The raise, however, only applies to employees of the actual restaurant. The 750,000 workers employed by franchises, which make up 90 percent of McDonald’s restaurants, are not included in this wage hike. “The fact that a $1.00 raise for 90,000 workers is headline news is evidence of how low the bar has been set,” the Economic Policy Institute noted in a statement. “All workers should receive regular wage increases as productivity rises, and yet despite rising productivity, Americans’ wages have been stagnant for three-and-a-half decades.”
Mother Jones
April 2, 2015
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, said the fact a $1 raise for 90,000 workers is headline news is evidence of how low the bar has been set. “All workers should receive regular wage increases as productivity rises, and yet despite rising productivity, Americans’ wages have been stagnant for three-and-a-half decades.”
The Hill
April 2, 2015
The Washington Post
April 1, 2015
Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968. Research from the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute shows that the chief executive-to-worker compensation ratio in 1965 was 20-to-1.
The Washington Post
April 1, 2015
The skill and education of immigrants with H-1Bs do not insulate them from criticism. Ross Eisenbrey, a lawyer at the left-wing Economic Policy Institute, complained that such skilled immigrants supposedly hurt Americans. He claimed that skilled migrants cause a “genius glut” that pushes down the job opportunities for Americans. Eisenbrey does get one thing right in his polemic against skilled immigrants: There is no shortage of skilled workers. But that doesn’t mean America can’t use them.
The Hill
April 1, 2015
Ross Eisenbrey warns that communities would get what they pay for. He’s vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. “The union labor that often is the higher cost labor is much better quality. The people who do the work are journeymen who’ve been through apprenticeship programs, and they’re just more skilled and more productive and more efficient. So at the end of the day, what is saved in an hourly rate calculation is lost. It takes more hours for the less skilled person to do the work,” Eisenbrey says.
Eisenbrey adds that lower wages don’t mean taxpayers would see savings. He says it’s not unfathomable to think that a company might just collect a bigger profit.
Milwaukee Public Radio
April 1, 2015
Wage stagnation is an old story, of course, having been around for about 35 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. It reported last year that hourly wages of the vast majority of Americans have either stagnated or declined since 1979 — the late 1990s being a brief exception — even as the economy surged.
Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2015
The repositioning of candidate Clinton has already begun. One of the fascinating indicators is a report of a commission on inclusive prosperity organized and released in January by the Center for American Progress. The report, co-authored by Larry Summers (!), sounds more like something Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute or Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz might have written.
Huffington Post
March 30, 2015
“A do-it-yourself retirement system isn’t any more feasible than a do-it-yourself health-care system,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute specializing in retirement security. “People need to be guided.”
CNBC
March 30, 2015