EPI in the news

• Pandemic provokes city vs. state conflicts

  A September 2020 study by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that Southern states are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption to stop local governments from implementing worker protections such as raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing paid sick leave.

  That stance, the institute wrote, is rooted “in a long history of events and actions that have sought to promote the interests of historically privileged property owners and perpetuate the South’s racist past.”

  Julia Wolfe, one of the study’s authors and a state economic analyst at the institute, said these preemption laws seem to be “targeted at preventing action in more progressive cities.”

  Stateline | April 14, 2021
• Big tech’s labor struggles has roots in Pittsburgh

  Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.

  “That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”

  But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.

  The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.

  Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.

  McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.

  “If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.

  90.5 WESA | April 14, 2021
• Record unemployment, massive bailouts, new businesses: Colorado’s pandemic economy is a shifting landscape

  Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.

  “Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”

  The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.

  Denver Post | April 14, 2021
• Other Voices: American steel is key to Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ agenda

  A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.

  Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.

  Pittsburgh Post Gazette | April 14, 2021
• Why Millions of Unemployed Workers Never Claim the Benefits They’re Owed

  It’s an issue that’s been ongoing since the start of the pandemic. Last April, the Economic Policy Institute reported that for every 10 people who successfully filed a claim, an additional two people didn’t try because it was too difficult. In all, the report suggested, millions more people would have filed for benefits if the process were easier.

  …

  Other potential claimants may be misclassified. There are many people who are classified as employed, but absent from work due to pandemic-related business closures, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Some workers who should be classified as ‘unemployed’ are mistakenly classified as ‘employed, but not at work’.

  Worker misclassification contributed to approximately 636,000 missing workers who could have filed for unemployment benefits in March 2021, according to the EPI. “People were thinking they would get called back to work, but they’re actually unemployed,” says Gould.

  TIME/Next Advisor | April 14, 2021
• Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

  “The way a recession can really hurt people just starting out can have lasting effects,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider. “There’s a lot of evidence that the first postgrad job you get sets the stage in some important way for later.”

  Business Insider | April 14, 2021
• Biden’s foreign policy starts at home

  If you wanted to find an original text for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, it would be an 83-page report by a Washington think tank released in the thick of the 2020 presidential race. In 2018, midway through Trump’s term, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set out to reimagine U.S. foreign policy. The institution assembled about a dozen specialists in economics and international affairs who’d worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. Among them was Sullivan, a senior fellow. He made a point to talk with labor leaders. “The fact that he was reaching out to me when I was at AFL-CIO was a sign that he was trying to expand his horizons,” Thea Lee, who was then deputy chief of staff at the labor federation and is now president of the Economic Policy Institute, told me.

  The Atlantic | April 14, 2021

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