Josh Bivens of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute argues, trade deals like these will drive down wages, since they rely on boosting America’s capital-intensive sectors at the expensive of labor intensive ones. Economists would expect an increase in higher-paying white-collar and creative work, but perhaps not enough to balance out negative pressure on manufacturing and other tradable sectors.
Quartz
April 21, 2015
The Washington Post
April 20, 2015
For one, women-owned businesses make only about 25 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn. That’s a much larger gap than the one that exists in the overall labor market, where the median earnings of women were about 83 percent of men’s, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
April 17, 2015
The leaked drafts describe a tribunals system called Investor-state Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that would allow corporate interests to sue countries over an alarming range of actions intended to defend the public interest. ISDS represents a warped version of a basically reasonable idea, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens. Traditional trade tribunals are meant to protect foreign businesspeople from having their investments in a country snapped up by soldiers and nationalized. “If a US corporation opens a big production facility somewhere else you don’t want foreign governments to just come in and take it from them,” Bivens said.
But the ISDS system used in modern trade deals goes far beyond protecting investors from forceful expropriation of their factories. It allows corporations to punish countries for things like environmental regulations and work safety laws. “Corporations have been known to bring suit based on, ‘You have passed a regulation that I did not expect when I opened this factory, so my return is lower than I expected,’” Bivens said.
Think Progress
April 17, 2015
This week, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will reportedly introduce “fast track” (trade promotion authority) legislation in the Senate, to help President Obama complete the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment deal with 11 other countries in Asia and the Americas. “Fast Track” authority would allow the president to submit trade agreements to Congress without giving members of Congress the opportunity to amend the deal. Experience has shown that these trade and investment deals typically result in job losses and downward pressure on the wages of most American workers. The last thing America needs is renewal of fast track and more trade and investment deals rushed through Congress.
Moyers & Company
April 17, 2015
Unbalanced trade leads to more job loss. As the Economic Policy Institute recently surmised, increased trade deficits push jobs out of better-paying industries. And at a time when income inequality is running rampant in the U.S., workers don’t need even more “free” trade agreements that will further strip this nation’s economy of middle-income jobs. Enough is enough!
The Huffington Post
April 17, 2015
Simply raising the hourly minimum in line with wage and price inflation would put it at about $11 today; adjusting it for productivity growth would put it at about $18.
The New York Times
April 17, 2015
Big employers, cutting back on full-coverage health care as Obamacare’s ‘Cadillac Tax’ begins to bite.
NPR
April 16, 2015
According to a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, this is life for about 17 percent of the labor force. So called “just-in-time scheduling” is far more common for those who work for hourly wages or are part-time employees, or both. Part-time workers—more than six million Americans—are more than twice as likely to have unpredictable hours than full-time employees.
The Atlantic
April 16, 2015
That language struck a chord with members of the alliance. As part of a new five-year plan, the organization is urging donors to contribute to an expanded suite of advocacy groups and think tanks devoted to economic inequality including Americans for Financial Reform, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
The Washington Post
April 16, 2015