Media clips

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• Ask Amy Coney Barrett if bosses should be free to fire workers at will

  As University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos put it in an excellent monograph for the Economic Policy Institute, the justices operated from a narrow, legalistic concept of freedom and equality: “The idea, which judges often made explicit, was that absent labor legislation employers and workers were each equally free to enter into, or refuse to enter into, contracts with each other. That is, the courts presumed that employers and employees had equal power in the labor market. “

  Common Dreams October 13, 2020
• Why prevailing wage reform matters for H-1B visas

  A May 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that 60 percent of H-1B positions certified by the DOL are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation.

  The Hill October 13, 2020
• Punching In: How the White House edited DOL gig-contractor rule

  Career economists at OIRA appear to have been reluctant to sign off on DOL’s sunny forecast for workers’ wages, particularly because of murky available data.

  “That removal following OIRA’s review is no surprise, given that a positive wage effect of the proposed rule can’t be supported,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former DOL chief economist during the Obama administration. “If anything, the available evidence goes in the opposite direction, with independent contractors earning less than similar employees.”

  Shierholz’s current employer, the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, is among the outside groups that plan to fill in the data gap by submitting their own economic projections. Public comments are due in two weeks.

  Bloomberg Law October 13, 2020
• ‘I’m terrified, frankly’: These people are depending on another stimulus bill to stay afloat

  But others say that with an estimated 33 million workers being harmed by the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, “It is terrible economics to pause stimulus talks.” That’s according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  She wrote that “the extra $600 in weekly UI benefits was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who, without it, have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting millions of jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs.”

  MarketWatch October 13, 2020
• U.S. Covid program leaves uninsured with ‘bills they can’t pay’

  Almost 30 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point in 2019, an increase of 1 million people from 2018, according to recent Census data. The number of uninsured people increased in 19 states last year.

  Additionally, as many as 6 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored insurance as the pandemic shuttered businesses and swelled the jobless ranks, the Economic Policy Institute estimated in August.

  Bloomberg Government October 13, 2020
• McDonald’s, Chipotle, and Domino’s are booming during coronavirus while your neighborhood restaurant struggles

  Turmoil among independent restaurants is cascading down to a swath of suppliers, including many seafood companies and small farmers that mainly serve diners rather than supermarket customers. Every 100 restaurant jobs support 50 more at suppliers such as wholesalers and farmers, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  Wall Street Journal October 13, 2020
• Unemployment, job losses and Covid: Inequality and unequal power

  As we stagger into the seventh month of the pandemic, the labor market remains deeply troubled.  But while the coronavirus is hurting working people, especially lower-income workers, it is mainly exacerbating underlying inequalities in the economy, not fundamentally reshaping the job market. As the Economic Policy Institute reminds us with its new “Unequal Power” project, our labor policies need to restore worker power to push for greater equality, pandemic or no pandemic.

  Forbes October 13, 2020
• Covid makes domestic work even more precarious

  Even as that began to change, though, the transition from domestic work into other professions wasn’t an equal one. During the 1960s, nearly 90% of Black women in the South still worked as domestic servants. Today, such work is still practiced most often by marginalized groups that have struggled to overcome racial and class barriers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 92% of domestic workers are female and 52% women of color. They’re also disproportionately immigrants, with noncitizens making up more than half of the nation’s housecleaning force.

  Bloomberg October 13, 2020
• The nightmare facing the poor and working class if there’s not another stimulus

  The Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute found that the con­sumer spend­ing gen­er­at­ed by that extra $600 per week sup­port­ed over 5 mil­lion jobs, and that con­tin­u­ing the sup­ple­ment through the mid­dle of next year would have raised U.S. gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) by a quar­ter­ly aver­age of 3.7 percent.

  Common Dreams October 13, 2020
• Urgent call for second stimulus checks and economic stimulus relief

  The real-world consequences of not passing new stimulus at this point in the crisis are ‘huge.’” – Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor under the Obama administration.

  Shierholz, who currently works as a senior economist and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, also warned, “It’s literally millions of jobs in the balance here” and that because of the gap between the millions of unemployed and the limited available jobs, “no matter what they do, no matter how amazing they are, no matter how great their skills are, they won’t get a job because the jobs just aren’t there.”

  Forbes October 13, 2020