On June 21, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee voted to advance the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Healthy Families Act on June 21. All three pieces of legislation have companion bills in the U.S. House.
Democrats mostly hailed the bills as beneficial for average workers, while Republicans mostly criticized the bills as being too pro-union.
The bills garnered support from the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Postal Workers Union, Communication Workers of America, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Urban League, and Oxfam America, according to Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
SHRM
June 26, 2023
That strike is only the most recent and widely reported strike among public employees. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that there was a 50 percent increase in strike activity in 2022 over the previous year.
Jacobin
June 26, 2023
The grocery giant’s planned merger with rival Albertsons, which is still in the works, exacerbated concerns. A May report from the Economic Policy Institute…[paywall].
Bloomberg Law
June 26, 2023
Meanwhile, the national Black jobless rate in May slid to the lowest on record at 4.7%, reaching the narrowest gap with white workers ever.
“It’s good to see improvement overall,” says Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “But the fact that disparities continue to exist in relative terms in some places means that there can still be work done.”
Crain's Chicago
June 26, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), childcare costs vary wildly too, depending on where a family lives. For example, here are the recent average annual costs of infant care in 10 states:
Motley Fool
June 23, 2023
According to an analysis last year by the Economic Policy Institute, the heads of the top 350 publicly traded companies earned annual incomes that were on average 399 times greater than a typical worker in 2021, up from 59-to-1 in 1989. This means that some executives’ pay is significantly greater than 399 times their employee’s pay. In fact, the heads of 22 S&P 500 companies earn at least 1,000 times more than what their typical workers take home.
Baltimore Sun
June 23, 2023
“What does it say about the greatest country on Earth, the land of the greatest opportunities, if we know what we need to do to address the problem, but only do it periodically for limited amounts of time?” Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute asked during Monday’s panel discussion.
Common Dreams
June 23, 2023
“The overall broad trend is that employers are desperate for workers who will accept bad wages and crappy conditions, like always,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at Washington, D.C.-based think tank Economic Policy Institute. “With the pandemic, a drop-off in immigration and more people out of the workforce … that’s a recipe for more youth labor. And we’re seeing states rolling back child labor laws. That’s scandalous.”
Crain's Detroit Business
June 23, 2023
“The kind of churn that we’ve seen in this labor market, even though it’s down from a year ago, is higher than it [has been] historically; that is unusual,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “The labor market has been incredibly resilient to the rising interest rates, the layoffs that we saw; the data is not showing that it is weakening, at least not yet.”
Fast Company
June 23, 2023
To identify the states that have introduced legislation or enacted laws to make it easier and cheaper to employ minors, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed an analysis of enacted or pending state legislation across the country by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning labor-policy nonprofit research group. The status of pending legislation has been updated as of May 31.
24/7 Wall St.
June 23, 2023