AAPI Equal Pay Day: Essential AAPI women workers continue to be underpaid during the COVID-19 pandemic
Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) Equal Pay Day is March 9, marking the number of days into 2021 that AAPI women must work to make the same amount as their white male counterparts were paid in 2020. AAPI women are paid 94 cents on the dollar on an average hourly basis, relative to non-Hispanic white men with the same level of education, age, and geographic location. Further disaggregating this data reveals that Pacific Islander women earn 61 cents on the dollar relative to their non-Hispanic white male peers.
During this pandemic, members of the AAPI community have been victims of a horrific rise in discrimination, violence, and hate crimes—which we must call attention to and urgently address. In addition, AAPI women who are essential workers have continued to face an alarming and unacceptable pay gap. The infographics below take a closer look at average hourly wages of AAPI women and non-Hispanic white men employed as elementary and middle school teachers, registered nurses, cashiers, and wait staff. We find that AAPI women make between 11% and 21% less than non-Hispanic white men in these occupations.
The pay disparities are largest among elementary and middle school teachers, with AAPI women being paid just 79% of what non-Hispanic white men are paid. AAPI women registered nurses are paid 82% of what non-Hispanic white men are paid. Lastly, AAPI women cashiers and wait staff make 84% and 89%, respectively, as much as non-Hispanic white men in those occupations. It is long past time to ensure equal pay for AAPI women.
The Senate must pass the $1.9 trillion relief and recovery plan with the UI provisions extended to October 3
Another 1.2 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, the last week of February. This included 745,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 437,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.
The 1.2 million who applied for UI last week was roughly the same as the prior week (an increase of 18,000). The four-week moving average of total initial claims was unchanged.
Last week was the 50th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week would have been higher than the sixth-worst week of the Great Recession.)
What to watch on jobs day: Who has been hurt by the pandemic recession—and why we should ignore wage growth for now
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its latest jobs report on the state of the labor market for February 2021, exactly one year since the labor market peak before the pandemic recession hit. Overall, the labor market is down 9.9 million jobs since February 2020. And if we count how many jobs might have been created if the recession had not hit—a more appropriate counterfactual for the current hole we are in might be average job growth over the 12 months before the recession (202,000)—we are now short 12.1 million jobs since February 2020.
In this jobs day preview post, I remind readers which sectors are still experiencing the greatest shortfalls in jobs, which demographic groups have been hardest hit, and which metrics we should continue to ignore in this unusual recession.
Leisure and hospitality workers remain the hardest hit in the pandemic recession, with a 3.9 million job shortfall since February 2020 (as shown in Figure A). These losses are particularly devastating for leisure and hospitality workers and their families because they are among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. economy.
What we learned from the UK case rendering Uber drivers employees
The recent United Kingdom Supreme Court ruling that Uber drivers are employees, and not entrepreneurs or independent contractors, is noteworthy for many reasons. One is that the underlying Employment Tribunal judgment that it affirmed provides a deep dive into the realities of Uber driving that obliterates the many myths Uber tells about its employment arrangements—and does so in a joyful, humorous way. It is a must read.
A second reason is that the ruling points to the need for two critical items that Tanya Goldman and David Weil proposed to combat misclassification of workers as independent contractors. First, judging whether a worker is an employee or not should not be limited to the issue of who “controls” the work, an analysis that is too easily manipulated in order to get a wrong result. Rather, one should include an analysis of whether the worker has a true opportunity to be an entrepreneur—actually build a business and not just the limited freedom of choosing their hours and work location.
In addition, Uber’s response to the ruling was—predictably—that it has already changed its terms, so the ruling no longer applies. But with these changes, drivers are still denied employment status. As long as the employer-determined status quo remains—and until endless court cases and appeals are exhausted—then the workers will never really be able to secure their rights through court challenges. To change this, Goldman and Weil propose “there should be a presumption of an employment relationship the putative employer must rebut.” Let the employer prove someone is a contractor, and until the employer has done so the worker has full employment rights (right to a union, to be paid minimum wage, etc.) and access to social insurance (unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, paid sick days, etc.).
Six ways the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act restores workers’ bargaining power
When it was passed in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act declared that its purpose was to promote the practice of collective bargaining, where workers and their union sit down with their employer to negotiate over wages, safety, fairness, and other important issues. But over time, this promise has become hollow because weaknesses in the law have been exploited by employers and the courts to undermine workers’ bargaining power. Here are six ways the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act helps to level the playing field and restore workers’ bargaining power:
- The PRO Act has a process for reaching a first collective bargaining agreement. When workers first form a union, too often employers drag out the bargaining process and avoid reaching an initial agreement, because there are no monetary penalties in the law for bad faith bargaining. A year after forming their union, more than half of all workers do not yet have an initial bargaining agreement with their employer. This leads to worker frustration, which employers exploit to undermine the new union. The PRO Act addresses this problem by establishing a mediation and arbitration process for reaching an initial agreement.
- The PRO Act requires employers to continue bargaining instead of taking unilateral action. Current law gives employers too much power to force its position on workers by unilaterally declaring that the parties have reached an impasse in bargaining and then either locking out workers—preventing them from working and getting paid—or implementing the employer’s proposals. This power, either alone or combined with the restrictions on workers’ ability to strike or put other economic pressure on the employer, puts employers in the driver’s seat in bargaining and greatly undermines workers’ bargaining power. To address this problem, the PRO Act prohibits employers from declaring impasse and locking out workers—a so-called “offensive lockout.” And the PRO Act requires employers to maintain the status quo on wages and benefits during bargaining—no more unilateral changes to put pressure on workers to cave in to the employer’s demands.
- The PRO Act gets the economic players to the bargaining table. Under current law, staffing firms, contractors, temporary agencies, and other employers try to evade their responsibility to bargain with workers and their union even when they have power over workers’ health and safety, schedules, wages, and other key issues. This leaves workers without the real economic players at the bargaining table. The PRO Act fixes this problem by adopting a strong joint-employer standard that will bring employers with power over wages or working conditions to the bargaining table.
- The PRO Act eliminates the ban on so-called “secondary” activity. In order to win a wage increase, a voice on new technology, safety improvements, or other bargaining priorities, workers need leverage to put economic pressure on their employer to accept their demands. But current law robs workers of their leverage in many ways, including a prohibition on so-called “secondary” activity that was enacted by Congress in 1947. In fact, current law instructs the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to give top priority to shutting down so-called “secondary” activity. These cases are given even higher priority than cases alleging that employers have illegally fired union activists, and statistics show this has in fact been the case. For example, in the first 12 years after the restriction on secondary activity was first implemented, the number of injunction proceedings against unions for engaging in illegal secondary activity skyrocketed by 1,188%, while virtually no injunction proceedings were brought against employers for violating workers’ rights. This restriction on secondary activity forbids workers from picketing or otherwise putting pressure on so-called “neutral” companies other than their employer, even if those companies could influence their employer’s practices by, for example, withholding purchases until workers and their employer reach a collective bargaining agreement. The restriction has been interpreted so broadly as to prohibit janitors from picketing a building management company over sexual harassment by its janitorial subcontractor. The Trump NLRB General Counsel unsuccessfully tried to argue that floating an inflatable Scabby the Rat balloon at a labor protest was illegal secondary activity, even though courts have consistently said such protests are protected by the First Amendment. Given the prevalence of subcontracting and the interrelated nature of business relationships, the ban on secondary activity does not reflect the realities of today’s business structures. It deprives workers of an important tool in the bargaining process and unfairly tips the power balance to employers. To correct this imbalance, the PRO Act repeals the ban on secondary activity.
- The PRO Act prohibits employers from permanently replacing strikers. Workers’ ultimate leverage in bargaining is to withhold their labor—in other words, to strike. The law technically protects workers from being fired when they go on a lawful strike, but this right has been gutted by a 1938 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that stated that employers can permanently replace, i.e., terminate, workers who are on strike over economic issues. Despite a slight increase in strike activity last year, the number of strikes continues to be at a historic low in part because of this weakness in the law. The PRO Act restores the right to strike by prohibiting employers from permanently replacing economic strikers.
- The PRO Act overrides state “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions. So-called right-to-work laws have nothing to do with getting or keeping a job—they are about weakening workers’ collective voice on the job. Under the law, unions are required to represent all workers protected by the collective bargaining agreement, but so-called right-to-work laws prohibit unions and employers from voluntarily agreeing that all workers covered and protected by the agreement should share in the costs of union representation through union dues or fees. This creates a “free rider” problem, where workers get the benefits of unionization but do not contribute toward the costs, creating a financial drain on unions. The PRO Act overrides state right-to-work laws and allows unions and employers to negotiate fair share agreements whereby all workers covered by the collective bargaining agreement share in the cost of representation.
Read EPI’S fact sheet on why workers need the PRO Act.
Nearly a year into the pandemic and unemployment claims remain 17 million above their pre-pandemic levels: Congress must pass $1.9 trillion relief bill
Another 1.2 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 730,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 451,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.
The 1.2 million who applied for UI last week was a decrease of 172,000 from the prior week, reversing last week’s increase of 164,000. The four-week moving average of total initial claims was roughly unchanged (a slight decline of 8,500).
Last week was the 49th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week were roughly the same as the ninth-worst week of the Great Recession.)
Projected state and local revenue shortfalls are shrinking, but the value of substantial federal aid to state and local governments is not
Recently, a number of analysts have noted that the revenue shortfall for state and local governments stemming from the COVID-19 economic shock looks to have been smaller than what was forecast in the middle of last year. However, these smaller revenue shortfalls should not deter federal policymakers from including substantial aid to state and local governments in the forthcoming relief and recovery package, for a number of reasons:
- The revenue shortfall is smaller than forecast in the middle of 2020 because the economic fallout of the COVID-19 shock has fallen so heavily on low-wage workers. While this has blunted the revenue loss because low-wage workers pay fewer taxes, it has increased fiscal demands on spending by an abnormally large amount.
- The fiscal demands on the spending side of state and local budgets should not be defined simply by what these governments provided in public investments and safety net spending in the pre-COVID status quo. The need to “build back better” is real and should influence future plans for state and local spending.
- Building back better will require more public investments—particularly in education and safety net programs. Crucially, large educational investments are needed just to keep educational quality constant. These investments have lagged in recent decades.
- Currently, the federal aid to state and local government in the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) provides two utterly crucial functions: It is the major provision that offers potential financing for public investments, and it smooths out the disbursements of aid, allowing the aid to be distributed more gradually and hence buoy growth for a longer stretch of time over the coming years. Just stripping this aid out (or significantly reducing it) would hence be extremely harmful to the overall effectiveness of the ARP.
Chump change: The Romney–Cotton minimum wage proposal leaves 27 million workers without a pay increase
Those who had high hopes for a serious minimum wage proposal from the Republican Party will be disappointed: The recent proposal released by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would not even increase the minimum wage to 1960s levels, after adjusting for inflation. It is a meager increase that fails to address the problem of low pay in the U.S. economy.
The Romney–Cotton proposal would slowly raise the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 per hour to $10 per hour in 2025. In contrast, the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025.
- The Romney–Cotton proposal would leave 27.3 million workers without a pay increase, compared to the Raise the Wage Act.
- Only 4.9 million workers, or 3.2% of the workforce, would receive a pay increase in 2025 under the Romney–Cotton plan, for a total of $3.3 billion dollars in wage increases.
- In contrast, under the Raise the Wage Act, pay would rise for 32.2 million workers, or 21.2% of the workforce, with $108.4 billion in total wage increases.
- 11.2 million fewer Black and Hispanic workers would receive a raise under the Romney–Cotton plan, compared with the Raise the Wage Act.
- 16 million fewer women would see wage increases. Less than one in 20 women (4.1%) would have higher pay under the Romney–Cotton proposal, whereas the Raise the Wage Act would raise earnings for one in every four women (25.8%).
- The average affected worker who works year-round would see their annual pay rise by $700 under the Romney–Cotton plan; under the Raise the Wage Act, the average annual pay increase would be nearly five times that amount ($3,400).
Romney–Cotton’s $10 target by 2025 is the equivalent of $9.19 per hour in today’s dollars, about 13% less than what the minimum wage was at its high-water mark in 1968.
Congress should think big about the Postal Service’s future: Policymakers should focus on rebuilding the Postal Service after the Trump years
This morning, the House Oversight Committee will hold its first hearing on the U.S. Postal Service since Democrats gained control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. Committee members will have the opportunity to question Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who in his short tenure has severely damaged the Postal Service’s reputation for timely service.
(Related: REPORT The War Against the Postal Service: Postal services should be expanded for the public good, not diminished by special interests.)
DeJoy, a former logistics executive who last year tussled with a federal judge about mail delays, may need to be reminded that he serves the public. USPS board vacancies give President Biden the opportunity to install a Democratic majority on the board this year and potentially oust DeJoy—though this would take some wrangling. The prospect of a newly configured board may make DeJoy more cooperative than he was in the lead-up to the election, when former President Trump planted fears, which mail slowdowns under DeJoy seemed to confirm, that voting by mail was iffy.
In the end, concerns that ballots wouldn’t be delivered in time didn’t materialize. But millions unnecessarily put their health at risk to vote in person during a deadly pandemic. And Trump’s attacks on mail voting emboldened Republicans in their efforts to limit absentee voting to red state seniors and other groups who tend to vote Republican.
Learning during the pandemic: Lessons from the research on education in emergencies for COVID-19 and afterwards
In our recent report, COVID-19 and student performance, equity, and U.S. education policy, we covered the “education in emergencies” research, a body of work that is particularly relevant now to understand the COVID-19 pandemic’s consequences and guide our preparations for its aftermath. This research examines the provision of education in emergency and post-emergency situations caused by pandemics, other natural disasters, and conflicts and wars, often in some of the most troubled countries in the world. Approximately 50 million children are out of school in conflict-affected countries around the world—four times as many as in the 1980s—and we can expect that number to rise due to increased natural disasters and the growing impacts of climate change.
This fascinating research had, until now, gone largely unnoticed to us due to the perceived lack of relevance for guiding domestic education policy in the United States and many of our peer nations. (For those interested, see a recent summary of the research here.) But as we learned when we wrote our report, this research offers four lessons that can help frame the current crisis and plan for the rebuilding of our education system post-pandemic.
First, the research on education in emergencies is extremely clear on the negative consequences of these emergencies on children’s development and learning, not to mention the trauma and stress that some experience in the most serious events. Emergencies, especially the catastrophic ones that this work specializes in, lead to undeniably negative impacts on both educational processes and outcomes. Moreover, the most disadvantaged population subgroups often experience the worst—and longest lasting—consequences.