Media clips
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Economic Policy Institute (EPI) studies show that “Black-white wage gaps are large and have gotten worse in the last 20 years,” EPI economist Elise Gould wrote in a blog post last year. “Even Black workers with an advanced degree experience a significant wage gap compared with their white counterparts.”
SHRM March 12, 2021 -
The big picture: The PRO Act would restrict companies like Uber and Lyft from classifying workers as independent contractors and improve protections for workers’ right to strike, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios March 12, 2021 -
Raising the minimum wage would overwhelmingly benefit women and, consequently, it would benefit queer women who cohabitate. According to the Economics Policy Institute, 59 percent of workers whose lives would improve from a $15 minimum wage are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Latinx or Black. According to the Center for American Progress, nearly one in three bisexual women ages 18-44 lives in poverty, and one in five LGBTQ women living alone lives in poverty. While some studies say that $15 an hour won’t be enough for many U.S. families, the raise would have a significant impact on the gender and racial pay gap and start a necessary process of wage redistribution. The current $7.25 minimum hourly rate was set in 2009, which means minimum wage workers have lost about $3,000 a year due to the rising cost of living, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As Sinema uses her identity as a woman to cynically dismiss the very fair and necessary criticism about her vote, women of color and queer women will struggle to make ends meet this month, and for every month in the foreseeable future until the Senate holds an open debate on raising the minimum wage. While it may have been exciting to witness Sinema become America’s first openly bisexual senator and watch her use of colorful wigs on the floor, her latest vote begs the question: How valuable is bisexual representation in the Senate if the bisexual woman in question is voting against the best interests of queer women at large? What is the use of representation if it does not translate to material changes for the people who inhabit those identities?
Bitch Media March 12, 2021 -
According to congressional testimony from the Economic Policy Institute last month, “Due to the impacts of structural racism and sexism, women and Black and Hispanic men are concentrated in low-wage jobs” and would greatly benefit from a higher minimum wage.
People for the American Way March 12, 2021 -
“Things are improving, but we still have a massive jobs hole,” said Heidi Shierholz, a Ph.D. economist at the Economic Policy Institute who served in the Obama administration. “Unemployment benefits will help get some people through what could still be some very rough next few months, ” she said.
Morningstar March 12, 2021 -
March 12, 2021
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During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Action is urgently necessary. In 1983, 20 percent of workers in the United States were union members; in 2020, that’s down to about 10.8 percent. Among employees in the private sector, the decline was even more precipitous: from 17 to 7 percent. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and Brookings attribute the drop in union membership, along with globalization and automation, as a significant factor in wage stagnation and inequality, with the largest impact on lower income workers.
The Hill March 11, 2021 -
A major concern regarding this income requirement should be that it will have the effect of excluding people of color who are “far more likely to be paid poverty-level wages than white workers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute’s study marking the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Sunny Side Post March 11, 2021 -
While offering no source, Jahncke claims that, “for more than a decade, state employee compensation has exceeded compensation in Connecticut’s private sector by about 40 percent, the biggest gap in the nation.” That unattributed claim likely came from a 2015 report by the Yankee Institute asserting Connecticut public sector workers earn 25-46 percent more than comparable private sector workers. First, consider that the Yankee Institute is a right-wing, dark money-fueled, propaganda outlet associated with conservative North Carolina billionaire Thomas Roe’s State Policy Network. Roe’s particular objective, as revealed in Jane Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” was the destruction of public sector unions. In a meticulous analysis for the respected Economic Policy Institute, Monique Morrissey debunked the Yankee Institute report, revealing it was based on a cherry-picked sample of workers, used nonstandard control variables, and inflated the cost of retiree benefits in the public sector, while minimizing their cost in the private sector. Morrissey concluded that Connecticut public sector workers without college degrees are compensated somewhat more than those in the private sector, while those with college and graduate degrees are compensated somewhat less than in the private sector, even when factoring in more generous public sector benefits. In short, Morrissey writes, “taxpayers are getting a bargain!”
CT Post March 11, 2021 -
Nonpartisan think tank the Economic Policy Institute cheered the House’s passing of the PRO Act, stating helps “bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century.”
“The Senate should pass the PRO Act Immediately and ensure that all workers have a voice on the job,” Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the EPI and its policy analyst, Margaret Poydock, said in a joint statement.
Breitbart March 11, 2021