Attorney General Dana Nessel is one of the leading state AGs in protecting workers’ rights, according to a new report published by the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI) prior to Labor Day.
The economic justice think tank details the more prominent role state attorneys general have taken in labor rights issues since mid-2018 and lists specific ways each has advanced workers’ protections, both on the state and federal level.
Michigan Advance
September 8, 2020
One basic function of government is keeping people safe. Another is enforcing the law. Unfortunately, President Trump’s labor team has barely lifted a finger to help workers.
Enter state attorneys general. In recent years, a number of them have been increasingly involved in workers’ rights, as documented in an Economic Policy Institute and Harvard Labor and Worklife Program report issued last month.
The American Prospect
September 8, 2020
A reality you may be somewhat more aware of is that unions benefit their members and other workers covered by union contracts. Which they do—to the tune of an 11.2% wage boost for a worker under a union contract as compared to an equivalent worker in a nonunion workplace. But it’s important to understand that unions help nonunion workers, too. “Research shows that deunionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality between typical (median) workers and workers at the high end of the wage distribution in recent decades—on the order of 13–20% for women and 33–37% for men,” the Economic Policy Institute reports.
Daily Kos
September 8, 2020
As the nation celebrates workers this labor day weekend, a new study shows Union membership often pays off and higher wages. A new study from the left-leaning economic policy Institute finds unionized workers typically earn 11% more than their nonunion counterparts and enjoy better benefits as well. Heidi Shierholz one of the authors of the study says the union premium is even bigger for Black and Brown workers.
NPR
September 8, 2020
Economic Policy Institute yesterday. diane swonk quoted it the moment it came out. you’ve got to take the claims yesterday and throw on top of it depended it kind of claims that are out there, and then you’ve got the furlough to permanently off dynamic as well.
Bloomberg TV
September 8, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist with the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, says these figures are weaker than they appear. “1.4 million jobs we would think that would be an enormous jump but it actually represents a slowdown from what we’ve seen from the prior couple of months and it’s important to note that the economy is still down 11.5 million jobs where it was in February before the pandemic.”
NPR
September 8, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, just 67% of nonunion private-sector workers had access to health care benefits in 2019, compared to 94% of union members. The union difference is real.
Tennessee Lookout
September 8, 2020
The federal government’s all-but-total abandonment of antitrust enforcement has contributed to Labor’s declining influence and to the inequality gap. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation since 1978 has risen more than 1,000 percent, compared to only 11.9 for average workers. The typical CEO now makes 278 times more than his or her average employee. Wealth is being accumulated at the very top, while the middle class is essentially stagnant.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 8, 2020
The evidence that automation has been displacing human labor is fairly thin. A 2017 NBER paper by Acemoglu and Restrepo found that industries and areas that added more robots saw lower employment and lower wages. But a careful analysis by economists Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute found that the story wasn’t so clear. Acemoglu and Restrepo focused only on one very narrow form of automation — industrial robots. Mishel and Bivens, looking at the same data, found that overall investment in information technology was positively correlated with employment.
Bloomberg
September 8, 2020