The Economic Policy Institute found that one in five Black adults couldn’t see a healthcare provider when they needed to because of costs. Black people are twice as likely to be uninsured as white Americans.
Inside Philanthropy
November 3, 2020
The Republican dominated executive, legislative and judicial branches have conspired to rig the laws, rules and regulations governing our political economy against unions and for corporations. The Brookings Institute maintains an up-to-date compilation of the Trump administration’s deregulatory actions in a number of areas including labor, health, covid-19, education and environment. The Economic Policy Institute has itemized 50 anti-union actions taken by these branches of government against workers and provided an even more detailed analysis in another article. Here are some of the highlights.
AlterNet
November 3, 2020
Telegraph UK
November 3, 2020
Real wage growth was also higher under Obama-Biden. Middle-class incomes grew about 5.8% per year during their last two years in office, but slowed to 2.7% in Trump’s first two years, an Economic Policy Institute and Capital & Main analysis of U.S. Census data found.
New Jersey Star-Ledger
November 3, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute predicts 29.8 million people nationwide will lose their health insurance if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is repealed and another 1.2 million jobs will be lost. Hawaii’s number of uninsured people would jump by 99% and 4,299 jobs would be lost, or 7 out of every 1,000. That would increase the unemployment rate by .7%.
State of Reform
November 3, 2020
Interview with Robert Scott.
Al Jazeera
November 3, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has published a handy list describing fifty ways the Trump administration has hurt workers.
DOL-related highlights include:
- Refusal to issue COVID-19 workplace safety guidelines, and generally not enforcing the Occupational Safety and Health Act during the pandemic;
- Allowing states to deny unemployment insurance benefits to workers who refuse to return to unsafe jobs due to COVID-19 concerns;
- Giving employers more ways to avoid paying workers overtime;
- Allowing employers to avoid basic labor protections by misclassifying employees as “independent contractors”;
- Letting large corporations off the hook for their franchisees’ labor law violations by refusing to consider them to be “joint employers”;
- Allowing employers to lower tipped workers’ pay, and trying to allow employers to steal workers’ tips;
- Relaxing employers’ responsibility to track workplace injuries and illnesses.
Jacobin
November 3, 2020
Under the Trump administration, the Black unemployment rate steadily improved, dropping to 5.4 percent at its bottom in August 2019, compared to 7.5 percent when Trump took office in January 2017. But that achievement is attributable to economic growth that was already revving when Trump took office, economists say.
“Basically, we saw a continuation of the steady growth of the economy that we saw in the years prior to this administration,” said Elise Gould of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Under the Trump administration, she said, Black workers did not see employment levels ever go “above the trend.”
Gould added that when the labor market is tight, like it was in first three years of the Trump administration, discrimination tends to decline. “Oftentimes, the gains to a growing economy are not accrued to those most historically disadvantaged,” Gould said, “until you get to a much tighter labor market, and that is the natural consequence of workers becoming more scarce and employers having less discretion to discriminate. “
Even with record-low unemployment rates in 2019, Black Americans still had fewer jobs than their white counterparts — even for those with college or advanced degrees — according to research by EPI.
Politico
November 2, 2020
Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act kicks off today. The uninsured have from today to December 15th to sign up for the insurance plan or get coverage through the health care exchange. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that at least 12 million workers and their families lost their employee sponsored insurance because of the pandemic.
WUSA 9
November 2, 2020
Experts attribute the divide to a “double wage gap” whereby Latinas are subjected to both gender and ethnic bias, crippling upward mobility and limiting earnings to an average of 55 cents on the dollar compared to white men. According to the Economic Policy Institute, while the types of occupation and lack of education remain critical factors, even when accounting for those factors, in addition to experience and location, Latinas are still vastly underpaid compared to their white male colleagues across professions.
AOL
November 2, 2020