“It doesn’t look like there will be, at least in the next few years, any chances of anything happening legislatively,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Northern Public Radio
January 13, 2023
In more liberal states, advocates for a higher minimum wage get a friendlier hearing in state legislatures. In 2016, California passed a $15 minimum wage that will have gone into full effect only this year. The new minimum of $15.50 puts the state’s minimum wage up by just over a third in seven years. California’s increase came through a combination of legislation and adjusting for inflation. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 3.2 million workers in California, almost a fifth of the state’s workforce, will see an increase in their wages, making up over a third of all workers nationally who will be affected by hikes in the minimum wage this year.
Grid News
January 13, 2023
When compared to peers, the Economic Policy Institute information found half of Wegmans employees made less than $15 in 2021. Wegmans employee pay …(paywall).
Democrat & Chronicle
January 13, 2023
Employers have historically turned to noncompetes to reduce turnover and keep workers from fleeing to competition, as demonstrated by a study from the Economic Policy Institute that found 30% of U.S. employers had all of their employees sign noncompetes, and nearly 50% of employers had some of their employees enter noncompete agreements. Of course, for workers with intimate knowledge of trade secrets like proprietary technology or convoluted recipes, it would make sense that employers should on a case-by-case basis cement confidentiality provisions.
Fortune
January 13, 2023
But since the 1940s, the power of the labor movement and labor unions in the U.S. has been on the decline, says the Economic Policy Institute. This has allowed major companies and corporations to deploy anti-union tactics, cripple organization efforts, and skirt existing labor laws with some degree of impunity. Workers find themselves battling management for what they see as fair deals and an end to unjust practices across a range of industries, including the food and beverage sector. As National Restaurant News reports, wage theft is an acute problem in the industry, with 85% of fast food workers polled in California experiencing some form of it.
Tasting Table
January 13, 2023
Many journalists and policy analysts started paying attention to noncompetes “a few years back when it was revealed that the sub chain Jimmy John’s was forcing its sandwich makers to sign the agreements,” Jordan Weissman writes at Semafor. Jimmy John’s dropped that requirement after a lawsuit, but noncompete clauses have morphed into a “yoke for low-wage hourly workers who ordinarily have little say over terms of their employment.” In fact, “the only source of power non-unionized workers have vis-à-vis their employers is their ability to quit and take a job elsewhere,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a statement.
The Week
January 13, 2023
In Michigan, a 2019 survey by the Economic Policy Institute revealed roughly 55 percent of the state’s more than 4 million workers were subject to …(paywall).
Crain's Detroit Business
January 13, 2023
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009, when it was increased by 70 cents. That is the longest period without a raise in the history of the minimum wage. At the other end of the growth ladder, CEO pay has exploded. From 1978 to 2020, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,322%, out-gaining S&P stock market growth (817%) by a considerable margin, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In contrast, compensation of the average worker grew by just 18% during that time and the minimum wage increased 174%, from $2.65 an hour.
ecoRI News
January 13, 2023
“People often invoke the damage done by the 2011 showdown over the debt ceiling,” Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post last year. “They point to stock market losses, increases in ‘economic uncertainty’ indices, and estimates of how much higher interest rates went in the showdown’s aftermath. But they tend to miss what was by far the greatest damage done by the 2011 debt ceiling episode: the passage of the Budget Control Act (BCA), a piece of legislation that is relatively unknown to the lay public.”
Truthout
January 13, 2023
“Exorbitant CEO pay is a contributor to rising inequality that we could restrain without doing any damage to the wider economy,” Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute recently recently wrote. “CEOs are getting ever-higher pay over time because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related.”
Minnesota Reformer
January 13, 2023