According to the Economic Policy Institute, when workers try to organize unions, 75 percent of employers hire union-busting consultants, 47 percent threaten to cut employee pay or benefits, 57 percent threaten to shut down, and 90 percent hold mandatory “captive audience” meetings to propagate anti-union messages.
Inequality.org
May 31, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute has reported that most U.S. workers saw little or no benefit from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And some middle-class taxpayers in blue states, after losing valuable deductions, complained that their taxes had increased thanks to the Republican tax law.
AlterNet
May 31, 2019
Helping individuals plan and save for retirement is a specialty of many financial planners. Saving for retirement might be hard to imagine for individuals who are financially stretched with the expenses of caring for elderly parents and supporting grown children. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average retirement savings for the families of people in their 50s was $124,831 in 2018. For the families of people ages 56 to 61, it was $163,577. Unfortunately, these numbers are nowhere near the amount that will be needed to retire comfortably at the current cost of living.
Church Executive
May 31, 2019
At the same time, people of color are becoming an ever-larger part of the workplace: according to the Economic Policy Institute, they will comprise the majority of U.S. workers by 2032.3 To help create spaces for black college students to gain exposure to the technology industry, JPMorgan Chase has partnered with universities and organizations—including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)—to sponsor hackathons and promote volunteerism. Part of Tech for Social Good, a JPMorgan Chase initiative, these hackathon events are an opportunity to expose students to how they can use technology to solve social good challenges. It’s also a chance for employees to use their expertise to help the next generation of diverse workers develop the skills they need to join the technology workforce.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
May 31, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that up to 20 percent of businesses are misclassifying at least one contractor who should be considered an employee. The potential liabilities could be huge, including back pay for overtime and penalties in the tens of thousands of dollars per employee.
Inc.
May 31, 2019
The U.S. wireless industry’s HHI would increase from approximately 2,800 to over 3,200 if the merger were to go through, according to an analysis by the Communications Workers of America (via the Economic Policy Institute) six months ago. That’s even higher than the 3,100 HHI that the DOJ estimated would have resulted from AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile back in 2011.
The Motley Fool
May 31, 2019
The net effect on jobs does not seem to lend support to Hawking and Musk’s gloomy predictions. This is even more true if one considers another beneficial effect of technological change: everyday objects like dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, washers, and dryers, reduced the burden of housekeeping and freed up time for women to seek employment. Indeed, the labor force participation rate was 67% in 2000, compared to 59% in 1948. The increases in labor productivity brought about by technological change spill over into higher wages for workers: in a 2015 report, Economic Policy Institute economists Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel have documented that the average hourly compensation for the typical American worker in 2014 grew by about 110% relative to 1948.
Phys.org
May 31, 2019
In other words, inequality has local officials coming and going. The ranks of the homeless are growing because almost all the gains from America’s growing economy, as the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould testified to Congress this past March, are “going to households at the top.”
May 31, 2019
The states with much higher thresholds for the top 1% of earners tend to either have major economic hubs or multiple resort towns. 24/7 Wall St. spoke with Mark Price, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank. Price explained how jobs in the higher-paying finance and insurance sectors, for example, tend to cluster in large metropolitan areas with large labor pools.” Those places that the high-income earners are more likely to work at are concentrated in a place like New York,” Price said. The same is true of high-paying tech industry jobs.
24/7 Wall St.
May 31, 2019
This week on CounterSpin: Quaint as it may sound, the idea is still operative for many people that if you work, you earn wages and fair treatment. We can’t seem to shake the storyline that employers, graciously, offer this, and workers should, gratefully, accept it. But a new report outlines just how tilted the workplace balance of power has become in this country, and what we need to do to restore workers’ voice and power at work. Titled Unchecked Corporate Power: Forced Arbitration, the Enforcement Crisis and How Workers Are Fighting Back, the report comes from the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute. We’ll speak with one of the authors, EPI director of government affairs and labor counsel Celine McNicholas.
CounterSpin Celine McNicholas Interview DOWNLOAD MP3
FAIR
May 31, 2019