Chances are if you’re reading this article and you work for a private company, you probably signed one too (check our interactive tool below to see if your employer has one). About half of non-unionized workers at US companies are subject to these agreements — more than double the share in the early 2000s. America’s most well-known companies, including Walmart, Starbucks, Macy’s, Uber, Google, and McDonald’s, now require all their workers, or some of them, to sign them. (Full disclosure: Vox Media does too.) The rise of mandatory arbitration has made it nearly impossible for workers to seek legal justice for wage theft, overtime violations, and job discrimination. This secretive system also has the potential to hamper the #MeToo movement. Women are coming forward, often for the first time, with stories of widespread sexual harassment at work, only to discover that they’ve been shut out of the court system because they signed an arbitration agreement. The practice is particularly harmful to women and black employees, as they are more likely to be subjected to arbitration agreements because they make up a large share of workers in the industries that require arbitration the most: education and health care.
VOX
August 3, 2018
We already let you in on how much the top 1 percent earn, but the top 0.01 percent of U.S. earners are in an entirely different league. According to a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, to be in the top 0.01 percent nationally, a family needs an annual income of $9.77 million. And that number just represents the threshold — the average income of this elite group nationwide is $32.32 million. Read on to see just how much money the 1 percent of the 1 percent make a year in each U.S. state.
CNBC
August 3, 2018
Income and wealth inequality are at extraordinary levels. A study by the Economic Policy Institute—called “The New Gilded Age”—shows that income inequality is at levels not seen in the United States since the Great Depression of 1928. The costs of that inequality are borne on the backs of the working class—people who struggle with debt at every turn. Merely a third of Americans have enough money saved for a $1,000 emergency room visit or for the repair of their car. Boots gets under the skin of that debt. It frames his film. It—in the absence of worker power—constrains the imagination, forces ethics to go out of the window, strains the basic bonds of human fellowship.
AlterNet
August 3, 2018
Doesn’t everyone want to be in the “one percent” club? It’s becoming more exclusive: 82 percent of the global wealth generated last year went to just one percent of the world’s population. According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, the top one percent of families living in the Evansville metro area had an average income of $891,861.
Evansville Courier & Press
August 3, 2018
Between 2009 and 2015, 81 percent of Nevada income growth was captured by the top 1 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In its report on The New Gilded Age released last month, EPI found that income for the top 1 percent in Nevada was 33 times that of the average earned by the 99 percent. Only in three states (New York, Connecticut and Florida) was wealth more concentrated at the top.
The Nevada Current
August 3, 2018
Some tipped workers make 71% less than the federal minimum wage and are twice as likely to live in poverty than untipped workers, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. They are also more likely to experiences hostile behavior or sexual harassment on the job, a separate 2015 study published by the Canadian Journal of Law and Society found.
Market Watch
August 2, 2018
As the U.S. House and Senate try to hammer out a final version of the Farm Bill, a new report shows that increasing work requirements for people receiving SNAP benefits, the program formerly known as food stamps, would end up hurting millions of Americans. Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute and the report’s lead author, said the move proposed in the House version of the bill would not increase employment levels, and additional requirements would be especially hard on people working in low-paying jobs. (whole story)
Public News Service
August 2, 2018
Recent reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) lay out the realities of low-wage work. The reports complement each other: The CBPP report, by economists Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Kristen Butcher, looks at the typical person who will be affected by policies that aim to strip people of benefits and what their jobs are like, and the EPI report, by Josh Bivens, director of research at EPI and Shawn Fremstad, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, further explains the likely outcomes of the work requirement proposals given the current labor market. (EPI cited throughout)
The American Prospect
August 2, 2018
Las legislaturas de algunos estados y el propio Congreso están debatiendo expandir las verificaciones de horas de trabajo para conceder beneficios de cupones de comida y Medicaid. Todo ello llega mientras muchas personas no trabajan a tiempo completo por falta de posibilidad, lo hacen con horarios erráticos en muchas industrias y por un salario mínimo que a nivel federal está atascado desde 2009 en $7.25 la hora y deja a muchas familias muy por debajo del umbral de la pobreza. Los economistas de los institutos de opinión más progresistas, como Economic Policy Institute, creen que comprometer la red social básica de muchas familias no solo va a causar más hambre y peor atención de salud sino que además no va a hacer gran cosa por rebajar el desempleo. La mayoría de los receptores de estas ayudas trabajan pero aún así son pobres. (whole story)
La Opinion
August 2, 2018
The analysts at the Economic Policy Institute have hit on something here, in their new analysis on proposals to impose work requirements on programs like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP, or food stamps): We find that the tests proposed are excessively rigid and seem designed to maximize failure rather than to help working-class people succeed. (whole story)
Daily Kos
August 2, 2018