

In the middle of the last century, there was a large and secure working class. Then, changes to the tax structure distributed more and more of the wealth to the richest and hollowed out the middle class. Now, levels of inequality in the United States are unsustainable as the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) has wealth equal to the bottom 80%. Momentum is growing to make the tax system more fair at both the state and federal levels. We speak with Sam Pizzigati about the history of taxes and what policies are currently being proposed.

Largest Private Sector Strike In Years – At Supermarkets Across Northeast

April 14, 2019 By Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox. Resist! Food and Agriculture, Strike, Wages, Worker Rights

More than 30,000 grocery store employees in the northeastern US are refusing to return to work for the second day in a row. Cashiers and deli workers at Stop & Shop supermarkets walked off the job Thursday afternoon at 240 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, saying the supermarket chain is trying to slash their pay by hiking health insurance premiums and lowering pension benefits for new employees. The workers have been negotiating new jobs contracts with the company since January, according to their labor unions, which are part of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union International.

Maryland Becomes Sixth State To Raise Minimum Wage To $15 An Hour

April 8, 2019 By Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox.com Create! Maryland, Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Maryland just became the sixth state to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. On Thursday, lawmakers managed to override Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a minimum wage bill. Maryland’s current minimum wage is $10.10, and the new policy willgradually raise the wage floor to $15 by 2025. Hogan had blocked the bill earlier this week, claiming that such a change would “devastate” the economy. But it was clear early on that he would be unable to stop the national momentum building around a $15 minimum wage.

Thousands Of Workers At US Factories In Mexico Are Striking For Higher Wages

April 1, 2019 By Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox.com Resist! Class Struggle, Factories, Mexico, Wages, Workers

Hundreds of Coca-Cola workers are camping out at a major bottling plant until they get a raise. More than 8,000 Walmart employees were prepared to walk off the job, until management met some of their demands. And 30,000 striking factory workers have finally returned to work after a month-long strike. Workers are organizing at unprecedented rates along the border — in Mexico. Since January, thousands of factory workers have been striking for higher wages in Mexican border cities, which are home to hundreds of factories run by US companies and subcontractors.

Hundreds Of Janitors March For Better Wages, More Respect

February 16, 2019 Homa Bash, News5cleveland.com Resist! Class Struggle, Wages, Workers

A movement sweeping through Cleveland — “Justice for Janitors” has old roots but new momentum in our city. It’s a push for better wages, better healthcare, and most importantly, representatives say, more respect in the workplace. “People just want to be able to buy groceries, pay their rent, their mortgage, pay their car note, get to and from work and go home just like everyday else,” said Yanela Sims, Ohio state director for SEIU Local 1. “It’s not rocket science — people just need to be able to survive.”

Shutdown Exposes How Many Americans Live Paycheck To Paycheck

January 22, 2019 By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout.org Educate! Class Struggle, Government Shutdown, Wages, Workers

Today marks the two-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, and we have learned some hard lessons in the interval. The ongoing, historically unprecedented shutdown of the federal government has exposed Trump as one of the worst deal-makers ever to stand up in two shoes. It has further exposed the Republican Party’s bottomless disdain for marginalized people through its craven refusal to contain the man who has unleashed all this misery. It has exposed deep fissures in Trump’s once-unbreakable base as more and more of his supporters — battered by tariffs and now the shutdown — come to correctly believe they’ve been played for chumps.

Federal Workers: Shutdown And Out

January 21, 2019 Saurav Sarkar, Labornotes.org Educate! Class Struggle, Government, Government Shutdown, Slavery, Wages, Workers

What would you do if management could force you to work without pay, lock you out with no consequences, and fire you for going on strike? That’s the situation facing 800,000 federal workers—and their unions—during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Forty percent of the government’s civilian workforce besides postal workers are being deprived of money to pay for rent, gas, groceries, and car and student loan payments. They include 420,000 workers who are being forced to work without pay and 380,000 who are locked out. The shutdown is the result of President Trump’s demand that Congress fund an anti-immigrant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats in Congress are refusing to go along with the idea.

The ‘Private Governments’ That Subjugate U.S. Workers

January 16, 2019 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Wages, Workers

Corporate dictatorships—which strip employees of fundamental constitutional rights, including free speech, and which increasingly rely on temp or contract employees who receive no benefits and have no job security—rule the lives of perhaps 80 percent of working Americans. These corporations, with little or no oversight, surveil and monitor their workforces. They conduct random drug testing, impose punishing quotas and targets, routinely engage in wage theft, injure workers and then refuse to make compensation, and ignore reports of sexual harassment, assault and rape.

Universal Basic Income Is Easier Than It Looks

December 31, 2018 Staff, Ellenbrown.com Strategize! Universal Income, Wages

Calls for a Universal Basic Income have been increasing, most recently as part of the Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security. Critics say the Green New Deal asks too much of the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the resolution proposes. It says funding would primarily come from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks,” and other vehicles.

The Eight Most Important Labor Stories Of 2018

December 23, 2018 Rebecca Burns, In These Times Educate! Janus, Labor, Wages, Worker Rights

In June, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling in Janus v. AFSCME—and it was just as bad as everyone feared. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court found that public-sector unions violated the First Amendment by collecting so-called fair-share fees from workers who aren’t union members but benefit from collective bargaining regardless. A report by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute estimated that the resulting “free-rider” problem could eventually lead to the loss of 726,000 public-sector union members nationwide. This diminished strength could result, in turn, in a 3.6 percent decline in public-sector wages.

Real Roots Of Inequality Is Neoliberal Capitalism, Not Trade & Technology

December 17, 2018 By Jayati Ghosh, Project-syndicate.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Inequality, Labor, Wages

New findings from the International Labor Organization show that workers across many advanced and emerging economies continued to miss out on the gains from growth in 2017. Rather than trotting out the usual suspects – trade and technology – it is time for policymakers to place the blame where it belongs. NEW DELHI – It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.

New Yorkers Confront Amazon Execs At City Council Meeting

December 14, 2018 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Resist! Amazon, Taxes, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

After being kept in the dark about New York's $3 billion deal with Amazon, allowing the trillion-dollar corporation to build its new headquarters—complete with helicopter landing pad for CEO Jeff Bezos—in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, concerned New York City Council members and scores of angry New Yorkers on Wednesday angrily confronted company representatives over the plan. At the first City Council meeting on Amazon's so-called "HQ2," about 150 protesters joined the mostly-Democratic lawmakers in slamming the closed-door process through which the city and state finalized the deal and the effect the corporation's arrival will likely have on affordable housing and community development in Queens and the entire city, as New York pours much-needed funds into the new one million square foot campus.

Council Approves Bills For ‘Fair Workweek’ And $15/hr. Wage Hike

December 8, 2018 Juliana Feliciano Reyes, Philly.com Create! Legislation, New Economy, Reform, Wages

The 24-year-old graduate of Olney High School left his job at a Target store two weeks ago because the company couldn’t accommodate his schedule — he’s only able to work daytime hours because in the evenings, he has to take care of a nephew who has cerebral palsy. Now, he works at Ross on City Avenue, where he’s in charge of making sure people don’t steal. But because he’s only getting 25 hours, he makes about $200 each week. His managers said they’re trying to make him full-time. If he could even get 32 hours a week, he said, it would make a big difference to his relatives, including his grandmother, who has cancer.

Voters Overwhelmingly Choose To Raise Wages In Two Red States

November 9, 2018 Michael Arria, Inthesetimes.com Create! Electoral Politics, Wages

On Tuesday, Arkansas voters overwhelmingly approved Issue 5, a ballot measure that will raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.50 to $11 by 2021. The vote is expected to raise wages for some 300,000 workers throughout the state. The measure received a staggering 68 percent of the vote in a state that Trump carried by more than 60 percent in 2016. Arkansas wasn’t the only red state where workers saw a win last night. Missouri’s Proposition B, which will raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.85 to $12 by 2023, passed with 62 percent of the vote. The measure will lift pay for more than 600,000 workers. Missouri’s wage hike comes just three months after its electorate overwhelmingly rejected a right-to-work law at the ballot box.

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