The Harris campaign seems to tout Biden’s record as a pro-union president to justify the labor movement’s draw to Harris, and Celine McNicholas, policy director at nonpartisan research organization Economic Policy Institute Action, agrees.
“There are parts of the Biden administration… (his) record on benefiting workers that I think Harris deserves unique credit on, because she was essentially the tie-breaking vote,” said McNicholas said.
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Project 2025, though not part of Trump’s official agenda, also paints a bleak future for the labor movement McNicholas said, calling it an “anti-union,” and “anti-worker” document.
“I think it is a fundamental misunderstanding of organized labor,” she said. “I think it harkens back to a time when labor was synonymous with white men, and that is far from the modern labor movement.”
The USA Today
September 3, 2024
Valerie Wilson, a labor economist with EPI Action, said that while increasing the housing supply is an important step in addressing the country’s housing issues, building 3 million homes and rentals is an “ambitious goal.” But she believes it is “worth pursuing,” adding that it’s more likely to come to fruition if Democrats gain a numbers advantage in both houses of Congress.
Wilson said Harris’ plan to offer $25,000 on a house down payment for first-time buyers could be a tactic used to help bridge the gap in homeownership between Black and white Americans.
“That down payment is often a major barrier for a number of first-time Black homeowners, because there is less generational wealth and they are less likely to be in a position where parents can provide that down payment support or even purchase a first home for you,” said Wilson.
Capital B
September 3, 2024
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, Americans without college degrees have lost nearly $2,000 a year in wages owing to trade with low-wage countries, even after accounting for cheaper consumer goods.
New York Times
September 3, 2024
Raising the lowest wage does give a group of earners a little more money, where higher earners likely see little to no impact, said Ben Zipperer, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The lowest earners include a disproportionate number of women and people of color.
“If we do not raise the minimum wage, those are the people that continue to face the consequences of wage inequality,” Zipperer said. “When you raise the minimum wage, economic research does show that it reduces the number of people in poverty. That is both an important motivation and also an important consequence of a higher minimum wage.”
Colorado Sun
September 3, 2024
“The New Jersey lawsuit is primarily about overtime pay for farmworkers. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act exempts farmworkers from overtime pay (i.e., time and a half for hours worked over 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week),” said Daniel Costa, research director at the Economic Policy Institute.
The researcher says that only a small group of states have enacted state laws for overtime pay for agricultural workers, most notably California and, more recently, New York. “In both states, they are being phased in over a number of years until they reach the regular threshold enjoyed by workers in other sectors,” he says.
Telemundo
September 3, 2024
If working from home was a benefit that mostly went to higher-paid workers, the pay increases disproportionately went to those at the bottom, reversing the pattern that had been in place for more than four decades. An analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that wages for workers in the bottom 10% of the wage distribution increased by 13.4% from before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation.
Duluth News Tribune
September 3, 2024
CEO pay has soared in recent decades compared to typical workers’ pay. From 1978 to 2022, CEO pay increased by 1,209.2% compared to just a 15.3% increase in median worker compensation, according to a 2023 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
September 3, 2024
…highest unemployment rates. Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank tackling inequalities in the…[Paywall].
Chicago Tribune
September 3, 2024
Many of these states are also right-to-work states, meaning that they have laws on the books that prevent workers from being required to join unions as a job requirement or paying agency fees for representation. Workers in such states are paid 3.2% less than similar workers in states without right-to-work laws, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Quartz
September 3, 2024
Wage theft, by contrast, is a massive crime: A 2014 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft “costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year.” It deserves massive attention.
New Republic
September 3, 2024