Media clips
-
April 23, 2021
-
The past few months have brought some encouraging signs for low-paid workers. Big employers like Walmart Inc. have announced pay raises, and higher minimum wages took effect in 20 states as of Jan. 1, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg April 23, 2021 -
The median Black household earns 61 cents for every dollar earned by a comparable White household, according to the Economic Policy Institute. This not only makes it more difficult to afford a home, but also to accumulate and pass on generational wealth. A primary residence accounts for the largest percentage of the average American household’s net worth, according to the Latest Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances.
Adding to the problem is that Black-owned houses are typically worth less and are more likely to lose value than White-owned homes in similar neighborhoods.
TIME/Next Advisor April 23, 2021 -
Part 2. The Tactics Used by Amazon to Defeat Union Organizing Drives
Guest: Lynn Rhinehart is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, where she works on labor and employment policy, with a focus on collective bargaining. She wrote the piece How Amazon Gerrymandered the Union Vote—And Won. The PRO Act would put voting decisions back in the hands of workers and the National Labor Relations Board.
KPFA April 23, 2021 -
The National Labor Relations Act’s inadequate protections for workers who are fired for engaging in protected activity has cost them billions of dollars in potential legal remedies “even using the most conservative of calculations,” a left-leaning group said in a report released on Thursday.
The Economic Policy Institute said the NLRA shortchanges workers by not allowing them to sue for retaliation in court or be reinstated to their jobs while their cases are pending, and by not levying monetary penalties on employers who are found to have violated the law.
Reuters April 23, 2021 -
Robert Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says the changes contemplated in the PRO Act, coupled with the surge in demand for labor that Biden’s infrastructure plan would unleash, would benefit workers: “It will give them more leverage and reduce the market power of the employer.”
Bloomberg April 21, 2021 -
Labor unions are key backers of Mr. Biden’s presidency, and several of his early immigration-policy decisions have shown some deference to their concerns.
“H-2B visas are intended for use during times of labor shortages, but the latest unemployment rates for the main H-2B industries are sky high,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal critic of guest-worker programs.
Mr. Costa pointed to March data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing an unemployment rate of 19.9% in the hospitality industry and 11.8% among restaurant workers.
The Wall Street Journal April 21, 2021 -
The model minority myth perpetuates a belief that all Asians in the U.S. are financially successful, but this ignores wealth and pay gaps ― not to mention disparities between Asian communities. One analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that pay disparities between Asian American women and white men are not as large as the pay gap between women and white men overall, but it widens significantly when comparing people at higher education levels.
An Asian American woman with a bachelor’s degree makes, on average, 78 cents for every dollar made by a white man with a bachelor’s degree.
Huffpost April 21, 2021 -
Features interview with Robert E. Scott.
KPFA April 19, 2021 -
Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She’s the co-author of “Rescuing Retirement” and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg April 19, 2021 -
The union’s defeat at Amazon is shaking up the labor movement and exposing a rift between organizers
Employers are accused of violating federal law by workers in 41.5 percent of all union election campaigns, according to a 2019 study of NLRB charges from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and in nearly a third, employers were accused of illegally coercing, threatening or retaliating against workers for their union support. In nearly one-fifth of all elections, employers are accused of illegally firing workers.
Over the last couple of years, about a third of all NLRB charges resulted in settlements between the parties, and about 5 percent resulted in the board issuing a formal complaint.
Washington Post April 19, 2021 -
If you look at the 1950s, when you had the highest rates of unionization, you had one of the lowest rates of income inequality. Since then, union membership has decreased from around 33 percent of the workforce to around 10 percent. What’s the impact? Over the past 40 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, income growth for the top 1 percent has been five times as fast as for the bottom 90 percent of households. So clearly their efforts were successful in taking away workers’ voices, which allowed them to shift more money to the very top and not to the average worker.
The Nation April 19, 2021 -
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, is also collaborating with other researchers to publish a paper on this kind of strategy, according to research director Josh Bivens.
Generally, the idea would be that once the unemployment rate starts to rise — to anywhere from 5% to 8%, for example — the generosity of unemployment benefits would automatically increase, along with the length of time people could collect those jobless checks.
To further strengthen the system, benefits should also be made available to include non-traditional gig workers, as well as those who are looking to enter the labor force, such as stay at home parents or recently graduated college students, Bivens said.
However, the political process could derail this expansion, according to Bivens.
Yet another obstacle is finding the money to upgrade states’ unemployment infrastructure, particularly with regard to technology, he said.
Ultimately, the challenge is to strike a balance between providing enough money for people when they are without work, but not so generous that they are discouraged from re-entering the labor force.
“I would argue in the U.S. we have erred way too much on the ‘keep it stingy’ part,” Bivens said. “We have a lot of room to make [unemployment pay] a lot more generous, and yet not stop people from looking for jobs.”
CNBC April 19, 2021 -
“Black workers, on average, are not being hired, promoted or paid according to what would signal their level of productivity based on their experience or their education,” Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, tells CNBC Make It. And “it absolutely impacts everything. It impacts your family’s economic security.”
On average, Black men are paid just $0.71 for every dollar paid to white men, according to EPI. Black women, who face both gender and racial barriers, are paid just $0.63 for every dollar paid to white men. Over the course of a 40-year career, the National Women’s Law Center estimates that Black women stand to lose close to $1 million due to this disparity.
CNBC April 19, 2021 -
“If a bunch of large employers in the labor market raise pay, other employers are going to be compelled to raise pay a little bit too in order to make sure that they can recruit and retain their workforce,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Insider in March.
Small businesses in those areas will probably feel those spillover effects, and will likely feel compelled to respond, Zipperer said.
Business Insider April 16, 2021 -
And employers have more discretion when there’s a huge pool of unemployed workers, according to Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg April 16, 2021 -
Richard Rothstein, a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow, emeritus, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), gave this opening statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’ hearing on the “Legacy of Racial Discrimination in Housing,” on behalf of himself and Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the LDF. Here is a link to the full testimony.
MarketWatch April 16, 2021 -
The challenge would be to collapse the distinction, and recent economic research backed them up. Federal investments in care yielded twice as many jobs as similar investments in infrastructure, according to a 2016 study from the Economic Policy Institute, and it would also free up women to participate in the economy, leading to even greater employment. If the workers were being paid fairly, that would spur a number of “respending” jobs, the sorts of jobs that get created when people have money to spend. This was all the more important given that care is expected to be the fastest-growing segment of the economy over the next decade, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics. The jobs would be there anyway—they might as well be good. “I was getting to the point where I had to say, ‘Care job creation is vastly superior, but physical infrastructure is still good, also,’” says Josh Bivens, the EPI economist who worked on the study, recalling conversations with colleagues. On the day the campaign launched the caregiving proposal, Bivens, at the behest of Biden advisers, published a blog post asserting the campaign’s plan would, in fact, support 3 million new jobs.
Mother Jones April 16, 2021 -
“As we move toward herd immunity, those issues around care infrastructure will get better,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “These structural things related to public health, we may not know the magnitude of how many people they’re keeping out of the labor force, but with the vaccine we can come at this with optimism that it will improve.”
New York Times April 16, 2021 -
Whitmer cited a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank devoted to ensuring fair pay, health care, and retirement security, that said payroll fraud cost workers $429 million in wages and overtime between 2013 and 2015. And an MSU study that said employee misclassification costs Michigan $107 million a year in evaded taxes.
Detroit Free Press April 16, 2021 -
Producers have urged Biden to keep the steel tariff, and they found a new point of argument in a recent study. Left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute found in a March 24 analysis that the steel tariffs delivered benefits in the near term, including drastic cuts to steel imports. The study was promoted after its release by the American Iron and Steel Institute, a nonprofit that represents U.S. steelmakers and iron producers.
The Section 232 actions had “no meaningful real-world impact” on the prices of steel-consuming products such as cars, and exclusions to the actions such as those instituted under Trump “mitigate positive economic impact,” according to the study. After the measures were implemented in 2018 and prior to the widespread downturn in 2020, steel producers in the U.S. outlined plans to invest more than $15.76 billion in new or upgraded steel facilities and to create more than 3,200 new jobs in the country.
There is “no doubt” the trade actions boosted profitability in the U.S. steel sector, increased long-term investment within the space and led to some form of a recovery, according to Robert Scott, an economist who worked on the study. However, the tariffs alone were unable to stop the issue of excess steel production abroad.
“Until we get that problem under control, I don’t think the need for the tariffs is going to go away,” Scott said in an interview. “Other countries aren’t going to be willing to make concessions without really tough international bargaining.”
S&P Global April 16, 2021 -
Since 1938, the minimum wage has been raised more than twenty times, in administrations of both parties. But its purchasing power has meant different things depending on the year. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage hit its peak in 1968 at $12.30 an hour in today’s dollars.
“Obviously, since that time, increases in the federal minimum wage have been either less frequent or just smaller, just inadequate to keep up with the rise in prices,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute told Spectrum News.
That’s led to calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, dubbed the “Fight for $15.” It has unleashed strikes and drawn the support of President Biden.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 16, 2021 -
Both sides turn to the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 to bolster their cases. Proponents say about a fifth of the workforce would get a raise, which would boost their annual pay, on average, more than $3,300.
That hike would particularly benefit Black and Latino workers, who make disproportionately less than others. In all, the legislation would lift 900,000 people out of poverty, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“I take that as a pretty positive outcome – if you’re going to be lifting nearly a million people out of poverty and raising pay for twenty seven million, even if there is some negative impact on jobs in some places,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview with Spectrum News.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 16, 2021 -
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
VOX April 16, 2021 -
Declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to an estimate by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel, said that tying federal contract dollars to union jobs wouldn’t be sufficient for creating a workforce with strong union density.
“It will make a difference, but you absolutely need meaningful labor-law reform, not nibbling around the edges and offering piecemeal” measures, she said. “The system is fundamentally broken and requires fundamental reform.”
Bloomberg April 16, 2021 -
The depth and speed of the current economic downturn was unprecedented, but the longstanding gaps in wealth and wages indicate that Black and brown households will take longer to bounce back, according to Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race and ethnicity.
“In periods of general economic growth, racial disparities in a wide range of poverty indicators have remained constant, suggesting a lack of political will over decades to tackle the root causes. Black and brown households have been hardest hit in every economic crisis, and taken the longest to recover,” said Moore.
The Guardian April 16, 2021 -
A September 2020 study by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that Southern states are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption to stop local governments from implementing worker protections such as raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing paid sick leave.
That stance, the institute wrote, is rooted “in a long history of events and actions that have sought to promote the interests of historically privileged property owners and perpetuate the South’s racist past.”
Julia Wolfe, one of the study’s authors and a state economic analyst at the institute, said these preemption laws seem to be “targeted at preventing action in more progressive cities.”
Stateline April 16, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.
“That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”
But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.
The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.
Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.
McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.
“If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.
90.5 WESA April 16, 2021 -
Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.
“Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”
The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.
Denver Post April 16, 2021 -
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.
Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 16, 2021