“Workers are going to have less retirement security in the future,” Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, told me recently. “Unless something changes, there’s going to be a lot more hardship soon.”
MarketWatch
March 12, 2021
The tactics are “so typical that it’s truly sad,” said Celine McNicholas, general counsel at the Economic Policy Institute and a former special counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees private-sector union elections.
“It isn’t just Amazon ― this is the standard playbook,” McNicholas explained. Employers collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on outside firms “because unions do improve workers’ lives,” she said. “These firms feed off that.”
The Huffington Post
March 12, 2021
Legal barriers to LGBTQ+ equity are undergirded by disproportionate poverty levels among queer families of color. The Williams Institute estimates that Black LGBTQ+ couples earn less than non-LGBTQ+ couples, while Black female-headed same-sex households earn approximately $20,000 less than Black male same-sex households. African American lesbians in particular are more likely to be raising children while being segregated into low-wage jobs with few benefits and nominal workplace protections. It is projected that the child allowance would cut child poverty in half, with African American and Indigenous families reaping the greatest benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over thirty percent of Black workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage increases. LGBTQ+ families of color would directly benefit because many Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming rank and file workers are employed in low-wage service and food sector jobs.
The Humanist
March 12, 2021
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) studies show that “Black-white wage gaps are large and have gotten worse in the last 20 years,” EPI economist Elise Gould wrote in a blog post last year. “Even Black workers with an advanced degree experience a significant wage gap compared with their white counterparts.”
SHRM
March 12, 2021
The big picture: The PRO Act would restrict companies like Uber and Lyft from classifying workers as independent contractors and improve protections for workers’ right to strike, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios
March 12, 2021
Raising the minimum wage would overwhelmingly benefit women and, consequently, it would benefit queer women who cohabitate. According to the Economics Policy Institute, 59 percent of workers whose lives would improve from a $15 minimum wage are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Latinx or Black. According to the Center for American Progress, nearly one in three bisexual women ages 18-44 lives in poverty, and one in five LGBTQ women living alone lives in poverty. While some studies say that $15 an hour won’t be enough for many U.S. families, the raise would have a significant impact on the gender and racial pay gap and start a necessary process of wage redistribution. The current $7.25 minimum hourly rate was set in 2009, which means minimum wage workers have lost about $3,000 a year due to the rising cost of living, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As Sinema uses her identity as a woman to cynically dismiss the very fair and necessary criticism about her vote, women of color and queer women will struggle to make ends meet this month, and for every month in the foreseeable future until the Senate holds an open debate on raising the minimum wage. While it may have been exciting to witness Sinema become America’s first openly bisexual senator and watch her use of colorful wigs on the floor, her latest vote begs the question: How valuable is bisexual representation in the Senate if the bisexual woman in question is voting against the best interests of queer women at large? What is the use of representation if it does not translate to material changes for the people who inhabit those identities?
Bitch Media
March 12, 2021
According to congressional testimony from the Economic Policy Institute last month, “Due to the impacts of structural racism and sexism, women and Black and Hispanic men are concentrated in low-wage jobs” and would greatly benefit from a higher minimum wage.
People for the American Way
March 12, 2021
“Things are improving, but we still have a massive jobs hole,” said Heidi Shierholz, a Ph.D. economist at the Economic Policy Institute who served in the Obama administration. “Unemployment benefits will help get some people through what could still be some very rough next few months, ” she said.
Morningstar
March 12, 2021
During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Action is urgently necessary. In 1983, 20 percent of workers in the United States were union members; in 2020, that’s down to about 10.8 percent. Among employees in the private sector, the decline was even more precipitous: from 17 to 7 percent. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and Brookings attribute the drop in union membership, along with globalization and automation, as a significant factor in wage stagnation and inequality, with the largest impact on lower income workers.
The Hill
March 11, 2021
A major concern regarding this income requirement should be that it will have the effect of excluding people of color who are “far more likely to be paid poverty-level wages than white workers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute’s study marking the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Sunny Side Post
March 11, 2021
While offering no source, Jahncke claims that, “for more than a decade, state employee compensation has exceeded compensation in Connecticut’s private sector by about 40 percent, the biggest gap in the nation.” That unattributed claim likely came from a 2015 report by the Yankee Institute asserting Connecticut public sector workers earn 25-46 percent more than comparable private sector workers. First, consider that the Yankee Institute is a right-wing, dark money-fueled, propaganda outlet associated with conservative North Carolina billionaire Thomas Roe’s State Policy Network. Roe’s particular objective, as revealed in Jane Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” was the destruction of public sector unions. In a meticulous analysis for the respected Economic Policy Institute, Monique Morrissey debunked the Yankee Institute report, revealing it was based on a cherry-picked sample of workers, used nonstandard control variables, and inflated the cost of retiree benefits in the public sector, while minimizing their cost in the private sector. Morrissey concluded that Connecticut public sector workers without college degrees are compensated somewhat more than those in the private sector, while those with college and graduate degrees are compensated somewhat less than in the private sector, even when factoring in more generous public sector benefits. In short, Morrissey writes, “taxpayers are getting a bargain!”
CT Post
March 11, 2021
Nonpartisan think tank the Economic Policy Institute cheered the House’s passing of the PRO Act, stating helps “bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century.”
“The Senate should pass the PRO Act Immediately and ensure that all workers have a voice on the job,” Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the EPI and its policy analyst, Margaret Poydock, said in a joint statement.
Breitbart
March 11, 2021
In a statement the Economic Policy Institute explained that
The PRO Act helps restore workers’ right to join together to bargain for better wages and working conditions by streamlining the process when workers form a union, ensuring that they are successful in negotiating the first agreement, and holding employers accountable when they violate labor law.
Workday Minnesota
March 11, 2021
Determined to show that caregiving is essential work, Wiley hopes this grant will finally compensate family members who have traditionally worked in the home for free. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average American made $19.33 per hour in 2019. Therefore, if women were compensated for their unpaid labor, they would earn nearly $40,000 a year.
Popsugar
March 11, 2021
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, impacted workers would earn an additional $3,300 a year under a $15 minimum wage, and a majority (59 percent) whose total family income is below the poverty line would receive an increase if the wage is raised in four years’ time. The hike would be particularly significant for workers of color and help narrow the racial pay gap, the analysis also found.
Hays Free Press News-Dispatch
March 11, 2021
The following excerpt is from an Inc.com article, “Getting Beyond the Minimum Wage:” A 2020 study from Princeton University shows that providing low-wage workers with more money directly leads to increased consumer demand. That’s because they quickly recirculate their wages, says Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Low-wage workers and unemployed people, she says, typically have “no choice but to spend immediately on necessities.”
Taunton Gazette
March 11, 2021
Half of Americans ages 56 to 61 had less than $21,000 in retirement savings in 2016, the most recent year for which the figure is available, the Economic Policy Institute reports.
AARP
March 11, 2021
More than 25 million workers have been hurt by the pandemic, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, including 10 million who are currently unemployed, an estimated five million who have left the workforce and are not being counted in unemployment numbers, and 6.6 million who have seen their hours and pay cut because of COVID-19.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
March 11, 2021
At face value, “$300 instead of $400 is worse,” says Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. A $300 weekly boost on top of state UI replaces 74% of the average worker’s lost income, according to a CNBC analysis, while a $400 weekly supplement bumps it up to 85% wage recovery. The CARES Act’s $600 weekly enhancement aimed to provide 100% wage replacement for the average worker.
CNBC
March 11, 2021
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for Black workers went the other way: jumping to 9.9% from 9.2% before. The current rate is “just shy of the high-water mark in the Great Recession,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN
March 11, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute’s “Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift the pay of 32 million workers” research paper analyzed pay by state, unemployment rate, job type and effect on poverty levels. The foundation of the research was based on the “Raise the Wage Act of 2021,” which had five increases in the minimum wage between now and 2025 when it would reach the $15 threshold.
24/7 Wall St.
March 11, 2021
“I find it hard to understand how the CBO concluded that raising the minimum wage would increase the deficit by $54 billion,” Sanders said. “… several major studies done by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics and the Economic Policy Institute both found that raising the minimum wage would amount to a significant reduction in the deficit.”
The Daily Iowan
March 11, 2021
According to 2017 data from the Economic Policy Institute, white families’ average wealth was seven times higher than that of Black families. Furthermore, even when an internship does come with compensation, race discrepancy is reportedly rampant across intern pay scales; the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that white students are more likely to be paid than unpaid, while Black students are more likely to be unpaid, Latinx candidates are more likely to never have an internship than an unpaid or paid internship, and multi-racial Americans are more likely to be unpaid or never intern at all. With access to internships being inequitable—and compensation being unequal once access is granted—many start out behind in terms of salary level, which is hard to make up for and may be part of what leads to so few BIPOC employees being in leadership roles.
Well and Good
March 11, 2021
It was a freezing afternoon in February 2011 as I marched up State Street to the Wisconsin State Capitol. I was between undergraduate classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when I caught word that a group of graduate-student workers were delivering valentines to Republican Governor Scott Walker and holding a rally at the Capitol urging him not to abolish their collective-bargaining rights. I had some time to kill and was curious about the action, so I marched along with them.
Teen Vogue
March 11, 2021
During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Action is urgently necessary. In 1983, 20 percent of workers in the United States were union members; in 2020, that’s down to about 10.8 percent. Among employees in the private sector, the decline was even more precipitous: from 17 to 7 percent. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and Brookings attribute the drop in union membership, along with globalization and automation, as a significant factor in wage stagnation and inequality, with the largest impact on lower income workers.
The Hill
March 11, 2021
A major concern regarding this income requirement should be that it will have the effect of excluding people of color who are “far more likely to be paid poverty-level wages than white workers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute’s study marking the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Sunny Side Post
March 11, 2021
While offering no source, Jahncke claims that, “for more than a decade, state employee compensation has exceeded compensation in Connecticut’s private sector by about 40 percent, the biggest gap in the nation.” That unattributed claim likely came from a 2015 report by the Yankee Institute asserting Connecticut public sector workers earn 25-46 percent more than comparable private sector workers. First, consider that the Yankee Institute is a right-wing, dark money-fueled, propaganda outlet associated with conservative North Carolina billionaire Thomas Roe’s State Policy Network. Roe’s particular objective, as revealed in Jane Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” was the destruction of public sector unions. In a meticulous analysis for the respected Economic Policy Institute, Monique Morrissey debunked the Yankee Institute report, revealing it was based on a cherry-picked sample of workers, used nonstandard control variables, and inflated the cost of retiree benefits in the public sector, while minimizing their cost in the private sector. Morrissey concluded that Connecticut public sector workers without college degrees are compensated somewhat more than those in the private sector, while those with college and graduate degrees are compensated somewhat less than in the private sector, even when factoring in more generous public sector benefits. In short, Morrissey writes, “taxpayers are getting a bargain!”
CT Post
March 11, 2021
Nonpartisan think tank the Economic Policy Institute cheered the House’s passing of the PRO Act, stating helps “bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century.”
“The Senate should pass the PRO Act Immediately and ensure that all workers have a voice on the job,” Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the EPI and its policy analyst, Margaret Poydock, said in a joint statement.
Breitbart
March 11, 2021