For Democrats, it’s $15 or bust.
After all, it’s not such a big lift, politically or economically. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 32 million workers — 21 percent of the workforce — would be affected by a phased-in increase of the minimum wage. In Arizona, where the state minimum wage is $12.15, an estimated 835,000 workers would see an increase in their wages over the next four years. In West Virginia, about 35 percent of the workforce would see a gradual increase in their wages up from the current state minimum of $8.75.
The Washington Post
March 9, 2021
Elise Gould, economista del Economic Policy Institute, apunta a otro factor determinante en el hecho de que en un momento de dificultades como al que ha forzado la pandemia de covid-19 se pierdan más empleos femeninos: en igualdad de condiciones, con ambos cónyuges trabajando en un puesto similar, la mujer gana menos, lo que pone de relevancia la importancia de recortar la brecha salarial.
“Además del contexto cultural, si uno de los dos miembros del hogar deben abandonar su trabajo para atender la casa, será la mujer la que suponga un menor golpe financiero”, señala Gould, quien coincide en señalar la falta de una red de bienestar social en Estados Unidos como el principal escollo para la incorporación plena de la mujer en el mercado laboral.
EFE
March 9, 2021
The UFCW cited figures presented by the Economic Policy Institute which indicate that increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would raise the pay of 82-percent of all Delaware workers who are currently in poverty.
WGMD
March 9, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute reports that women and people of color are most impacted by low wages in the U.S. The nonprofit states that 59% of low-wage earners are women, while nearly one-third of African Americans and one-quarter of Latinos would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $15. More than half of minimum-wage earners work full-time, the nonprofit reports.
WHYY
March 9, 2021
An Economic Policy Institute report found that employers try to block the formation of unions 40% of the time. Employers also regularly stall initial bargaining agreements during union formation.
The American Independent
March 9, 2021
According to a range of research compiled by the Economic Policy Institute, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 would deliver pay increases for nearly 32 million workers, 21 percent of the entire U.S. workforce.
Truthout
March 8, 2021
By the early 1970s, the union-avoidance industry had become a big business. Lawyers and consultants have since spent decades finding even more weaknesses in NLRB law and procedures, effectively thwarting the desires of workers to unionize. A 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute estimated that employers spend $340 million a year on union-avoidance consultants. In 2018, 48 percent of nonunion workers said they would join a union if they could; yet just 10.8 percent of workers belong to a union today. Between those two numbers is the union-avoidance industry doing the bidding of the bosses.
Jacobin
March 8, 2021
“Low wages hurt all workers and are particularly harmful to Black workers and other workers of color, especially women of color who make up a disproportionate share of workers who are severely underpaid,” reports an Economic Policy Institute fact sheet on the minimum wage. “This is the result of structural racism and sexism, with an economic system rooted in chattel slavery in which workers of color — and especially women of color — have been and continue to be shunted into the most underpaid jobs.”
A bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Senate just voted to keep it that way.
Salon
March 8, 2021
Many economists have also roundly rejected the idea that the extra unemployment checks discourage people from finding work. Josh Bivens, a research director at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog last year that, “In normal times, economists and policymakers have focused a lot of attention (almost surely too much) on the incentive effects of [unemployment insurance] benefits.” But studies have found that, “The negative economic impacts of these incentive effects have always been exaggerated,” says Bivens, and that they’re negligible, especially under the exigent circumstances caused by the pandemic.
Truthout
March 8, 2021
The Biden proposal will make federal resources available to address both. It has the potential to create millions of new jobs in this country, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Jobs building the material that will make up our infrastructure are the kind that pay a premium wage to workers with less than a four-year degree. They’re precisely the kind the market needs more of right now.
Bay to Bay News
March 8, 2021