Media clips

• Uber and Lyft could shut down in California this week. It may not help their cause

  Terri Gerstein of the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and Economic Policy Institute questioned if the companies may also eventually withdraw from other markets where their business model is similarly in limbo: “What’s the long term plan?”

  CNN Business August 16, 2020
• Trump’s decision to block coronavirus aid to hard-hit states will cost 4 million jobs: analysis

  Another analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) predicted that the cost of inaction is even greater, threatening to cost the country 5.3 million jobs.

  Salon August 16, 2020
• The Scramble to Pluck 24 Billion Cherries in Eight Weeks

  In March, as the virus continued to spread around the world, the State Department announced that it would suspend visa processing, effectively shutting off the flow of seasonal agricultural workers coming from Mexico. Industry groups and Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, pushed back with such urgency that the decision was quickly reversed; the State Department announced that the H-2A program would be continued as “a national security priority.” It’s meaningful, said Daniel Costa, a lawyer and immigration expert at the Economic Policy Institute, that the H-2A system is one of the only parts of the immigration system that hasn’t shut down because of the pandemic: “The government has moved heaven and earth to make sure companies can keep employing these workers.” Even though the visas were reopened, said Kristin Kershaw Snapp, the director of corporate affairs for Domex Superfresh Growers, another major Washington fruit company, the threat that they might not be was enough to realize how precariously the system was propped up. “That was a very scary 12 hours,” she said.

  The New York Times August 14, 2020
• Equal Pay Day for Black women is today, August 13th. There’s a reason for that
  Nor does it reflect that Black women typically work fewer hours and therefore make less than White men. That’s in part because they’re more likely to be unemployed or work part-time, said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
  CNN August 14, 2020
• Another huge unemployment wave is coming—and there’s an obvious way to stop it

  And these awful projections might be best-case assessments. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows the spending generated by that extra $600 is supporting 5 million jobs. If the dollars disappear, so will the jobs they support.

  Fortune August 14, 2020
• How the pandemic will affect Black Women’s Equal Pay Day for years to come

  Nina Banks, an associate professor of economics at Bucknell University, notes the pay gap is “particularly distressing” because, in comparison to women of other races, Black women have always had higher labor force participation rates.

  “Black women’s labor market position is the result of employer practices and government policies that disadvantaged Black women relative to white women and men,” she wrote for the Economic Policy Institute in 2019. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, founder and president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race, agreed. She said it’s important to consider “occupation segregation.” She describes the practice as “the limiting of the occupations that Black women have access to, especially [jobs] that are higher paid and have more autonomy,” when discussing the pay gap Black women face.

  NBC News August 14, 2020
• As GOP Blocks Covid Relief, Experts Warn of ‘Wave of Despair’ and Devastating Anecdotes Show Crisis Already Here

  Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order partially reinstating a federal unemployment benefit, offering just $300 per week. The order was derided as “an unserious move of political theater” by the Economic Policy Institute.

  “This inaction and ongoing uncertainty is causing significant economic pain for workers who have lost their job during the pandemic and their families,” wrote EPI economic analyst Julia Wolfe on Thursday.

  Common Dreams August 14, 2020
• Economists Call Out Trump and Congress for Stalled Stimulus Package as Unemployment Remains at Historic Levels

  Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, shared similar concerns in a Thursday morning blog post.

  “In an unserious move of political theater, the Trump administration has proposed starting up an entirely new system of restoring wages to laid-off workers through executive order,” Wolfe wrote.

  Newsweek August 14, 2020
• Equal Pay Day for Black women is today, August 13th. There’s a reason for that
  Nor does it reflect that Black women typically work fewer hours and therefore make less than White men. That’s in part because they’re more likely to be unemployed or work part-time, said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

  EPI did account for those factors and found that, based on average hourly earnings, Black women still earned only 66 cents for every dollar White, non-Hispanic men made.
  CNN August 14, 2020
• For Black youth, is democracy hypocrisy?

  Society and its justice system, which Georgetown Law Center Professor Paul Butler discusses in his book, Chokehold, foment destructive patterns of youth development. Many urban schools are dysfunctional, and the prisons reflect a punishment system that does not take appropriate steps to correctly treat people and their problems. As the Economic Policy Institute reported in 2018, our society since 1968 has failed to address historic inequities related to health, housing, employment, income, and educational opportunity – all of which begin at child birth and persist throughout the lives of people of color.

  The CT Mirror August 14, 2020