Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, said their analysis found black Missourians would be disproportionately impacted by the law.
Missouri News Service
May 29, 2018
When the Economic Policy Institute looked at 10 major cities — including Chicago, Tampa, Detroit, Kansas City, and San Francisco — the costs of child care were over 10 percent of median family income in every single one. The Department of Health and Human Services identifies 10 percent as the cutoff for affordability.
The Week
May 29, 2018
“His trade policy is erratic, ham-handed and ego-driven,” said Thea Lee, the president of the Economic Policy Institute and the former chief economist for the AFL-CIO. “He cannot articulate, let alone implement, a coherent strategy.” But Lee warns, “What we shouldn’t do is fall into the trap of saying, ‘Because Trump’s a jerk … and he hates trade, therefore trade must be good and we can go back to our kind of comfort blanket of saying, therefore let’s just rally around [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] or NAFTA and try to recreate that failed trade consensus around the old trade policy.’ That won’t work.” Labor leaders agree with Trump that the U.S. economic relationship with China is enormously lopsided – a $375 billion trade deficit – and that currency misalignment and predatory pricing policies only inflame the wealth gap at home. But they also admire his willingness to pick a fight. “The other thing that Trump’s right about is that leverage works,” Lee said. “You see that now that the Chinese did come to the table. Now they walked away from the table because Trump got bored and got bribed. … I dunno, he lost interest in the deal halfway through. But what he did show is what we’ve been saying for a long time, what we in labor have been saying: … We have leverage in that relationship, we need to use it.”
U.S. News and World Report
May 25, 2018
About 60 million workers in this country, according to a study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, are subject to mandatory arbitration agreements with their employers, which require employees to agree to pursue their claims in private arbitration rather than through the courts. The court’s decision this week means employees who sign those agreements must fight alleged violations individually, rather than as a group. The ruling was in response to three consolidated cases about wage issues, but comes amid increasing claims of sexual harassment during the #MeToo era.
The Washington Post
May 25, 2018
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that some 60 million non-unionized workers in the private sector are working – whether they realize it or not – under fine-print agreements that waive their constitutional right to a jury trial should they end up being the victims of workplace abuse.
THE SACRAMENTO BEE
May 25, 2018
New unemployment numbers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), based on Black unemployment data available for 22 states, show that states like South Carolina and Maryland have an especially large gap between unemployment rates among Black and white workers, while Washington, D.C., has the largest Black-white unemployment ratio of 8.5-to-1. Black unemployment in the first quarter of 2018 was at or below pre-recession levels in 17 states, according to EPI. But in all but three of those states, “black labor force participation rates … were lower in the first quarter of 2018 than at the end of 2007, indicating that the return to pre-recession levels of unemployment in these states was not a full recovery for African American workers because not all discouraged job seekers have returned to the market,” EPI reports. (whole story, Janelle quoted)
Rewire
May 25, 2018
GARCIA: Liz cites a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute which found that time theft violations for minimum wage workers totaled more than $15 billion a year.
VANEK SMITH: And the report found nearly a fifth of low-wage workers are experiencing a pretty extreme impact of time theft. The report said these workers were losing about a quarter of their weekly earnings to wage theft.
NPR
May 25, 2018
The gig economy relies upon independent contractors, workers who are not company employees. Rather, the former are self-employed workers with a contractual arrangement to a firm. Uber, the app-based ride-hailing firm, tops the gig economy, with 833,000 driver participants during a year, according to Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
MultiBriefs
May 25, 2018
For a while there a couple of years ago, it appeared as though we should all be considering giving up our day jobs and turning to the gig economy, where we could work as much or as little as we wanted and still be happy. Most people did not take advantage of the deal. While it did get its allotted 15 minutes of fame, the gig economy simply has not made much difference to overall U.S. employment. Economist Laurence Michel published a study last week focused on ride-sharing service Uber that looked at what the company’s drivers earn and just how important to the overall economy the gig economy might be. (whole story)
24/7 Wall St.
May 25, 2018
TERRI GERSTEIN: Well, the Economic Policy Institute recently did a study that showed that around—over 50 percent, around 53 percent, of the nation’s workers, among non-union, private-sector employers, were covered by mandatory arbitration. And of those, 30 percent had class-action waivers.
Democracy Now!
May 24, 2018