Media clips
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To understand what’s actually going on in the economy and discuss why a restaurant labor shortage could be welcome news for workers, I spoke with Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy and a senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. Before rejoining EPI in 2017, Shierholz served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor.
Mother Jones May 19, 2021 -
Northwest Indiana is the largest steel-producing region in the United States, and supporters of the industry say keeping the 2018 steel tariffs in place will be critical for post-pandemic recovery.
A report from the Economic Policy Institute outlined how a 25% tariff on steel imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act has provided relief to steel-producers facing prices undercut by foreign imports.
Public News Service May 19, 2021 -
Another recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, a national think tank, found low-wage workers in the 10 most populous states, including California, reported losing an average of $3,300 in wages per year due to wage theft and other crimes committed against workers by their employers. The report argues that criminal action brought by district attorneys or other prosecutors would likely deter wage theft and other similar crimes. There’s no reason to believe the violations have abated since the national study was conducted in 2008. The Center on Policy Initiatives interviewed hundreds of workers in 2017 and found that formal complaints are rare and typically only happen when the theft rises to an egregious level.
Voice of San Diego May 19, 2021 -
San Diego Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s office is calling attention to a new report published by the Economic Policy Institute, which “sheds light on the need for district attorneys and other public prosecutors to bring forward cases involving wage theft and other employer-committed crimes against workers,” according to her office.
“We need to actually enforce labor laws in this country and address the crimes committed against ordinary workers every single day with the urgency it deserves,” Gonzalez said in a statement.
The report found that minimum wage violations in the 10 most populous states, including California, affected approximately 2.4 million low-income employees, who lost an average of $3,300 a year, or nearly a quarter of their earned wages.
Sacramento Bee May 19, 2021 -
State and local prosecutors across the United States are increasingly bringing criminal charges against employers who violate their workers’ rights by stealing wages or providing unsafe work environments, says a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive, Washington DC-based think-tank.
“This is happening now in large part because worker organisations – like unions and advocacy groups – have pushed for it in many instances. This is happening now also because we have in our country a growing understanding of how extreme workplace violations have become,” Terri Gerstein, a senior fellow at EPI and the report’s author, told Al Jazeera.
Prosecutors are also reconsidering their roles and thinking of ways they could use their prosecutorial power to pursue economic and social justice by holding bosses who violate the law to account, Gerstein added.
Gerstein’s paper is the second in EPI’s New Enforcers series, which focuses on players at the state and local levels working to uphold and promote employee rights. The first report released last year, also authored by Gerstein, argued for increased state and local enforcement of workers’ rights.
Al Jazeera May 19, 2021 -
Neither a shortage of jobs, nor of people to fill them, seems to be the cause of sluggish hiring, according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, who authored the report.
“Job openings are swamped by unemployed workers,” Shierholz said, adding a true labor shortage would drive up wages in the industries where businesses were desperate for workers.
That has happened in the restaurant business and in other parts of the leisure and hospitality industry, but a wholesale wage jump across sectors isn’t in the cards just yet, Shierholz said.
San Francisco Chronicle May 18, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs for the Economic Policy Institute, said Biden needs to get the legislation through the Senate to make good on his rhetoric. She said Biden’s encouragement of Amazon workers trying to organize in Bessemer demonstrates the limits of verbal support.
“The classic example of that at this point is, the president comes out with a statement in Bessemer and the union does not prevail in the election,” said McNicholas, a former special counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. “It didn’t create a free and fair election. That would require policy reform.”
The vote broke heavily in the company’s favor. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has appealed the election to the NLRB, citing unfair labor practices. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing.
“Calling on Congress to do its job we all know is insufficient for Congress to do its job,” McNicholas said. “This administration is going to have to take an active role in championing the bill and an active role in looking for legislative mechanisms to actually get it passed, because we will not be able to pass the PRO Act and a host of other critical reforms with the 60-vote threshold.”
Roll Call May 18, 2021 -
But Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute, said health concerns and child care responsibilities seem to be the main reasons holding workers back.
In April, she said, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.
Shierholz added that unemployment benefits are designed to give workers the time to find jobs that are better suited to their abilities.
“We want people well-matched to their skills and experience,” she said. “That’s what helps the economy run better.”
Associated Press May 18, 2021 -
Two economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute conclude in a new paper that the government is to blame for the fact that pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s.
“Intentional policy decisions (either of commission or omission) have generated wage suppression,” write Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens.
Included among these decisions are policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment and to let employers fight unions aggressively, trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad and the tacit or explicit blessing of new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs.
Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens argue that a decades-long loss of leverage largely explains the gap between the pay increases that workers would have received had they benefited fully from rising productivity, and the smaller wage and benefit increases that workers actually received, Noam Scheiber reports for The New York Times.
New York Times May 17, 2021 -
Elise Gould, Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, talks with reporter Chris Bangert-Drowns about why we shouldn’t overreact to disappointing jobs data in April, and how to move the economy forward.
WPFW May 17, 2021