The American Prospect
December 6, 2017
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the rule leaves room for employers to keep the tips for themselves, as long as the tipped employees earn a base minimum wage. “This would be a big transfer of money from workers to employers,” said Shierholz, who previously worked for Obama’s Labor Department. “The restaurant industry has wanted this forever. They want to be able to capture tips.”
The Washington Post
December 5, 2017
What’s worse, the proposed change might not even end up benefitting non-tipped workers. As the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz pointed out (emphasis hers): Crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips.
Splinter News
December 5, 2017
Heidi Sheirholz, a former Labor Department economist now with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, argued this change would theoretically allow employers to claim all workers’ tips for themselves. “Crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers,” Sheirholz wrote.
The Washington Examiner
December 5, 2017
In 2017 we know this was so much wishful thinking. Men remain firmly entrenched in power. Those who peddled tales of women’s imminent takeover of the professional world simply ignored or glossed over inconvenient facts. In the United States, female workforce participation peaked around the millennium and then fell. As for the pay gap, it remains alive and well. A survey released earlier this year by the Economic Policy Institute found that women earned, on average, 22 percent less than men per hour when controlled for race, experience, and education. Men earned more than women whether they worked as kindergarten teachers or as metal fabricators. As for those collaborative skills, they weren’t so in demand when their possessors were no longer in the first blush of youth; a 2015 survey published by the National Bureau of Economic Statistics discovered “robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women.”
The Nation
December 5, 2017
But there’s another possible reason that red-state participation is lagging. “[P]art of it is a story of austerity,” said Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. While noting that the advantage blue states showed in the data appeared modest, Bivens said that states adopting cost-cutting measures could have put a damper on economic participation. “Growth in state and local spending has been historically slow since the Great Recession, and this drag from state and local governments is probably the single largest reason why the economy overall took so long to recover,” he said in an email. “I know that this state austerity has been most extreme in red states ([Gov. Sam] Brownback’s [Kansas] being the real exemplar here), and, I would absolutely expect states that did deeper cutting to have their recoveries lag overall averages.”
CBS Moneywatch
December 4, 2017
Most companies aren’t that rich, though. Eighty-six percent of households with pass-through income already pay a top marginal income tax rate of 25 percent or less, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. (House Republicans eventually amended their plan with a complex scheme for a lower effective rate for companies with lower incomes.)
The Huffington Post
December 4, 2017
“The GOP’s use of the term ‘small business’ conjures up images of neighborhood stores run by hardworking Americans carving out a modest living,” said Hunter Blair, an analyst from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in a statement. “None of these households would benefit from the Republican plan.” The wealthiest 1 percent of households already claim 69 percent of pass-through income, the EPI said.
CBS Moneywatch
November 30, 2017
“If you’re not being paid, you’re not considered as an employee, then you’re unfortunately sacrificing your right to not be discriminated against in a gross and disgusting way,” Celine McNicholas, labor counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Bustle. “Recent developments and news coverage have shown how susceptible young women are to this kind of treatment. Unpaid internships compound these problems. Your first experience is one where you don’t have a voice.” (Celine quoted throughout)
Bustle
November 29, 2017
The Washington Post
November 28, 2017