You’ve spent twenty plus years loyally working in Information Technology (IT) for Southern California Edison, and eighteen months ago your boss tells you that they are going to study outsourcing but not to worry, “your position is safe.” On the one hand you are worried because you know many stories of American IT workers losing their jobs to outsourcing, but on the other you feel comforted that you’ve been loyal to SCE and provide a critical service. Then eight months ago they tell you that they are outsourcing most IT functions and that they want you, get this, to train your guestworker replacement. If you say no, SCE will terminate you with cause and you would lose not only a severance package but also eligibility for unemployment insurance. This is the common story I heard from many workers at SCE.
The Hill
March 17, 2015
Six hundred liberal economists, including seven Nobel laureates, were red-baited by the Employment Policy Institute, a shady think tank funded by the restaurant industry, in a full-page New York Times advertisement because the letter they sent to President Barack Obama supporting increases in the minimum wage was also signed by eight radical/Marxist economists (including me).
Al Jazeera America
March 17, 2015
The Huffington Post
March 13, 2015
Lawrence Mishel, president at Economic Policy Institute, talks with Betty Liu about small business job openings and the outlook for wage gains in the United States.
Bloomberg TV
March 13, 2015
Just 23.1 percent of unemployed workers received state unemployment benefits at the end of 2014, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank. The rate has hovered beneath 24 percent since 2011 and bottomed out at 22.1 percent in November 2013.
Huffington Post
March 13, 2015
The nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, conducted a study in 2011 on manufacturing job growth in Oklahoma after it passed its right-to-work law in 2001. The study found that manufacturing job growth actually has fallen each year since the law was passed after steady growth the previous 10 years. The total number of manufacturing jobs in the state fell by about a third in the 10 years after the law was enacted.
“This does not mean that right-to-work in itself caused a decline in the state’s manufacturing employment,” the study said. “Rather, it suggests that right-to-work had no positive impact on the manufacturing sector and, in the face of broader forces undermining the sector, right-to-work was simply impotent.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press
March 13, 2015
Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based economic policy research group, noted that wages only rose by 1.6 percent for non-farm production and nonsupervisory employees over the previous year. “Ideally, we would want to see year-over-year nominal wage growth at 3.5 to 4 percent,” she wrote in an economic analysis released Thursday. She said the lack of wage growth, combined with the low labor force participation rate, is an indication the labor market has still not completely recovered from the Great Recession.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
March 13, 2015
“Right-to-work” laws deny unions the money they need to help employees bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits and working conditions. So it’s not surprising that research shows that workers in “right-to-work” states have lower wages and fewer benefits, on average, than workers in other states. Under federal law, no one can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment, and the Supreme Court has made clear that workers can’t be forced to pay dues used for political purposes. Right-to-work goes one step further and entitles employees to the benefits of a union contract — including the right to have the union take up their grievance if their employer abuses them — without paying any of the cost.
This means that if a worker who does not pay a union representation fee is fired, the union must prosecute that worker’s grievance just as it would a dues-paying member’s, even if it costs tens of thousands of dollars. Non-dues-paying workers would also receive the higher wages and benefits their dues-paying coworkers enjoy. Right-to-work laws have nothing to do with whether people can be forced to join a union or contribute to political causes they don’t support; that’s already illegal. The only freedom workers would receive is the ability to get something for nothing.
The New York Times
March 12, 2015
As Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute has shown, real wages fell for virtually every American in 2014, save only the poorest, and presumably least credentialed, workers. Wages for people at the 10th income percentile actually increased by 1.3 percent, chiefly due to minimum-wage increases enacted by cities and states.
The Washington Post
March 12, 2015
Ross Eisenbrey, vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, says GM can increase share prices at the risk of everything else, or take the long view: investing in new equipment and the workforce. He says GM has to balance all of those things against a desire to reward shareholders.
Marketplace
March 12, 2015