Did low-wage workers lose out in the first period and make gains in the second? Not at all. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, wages for the bottom 10th percentile of US workers rose in the late 1990s, and fell during the years from 2010 to 2014.
FAIR
February 22, 2021
We get some background on forced arbitration and why it matters from previous CounterSpin conversations with Celine McNicholas from the Economic Policy Institute and Joanne Doroshow from the Center for Justice and Democracy.
FAIR Counterspin
February 22, 2021
Trump nominated three “employer-side” members to the NLRB, giving businesses a distinct majority on the five-member board, which currently has one vacant seat. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that Trump’s NLRB members sided with the pro-business Chamber of Commerce in 10 key issue areas, based on a 2017 “wishlist” published by the Chamber. The board also undercut unions’ ability to organize outside of business hours and allowed gig workers to be classified as independent contractors.
Center for Responsive Politics
February 22, 2021
Over 70 percent of federal labor standards investigations of farms found violations, including wage theft and inadequate housing and transportation, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. However, although the agriculture sector accounts for a much higher share of investigations and violations than its share of total U.S. employment, there is a very low chance any farm employer will be investigated.
Currently, a hierarchy exists where legal immigrants suffer higher workplace violations than non-immigrants, but illegal immigrants suffer the highest rates of all, said Daniel Costa, director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s pretty clear that the lack of a legal status leads to the ability for employers to break the law against you without much worry of getting in trouble,” Costa said. “They fear retaliation and can’t speak up in the workplace because that could lead to their deportation and they’re afraid to report violations to government officials because they don’t want to interact with officials over deportation fears.”
Politico
February 22, 2021
Public Citizen and other groups are circulating a letter in support of DeFazio’s bill. The levy is “an important step toward having Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes,” says the letter, whose signatories so far include the liberal Economic Policy Institute and unions such as the AFL-CIO and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Bloomberg
February 22, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist now with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, offers a much higher estimate of nearly 19 million unemployed, derived from the number of officially unemployed (10.1 million), those who dropped out of the labor force (5.3 million), and those who are misclassified or non-responsive to surveys (3.5 million). Add the people who have seen cuts to their income (6.8 million), and the total of those negatively affected economically by pandemic comes to 25.5 million.
The Fiscal Times
February 22, 2021
When Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2018, a move now being debated in Congress for all American workers, some believed it would pressure other companies to lift pay levels as well — particularly rival retailers and warehouse employers.
“This is going to be a big deal for very low-wage workers,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based economic think tank said at the time. “It’s going to compel other businesses to raise wages as well.”
Gainesville Times
February 22, 2021
We talked to Celine McNicholas, Director of Government Affairs and Labor Counsel with the Economic Policy Institute, to get the low-down on what we can expect, and dare to hope for.
Dissent Magazine
February 22, 2021
The federal minimum wage is the baseline for employers in the state. A single adult needs to earn $11.76 per hour working full time to meet her basic needs in South Carolina, $4 more than the current minimum wage. According to David Cooper at Economic Policy Institute, the wages of roughly 684,000 South Carolina workers — a third of the state’s workforce — would increase if the state adopted a $15 minimum wage by 2025.
Statehouse Report
February 22, 2021
As David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, notes in the report, minimum wage hikes result in stronger buying power to workers. In turn, hospitality businesses benefit from the extra purchases. “Tax breaks or deferrals, rent subsidies, expanded lending programs, and other business-oriented relief measures all help firms weather a downturn,” Cooper says, “but they’re not going to drive additional spending in the same way that a minimum wage hike does.”
Mother Jones
February 22, 2021