Tuesday, March 1, 2016

[NJFAC] State legislators speak out for higher-paying jobs

Two recent articles highlight the leadership of state legislators in speaking out for good jobs at living wages.

1) Legislator Feels the Grind of a Low-Wage Job , Sen Marilyn Moore, Hartford Courant, February 21, 2016.

Connecticut State Senator Marilyn Moore from Bridgeport, CT took a job as a seasonal retail store employee, to see what working conditions were like for low-wage retail workers. "…We all hear the stories, but I decided if I am going to propose legislation, I need to talk with authority and knowledge." She found the work exhausting and frustrating, and was never offered sufficient hours, or regular shifts so she could apply for a second job. Read Sen. Moore's op-ed

2) South Carolina's leading low-wage job creator? Uncle Sam, The State, February 29, 2016

In a in a letter to the editor , South Carolina State Rep. Wendell G. Gilliard points out that the "the U.S. government is the leading low-wage job creator in South Carolina, responsible for more than 30,000 poverty jobs that pay under $12 an hour, the federal poverty guideline for a family of four. That's more poverty jobs than than Wal-Mart and McDonald's combined."

The federal government contributes to low-wage private sector jobs through its contracts, loans and subsidies to low-wage private sector employers, Rep. Gilliard says.

Rep. Gilliard's letter cites a report from Good Jobs Nation, South Carolina's Largest Low Wage Job Creator: The Federal Contribution to Low-Wage Unemployment in the Palmetto State, building on a methodology developed by Demos in their 2013 report, Underwriting Bad Jobs. Good Jobs Nation is supported by national faith, labor and advocacy organizations including Change to Win, Interfaith Worker Justice, the Ecumenical Poverty Initiative, Progressive Congress, and the Campaign for America's Future.

A previous survey by the National Employment Law Project found that 91 percent of port truck drivers in Charleston who transport military cargo have trouble paying their bills even though they work 60 or more hours a week. Disturbingly, nearly all of the low-wage workers in the survey are African-Americans.

Posted by:

Chuck Bell, Vice-Chair
National Jobs for All Coalition
www.NJFAC.org

--
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to njfac [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Friday, February 26, 2016

[NJFAC] Black imprisonment effect on unemployment data

America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality, Guo, Wash. Post, 2/26/16

....

The most recent report puts the white unemployment rate at around 4.5 percent. The black unemployment rate? About 8.8 percent.

But the economic picture for black Americans is far worse than those statistics indicate. The unemployment rate only measures people who are both living at home and actively looking for a job. The hitch: A lot of black men aren't living at home and can't look for jobs — because they're behind bars.

Though there are nearly 1.6 million Americans in state or federal prison, their absence is not accounted for in the figures that politicians and policymakers use to make decisions. As a result, we operate under a distorted picture of the nation's economic health.

There's no simple way to estimate the impact of mass incarceration on the jobs market. But here's a simple thought experiment. Imagine how the white and black unemployment rates would change if all the people in prison were added to the unemployment rolls.

According to a Wonkblog analysis of government statistics, about 1.6 percent of prime-age white men (25 to 54 years old) are institutionalized. If all those 590,000 people were recognized as unemployed, the unemployment rate for prime-age white men would increase from about 5 percent to 6.4 percent.

For prime-age black men, though, the unemployment rate would jump from 11 percent to 19 percent. That's because a far higher fraction of black men — 7.7 percent, or 580,000 people — are institutionalized.

    ....  June Zaccone

Thursday, February 18, 2016

[NJFAC] Black middle class is struggling - income is a big factor

The black middle class is decidedly losing ground

The top fifth of black households in 2014 earned on average what their white counterparts earned in 1979. And if the racial disparities in income are large, the disparities in wealth are massive.

See www.urban.org/urban-wire/stalled-struggling-black-middle-class for an extensive analysis and graphs illustrating several components of the problem.

Monday, February 8, 2016

[NJFAC] Uber: On the Road to Nowhere

UBER drivers. A convenient app and drivers choose their hours. But they don't control working conditions and the company can fire ("deactivate") them at will. The company does not contribute to a health plan, or pay into Social Security, Medicare, or workers' comp. Here's the best analysis I've seen on the Uber phenomenon, by Steve Greenhouse, a veteran labor reporter.

Uber: On the Road to Nowhere, American Prospect (Winter 2016)

Direct Link >> http://prospect.org/article/road-nowhere-3

Submitted by: Frank Stricker, author of Why American Lost the War on Poverty--and How to Win It (2007)

National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org/

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

[NJFAC] A Green Jobs Economy Can Help Save the Planet and Create Many New Jobs

Robert Pollin, an economist at University of Massachusetts-Amherst is
quoted in the Campaign for America's Future's daily posting. Pollin's
statement comes from the Nov 16, 2015 issue of The Nation and relates
to his recent book, Greening the Global Economy:

For the United States, we found that increasing
investments by around
$200 billion per year to raise energy-efficiency
standards and expand
clean, renewable production (about 1.2 percent of
current GDP) would
drop U.S. emissions by 40 percent within 20
years, while creating a
net increase of 2.7 million jobs. This is after
taking full account of
the jobs that would be lost as oil, coal, and
natural-gas production
fell by 40 percent." (Roger Hickey,
ourfuture.org, Jan 27, 2016)

--
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to njfac [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

[NJFAC] More companies should take responsibility for workers they hire indirectly--Dept. of Labor

Department of Labor sends warning shot to clients of temp staffing agencies

In an increasingly outsourced economy, the administration says more companies should take responsibility for the workers they hire indirectly. Lydia DePillis Washington Post, January 20, 2016

The Department of Labor thinks more companies should take responsibility for their contracted workforces, and it's just told them exactly how and when.

If there's one trend that's characterized the changing American workforce more than any other in recent decades, it's been the fracturing of the employment relationship, as companies focus on their "core competencies" and pay other businesses to do everything else.

Subcontracting, outsourcing, and the use of staffing agencies allows businesses to inexpensively scale up and scale down their labor needs, without the extra hassle and liability of adding payroll. But it also adds another layer between workers and the bosses who call the shots, shielding managers from responsibility when the labor provider doesn't follow the law.

Department of Labor' Wage and Hour Division director David Weil, a former business school professor, calls this trend "fissuring." He thinks lots of those client companies should really be considered "joint employers," together with the contractors that sign the checks, making them liable for violations. And Wednesday, his department issued detailed guidance drawing the categories in black and white, sending a message to employers that they had better fall on the right side.....

Weil's division has stepped up its proactive enforcement of situations where companies are functionally controlling the workers they order up from labor providers — and broadcasts its enforcement of egregious violations. Back in October, for example, investigators found that temp workers at a snack food producer in New Jersey were cheated out of overtime wages, and ordered the company to pay back wages, damages, and civil penalties.

That's the most typical form of joint employment — a "vertical" arrangement, with one company hiring another, as the guidance describes. But joint employment can also be "horizontal," when a worker might employed by two subsidiaries of the same company, but they never get overtime because their hours are tracked separately.

Weil says they've found similar problems in all kinds of industries, like agriculture, construction, and shipbuilding. Higher rates of wage theft at outsourced labor providers have been well documented, as are safety lapses that lead to sometimes fatal injuries. Another division of the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has been running an initiative on temporary workers, often reminding clients of their joint responsibility.

The issue of joint employment is similar in nature to misclassification of employees as independent contractors, on which Weil's office issued similar guidance back in July. It's also related to the National Labor Relations Board's recent decision on the definition of joint employment for the purpose of union organizing, which is likely to have a bearing on the massive McDonald's case that's currently waiting for a hearing in New York.....

The franchise industry has been particularly irked by the administration's regulatory approach. Before having seen the Department of Labor's new guidance on joint employment, the International Franchise Association didn't like it. "This is just another example of regulatory fiat that raises even more questions for employers," said senior vice president Matt Haller. "The administration should consider going through formal rulemaking instead of just issuing a 'guidance' without even an outreach to targeted industries who may be impacted.".....

At the same time, however, joint employment doesn't always solve the problem for temporary employees. Dave DeSario, who runs a group called the Alliance for the American Temporary Workforce, says that some staffing agencies and clients still point fingers at each other when something goes wrong. Without a union, it's difficult for temp workers to get the representation that would allow them to pursue a claim before an agency says it don't have any more work for them to do."Temp workers can't afford lawyers, and are in a poor position to defend themselves," DeSario says. "Joint employer complicates the employment situation, for sure, and when things are complicated, it's workers who have a harder time understanding it."....

Saturday, January 16, 2016

[NJFAC] Does cutting unemployment insurance boost unemployment?

Employment is growing more slowly in states that drastically cut unemployment benefits, by Will Kimball, Economic Policy Institute, 12/23/15

"...A common argument claims that cutting the length of time that people can collect unemployment benefits forces people to find jobs faster. If this were the case, we would expect to see the share of people with jobs increase after cuts went into effect in states that cut unemployment insurance. Instead, the share of people employed actually lagged the national average in the three states that most drastically cut unemployment insurance benefits after the Great Recession—Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina."

"While North Carolina's prime-age employment-to-population ratio started out above the national average, it fell to more than 2 percentage points below the national average after drastically cutting unemployment insurance. Both Florida and Georgia started out below the national average when they made cuts to their programs, and they have continued to fall further below the average in the meantime. This casts serious doubts on the theory that a more restricted unemployment insurance system boosts a state's labor market."

Read the report at: on.epi.org/1W5CTzH