The tactics are “so typical that it’s truly sad,” said Celine McNicholas, general counsel at the Economic Policy Institute and a former special counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees private-sector union elections.
“It isn’t just Amazon ― this is the standard playbook,” McNicholas explained. Employers collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on outside firms “because unions do improve workers’ lives,” she said. “These firms feed off that.”
The Huffington Post
March 12, 2021
Legal barriers to LGBTQ+ equity are undergirded by disproportionate poverty levels among queer families of color. The Williams Institute estimates that Black LGBTQ+ couples earn less than non-LGBTQ+ couples, while Black female-headed same-sex households earn approximately $20,000 less than Black male same-sex households. African American lesbians in particular are more likely to be raising children while being segregated into low-wage jobs with few benefits and nominal workplace protections. It is projected that the child allowance would cut child poverty in half, with African American and Indigenous families reaping the greatest benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over thirty percent of Black workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage increases. LGBTQ+ families of color would directly benefit because many Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming rank and file workers are employed in low-wage service and food sector jobs.
The Humanist
March 12, 2021
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
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