It’s against the law for companies to retaliate against workers who are trying to organize unions—but that often doesn’t stop them from doing so. According to recent research from the Economic Policy Institute, employers were charged with illegally firing workers in 24% of all union elections. That research uses the “most comprehensive measure of firings,” according to EPI, and comes from data from the NLRB between 2019 and 2022, as well as unfair labor practice filings from 2018 through 2022.
Fast Company
February 17, 2023
Advocates and experts also point to expanded access to no or low-cost early childhood education as a solution that not only benefits children but parents and the economy as a whole. Colorado ranks eighth in the country for most expensive child care, with an average annual cost of $15,325, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Rocky Mountain PBS
February 17, 2023
According to a 2022 study from the Economic Policy Institute – a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that addresses low- and middle-income workers’ needs – the teacher “wage penalty” – that is, how much less teachers make than comparable workers – grew from 6.1% in 1996 to 23.5% in 2021. Put another way, the average weekly wages of public school teachers – adjusted for inflation – increased just US$29 from 1996 to 2021, from $1,319 to $1,348 in 2021 dollars. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose $445, from $1,564 to $2,009, over the same period.
The Conversation
February 17, 2023
“The picture right now is actually still pretty rosy, so you’re not seeing that kind of slowdown in a lot of the topline jobs numbers,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
February 17, 2023
Employers regularly employ illegal tactics to suppress unions. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) of the latest government data on Unfair Labor Practice charges and union elections shows that employers were charged with violating federal Labor law in nearly 40 percent of elections – everything from firing to retaliation to changing work terms.
Labor Tribune
February 17, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, wage theft costs U.S. workers as much as $50 billion per year — a number far higher than all robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts combined. While we’re taught to be vigilant and lock our homes and cars to prevent robberies, most workers are not trained on how to identify wage theft and claw back stolen wages. Wage theft is also more likely to affect low-wage workers, immigrant workers, and workers with less education and fewer resources.
In These Times
February 17, 2023
While the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 per hour since 2009, many states have continually raised theirs. “States began instituting their own, higher minimum wages during periods of federal inaction,” says Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “So the longer the gap between federal minimum wage increases, the more likely some states went ahead and raised their own state-level minimum.”
CNBC
February 17, 2023
He worked 16 years at the liberal, pro-labor Economic Policy Institute before Mr. Biden hired him to be the chief economist for the vice president when Mr. Biden and President Barack Obama took office in 2009. In announcing his departure, E.P.I. officials called Mr. Bernstein “a tireless advocate for middle- and low-income families and for greater equity in the U.S. economy.”
New York Times
February 17, 2023
First, they face employers that are highly mobilized and unified in their commitment to sacrificing the rights of ordinary people to make higher profits. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently broke down how much money is being spent today on whittling away the wages and benefits of their employees—either by preventing them from unionizing or by seeking to break the unions their employees have already voted for. According to journalist Tyler Walicek, even with the EPI’s caveats about what spending they couldn’t fully account for, it concluded that “total spending on the union-busting industry amounts to at least $340 million a year.”
CNN
February 17, 2023