Tipping is a complex issue. Nina Mast, an economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, sees tips as a modern tool of racist oppression in the South. “Tipped workers are more likely to be people of color, women, women of color or single parents, and are disproportionately born outside of the U.S.,” she wrote in a paper published last year.
Tipped workers experience high rates of poverty and are vulnerable to wage theft and sexual harassment, she added. “The South has the largest tipped workforce of any region. Tipped workers in the South are paid the second-lowest median wage of any region, and most Southern states allow employers to pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour,” she wrote.
MarketWatch
June 9, 2025
Over the years, raids at farms, meatpacking plants and construction sites have grabbed headlines, but employers have seldom faced severe consequences. Many subcontract to avoid liability, and managers have long asserted that it is difficult to identify fake documents.
“They have plausible deniability for just about any hires,” said Daniel Costa, an immigration labor expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “The system was kind of rigged against workers and in favor of employers from the beginning.”
New York Times
June 9, 2025
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute points out that between 5.2 million to 7.8 million workers already suffer work-related injuries and illnesses each year, a number that is likely to rise under the Trump administration.
…
“The bad news is we are facing a national workers’ rights crisis, fueled by Trump administration attacks on long-standing worker health and safety protections and OSHA enforcement capacity, all while climate change is intensifying risks of deadly exposures to extreme heat in indoor and outdoor workplaces across the country,” the report’s coauthor, Jennifer Sherer, told Truthout.
“The good news is that states don’t need to wait to act, and can craft strong, effective heat standard policies that draw on decades of research and evidence-based best practices for preventing workplace deaths and boosting productivity,” she added.
Truthout
June 9, 2025
Six Nobel prize-winning economists said as much Monday in an open letter published on the Economic Policy Institute website.
“The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits,” they wrote. “The Medicaid cuts constitute a sad step backward in the nation’s commitment to providing access to health care for all.”
Word in Black
June 9, 2025
Things have changed. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the pay penalty for teaching is now more than 26 percent. Male teachers are sacrificing more than a third of their earning potential by choosing teaching.
The News-Press
June 9, 2025
But just because jobs are open does not mean they are being filled, according to Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think that reflects some cautiousness on the part of both employers and workers,” Gould told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera English
June 9, 2025
Ralph welcomes Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, to break down the budget bill passing through Congress that is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working-class to the wealthy in United States history.
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
June 9, 2025
Oklahoma’s minimum wage remains at $7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2008 and equal to the federal minimum wage, according to Square’s wage analysis. Meanwhile, a living wage for a single adult in Oklahoma City is $15.86 per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute study cited by Workstream.
Journal Record
June 9, 2025
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the Trump budget bill allocates $185 billion for its mass deportation scheme, which means that Trump, the defender of the working man, wants to spend 80 times more on immigration enforcement than labor standards enforcement.
Counterpunch
June 9, 2025