EPI in the news

• Unions brought black Americans into the middle class. They’re now being decimated

   

  Working, unionised black women, according to the Economic Policy Institute, “are paid 94.9% of what their black male counterparts make”, while non-union black women make “just 91% of their counterparts”. Another study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that “unions help raise the wages of women and black and Hispanic workers – whose wages have historically lagged behind those of white men … Black and Hispanic workers get a larger boost from unionization than their white counterparts”.

  The Guardian | August 14, 2018
• The New Gilded Age? It’s Everywhere
  The American Prospect | August 14, 2018
• Missourians see ‘Right-to-Work’ for what it is: an assault on workers
  The Hill | August 14, 2018
• In U.S., wage growth is being wiped out entirely by inflation

  Workers in the top 10th of the U.S. pay scale saw their wages jump 6.7 percent from 2009 to 2017, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Workers in the bottom 10 percent saw a boost of 7.7 percent, largely the result of a slew of minimum-wage increases passed on the city and state level. But for those in the middle, wages have been flat or even slightly down. African American workers, male workers and people who graduated from high school but never completed college have had an especially hard time.

  The Washington Post | August 13, 2018
• The Trouble With Trucking

  Imagine, however, that the government instead decided to use its prodding power to improve the lives and incomes of truck drivers. Officials could, for example, do more to crack down on companies that misclassify employees as contractors to avoid paying for expenses and guaranteeing a minimum wage. The government also ought to require that trucking companies and freight customers compensate drivers for every hour of work, including the hours spent picking up and dropping off loads. What’s more, Congress could pass a law making clear that regardless of how the industry pays drivers — whether on a per-hour or a per-mile basis — drivers are entitled to earn minimum wage and overtime for all of the hours they put in.

  The New York Times | August 13, 2018
• EDITORIAL: Missouri vote is a boost for workers everywhere

   

  Unions call the laws the “right to work for less,” a knock backed up by research. The Economic Policy Institute, for one, says wages drop by 3.1 percent in right-to-work states. Weaker unions also mean weaker protections for all workers, union or not.

  Chicago Sun Times | August 13, 2018
• A year after Charlottesville, money for injured residents is drying up — or never arrived

   

  The Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that studies conditions for low- and middle-class Americans, listed Charlottesville is in the fifteenth most unequal county in the U.S. in a 2018 study.

  Mic | August 13, 2018

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