“Unionized workers have had a voice in how their employers have navigated the pandemic, including negotiating for terms of furloughs or work-share arrangements to save jobs,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “This likely played a role in limiting overall job loss among unionized workers.”
She attributed more than half the gain in the rate of union membership to job losses among nonunion workers.
Newsday
January 26, 2021
After decades of declining unionization, in the middle of a pandemic, “the share of the workforce that’s represented by a union jumped up, from 11.6 percent to 12.1 percent,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
Shierholz said more than 20 million workers lost their jobs last year, union and non-union alike. But she said union workers “lost fewer jobs than their nonunion counterparts. And so the unionization rate actually rose.”
She said unions successfully negotiated furlough and work-share arrangements to preserve jobs.
NPR Marketplace
January 26, 2021
Advocates have also noted the policy’s potential to cut into racial and gender inequity. In cheering the Raise the Wage Act on Tuesday, the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute said 23% of workers who would benefit from the policy are Black or Latina women.
CNBC
January 26, 2021
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which played a pivotal role in backing the Fight for $15, sees considerable momentum behind a $15 minimum.
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“A $15 minimum is the single most concrete way to reduce racial inequality, put money in people’s pockets and make material change in people’s lives,” Henry said. The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank, found that raising the minimum to $15 would help 25% of Black workers, 19.1% of Hispanic workers, 13.1% of White workers and 10.8% of Asian workers.
The Guardian
January 26, 2021
“A few years ago you hardly heard about college graduates taking unpaid internships,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Ross Eisenbrey told The New York Times in 2012, a statement that now feels bleakly quaint. “But now I’ve even heard of people taking unpaid internships after graduating from Ivy League schools.”
The New Republic
January 26, 2021
Nationally, 3,878,000 Americans were considered long-term unemployed (having gone six months without work while looking for work) as of December. That number accounts for fully a third of all unemployed Americans, and the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould tells Bloomberg the percentage is “going to be continuing to rise.”
Grub Street
January 26, 2021
The last time the federal government raised the minimum wage was more than 11 years ago. It’s the longest span of time without an increase in just over 80 years. Now that President Biden is in office and Democrats control the House and Senate, a proposed $15 an hour minimum wage looks possible. But the question still lingers, especially in a pandemic: will this harm or hurt the economy? David Cooper, a senior economic analyst and deputy director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network for the Economic Policy Institute, talks to the Standard.
Texas Standard
January 26, 2021
A separate report issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) revealed that the impact was even greater on non-white younger workers. In the spring of this year, the unemployment rate for Asian American/Pacific Islander workers under 25 was 29.7%. Young black and Hispanic workers followed closely, at 29.6% and 27.5%.
Louisville Courier Journal
January 26, 2021