Shierholz said the wage growth we’re seeing in this industry is likely temporary, but there are ways to give workers more permanent “economic leverage.” Two ways, she said, are to pass a $15 minimum wage and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or the PRO Act.
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A Democratic-controlled board could reverse that and speed up the union election process, said Celine McNicholas with the Economic Policy Institute.
“Standard timelines, preventing unnecessary litigation from occurring before an election actually is held … those would make real differences,” McNicholas said.
Marketplace July 16, 2021 -
Yahoo Money explains:
Noncompete agreements prevent workers from going to a competitor or starting a competing business within a certain period after leaving their previous job. Between 36 million and 60 million private-sector workers were subject to noncompete agreements in 2019, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute.
“The only economic leverage that non-unionized workers have is the implicit threat that they could quit and go somewhere else,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told Yahoo Money. “Noncompete agreements reduce wages. Your employer doesn’t have to pay you bigger wages if they know that you don’t have outside options.”
Limiting noncompete agreements or making them unenforceable — as Biden’s order sets out to do — may not be enough, according to Shierholz. Banning them instead would give workers more leverage, she said.
Poynter July 16, 2021 -
Presidential leadership sets the tone for how – or if – the nation confronts the contradiction between American ideals of freedom, justice, and democracy and the reality that race is a predictor of social and economic status far too often. In that respect, the significance of the Biden administration’s stated commitment to advancing racial equity as one of the first official actions in office should not be understated. Through Executive Order 13985, the administration has sought to promote fairness and impartial treatment, specifically with respect to access to federal programs and participation in federal contracting and procurement.
This marks just one step on what must be a longer path toward a full conception of racial equity that also includes racial justice – steps to redress past exclusion and injustice –as a major component. A more expansive vision of racial equity would seek to address the root causes of racial disparities that lead to underserved communities’ greater need for federal programs, including government actions that curtailed Black Americans’ prospects for building and maintaining intergenerational wealth. Ultimately, real progress toward racial equity will be measured by the extent to which we can reduce, if not eliminate, racial disparities in economic outcomes.
The Biden administration alone is not expected to fully resolve issues that have been centuries in the making, but the president should continue to build on this executive order and implement policies that measurably advance racial equity.
The Guardian July 16, 2021 -
To get clarity on some of these questions, Teen Vogue speaks with Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
What defines a recession?
Teen Vogue July 16, 2021 -
During his speech, Biden said that “at least one in three businesses require their workers to sign a noncompete agreement.” He is citing a survey, published in 2019 by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), of 634 business establishments with 50 or more employees in a variety of industries.
The survey found that nearly a third, 31.8%, of responding establishments said that all employees in their establishment were required to enter into a noncompete agreement, regardless of pay or job duties. Nearly half, 49.4%, reported that at least some employees were required to enter into a noncompete agreement.
Interestingly, more than a quarter — 29% — of responding establishments where the average wage is less than $13 an hour used noncompetes for all their workers.
Washington Post July 16, 2021 -
Most of the base salary cuts made by executives in 2020 were “a public relations gimmick” and “almost inconsequential,” said Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied executive compensation.
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Still, Mishel said “the compensation number reported to the SEC is a legitimate description of the compensation of that executive.”
Los Angeles Times July 16, 2021 -
“To replace him now would be a signal something is fundamentally wrong, and I don’t think they think that,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor research group that contributed to the Fed’s debate over how to reshape monetary policy to encourage more employment. “Powell has made a very big step forward in making the Fed a progressive force.”
Reuters July 16, 2021 -
The fact sheet cites research from the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, which found that nearly half of organizations in an EPI survey said that at least some of their employees were required to enter non-compete agreements. Nearly a third of respondents in the survey said all employees at their establishments were required to do so.
HR Dive July 16, 2021 -
“The Atlanta Fed measure is showing that while in general in this measure of wages that controls for composition bias, wage growth is actually lower if you look economy-wide than it was before the recession hit,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told Insider.
That is, for “people who’ve remained employed, their wages are growing more slowly than they were before the recession,” Shierholz said.
The Economic Policy Institute’s Shierholz and Josh Bivens wrote in a recent analysis using this data that “overall wage growth fell in the first 15 months of the COVID-19 recession, largely in line with trends in the previous two recessions.”
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Shierholz told Insider that labor shortages and strong wage growth are really just in select industries right now, such as leisure and hospitality. This industry has been especially affected by the pandemic and is slowly making employment gains back to pre-pandemic levels.
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Business Insider July 16, 2021 -
Analysts at the Economic Policy Institute calculated in 2019 that American workers were losing out on roughly $200 billion each year in pay and benefits that they could have had under collectively bargained union contracts. (President Joe Biden’s White House has also taken to citing this EPI study, according to the May 13 Reuters article and a May 14 report by Business Insider).
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U.S. employers are charged with violating federal labor law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns, and they spend about $340 million annually on “union avoidance” consultants who work to prevent unionization, according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute. In the recent analysis, Reuters reported that workers “often fear that retailers will move to close stores and warehouses or fire people who try to organize.”
Reuters July 16, 2021