This session is meant as an introduction or refresher for some of the most popular data tools available to members through EARN. The session will open with a discussion of State Jobs Day tools and best practices. Thereafter, we will move through the suite of State of Working XX materials available to EARN members, highlighting the breadth of the resources available, where to find them, and how they can be used. The session will be interactive, and attendees are encouraged to bring laptops to participate in application exercises. The session will also touch briefly on state productivity data, trends in income inequality, and immigration data. A generous amount of time will be set aside for questions.

Millions of working people—especially those in retail, restaurant, and other low-wage, service-sector jobs—are subject to “just-in-time” scheduling practices that result in unpredictable and unstable work schedules, with little advance notice and shifts that vary wildly from week to week. These schedules are particularly problematic for parents: without sufficient notice or control over work hours, it can be impossible for a parent to take a sick child to the doctor, attend parent-teacher conferences, budget for expenses, or otherwise plan a life for herself and her family. This volatility can also have a negative impact on children’s well-being and makes it especially hard for parents to afford and access the high-quality child care that would provide needed stability for their children and help prepare them for school.

Addressing unfair work schedules is a relatively new frontier—but researchers and advocates are meeting the challenge with new tools, and new policies are advancing across the country: since 2014, cities including San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City have passed laws that provide scheduling protections for retail and/or food service workers, and Oregon Governor Kate Brown recently signed the first statewide fair scheduling protections into law.

This panel brings together researchers and advocates to share key findings and strategies that can advance fair scheduling policies—and, in turn, make a meaningful difference for working families. Together, panelists will review what both qualitative and quantitative research shows about the impact of unfair scheduling practices on family/child well-being and child care; share innovative approaches to filling the gaps in this emerging field of research; and discuss how the research and messaging strategies recently deployed in Oregon propelled a successful advocacy campaign to produce policy change that will benefit working parents and their children.

The 2016 presidential election. The opioid crisis. The Case-Deaton research on mortality rates. J.D. Vance. The maker movement. Over the past year, we have heard a lot about rural America and rightly so. Yet too often discussions of the country’s nonurban areas are ill-informed at best, and patronizing or exploitative at worse. Fortunately, EARN groups are already providing a more thoughtful voice on these issues and we want to strengthen and amplify that voice. In order to build state economies that truly work for everyone, we need to be well equipped to understand the conditions, challenges, needs, and desires of rural communities—as well as the policy options available for us to support them. In this workshop, we will present new EARN resources for analyzing nonmetro and rural portions of each state, as well as policy options that states, localities, and researchers have put forth to strengthen rural economies. We will also facilitate a clear-eyed discussion of the challenges and opportunities for progress.

The entire notion of regulation is under attack in Washington. Rather than seeing rules as a way to assure that working people get a fair return on their work, business interests have convinced the public that regulations stifle business and restrict freedom. This environment is fertile ground for the Trump administration to begin the systematic dismantling of core protections across the federal government. As this occurs, state policymakers and advocates are seeking to restore rights and protections imperiled at the national level. This session will explore how to push back against the broad assault on federal regulations. It will also offer poll-tested suggestions on how to make the case for regulatory action. The session will focus in on the Obama administration overtime rule as a case study on federal regulatory backtracking, and will discuss how states can act to restore lost overtime protections.

This conversation-style panel discussion will look at anti-immigration legislation enacted in Arizona (SB1070 in 2010) and Texas (SB4 in 2017). The panelists from Arizona will share how SB1070: (1) negatively impacted economic growth and tourism in Arizona; (2) led to the creation and growth of several new Latino advocacy organizations whose growing power were instrumental in the recall of State Senator Russell Pearce (the sponsor of SB1070); the defeat and criminal indictment of Sheriff Joe Arpaio; and the registration of 150,000 new Latino voters; and (3) has laid the foundation for proactive advocacy campaigns for policies that will create better economic opportunities for all Arizonans. The panelist from Texas will discuss what role, if any, the Arizona experiences from SB1070 played in Texas’ policymaking, and will discuss ways in which the political and community dynamics in Texas around SB4 compare and contrast with Arizona’s SB1070 experience. Finally, all of the panelists will share lessons learned from their experiences building the coalitions that were created in response to the anti-immigrant legislation and how those lessons are transferable to other types of proactive advocacy campaigns in other states.

The session will discuss case studies of state-level research aimed at slowing the unregulated growth of the charter industry, imposing accountability on charter operators, and protecting the fiscal health of traditional public schools.

This training session will provide three lessons in data-oriented policy analysis. We will first cover the whys and hows of indexing, such as inflation indexing. We will also explain how to adjust employment rates to account for the aging of the workforce. Finally, we will discuss how to discern the main strengths and weaknesses of existing policy analysis research, using minimum wage studies as an example.

Panelists will discuss lessons learned from the recent victories in Washington state and elsewhere, what research tells us about policy design options, and how EARN groups can support campaigns in their states.

Now that conservative forces control the majority of both chambers of state legislatures and 33 governorships, conservative state legislators have increasingly used preemption laws to strike down local government efforts to improve the quality of life for working people in their municipalities. In fact, many states are stripping away an entire package of basic labor and employment rights from workers in many cities, including the ability for workers to earn paid sick days, work under fair shift scheduling practices, and earn prevailing wages in safe, stable conditions on local government-funded construction projects. This panel will discuss what can be done to protect local labor and employment standards in the face of state resistance.

This training session will introduce how to use STATA for basic data analysis. We will cover how to import data, calculate basic summary statistics, create graphics, export an analysis, and follow best practices for data management and programming. We will illustrate these concepts using several datasets, including CPS microdata from EPI’s State of Working America Data Library.

In 2007, the United States entered its worst recession in decades, with long-term unemployment in many states at record highs. Unemployment Insurance was and is a lifeline for many workers and their families, but it is inaccessible or inadequate for far too many others due to restrictive eligibility rules, outdated benefit levels, insufficient duration, or onerous application requirements. In some states, this was because of a failure to modernize their UI systems, while others have implemented policies that directly suppress the receipt of benefits. This workshop will explore what states can do to improve their UI systems and other safety net systems—particularly food assistance—in preparation for the next economic downturn. It will also discuss the key role UI plays in supporting workers following humanitarian disasters, such as the three hurricanes that ravaged parts of the U.S. in September 2017.

In the wake of decades of declining job standards, a growing number of cities are pursuing a range of innovative strategies to raise standards and enhance protections for workers, most notably by passing new laws that establish markedly higher minimum wages and other new minimum labor rights. A number of these cities also have established or are working to establish their own local labor standards offices to ensure that new rights can be successfully claimed in practice. This panel will provide insight into what is involved in creating these new offices, the kinds of policies they are enforcing, and the role that research and policy development have to play in supporting their efforts to strengthen labor standards at the local level.

Increasingly, newly hired employees—from fast-food workers to high-tech managers—sign away a wide range of rights and liberties through the contracts they are required to endorse in order to finalize their employment. These contracts often contain clauses that prevent them from working in the future for a business considered to be a competitor, preclude them from suing their employer in the public court system, deny them the right to join a class-action suit with other workers against their employer, shorten the statute of limitations the law allows for them to bring a suit against their employer, and forbid the disclosure of compensation to other employees. Taken together, these provisions of employment contracts can severely restrict workers’ rights to change jobs, get redress when an employer has violated their rights, and come together with coworkers to seek better pay and working conditions.  Yet, frequently, workers are unaware that their employment contracts contain such provisions.

Since President Trump’s election and inauguration, adverse policies that target immigrants and workers have been moving forward at a heightened pace. It can be challenging to document the impact of these policies in a fast and timely manner. Gathering experiences through standard applied research methods can take years to develop and implement. This panel will explore rapid response tools and strategies for when workers are under threat, bad policy is moving quickly, or political events demand a response. Can technology provide new avenues for data collection? How do we ensure data security? What are ways we can leverage existing data quickly to impact policy? In what ways can rapid response techniques be employed offensively in policy campaigns?

Our state and local tax codes are indirectly contributing to growing income inequality by taxing low- and middle-income households at significantly higher rates than wealthy taxpayers. To be sure, upside-down state tax systems didn’t cause the growing income disparity, but they certainly exacerbate the problem. Creating more fair state tax systems should be an economic imperative. Addressing income inequality through state and local tax codes requires asking more from those at the top, and reducing reliance on low- and moderate-income taxpayers.

In this workshop we will explore:
– The latest income inequality data for the states
– ITEP’s Tax Inequality Index, which measures the effects of each state’s tax system on income inequality
– State and local tax policy tools to address income inequality, including options for raising taxes on top-income earners (millionaire taxes, surcharges, etc.) and options for reducing reliance on low- and moderate-income households (EITCs and other low-income credits, etc.)
– Recent successes in improving the progressivity of state and local taxes and preventing top-heavy tax cuts from being enacted, with a discussion of best practices for advocates
– Messaging tips for talking about taxes and income inequality

Often under-resourced and tasked with explaining complicated subjects in a crowded media landscape, nonprofit policy communicators face unique challenges. Hear from national and state communicators about what works and what doesn’t, and how they break through the noise to translate research into communications products and efforts that get noticed, get quoted, and move the ball forward.

Historically, EARN has supported work in states on a range of efforts to improve conditions for working families. Yet the specific initiatives have often seemed beyond the reach of groups operating in conservative areas, leaving them feeling that they cannot be full participants in an agenda for working families. At the 2016 EARN conference, a workshop titled “EARN in the Red” invited attendees to discuss how EARN can better support work in conservative areas. Subsequent discussions led to a September 2017 meeting in Atlanta, where representatives from 12 Southern EARN groups and advocacy/organizing collaborators from each state discussed the challenges of work in the South and began developing a shared framework for advancing worker-centric economic policy in the region. In this discussion session, participants from the Atlanta meeting will refine and expand on ideas for cross-state work and consider strategies for funding, engagement, and other resources. Other interested EARN groups are welcome to participate.

Many jobs in the hospitality industry—front desk, cook (chef de partie/line cook), bartender, server, room attendant/housekeeper, etc.—can elevate workers to the middle class. Working at union hotels or properties, many workers in these jobs are paid $20/hour or more and receive a pension and health and welfare benefits, which combine to lift them into the middle class. Through labor-management partnerships, low-income workers facing barriers to employment can obtain the training—both skills-based and soft-skill training—that allows them to improve their economic prospects and change their lives.