Progressive legal group Democracy Forward is sending two separate letters to Trump’s Cabinet picks calling for them to enforce the Biden administration’s overtime and independent contractor rules.
“If the Trump administration breaks its promise to working Americans and chooses not to fully defend the rule, we will,” the group wrote. “One or more of our clients or their members will seek to intervene to defend the rule and protect the interests of American workers.”
The letters, sent to Pam Bondi and Chavez-DeRemer, who are being vetted to lead the Justice Department and Labor Department respectively, were sent on behalf of the Service Employees International Union, National Employment Law Project, Economic Policy Institute, and Restaurant Opportunity Centers United.
Politico Morning Shift
January 28, 2025
From Dr. Josh Bivens: Pausing Federal Grants Is Reckless and Could Cause a Steep Recession
The short-run impacts of a federal grant freeze are dire and the questions they raise should make it obvious how gratuitously reckless this idea is. Will rural hospitals get Medicaid reimbursements for the services they provide? Will nursing homes receive payments for care they’re providing to elders? Will schools bounce checks and be charged late fees because Title I grants that finance ongoing operations are disrupted?
The long-term consequences would be catastrophic. They would be guaranteed to cause a steep recession—the Federal government gives $1 trillion in grants to state and local governments alone, sucking any significant portion out of the economy would represent a huge economic shock—and the valuable work done across governments could be fatally compromised.
Newsweek
January 28, 2025
After nominees for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet this week endorsed work requirements for social safety net programs, an economic think tank released a Friday report detailing the policy’s drawbacks.
“Work requirements for safety net programs are a punitive solution that solves no real problem,” said Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist and report author Hilary Wething in a statement about her new publication.
“They do not reliably increase employment, but they do kick people off essential benefits like food assistance and healthcare,” she stressed. “If policymakers are genuinely concerned about improving access to work, they should support policies like affordable child- and eldercare.”
Common Dreams
January 27, 2025
Data shows workers in right-to-work states make 3.2 percent less on average than their counterparts in similar positions in non-right-to-work states — $1,670 per year for a full-time worker — according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. On job growth, the Economic Policy Institute draws a different conclusion from the Harvard study cited by Cline, saying there are “no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.”
The Keene Sentinel
January 27, 2025
Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 percent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, citing the Labor Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels.
New York Times
January 27, 2025
“Modern youth sub-minimum wages are a persistent relic of employers’ past and present interest in children as pool of exploitable, low-wage workers,” argued 2024 article from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Maine Wire
January 27, 2025
“I think it is actually terrible policy,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, and a labor economist in the Obama administration. “If you really want to help tip workers, do it directly through raising the federal minimum wage and phasing out the tipped minimum wage.”
She says she’s concerned this policy might slow the momentum to overhaul the tip worker minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13, though certain states have set a higher benchmark.
NPR
January 27, 2025
Then again, Trump’s first term was a series of constant attacks on workers’ rights — in 2020 the Economic Policy Institute outlined the first Trump administration’s 50 most egregious attacks on working people.
Clean Technica
January 27, 2025
For decades, there has been a maddening gap between what the US economy could be delivering for working families and what it actually does deliver. The richest country in the world chronically fails to offer broad-based economic prosperity and security, because policymaking has been captured by the wealthy and privileged. In pursuit of their own financial interests, the well-off have piled one boulder after another in the way of a typical household’s ability to carve out an economically secure life.
This has been a long-going, incremental process, so there is no magic-bullet solution that could immediately clear the path. Each presidential administration must be graded on how many boulders it removed (or added). Viewed in this light, the economic-policy priorities of former President Joe Biden’s administration deserve much more credit than they have received. Biden chalked up significant achievements on behalf of American families, and even those that were stymied by Congress were well worth pursuing.
Project Syndicate
January 27, 2025
Resources:
Economic Policy Institute: How Vouchers Harm Public Schools
KALW
January 27, 2025