Media clips

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• Not much winning in this legislative session

   A report from the Economic Policy Institute estimates Kentucky could see 16.3% unemployment by July.

  April 9, 2020
• Oakland unhoused and homeless advocates town hall & speak out in the age of Covid19

  Homeless residents and housed Black Oaklanders already have higher rates of chronic health conditions, inequity in access to health care and housing, and worse health outcomes, and must be prioritized in an effective and just public response to the pandemic. They face a higher risk of exposure to the virus, mostly on account of concentrating in urban areas and working in essential industries. Only 20% of black workers reported being eligible to work from home, compared with about 30% of their white counterparts, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Indybay April 9, 2020
• Coronavirus recovery can’t lead to a more gentrified Seattle

  For Babayan, who along with her colleagues has called on Washington state to enact a fairer tax code, the data is unsurprising and distressing. Not only does it highlight that the working class is at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus, but so too are many in communities of color. She cites an Economic Policy Institute study showing that fewer than one in five Black workers, and one in six Latinx workers, can work from home. And while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to release the demographics of coronavirus patients, data from Illinois, North Carolina and Milwaukee County show the virus is battering Black communities the hardest.

  Crosscut April 9, 2020
• Pandemic creates ‘devastating’ job losses for already vulnerable domestic workers

  “I was also out of food,” Melissa, a 38-year-old home health aide from South Florida, said on a phone press conference organized by NDWA and the Economic Policy Institute [EPI].

  Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to both infection and layoffs because “they work with people,” said EPI state policy analyst Julia Wolfe.

  The 2.25 million workers who clean houses and take care of children, the elderly and disabled are overwhelmingly female—more than 90-percent, according to EPI figures. More than 95-percent of the about 340,000 house cleaners and 500,000 nannies and home childcare workers are women, and more than 85-percent of the 1.4 million home health aides are.

  It’s also an overwhelmingly low-wage job. The median income is $10.21 an hour, according to EPI. That also doesn’t count that many of New York’s 199,000 home health aides—the 190,000 who work through agencies are the most of any state—make less than minimum wage because they work 24-hour shifts, but only get paid for 13 hours. That’s all thanks to the state government’s legal fiction that home health aides don’t have to work during the other 11 hours spent in the client’s home.

  April 9, 2020
• Pandemic Updates From New York & Beyond
  • African Americans face a higher risk of exposure to the virus, mostly on account of concentrating in urban areas and working in essential industries. Only 20% of black workers reported being eligible to work from home, compared with about 30% of their white counterparts, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Experts also point to initial research showing a high prevalence of Covid-19 among those suffering from obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes – risk factors more common among black Americans. The virus is known to take a harsher toll on those with underlying health issues, and many hospitals are only testing those admitted for critical care, Washington Post explained
  April 9, 2020
• Progressive experts rebut Trump’s false claims about shared prosperity

  Trump is to blame for much of the economic hardship faced by working families, says Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute. She rattled off a list of examples of harmful Trump policies, including rolling back overtime protections and workplace safety protections, weakening protections that keep franchise employees from being cheated out of their earnings, and making it harder for workers to join together to improve their wages and working conditions.

  Good Men Project April 9, 2020
• Voters disapprove of Republican policy to keep health insurance Exchanges Closed

  The decision has implications for large swaths of the country, as a recent Economic Policy Institute report found an estimated 3.5 million Americans likely lost their employer-provided health insurance in recent weeks. Nearly two-thirds of states rely on the federal health insurance marketplace, including much of red-state America, while six others use the federal platform, which controls eligibility and enrollment functions, to administer their own marketplace, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

  April 9, 2020
• Not safe for work

  And it comes the same day as the Economic Policy Institute released a new report warning that many of the nation’s 2.2 million domestic workers are experiencing a “devastating loss of income.” More than half of those surveyed by the National Domestic Workers Alliance had no job for the week of March 30, and that figure rose to 68% the following week, according to the study.

  Many of those still on the job are risking their health because they don’t have adequate protective equipment, even though they are helping families follow guidelines to prevent the spread of coronavirus and are caring for the sick, elderly and disabled, the EPI report says.

  SN&R Extra April 9, 2020
• In Las Vegas, the Coronavirus Odds Are Not in Our Favor

  About 206,000 of Nevada’s casino workers have been affected by the mandatory closings. The week after the shutdown, Nevadans set a record for the most unemployment claims in the state’s history: over 92,000. The Economic Policy Institute predicts that our unemployment rate will be 19.7 percent by summer.

  April 9, 2020
• April 9, 2020