Friday, December 14, 2018

[NJFAC] What’s Under That Amazon Tank?


What's Under That Amazon Tank?
 
            If you shop much on Amazon, you know that the selection is incredible, it's easy to press the buy-button, and, if you have Amazon Prime, things come really fast to your house and oft- times with free delivery. I bought something the other day and it arrived in less than a day. Thus the bright side of the Amazon phenomenon.
            But even and perhaps especially in a holiday shopping season, it's good to think about the dark underside of the Amazon tank that is rolling over businesses, cities desperate for distribution centers and headquarters, and the people who labor in the warehouses or drive for delivery services, but don't earn a living wage.
            A smart piece that focuses on Amazon's effort to gain monopolistic control of the whole  retail market is Stacy Mitchell's piece, "The Empire of Everything." It appeared last March in The Nation. Mitchell writes about the company's predatory pricing practices, ruthless dealings with recalcitrant businesses, and its contribution to the world of crummy jobs and greater income inequality. It's fun to buy on Amazon, but not so much when you think about these things. And especially not when you think that with every purchase we are helping to enrich Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. He is already the richest man in America and probably in the world. He really a monopolizer in the mold of oil baron John D. Rockefeller, but he's worse. Bezos wants to squeeze all retail commerce through the Amazon pipeline.
 
 
Posted by Frank Stricker, NJFAC board member

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Tuesday, November 20, 2018

[NJFAC] Trying Again for Full Employment

Trudy Goldberg's article, "Trying Again for Full Employment," was published as the lead article in Dollars and Sense.

"As prominent progressives talk up a federal job guarantee, what can we learn from earlier attempts to legislate full employment?"

Goldberg is chair of the National Jobs for All Coalition, :


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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Tuesday, November 6, 2018

[NJFAC] Economists admit that $15 Seattle minimum wage was largely beneficial, reverse claims

Earlier this year, a group of business school researchers from the University of Washington and NYU, as well as Amazon, published an influential paper claiming that the rising Seattle minimum wage had decreased take-home pay for workers by 6% due to cuts to work hours -- the paper was trumpeted by right-wing ideologues as examples of how "liberal policies" hurt the workers they are meant to help.
But a new paper by the same authors (Sci-Hub mirror) shows that the rising minimum wage generated major increases for the workers who had the most hours, whose hours were only cut a little, but still came out ahead thanks to the wage increase; workers with fewer hours saw no financial harm from the rising minimum wage, working fewer hours and bringing home the same sum; and they found some harm to people who had the smallest number of hours) (which may actually reflect stronger demand for workers and fewer workers in this category of very-low-hour work).
The study's authors explain that their findings are all consistent with one another, but people who found methodological flaws in the first study say that the reversal is inevitable. Here's Barry Ritholz (previously) in Bloomberg:....

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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Saturday, October 13, 2018

[NJFAC] Wages Rising? by Frank Stricker

            Some observers write as though we are waiting for wage growth to return to normal. We just need money wages to grow a little more and inflation rates to fall a bit and we'd be back on the right track. But what's normal?  For example, how often since 2000-2017 has the real wage of average employees increased at least 1% a year? In only four of eighteen years: 2001, 2002, 2014, 2015.
            If you want to feel good for five seconds, the latest earnings report shows that real wages for average employees are up since September of 2017. But the increase is just 0.4%--less than a half a percent. That's what we are getting in what is supposed to be a red-hot labor market and a strong economy--so strong that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to cool it down.
            So for workers the economy is good but not great, and has been so for years. Basic power structures and institutions lean heavily against the working class. Unions cover few workers. Some states and localities are raising their minimum wages, but many are not doing so, and the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for years.
            And while labor markets are good, and causing wage upticks in some places, there is no generalized shortage of labor--nothing dire enough to push up money wages to increase 4 to 5% a year. Employers aren't used to having to expend real effort to get medium to low-skilled workers. When they have to exert, they think it's a labor shortage. But real unemployment is not low enough to give average workers enough individual bargaining power. On the sidelines there are millions of people who are ready to work. The labor force participation rate of prime-age workers (25 to 54 years old) is rising but it's still several points below where it was in the 1990s. Today, some distribution centers, trucking companies, and other businesses have to pay more, but there are plenty of applicants for many job slots across the country. That's one reason why wages haven't risen much. That is why Blue Ridge Health Care in North Carolina can get entry-level certified nursing assistants for $9.50. It's why, over the past year, ZipRecruiter registered 8.1 million applications for 68,500 postings for administrative assistant jobs, and 9.2 million applications for 136,000 warehouse job listings.
            It's true that some employers are having to pay more to get the employees they need. That's one reason Jeff Bezos is raising pay to $15 an hour at Amazon. (Another reason is that it's bad P.R. that Amazon workers are stuck at $12 or $13 whilst Jeff is worth almost two hundred billion dollars.) But that might not be as much of a raise as it seems. What Jeff gives with the left hand, he takes away with the right. The company is pulling back on its bonus and stock programs. Some employees think they will be worse off.
            One final note on $15. Amazon's move reflects what a good thing the $15 minimum goal is. It has been a tremendous rallying point, a unifying force around an ultra-reasonable goal. But it is just the first step. Fifteen dollars looks good because wage growth has been mostly terrible since the early 1970s. But $15 is just $31, 200 for a person who works absolutely full-time, year-round. If you think that amount is adequate, you've been drinking the Cato-Kool-Aid at Republican Congressional parties.

Frank Stricker is on the board of NJFAC and has written What Ails the American Worker? Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, Remedies.
           
 
           
 

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Tuesday, October 9, 2018

[NJFAC] a bouquet to Sanders' effectiveness in raising some wages

(and a critique of the notion that the market determines wages, even in giant firms.-j)
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/bernie-sanders-shows-how-to-do-politics

"...Sanders was lectured by the Heritage Foundation: 'wages are contingent on the additional value that a given worker contributes to the company,' and the bill would (tell me if you've heard this one before) Hurt The Very People It Was Trying To Help. Here's a Cato Institute libertarian writing in USA Today:

However much Sanders insists otherwise, in competitive industries, workers' pay and benefits tend to match the value of the work they're doing. Firms cannot "underpay," or else they risk losing employees to other businesses, while "overpaying" would be financial suicide. …Of course, Sanders is right that wages at major corporations do not always guarantee a decent standard of living, particularly for part-time workers, those with many children, or high rent. But shareholders and customers of companies should not be responsible for every factor of their workers' lives. Companies pay people for the work they do, and it is unrealistic to expect them to pay people based on the number of children they have, where they live or their medical bills. … My research estimates a program of liberalization in land use planning and zoning laws, child-care regulations, cost-inflating food programs, fuel standards and car dealership laws, tariffs on clothing and footwear and occupational licensing, could directly save poor households anywhere between $830 and $3,500 per year....

I think one of the reasons liberals have failed politically is that they think of politics as "designing the optimal policy" and have no clue how to actually build the political power that allows you to pass and implement the optimal policy. Bernie Sanders does know a thing or two about building political power—that's why he managed to be the "Amendment King" in the House of Representatives, passing more roll call votes in a Republican Congress than any other member despite being a radical democratic socialist. Sanders' bill was criticized as a stunt. But that shouldn't be a criticism, and we on the left need to try more stunts...."
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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

[NJFAC] Bloomberg: Unions Did Great Things for the Working Class

Unions Did Great Things for the Working Class

Strengthening them could blunt inequality and wage stagnation.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

link from Naked Capitalism
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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Tuesday, September 11, 2018

[NJFAC] No Gloomy Danes? Frank Stricker, NJFAN Board, and Deborah Schopp

            Most of you know something about the advantages of social democracy in the countries of Scandinavia: generous health care, decent wages, free college, less income inequality, and more. These countries and others like them including the Netherlands, are not utopias: some have racist anti-immigrant movements, some are privatizing public services and trimming benefits. More of their citizens believe in science than is true in America, but they are not perfect on fighting global warming. (Norway gets rich selling North Sea Oil.) But in these countries there are extensive income support programs, virtually universal government-supported health insurance, and many other things that help people live more securely.
            And against conservative assumptions, generous government programs aren't demoralizing people. We felt no gloom and doom during two weeks in Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands in June. Most of the people we met were friendly and upbeat. In fact, the Danes were recently judged the happiest people on earth. As the attached article mentions, a Fox Cable commentator recently talked about the horrors of socialism in Denmark. Nothing new with that. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was knee-jerk among American right-wingers to harp on high suicide rates in Scandinavia. The explanation for the high rates was that when everything is given to people, they lose initiative and sense of worth. But the people we met were getting help from the welfare state and/or paying for it in high taxes)--but they were professional, friendly, positive, and proud of their social democracies. The tour guide who led us through the spectacular murals in Oslo's city hall emphasized that people in Norway valued the practice of helping one another through their government. So did the guide for our food tour in Copenhagen. By the way, on the food tour, we visited six businesses that ranged from very small to almost medium-sized. None were owned by the government and none, as far as I could tell, were being run and ruined by Bolsheviks working out of Commie Central. Some of these businesses were cutting edge and there was pride among the beer-makers and bubbly enthusiasm from the guy who knew all about hard cider. In other words, there is plenty of entrepreneurialism in these countries.
            There are many lessons that Americans can learn in Western Europe. The idea of Americans learning from the European social democracies is second nature to socialists like Bernie Sanders, but a fearsome thing to others. One Democratic candidate--not a conservative-- stated in 2016 that we should not learn from the Danes. But young people in America are less resistant to things socialism and the Democrat Socialists of America have recently had a surge of new members. Maybe it will get harder for Trump and Swamp-dwellers to flail away at the welfare state while they are beating up on the working class. The attached article, "Something Not Rotten in Denmark," is Paul Krugman making good points about the Danish system. By the way, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have suicide rates below those in the United States. So does Iceland.
 
 
 
 

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Monday, September 3, 2018

[NJFAC] Announcement of Important Conference on a Jobs Guarantee and MMT


Dear Friends,
I want to call your attention to the following Conference of interest to all who advocate "Jobs for All. It is led by NJFAC's Board members Raúl Carrillo and Rohan Grey. I hope to see you there.
Best regards,
Trudy Goldberg
 
 
The Second Annual MMT Conference will be held at the New School in New York City from Sept 28-30. This year's theme is "Public Money, Public Purpose, Public Power", signaling the MMT community's efforts to build bridges between social justice movements, inspire broad-based participation, and more deeply discuss how our ideas may be concretized politically.
We are especially focused on discussing the future of the movement for a Job Guarantee, as well the Job Guarantee's eventual implementation.
 
Day 1 of the conference will feature a keynote discussion of how we might organize around a right to a job. This conversation will feature Raúl Carrillo (Director, Modern Money Network & National Jobs for All Coalition), Shawn Sebastian (Director, Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign), and Sarah Treuhaft (Senior Director, PolicyLink). This will be followed by a panel on the substantive dimensions of the Job Guarantee, especially focused on green work and care work. The panel will feature Pavlina Tcherneva, (Director, Economics Program, Bard College), Kate Aronoff (Journalist, The Intercept), Vicki Schultz, (Professor, Yale Law School), and Donatella Alessandrini (Professor, Kent Law School).
 
Day 2 of the conference will consist of a series of workshops, both academic and non-academic. Many of these workshops will focus on the Job Guarantee.  The Modern Money Network is taking a leadership role in organizing this year. We are still in the process of finalizing workshop topics and formats, so if any NJFAC members are interested in participating, with the knowledge that this is a yearly MMT community event, we would earnestly welcome your participation.
 
See program and register at

http://www.mmtconference.org/program.html

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

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Thursday, August 23, 2018

[NJFAC] "in a strong economy, job seekers are the ones who get to be choosy about their next job"

[Unnecessary] Standards Go Out The Window As Employers Struggle To Fill Jobs 

Getting a job in the United States has never been easier. The U.S. unemployment rate dipped to 3.9 percent in July, the lowest point since 2000, and one new trend is helping: Employers are ditching requirements for college degrees and previous experience.
As of last year, there are more jobs available than people to fill them, so it's time to throw age-old standards out the door.
In the first half of 2018, the share of job postings requesting a college degree fell from 32 percent to 30 percent, according to an analysis by labor-market research firm Burning Glass Technologies covering some 29 million job postings.
Share of posts requiring three or more years of job experience have dropped from 29 percent in 2012 to 23 percent in 2018, which translates to 1.2 million jobs that could be open to less-experienced candidates.
Even better … some one million job openings—for everything from preschool teachers and warehouse workers to e-commerce analysts--have opened up to candidates with "no experience necessary" in the last year. 
Some companies no longer even insist on performing criminal background checks or drug testing on the candidates.
So, what started as a recent trend of relaxing job requirements is now becoming the new mantra for businesses trying to attract talent—and keep it at a time when Americans are increasingly job-hopping and shopping around for better deals.
Amy Glaser of staffing agency Adecco Group, told the Wall Street Journal that in a strong economy, job seekers are the ones who get to be choosy about their next job.
"If a company requires a degree, two rounds of interviews and a test for hard skills, candidates can go down the street to another employer who will make them an offer that day," Glasser said....

[emphasis mine--jz]
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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Wednesday, August 15, 2018

[NJFAC] Is Lower Inflation the Secret to Getting More Real Wage Growth? Frank Stricker 8/14/18

            I try not to miss Dean Baker's short pieces on wages, inflation, and jobs, and I learn a lot from him. His post, "The Story of Stagnant Wage Growth,"  (Beat the Press, August 4, 2018), made me remember that unusual price changes can cause short-term shifts in real wages. It also made me think about whether we should focus on inflation spurts to explain slow or no growth in real wages in recent years and also whether low inflation can be a key to real wage growth.    
            Dean Baker seems to exaggerate the extent of real wage growth in the last five years. He graph shows not much progress for several months in 2013-2014 and a number of bad months at end of the last five years. I think Dean's text tends to underestimate the bad periods. It is true that real wages have grown at times, but they have also not grown at other times. Overall, real wages for rank-and-file workers have increased by a total of 5% in the last five years. That's good. But while better than stagnation, 1% a year is not going to reverse forty years of mostly lousy wages.
            History suggests that in recent times even fairly modest rates of inflation often eat up wage increases. The monetary authorities want prices to rise 2 to 3% a year, which is about what prices are doing now. But that means that if you are a worker getting nominal pay increases of 2 to 3%, you are standing still. And 2 to 3% inflation is pretty typical. The main culprit may be energy prices or housing prices, or food prices or health care costs or college tuition or some combination. But a 2 to 3% annual increase in the consumer price index is not uncommon in the last few decades. It means that nominal pay--the face value of the paychecks of average workers--must rise 4% or more a year over the long haul if real wages are ever to make a big U-turn to solid, long-term growth.
            The history of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s is illuminating. The 1980s began with two recessions. The second, giant one started in 1981. Paul Volcker caused it and Ronald Reagan went along. Inflation rates came down, from three years of more than 10% to roughly 3 to 4% a year. That was the miracle of the Reagan-Volcker Recession. But the recession and Reagan's attack on unions added to other forces that disempowered the working class. Nominal pay rose 24.4% over 1983-1990, about 3% a year. But prices rose 31.2%, even in this low-inflation period. That was roughly 4% year. As a result real wages fell. In other words, inflation in consumer prices was not soaring at 9 or 10%, but even the lower inflation rates that people were glad to see were enough to wipe out wage gains and then some.
            In the 1990s, which are generally thought of as low-inflation years, consumer prices rose 32% (31.8% over 1990-2000); nominal pay increased 37% which sounds wonderful, but after the  effects of inflation are included, real pay increased for the whole decade 4.9%. That's all. Just 5% for a decade that ended with years of strong demand for labor and a period that was thought to shine for low inflation rates.
            As to the 2000s in the years before the Great Recession, if you forgot about inflation, you'd have been thrilled. In nominal face-value dollars, hourly pay for the average worker increased 29% from 2000 through 2008. But while inflation rates were fairly moderate at 3% a year, that was enough to wipe out most gains in purchasing power. The average real wage in 2008 was just 3% over the average real wage in 2000. That's less than a half percent a year gain.
            So what's the big take-away? Everyone knows that real wages are not progressing much. One important point here is that trying to get strong wage growth by relying on lower inflation rates is a losing proposition. A second point is that thinking that wage increases of 2 to 3% are going to be enough to make for real advances is wrong. This is not big news but it means that people on our side have to be forthright about what is necessary. Many people need a lift now to $15 or even $20. And on average workers must see increases in their face-value hourly pay of 4% a year or more. And if we want nominal increases of 4% or more, we must--it's no secret--focus on politics, organization, minimum wage laws, and propaganda about social justice. The caps grab too much of the national income pie. That's the number-one overarching economic problem of our time.

Frank Stricker is on the board of NJFAC and has written What Ails the American Worker: Unemployment and Crummy Jobs. He can reached at frnkstricker@aol.com.
Most of the data in this piece is from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and from the Dean Baker article mentioned in the first paragraph of my essay. Also useful is Baker's Prices Byte on the latest inflation report, "Rising Rents Continue to Drive Inflation: Core Excluding Shelter Up Just 1.5% in Lat Year," August 10, 2018.

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Saturday, July 21, 2018

[NJFAC] The Crummy Good Economy and the New Serfdom by Frank Stricker

            For about a year now, the unemployment rate has been around 4%. That's supposed mean full employment, labor shortages, and rising pay. But the latest earnings report is the same old story: no gains in real hourly wages from June of 2017 through June of 2018. Most employers have been able to find new workers without having to raise pay offers much.
           
            What's going on?  There are screwball right-wing diversions and explanations. A Trump economist, D. J. Norquist, opines that it will take time for the Republican tax-cuts to work their way through the economy. This is nonsense. Just because the lords of creation get more money doesn't mean more will filter down to workers. We have the evidence of forty years on that issue. Then we have Stephen Moore at the Heritage Foundation. He suggests that the economy might be creating a disproportionate number of low-wage jobs, which could outweigh rising wages higher on the job ladder. But this compositional shift is not happening. And if it were, we would be right back to asking why a booming labor market was generating more lousy jobs.

            It's true that scattered labor shortages are lifting wages and employment opportunities for some people. California farm workers' average pay is now about $14 an hour. More prisoners and ex-prisoners are getting regular jobs and the unemployment rate for disabled people has fallen to 7%. These are positive events. But average real wages have been stuck for two years.
 
           So what are the causes for the general wage drag? Here are the important ones.

1. There is still a plentiful supply of jobless workers. The official unemployment rate tells us nothing about millions of people who are essentially unemployed and ready to work, but who are not currently searching for work and are not labeled as unemployed. Five million people came off the sidelines to take jobs in June. We are not close to full employment.

2. Few workers are unionized; most do not have collective power to take full advantage of good labor markets. Employers love dealing with workers one at time. Most employers don't want unions. Quite a few don't want regular employees. Millions of employees are  involuntary part-timers, temps, or "independent" contractors who get no company contributions for Social Security and health insurance and may earn less than the minimum wage.
 
3. U.S. employees have less job security than employees in other rich nations. They are more likely to be laid off or fired, and less likely to get enough unemployment benefits to carry on a careful search for a better-paying job.
 
4. Capitalists and their financial overlords are more determined than ever to limit pay raises for rank-and-file workers. Everything, including executive pay, is about corporate earnings, stock prices, and shareholder gains. When American Airlines offered wage increases to employees, there was bitching and boo-hooing on Wall Street. "Labor is being paid first again," said Citigroup's analyst. "Shareholders get leftovers." Really?  In what evil parallel universe do people like this guy live?  Shareholders have been making out like bandits for years, and they are benefitting now from the Republican tax-cut giveaway which lowers rates on personal and corporate income, and gives companies tons of money for share-buybacks. Yes, I am aware that capitalism is inherently self-interested and amoral. But American capitalists seem more parasitic than ever. The invisible hand of self-interest does less to promote the general welfare than it once did. Wages are too low, poverty rates too high, global warming races ahead, and so on.   
 
5. Another factor keeping wages down is akin to serfdom: employers rig labor markets with non-compete and no-poaching contracts. Employees must promise not to move to a competitor, even within the same company. Franchise owners pledge not to hire employees from other franchisees in the company. Company arguments are that employees have trade secrets, and also that employers must protect their investments in worker training. But the average fast-food worker doesn't get trade secrets, and there can't be a lot of training for fast-food workers. The real issue is that when employees have more freedom to search for a better deal, average wages are more likely to rise.
            How restrictive are these contracts? In 2014 Jimmy John's required low-level employees to sign non-compete contracts that prohibited them from going to work for any business that earned more than 10% of its revenue from "selling submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches" within three miles of any JJ's franchise anywhere in the United States. This meant, for example, that a Jimmy John's employee in Chicago would not be able to take a new job making sandwiches in the Chicago area.
            These anti-competitive contracts occur in many occupations, but they have been common in the fast-food industry. And truly wicked: you are an owner and you are paying very low ages--the median hourly rate at six fast food chains is $9.58--and now you and your company are barring employees from searching for a better job in the industry.  
            There's some reform at the state level. As I composed this article, the Attorney General of the State of Washington announced binding agreements to end no-poaching practices with McDonald's (which had stopped enforcing its contracts last year), Auntie Anne's, Arby's, Carl's Jr., Jimmy John's, Cinnabon, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Meanwhile, Democratic Attorney Generals in ten other states and Washington, D.C. announced investigations of six companies, including Panera Bread and Burger King.
            So here's a little good news at a time when the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress are dominated by people whose main labor policy is to limit the power and the living standards of workers. So treasure small victories. But remember other, bigger things that make for more subtle forms of modern serfdom.
 
Frank Stricker is on the board of the National Jobs for All Coalition, and emeritus professor of history and labor studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has just finished What Ails the American Worker: Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, Remedies.
 
 
Useful sources
 
Abrams, Rachel, "Why Aren't Paychecks Growing? A Burger-Joint Clause Offers a Clue," New York Times, September 27, 2017, accessed at nytimes.com on 7/11/2018.
 
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, "Real Earnings--June 2018," USDL-18-1114, released July 12, 2018.
 
Cohen, Patricia, "Paychecks Lag as Profits Soar, and Prices Erode Wage Gains," July 13, 2018, accessed at nytimes.com, 7/13/2018.
 
Dougherty, Conor, "Losing the Right to a New Job," New York Times, May 14, 2017, 1, 4-5.
 
Hiltzik, Michael, "Labor Losing Out to Wall Street," Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2018, C1, C5.
 
Krueger, Alan B., and Eric A. Posner, "A Proposal for Protecting Low-Income Workers from Monopsony and Collusion,"  Hamilton Project Policy Proposal 2018-5, February, 2018.
 
Stein, Jeff, "Fast-Food Hiring Practices Are Probed," Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2018, C6
 
Van Dam, Andrew, "Why Many U.S. Workers Feel Left Behind in Hot Economy," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2018, C3.
 
Velshi and Ruhle, MSNBC, July 11, 2018, "What 'No Poach' Rules Mean for Fast Food Workers."
 
 

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