The gap between executive compensation and average worker pay has been growing for decades. Chief executives of big companies now make, on average, 320 times as much as their typical worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1989, that ratio was 61 to 1. From 1978 to 2019, compensation grew 14 percent for typical workers. It rose 1,167 percent for C.E.O.s.
New York Times
April 26, 2021
According to an analysis by Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research for the progressive Economic Policy Institute, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act would tweak the complicated system for setting minimum pay rates for H-2A workers in ways that will likely lower wages for most of them—a major goal of the agribusiness lobby.
On top of the wage change, the bill would open the H-2A program to more kinds of farms. Currently, the H-2A program only grants seasonal visas; it’s designed to draw in workers to, say, handle a region’s strawberry harvest. It leaves out operations that rely on steady year-round work, like plant nurseries and dairy farms, which now rely heavily on undocumented labor. These interests “have been clamoring for years for Congress to allow them to hire temporary H-2A workers for many of these 419,000 permanent, year-round jobs,” writes Costa.
Mother Jones
April 26, 2021
The gap between executive compensation and average worker pay has been growing for decades. Chief executives of big companies now make, on average, 320 times as much as their typical worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1989, that ratio was 61 to 1. From 1978 to 2019, compensation grew 14 percent for typical workers. It rose 1,167 percent for C.E.O.s.
New York Times
April 26, 2021
The past few months have brought some encouraging signs for low-paid workers. Big employers like Walmart Inc. have announced pay raises, and higher minimum wages took effect in 20 states as of Jan. 1, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
April 23, 2021
The median Black household earns 61 cents for every dollar earned by a comparable White household, according to the Economic Policy Institute. This not only makes it more difficult to afford a home, but also to accumulate and pass on generational wealth. A primary residence accounts for the largest percentage of the average American household’s net worth, according to the Latest Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances.
Adding to the problem is that Black-owned houses are typically worth less and are more likely to lose value than White-owned homes in similar neighborhoods.
TIME/Next Advisor
April 23, 2021
Part 2. The Tactics Used by Amazon to Defeat Union Organizing Drives
Guest: Lynn Rhinehart is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, where she works on labor and employment policy, with a focus on collective bargaining. She wrote the piece How Amazon Gerrymandered the Union Vote—And Won. The PRO Act would put voting decisions back in the hands of workers and the National Labor Relations Board.
KPFA
April 23, 2021
The National Labor Relations Act’s inadequate protections for workers who are fired for engaging in protected activity has cost them billions of dollars in potential legal remedies “even using the most conservative of calculations,” a left-leaning group said in a report released on Thursday.
The Economic Policy Institute said the NLRA shortchanges workers by not allowing them to sue for retaliation in court or be reinstated to their jobs while their cases are pending, and by not levying monetary penalties on employers who are found to have violated the law.
Reuters
April 23, 2021
The Detroit News
April 23, 2021
Unfortunately, this is also a pretty common practice across the United States: the Economic Policy Institute estimates that $15 billion in total wages is stolen from workers every year due to minimum wage violations (merely one form of wage theft among many). Wage theft is effectively a standard form of upward economic redistribution in America, made possible by toothless Departments of Labor.
AZ Central
April 23, 2021
“It’s important to keep in mind that the trend is going in the right direction,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, “but we’re still at crisis levels of unemployment claims.”
The New York Times
April 23, 2021