Media clips
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The fate of workers who earn tips in New York could have national implications as the conversation around the minimum wage continues at the federal level.
ROC United has campaigned for a higher minimum wage for tipped workers on the federal level. Such an increase would affect millions of American workers. As of 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that some 2.3 million Americans were employed as waiters and waitresses alone–and about 73% of tipped workers are women, according to a 2011 report [PDF] by the Economic Policy Institute.
As the Economic Policy Institute points out, “Many tipped workers are unaware that their tips and hourly wages must add up to at least the minimum wage. At the same time, employers are unlikely to ensure that their workers are paid appropriately—it is up to the employees to know and understand this law.”
MSNBC March 26, 2013 -
It is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated.
Time Magazine March 26, 2013 -
Larry Mishel, of the Economic Policy Institute, makes the case from the left against using the chain-weighted CPI to adjust Social Security benefits for inflation, as President Obama proposes in his latest deficit-reduction plan. It’s simply a way to cut benefits, he says. If the goal is a better inflation measure, then develop one tailored to the elderly’s spending patterns. [EPI]
Wall Street Journal March 26, 2013 -
Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said Obama shoulders part of the blame. Since 2010, he said, Obama has spent too much time focused on the debt, including agreeing to significantly shrink domestic spending as part of his own budget proposals.
“I think they brought it on themselves to the extent that they validated the deficit issue,” Mishel said. “It was always the case that the actual budget policy being pursued contradicted the rhetoric in the campaign. Now it’s even worse.”
The Washington Post March 26, 2013 -
The first paragraph of the commentary posted Wednesday on the website of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank founded by, among others, Clinton-era labor secretary Robert Reich, lays out the thrust of the argument pretty succinctly:
“For more than a year, there has been a high-profile debate over what Apple should do with its enormous cash reserve, now amounting to $137 billion. The proposals have been curiously one-dimensional, with a nearly exclusive focus on how the reserves should be used to reward its shareholders. Almost entirely absent from the discussion has been whether those reserves should also be used to provide fairer compensation to the workers making its products abroad or selling its products here. This imbalance is part and parcel of a larger trend: the share of economic rewards going to workers is diminishing.”
Fortune March 22, 2013 -
A larger backlog of EEOC cases could increase the number of workplace discrimination cases which go directly to court. If a workplace discrimination charge goes unheard by the agency for more than 180 days, complainants can request that a “Notice of Right-to-Sue” be issued automatically. However, those cases could still go unheard thanks to a rash of vacancies in the federal courts.
Some of the cases unheard by the EEOC might not even be submitted to the courts in the first place, said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former OSHA commissioner.
“They’re hard cases to bring, hard cases to prove,” he said. Plus, “most people can’t afford attorneys to do it.” Instead, they rely on government agencies to “help them assert their rights.”
For complaints about health and safety standards, employees don’t even have the option of going to the courts on their own. Instead, all those complaints must go through OSHA. While that agency hopes to avoid serious reductions in its workload capacity due to the sequester, Eisenbrey said that the status quo at the department is already “completely insufficient.”
“The chance of having an OSHA inspection, if you’re an employer, in any given year is close to zero,” he said. He estimated that there were only about 1,000 inspectors in the agency, compared to seven million employers nationwide.
MSNBC March 22, 2013 -
The critics argue, moreover, that companies have exploited the H1-B program to fuel outsourcing, bringing in foreign employees into the U.S. to train them and then sending them back their native countries to run their offshore operations: They point out that the top 10 companies that petitioned for H1-B visas in FY 2012 were all outsourcing giants.
Their preferred course of action is anti-fraud and anti-abuse legislation just introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which would require companies to do more to hire native-born workers, raise wages for foreign-born workers, and make it more difficult to use the program to fuel outsourcing. The underlying message is, “don’t think about expanding the H1-B before examining the problems,” explains Ross Eisenbery, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and a vocal critic of the visa program.
The Washington Post March 22, 2013 -
Many economists say that Republican plans to slash spending would hurt the economy. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed budget would destroy 2 million jobs in 2014 alone if it were implemented, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post March 22, 2013 -
Not surprisingly, liberal economists have jumped on Brooks’s arguments. Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute argues that the economy is still performing so under par — $985 billion below its potential output if all our factories were going full tilt — that it needs a major boost from government-financed economic activity to increase production, employment and consumption. Coincidentally, the day after Brooks’s column was published, Gallup released a poll showing that 72 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, would support a major federally financed infrastructure repair program and a federal program creating 1 million jobs. Nearly 80 years after Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration, it seems the American people would like the government to re-create it.
The Washington Post March 22, 2013 -
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the country’s labor market is in crisis, and it’s projected the unemployment rate will not drop below 6 percent for another four years.
“This is precisely the time that we should provide legal status and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, because it will actually make things better,” she said. “It will actually improve the economy and generate some jobs, so this is a very good time to do it given the economic context.”
Progress Illinois March 21, 2013