“People think that nonprofit workers don’t need unions — that we don’t fit into the mold,” said Kayla Blado, the president of the all-volunteer NPEU and a staffer at the Economic Policy Institute. “But millennials graduated with high levels of student debt and medical bills, which has helped open people’s eyes that we’re not going to get a ‘middle-class’ lifestyle unless we work for it.”
The Washington Post
February 5, 2020
Some research has found that this increase is partly driven by states increasing their minimum wages. States that raised their minimum wage between 2013 and 2018 saw pay for their lowest-paid workers grow more than 50% faster than those that didn’t, according to an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The trend continued in 2019, said Elise Gould, senior economist at EPI.
“Year after year, we’ve seen states increase their minimum wage, either through indexing [for inflation] or legislation, and we have seen faster wage growth at the bottom in those states that have increased their minimum,” she said.
CBS News
February 5, 2020
“It doesn’t necessarily stop people from engaging in bad behavior, but if a worker knows they are going to have a solid paycheck at the end of the week, regardless of what they receive in tips, it gives them a bit of a power to stand up,” says David Cooper, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that advocates for liberal economic policy. Cooper’s research has found that in states with a universal minimum wage, tipped workers have higher take-home pay, and restaurants still operate successfully. “They may feel more empowered to say no to a manager who may be behaving badly towards them, even if that means they get a bad schedule for next week. It just creates a little more stability for them, so they feel like they don’t have to rely on tips for the bulk of their income.”
The Counter
February 5, 2020
The unemployment rate for African-Americans is the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began reporting it in 1972, but the Economic Policy Institute notes that the rate has been falling since 2011.
NBC 4
February 5, 2020
The president also often touts the black unemployment rate as being historically low. It was 5.4% nationally in the fourth quarter of 2019, but Georgia has lagged in spreading the gains as much to its black residents – according to the Economic Policy Institute, black unemployment in Georgia in the third quarter of 2019 was 6.1%.
11 Alive
February 5, 2020
Trump frequently claims that his presidency has been a boon for black workers, whose unemployment rate is at an all-time low. But as the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute points out, that doesn’t tell the whole story, because black workers are still twice as likely as their white counterparts to be without jobs, a disparity that persists throughout all education levels.
NBC News
February 5, 2020
Around the same time, the Economic Policy Institute wrote: “African American and Hispanic children continued to face the highest poverty rates—28.5% of African Americans and 23.7% of Hispanics under age 18 lived below the poverty level in 2018.” Not mentioned was the steeper decline since 2013 for children in these categories compared to White children.
American Enterprise Institute
February 5, 2020
Domestic workers are mostly female immigrants, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
Bainbridge Island Review
February 5, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C. found a four-person household must make more than $7,000 a month. Someone living on their own needs to make more than $3,000 a month.
13 News Now
February 5, 2020
It would also prohibit mandatory-arbitration rules that prevent workers from participating in class-action litigation, let individual workers sue for harm caused by labor-law violations or unfair labor practices, and expand penalties for those violations, including interference with the National Labor Relations Board or causing serious economic harm to an employee. The Economic Policy Institute estimated last December that workers are fired or illegally penalized in almost 30 percent of unionization elections. Workers fired could ask the NLRB to issue an injunction reinstating them, instead of having to wait years for a court decision.
LaborPress.org
February 5, 2020