Social or labor market policies are measured by their reach, their adequacy, and their costs. By these metrics, a minimum wage increase is a slam dunk. A generation of research now demonstrates pretty decisively that markets can accommodate a reasonably higher minimum at no significant threat to job creation—especially when ancillary gains (productivity gains, less turnover, increase in aggregate demand) are taken into account. Raising the minimum wage makes almost no demands on the public purse, and could in fact recoup much of the current public subsidy (through working families’ reliance on means-tested tax credits, cash assistance, health care, and food security programs) of low-wage employment. Even a small increase promises to make a big difference: in 2013, Arin Dube estimated that an increase to $10.10 would raise the incomes of poor families (those at the 10^th percentile) by 12 percent and lift five to seven million out of poverty. An increase to $12 would likely have even larger poverty-fighting effects.

While much of our social and tax policy is either poorly targeted (it reaches the poor unevenly) or aimed in in the wrong direction (it benefits those who don’t need it), a minimum wage increase hits the bull’s-eye. As EPI’s new estimates of the impact of the “Raise the Wage Act” (bringing the minimum to $12.00/hour by 2020) underscore, the benefits of an increase would flow overwhelmingly to those—young workers, single parents, workers of color—who need it the most. The interactive graphic below summarizes this important new work: the first menu sorts workers by race, the second by income, age, family status, labor force participation, and educational attainment.

After more than five years of litigation in numerous jurisdictions by immigrant and worker advocates who challenged the Bush administration’s illegally promulgated regulations for the H-2B temporary foreign worker program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) have jointly promulgated two new rules—the H-2B “Comprehensive Interim Final Rule” and the “Wage Methodology Final Rule”—which establish important but modest protections for low-wage U.S. workers and guestworkers.

The H-2B temporary foreign worker program—which has been only minimally regulated since 2008—has facilitated the exploitation and human trafficking of guestworkers who work for U.S. employers in various industries, including landscaping, hospitality, forestry, seafood, fairs and carnivals, and construction. A judgment of $14 million in damages was recently awarded to five Indian H-2B guestworkers by a federal jury in Louisiana; the case is just one example of the many abuses that have been inflicted upon H-2B workers over the years.

EPI applauds the new worker protections provided by the H-2B Comprehensive Interim Final Rule, which goes into effect immediately but will be finalized after a 60-day comment period. This rule was originally proposed and finalized in 2012, after notice to the public and the collection and analysis of comments, but was postponed by congressional appropriations riders and enjoined by federal courts at the request of employer associations. While the rules impose some new duties on H-2B employers, the burdens are minimal and justified. The rules will result in more U.S. workers being hired for open positions and prevent the exploitation of H-2B workers. We echo the sentiment of 10 senators who asked DHS and DOL to “mirror the 2012 rule as much as possible” when the rule is finalized after 60 days.

The new protections for H-2B guestworkers include: the right to a copy of their work contract in a language they can understand; a guarantee that they will be paid for at least three-quarters of the hours promised in their work contracts; and reimbursement for inbound travel expenses after a worker completes 50 percent of the employment contract, and employer-paid outbound transportation if the worker remains employed until the end of the job order or if the worker is dismissed before the end of the job order.

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In 1993, it seemed obvious to me that NAFTA was about one main thing: providing a huge new (and much cheaper) labor force to U.S. manufacturers by making it safe for them to build factories in Mexico without fear of expropriation or profit-limiting regulation. But the Clinton administration claimed it would open a new market to U.S. business, and U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, President Clinton, and even Labor Secretary Bob Reich argued that it would create jobs for American workers and even increase job creation in the U.S. auto and steel industries. They said NAFTA would benefit Mexican workers and help create a bigger Mexican middle class, while deterring migrant workers from crossing the border to seek jobs in the United States with better wages. They also argued an alternative theory: that NAFTA would help keep U.S. manufacturers from moving to Southeast Asia, and that it was better to keep that off-shored work in our hemisphere and along our border.

What actually happened?

1. The trade balance with Mexico went from positive to very negative, resulting in the loss of more than 600,000 jobs in the United States.
2. Mexico’s corn farmers were overwhelmed by a flood of cheaper U.S. corn and almost 2 million agricultural workers were displaced. Most of them migrated illegally to the United States and remain here as exploited, undocumented workers.
3. Wages fell for Mexican industrial workers, to the point that autoworkers in Mexico now make less than Chinese autoworkers. Some Japanese carmakers start paying Mexican workers at 90 to 150 pesos per day, or $6 to $10.
4. U.S. auto companies shifted investment to Mexico to exploit its much cheaper labor. AP reports that “Mexican auto production more than doubled in the past 10 years. The consulting firm IHS Automotive expects it to rise another 50 percent to just under 5 million by 2022. U.S. production is expected to increase only 3 percent, to 12.2 million vehicles, in the next 7 years.” Since NAFTA’s enactment, employment in the U.S. motor vehicle and parts industry has declined by more than 200,000 jobs.

More recent claims about the expected benefits of free trade agreement with Korea have proven hollow, too. Instead of creating 70,000 jobs, the net effect has been a higher trade deficit and the loss of 60,000 jobs. Worse, the harshest impact of that deal won’t be felt for several more years, when protective tariffs on pickup trucks are eliminated, making Korean imports 25 percent cheaper than they are today. U.S. auto workers will be hard hit.

And then there’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and China’s admission to the WTO, which led to an explosion of imports and the loss of more than 3 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing and mostly in occupations that paid more than the jobs created in exports industries.

One bad experience after another: that’s why so many are so opposed to fast track and more NAFTA-style free trade deals.

In Baltimore in 1910, a black Yale law school graduate purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood. The Baltimore city government reacted by adopting a residential segregation ordinance, restricting African Americans to designated blocks. Explaining the policy, Baltimore’s mayor proclaimed, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.”

Thus began a century of federal, state, and local policies to quarantine Baltimore’s black population in isolated slums—policies that continue to the present day, as federal housing subsidy policies still disproportionately direct low-income black families to segregated neighborhoods and away from middle class suburbs.

Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or murder, as they have done in Baltimore this week, we’re tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police quality—training officers not to use excessive force, implementing community policing, encouraging police to be more sensitive, prohibiting racial profiling, and so on. These are all good, necessary, and important things to do. But such proposals ignore the obvious reality that the protests are not really (or primarily) about policing.

In 1968, following hundreds of similar riots nationwide, a commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson concluded that “[o]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal” and that “[s]egregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.” The Kerner Commission (headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner) added that “[w]hat white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

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Here are a few recent reports about the grim toll of industrial fatalities and the hazards workers are exposed to every day, from the Cal-OSHA Reporter and other sources. Hopefully, they will remind you why we need a strong federal enforcement effort and much better programs of workers compensation for occupational injuries and illnesses. A recent NPR/ProPublica report was a wake-up call about how state legislatures are gutting the programs that compensate employees for lost limbs, lost eyes and damaged hearing, compensate them for lost wages, and pay for the medical care of injured workers.

Bumble Bee Foods facing criminal charges over worker death: “Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey on April 27 announced that Bumble Bee Foods LLC and two others are facing criminal charges related to willfully violating worker safety rules and causing the 2012 death of an employee who became trapped inside an industrial oven at the company’s Santa Fe Springs plant.”

OSHA: York workers exposed to asbestos: “A York County company is facing a nearly half-million-dollar fine for allegedly failing to protect employees from asbestos. The York City-based First Capital Insulation Inc. allowed workers to remove asbestos improperly, failed to make sure employees’ respirators fit correctly and did not decontaminate employees and their clothing before they left a work site, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration stated in a news release this week.”

Police: Man dies in Oklahoma City industrial accident: “Oklahoma City police say a worker has died at an area commercial printing business after being trapped under a piece of machinery.”

Worker killed in cinder block wall collapse, Ramsey police say: “A 56-year-old construction worker was killed in a wall collapse at a Ramsey, New Jersey building on Wednesday, officials said.”

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Last week, the president claimed that critics who say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is bad for working families… don’t know what they are talking about.”

But the truth is, there is an emerging consensus that globalization has put downward pressure on the wages of most working Americans, and has redistributed income from the bottom to the top. My colleague Josh Bivens has shown that expanded trade with low-wage countries has reduced the annual wages of a typical worker by $1,800 per year. Given that there are roughly 100 million non-college-educated workers in the U.S. economy, the scale of wage losses suffered by this group likely translates to roughly $180 billion. Trade and investment deals such as the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (completed by President Obama), and the agreement to bring China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 (negotiated by President Clinton), have contributed these lost wages. It’s not surprising that one commentator concluded that “the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is an abomination,” precisely because of its impacts on “low-skilled manufacturing workers and income inequality.”

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Over the last year, and, in fact, over the last five years, nominal wage growth has been slow—slow by historic standards and slow relative to wage growth that would be consistent with the Fed’s 2 percent overall price inflation target. Hourly wage growth has run at about 2 percent a year and, as we’ve discussed in great length, 2 percent hourly wage growth is far below the 3.5-4 percent target growth that is consistent with the Fed’s target of 2 percent price inflation and a 1.5 to 2.0 percent trend in productivity growth.

Wage growth that exceeds this 3.5 to 4 percent target for a period of time is not an economic problem to be solved. Rather, it is a normal pattern of the labor share of corporate sector income finally recovering its pre Great Recession levels. If last month’s weak job growth is just a blip and healthy job growth continues in the next year, this should eventually lead to a labor market tight enough to finally provide workers with the bargaining power necessary to bid up their wages.

There has been some discussion that the sluggish wage growth we’ve seen since the recovery began in 2009 is driven in large part by the mix of jobs being created, as if we have lower wages simply because the economy is adding more low-wage jobs. Earlier in the recovery there was likely some truth to this, as lower-wage sectors saw the first pickup in job growth. However, over the last year jobs have been created throughout the economy in high-, low-, and middle- wage sectors. The evidence suggests that the economy has been adding jobs in proportion to the rate that those jobs already exist in the economy.

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It’s a scary thing when powerful government officials misuse their power, and especially when they misuse it to afflict the needy and comfort the comfortable. This appears to be what’s happening now as the chairmen of the two congressional tax-writing committees seek to change the tax status of various worker centers that have annoyed politically active corporations like Walmart, Darden Restaurants, and McDonalds.

I am not a tax lawyer and can’t say with any certainty whether a worker center formed to provide services such as job training, education, and legal assistance to low wage workers should suddenly be transformed from a 501(c)(3) charity into a labor organization if it challenges wage theft or other labor problems caused by a store or corporation. I don’t think the law should operate that way, but the law has a lot of problems.

What I can say is that it’s a shame that Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Paul Ryan are spending their time on a matter of importance only to huge corporations that need no help from Congress in crushing worker organizations, fighting wage increases, and profiting immensely from weak labor standards and high unemployment. As their letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen shows, Ryan and Hatch don’t like the fact that worker centers have exercised their constitutionally protected right to “protest and picket against targeted businesses.”

One of the protests the congressmen cited was a Restaurant Opportunity Center protest over the takeover of Olive Garden restaurants by a hedge fund, Starboard, that wanted to cut labor costs by $48 million and transfer the savings to the pockets of investors. The workers and the worker center weren’t asking for the right to be the exclusive bargaining representative: they just didn’t want their wages cut and didn’t want to be changed from waged employees to tipped employees. But Ryan and Hatch want the IRS to investigate the workers.

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Right to Work (RTW) laws weaken unions by depriving them of the funding they need to be effective, and workers, both union and non-union alike, in RTW states have lower wages. No one really disputes the first fact—workers in non-RTW states are more than twice as likely (2.4 times) to be in a union or protected by a union contract. And wages in RTW states are far lower—almost 16 percent on average. This isn’t surprising, since RTW’s proponents are anti-union hate groups and business organizations that oppose every effort to help workers organize or raise wages. In fact, their key pitch to legislators (outside of campaign contributions) is that RTW will lower labor costs, improve the “business climate,” and encourage out-of-state businesses to relocate.

So it was surprising to see the Heritage Foundation challenge the notion that RTW has no effect on a state’s wage levels. Yes, they say, wages are lower in RTW states, but it isn’t because of RTW. If true, it would leave proponents with no argument for RTW except its core purpose—weakening unions.

But in fact, it’s not true. EPI senior economist Elise Gould and co-author Will Kimball examined the Heritage report and found it to be deeply flawed. Heritage’s finding depends on statistical tricks—the removal of relevant and standard labor market controls such as the worker’s industry, and the inclusion of nonstandard and irrelevant worker characteristics and state-level amenities. Using only standard and relevant factors in the regression analysis yields a consistent finding: wages in RTW states are 3.1 percent lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as state macroeconomic indicators. This translates into RTW being associated with $1,558 lower annual wages for a typical full-time, full-year worker.

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