Media clips
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“Every country wants to have its own steel industry,” she explained. “What’s different is that China is completely off the charts” in terms of subsidies, from tax breaks, to cheap land, to below-market electricity to low-interest generous loans from state-owned (government-owned banks). Economic Policy Institute trade specialist Robert Scott added the biggest subsidy is currency manipulation. Tariffs do little against those myriad subsidies, and Scott noted Trump’s Treasury Department, three days before, issued a congressionally mandated report about currency manipulators – and didn’t name China. He also said while China may be the biggest steel dumper, it’s not the only one. Korea and Japan are in the game, too. Still, when the U.S. let China into the World Trade Organization in 2000 – over labor’s strong objections and lobbying – China was producing 100 million tons of steel a year. Now, it’s 1.6 billion tons “and Korea and Japan are willing to take those dumped, subs-idized products” – China’s steel – “and ship them in manufactured products, like cars, to us.”
Press Associates Union News Service April 26, 2018 -
The distinction is not merely an issue of semantics, but one of rights, better wages, and improved working conditions. According to a January 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute, graduate teaching assistants have taken on heavier workloads, have more responsibility when it comes to teaching and grading, and assume much of the research that ends up winning the universities grants and prestige. “And yet the pay they receive rarely rises to the level of a living wage,” the report stated. The EPI report found that between 2005 and 2015, the rise in graduate assistant and non-tenure-track faculty jobs surpassed that of tenured and tenure-track jobs, with the former currently making up approximately 73 percent of the academic workforce. “The simple explanation for this increasing reliance on graduate and non-tenure-track faculty is that they are far less costly to employ,” the report reads.
Think Progress April 25, 2018 -
Even before the SEC passed this new law, the fact of CEOs’ staggering paychecks (and payouts) has been well known (and much maligned) for quite some time. Last year, an Economic Policy Institute study found that the pay gap between CEOs and their employees has grown six times as large as it was three decades ago and that today CEOs make about 271 times more than their employees. While the EPI noted that the CEO-worker pay gap peaked in 2000, when CEOs made 376 times more than the average employee, the ratio wasn’t always this alarming. In 1964, for example, CEOs made 20 times more than an average employee, and in 1989, they made 59 times as much. (EPI cited throughout)
Racked April 25, 2018 -
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, found that mandatory arbitration is most common in low-wage workplaces and in industries with a high number of women workers. EPI found that last year 56 percent of private-sector nonunion workers in the U.S. — about 60 million people — were subject to mandatory arbitration in employment contracts. The agreements bar access to the courts for all types of legal claims, including those based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. “The practice is especially widespread in California,” said EPI attorney Marni von Wilpert. “This means that, when a worker is paid less than she is owed, is fired for being pregnant, or is underpaid because of her race, she cannot have her claim heard in a court of law. Instead, she is locked into a private arbitration process that favors the employer.” “Arbitration is a highly effective dispute resolution method when both parties chose it freely,” she said. “It is far less successful when the more powerful party forces the other to accept the terms.
The Orange County Register April 24, 2018 -
Colorado teachers were among the lowest paid in the country in the 2016-2017 school year, making an average of $46,506, a 15 percent drop from the 1999-2000 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Educators there get paid worse than their peers who aren’t teachers, earning just 65 cents for every dollar other college graduates make, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In Arizona, where educators are expected to participate in a walkout on Thursday, that number is 63 cents.
Mother Jones April 24, 2018 -
Amazon’s median pay trails all 10 companies in S&P Global rankings in the transportation industry, including several railroad and airline companies. The company’s “enormous market advantage” doesn’t appear to be translating into more pay for the median warehouse worker, said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
The Wall Street Journal April 23, 2018 -
Companies can’t bar employees from reporting complaints to the EEOC, which investigates and makes a determination about whether there’s enough to proceed with a court case. But many employers have required employees to sign away their right to file a civil suit. According to research by the Economic Policy Institute, more than half of U.S. companies now require employees to settle disputes of all kinds, including sexual harassment, through arbitration, where it remains behind closed doors.
Bloomberg April 23, 2018 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in 2017, there were 262,000 new union members in the United States. Seventy-five percent of this increase came from young people (which EPI considers those aged 34 and under, but for the purposes of this article, broadly refers to the older subset of Generation Z and most Millennials, ages 16 to 35). Young people also hold the most favorable attitudes towards labor of any generation, and their support for political parties skews heavily towards those that support pro-worker policies (like standing against “right-to-work” laws), including the Democrats and, increasingly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Talk Poverty April 23, 2018 -
While the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has remained unchanged since 2009, 21 states have changed their minimum wage laws since January 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, 41 localities have adopted minimum wages above their state minimum wage. The biggest argument against increasing the minimum wage is that it will hurt the economy and result in fewer jobs. But according to a new EPI paper, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of minimum wage hikes should focus on costs and benefits for low-wage employees, not job loss. (whole story)
MultiBriefs April 20, 2018 -
RETHINKING THE WAGE FRAME: When people evaluate minimum wage increases, they should take the benefits of raising the earnings of low-wage workers into account, according to a report released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Focusing on job losses ignores the high degree of churn in the low-wage labor market, giving the misleading impression that a given pool of workers would lose their jobs and have no earnings over an entire year,” according to EPI. Dig through the findings here.
Politico Pro April 19, 2018