Economy
Domestic Workers Get Overtime Pay But No Union
originally posted by Daisy Hernandez for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 29th
After a six year fight, New York is now the first state to grant domestic workers the right to overtime pay, one day off per week, disability benefits, and unemployment insurance.
The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, signed into law by Gov. David Paterson earlier this month, is significant. It’s breached through nearly a century of institutional neglect and standardized some basic human rights. But it does have one debatable feature: It doesn’t allow collective bargaining among domestic workers, the bulk of whom in New York are women of color. In fact, the New York State’s Department of Labor will be conducting a study with the explicit purpose of proving “once and for all, that collective bargaining would not be useful to domestic workers.”
Organizers pushing to get the bill passed let this happen, sacrificing the collective bargaining option for the new protections. They felt collective bargaining wasn’t critical right now because there isn’t a counterpart on the side of employers with whom domestic workers could bargain as a group. According to Domestic Workers United, the lack of that employer counterpart proved advantageous these last six years since there wasn’t organized opposition to the bill.
But if domestic workers don’t have a union holding lawmakers and employers accountable, what assurance is there that this bill will be effective or even enforced?
Immigrant workers may suffer the most without the right to collective bargaining. According to a survey by the Domestic Workers United, “an overwhelming majority of domestic workers are immigrants and 76 percent are not citizens.” Given the language barriers and fear of deportation, these workers won’t contact the Department of Labor. Collective bargaining would fill in the breach.
However, according to union organizer Stephen Lerner in the New Labor Forum, it might be time for the labor movement to go “beyond collective bargaining as we know it.”
Lerner writes: “The lesson of recent years is that none of these [union] models alone—or in combination— work because they are all, in some way, trying to repair and recreate the now-dead social compact-based labor relations system of the last century.”
He suggests organizers “narrow the scope” of their demands and it’s true that the work of Domestic Workers United, CAAV and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles have proved that domestic workers can organize without the legal right to collective bargaining.
In an industry like domestic work, where workers negotiate their terms based on distinct levels of dependency and in an isolated work space, standardizing human rights might set a precedent for new labor relations and new forms of organizing.
Organizers nationwide are beginning to push for bills similar to New York’s. It’s not clear how much of a precedent New York is going to set. The California law that’s going to be proposed still demands collective bargaining rights for domestic workers.
How Republicans Blamed the Jobless for Being Out of Work
originally posted by Seth Freed Wessler for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 21st
The Senate has finally closed its four-month long ideological bludgeoning match over unemployment insurance, voting 60-40 yesterday to move forward with a bill extending the benefit through November for people who’ve been jobless for more than six months. After a final Senate vote, the bill will head to the House, where it will pass easily. So the demoralizing back and forth will come to an end–at least for the next four and half months.
On the surface, the debate has provided ground for an ongoing fight over the deficit. Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson insist that unemployment insurance extensions should not add to the federal deficit and should be paid for with budget offsets. But lurking behind the deficit discussion has been another, arguably deeper ideological debate about the social safety net itself. Over the last several months, Republicans have revived an idea that had faded from the public discussion during the boom years: The absurd notion that safety net programs like unemployment insurance create disincentives to work.
As this debate has unfolded, there’s been typically little acknowledgement of just how much race informs it. With unemployment rates as racially skewed as they are–blacks and Latinos, young people of color and single moms are all way more likely to be without a job–the benefits-make-them-lazy assertion is weighted by familiar, if silent tropes about people of color and work.
The suggestion that unemployment insurance is the reason people aren’t working may seem absurd in a time of almost 10 percent joblessness, rising homelessness and record levels of participation in the food stamp program. The average unemployed worker has been without a job for 34 weeks. But throughout congressional debate over the past four months and on the airwaves and editorial pages, conservatives have repeated the theme over and over.
In March, when the hoopla was just getting under way, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued on the Senate floor that a jobless benefits extension would be counterproductive “because people are being paid even though they’re not working . . . if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
Sharron Angle, the Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said in an interview a few weeks ago that she would have voted against the benefit extension:
because the truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn’t pay as much as the unemployment benefit does. And what we really need to do is put people back to work.
It’s plainly untrue that most jobs would pay less than the paltry, if essential benefit–an average of just $293 weekly. No matter. The Wall Street Journal nonetheless published an op-ed by Arthur Laffer arguing that extending the benefit “will make being unemployed either more attractive or less unattractive, and thereby lead to higher unemployment.”
But of course there’s a serious chicken and egg problem here. As Paul Waldman writes over at Tapped, “saying that increasing benefits causes unemployment is like saying that the presence of oil-catching booms causes oil spills, or that rain is caused by people carrying umbrellas.”
Even if unemployment insurance did somehow discourage people to go look for jobs, as Paul Krugman notes that can’t be an issue now, since there just aren’t enough jobs. There are roughly five job seekers for every opening, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Labor Department data. And as Krugman writes, “One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending.”
In sum, the benefits of unemployment insurance far outweigh any potential disincentive to work. That’s plain, if we’re talking about facts rather than racially loaded ideology.
Two and a half million jobless Americans have been without assistance since they were cut off over a month ago and a failure to pass the extension now would have plunged another 1.2 million a month into economic no man’s land. (The bill will retroactively provide benefits to those who were cut off last month.) As my colleagues and I explained in the Applied Research Center report Race and Recession–which we updated on Colorlines earlier this month–people of color are feeling the recession’s worst results. These are the communities waiting most anxiously for this bill. (Scroll down for more.)
Moreover, the Republicans’ use of the deficit as the key objection to extending unemployment insurance is entirely a straw man. Yes, the deficit is a serious longterm concern. But Senate Republicans are hard pressed to get us to believe that their complaints are a genuine worry rather a November elections strategy. As Democrats have hammered home, the very Republicans who are yelling about the deficit now helped push through the economic policies that created it in the Bush era.
President Obama said as much this week when he called Republicans a “partisan minority.” “The he same people who didn’t have any problems spending hundreds of millions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle class Americans….who really need help,” he lectured.
When Bush entered office the federal books were in the black. By the time he left, the country had plunged into trillions of dollars of debt. Apparently Republicans only object to the deficit when there are politics or other ideological commitments at stake. And one of those commitments is the idea that helping the unemployed makes them lazy. It’s a fact-challenged argument that’s drenched in old ideas about lazy workers, who, over and over again, are cast as Black and brown.
Photo: Getty Images/Scott Olson
Blacks Locked Out of Oil Spill Cleanup Jobs, says NAACP
originally posted by Julianne Hing for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 20th
The NAACP says BP’s hiring process has kept people of color out of the burgeoning oil spill cleanup industry in the Gulf Coast and the group has called on BP CEO Tony Hayward to rectify the problem. In a July 10 letter, NAACP president Ben Jealous also told Hayward that people of color who do get hired are getting stuck with tougher, lower-paying cleanup work.
Black Voices reports that less than 5 percent of the $53 million in cleanup contracts awarded so far has gone to people of color-owned businesses. The NAACP also said that BP has been hiring workers from out-of-state to take over cleanup work, which has taken away precious employment opportunity from locals, the AP reported. (Rest assured, the local police already called up ICE to poke around cleanup sites and make sure there were no undocumented immigrants among the bunch.)
But cleaning up the oil spill is not enviable work. It says much about the Gulf Coast’s dismal economic climate when people have to fight over jobs in a toxic stew. Sure, billions of dollars are being spent on cleanup efforts, but the pay itself is not lucrative, and the risks associated with exposure to the poisonous dispersants and oil are significant. Back in May, cleanup work was temporarily halted after dozens of workers in both Louisiana and Alabama fell ill, reporting difficulty breathing, nausea and dizziness. And in the weeks right after the spill, local environmental groups raised concerns that cleanup workers were not being sent out with appropriate safety equipment, and were even forbidden to bring their own respirators with them. Those who brought along their own safety gear were threatened with job termination.
As Trinh Le, an organizer with the Hope Community Redevelopment Agency in Biloxi told me at the time, “The entire region is built on the fishing industry.” Le said that many men used to work work in the multi-million dollar fishing, shrimping and oyster industries, while many women worked in the canning and processing factories. And those who didn’t work in the industry directly were employed through peripheral supporting industries. Now that the oil spill has decimated the local fishing industry, people have lost access to their livelihoods indefinitely, (though not according to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal). People are anxious for recovery and some form of long term redress, but in the meantime, they also need jobs to feed their families. Even if it’s dangerous and dirty cleanup work.
h/t The Root
Fourth Time’s A Charm? Obama Jabs GOP on Stalled Jobs Bill
originally posted by Naima Ramos-Chapman for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 19th
An exasperated President Obama tried to turn up the heat this morning on the GOP for its opposition to a bill extending jobless benefits. So far the GOP has blocked the latest effort extend unemployment insurance to cover the growing ranks of longterm unemployed three times. Congress has repeatedly stumbled in its effort to keep the program going throughout 2010.
Obama said in a Rose Garden speech this morning that it has been standard practice for similar bills to gain bipartisan support, especially in times of economic hardship. Obama accused Republicans of political posturing and pleaded that “elections be put aside” to help “middle class Americans.” With unemployment at just under 10 percent–more than 15 percent for African Americans and 12.4 percent for Latinos–there are roughly five job seekers for every job opening, as the Economic Policy Institute details. (Scroll down for more.)
Obama called out Republicans for “championing” policies that led this country into financial ruin and giving too many breaks to the rich Obama. “The same people who didn’t have any problems spending hundreds of millions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans,” said Obama, “are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle class Americans….who really need help”
Calling the GOP a “partisan minority,” Obama blamed Republicans for holding the bill hostage with filibusters “not once, not twice, but three times.”
After Republicans–with the notable help of some conservative Democrats–filibustered a broader jobs bill the first time around, Democrats separated unemployment benefit. With the passing of West Virginia Sen, Robert Byrd, however, the Democrats do not have the needed three votes to move the stand-alone bill. Another vote to extend benefits for the Americans will be scheduled tomorrow.
If the fourth attempt is refuted, another 1.2 million Americans who have been out of work for longer than 26 weeks will be severed from unemployment benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 2.5 million people had lost benefits as of July 17. The average unemployed worker has been without a job for 34 weeks.
“Tomorrow we will have another chance to offer them that relief. Do right,” said Obama.
Photo: WASHINGTON – JULY 19: U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement to the press at the Rose Garden of the White House July 19, 2010 in Washington, DC. Obama called on the Congress to extend the long-term unemployment benefits to assist Americans that are still out of work. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Invest in Immigrants for Economic Longevity, says OECD
originally posted by Naima Ramos-Chapman for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 14th
Rich nations should invest in immigration for longterm economic growth. That’s the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) message this week to its 31 member countries–the globe’s most developed nations.
A report released by the OECD Monday documented that in 2008, 4.4 million people migrated to its member countries, a 6 percent decline compared to the year prior. That decline’s a bad thing, says OECD, because rich countries need immigrants to stay rich.
“It is important to recall that migrants are valuable contributors to the national economy especially when times are good,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Current economic difficulties will not change long-term demographic trends and should not be used as an excuse to overly restrict immigration. It is important that immigration policy has a long-term perspective.”
Around half of the 2008 migrants went to Europe, a third to North America, 10 percent to Japan and Korea, and 8 percent to Australia and New Zealand.
Those who have migrated–especially male immigrants who work in sectors hit hard by the recession, such as construction, hotels and restaurants–have tasted the bitterness of unemployment at a higher rate than those native-born. Some countries reported a rise of employment for women immigrants, but the OECD attribute the rise to women taking jobs to substitute their spouse’s lost income.
To ensure a healthy economy, the OECD suggests “governments should make every effort to assist immigrants who have lost their jobs, both by ensuring they have the same rights to unemployment support as native workers” and providing support for job searches and language-training to aid in integration. Translation: Invest in immigrants like a valuable economic asset, rather than treating them like a burden.
Photo: Getty Images/Joe Raedle
Wells Fargo’s "Stage Coach From Hell" Loses Subprime Wheels
originally posted by Jamilah King for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 8th
Late last night Wells Fargo announced its plans to cut 3,800 jobs, close 638 of its Wells Fargo financial stores nationwide and officially stop handing out subprime loan packages. The move is a long time coming for a bank that’s been at the forefront of the subprime mortgage crisis for communities of color.
The bank’s shady lending practices in communities of color were well documented at the beginning of last year, when a former employee, Beth Jacobson, detailed how she’d spent the better part of a decade riding “the stagecoach from hell” and doling out costly subprime loans to working- and middle-class aspiring homeowners, even when they could afford prime loans. Loan officers even strategically went after Black churches.
“We just went right after them,” Jacobson told the New York Times in 2009. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”
And that’s not even the worst of it. In a federal affidavit filed the same year, another loan officer testified that bank representatives called Black customers “mud people” and termed subprime lending “ghetto loans.”
Once the housing bubble went bust, Wells Fargo became the ire of foreclosed homeowners and city governments, who were often left to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and city services. Baltimore and Memphis filed suit, along with the NAACP, charging that the company had violated the federal Fair Housing Act. In Baltimore, for instance, 71 percent of foreclosed properties owned by Wells Fargo were in predominately Black neighborhoods.
And as ColorLines’ Seth Wessler reports today, communities of color are still being hit hard by foreclosures nationwide.
Photo: Getty Images/Justin Sullivan
Lawmakers Prepare for Showdown Over Jobs
originally posted by Jamilah King for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 7th
It looks like the congressional stalemate on jobs is headed directly for a political showdown in November’s midterm elections. After Republicans successfully blocked multiple efforts by Democrats to extend unemployment benefits before the holiday break, both sides were forced to call a draw while more than 1.2 million jobless workers saw their insurance expire. Now, as representatives from both parties take a week off in their home districts, they’re arming themselves with talking points for angry constituents. And eyeing midterms as a crucial moment to build an agenda for years to come.
Labor leaders in Kentucky organized a demonstration this afternoon against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who helped lead the opposition to legislation extending unemployment benefits. The state’s AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan told The Hill, “The message at events like this across the country is loud and clear: Working people won’t stand for elected officials who play politics with people’s livelihoods.”
The national unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent, while the jobless rate for workers of color is nearly double that. UC Berkeley’s Labor Center released new data this week showing that the Black unemployment rate for June was 15.4 percent.
Still, those politics are heating up. Talking Points Memo reported on how representatives from both sides of the aisle left last week with holiday homework to ease their constituents — and help build party support for what’s sure to be contentious midterm elections.
Democrats had their “Job Fair in a Box” kits, which included cheat sheets touting the party’s big success with health care and step-by-step instructions on holding local job fairs.
TPM reported that the phrases “job creation” and “create new jobs” appeared 24 times in a the first few pages. The overall consensus from House leaders is that the Democrats have done everything in their power to secure jobs for unemployed workers, while Republicans have done everything in their power to stop them. This includes their efforts to stop American companies from shipping jobs oversees, supporting small business growth, and using bonds to employ workers to build new schools and highways.
Meanwhile, Republican representatives say that the mounting deficit and stagnant unemployment numbers show that the Democratic strategies simply aren’t working.
The Hill reported today that Republicans are working on a remodeled documented called the “Contract With America” due out in September. Back in 1994, Newt Gingrich helped craft the first iteration of this contract, which used parts if Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union address to outline a conservative agenda. Notably, Congress voted on ten pieces of legislation from the contract, including the Personal Responsibility Act, which aimed to prohibit welfare for mothers under the age 18; The American Dream Restoration Act, which created a $500-per-child tax credit to provide tax relief for middle class families; and the Taking Back Our Streets Act, which helped fund additional law enforcement and new prison construction. Iterations of all three acts were eventually signed into law by 1996, and it’s widely believed that the move helped Republicans win back the House after four decades of Democratic control.
This time around, the Republican strategy is much of the same. Again, Republicans want to win control of the House and a dismal economy is tanking support for a Democratic president. The Hill reported that Republicans have been busy holding town halls to gather ideas for a new contract, including a website that’s supposedly fielded more than 10,000 ideas from supporters. Categories on the website include “Fiscal Accountability”, “American Values” and “National Security.”
“There are conversations every single day among our members” on what to include in the document, House GOP leader John Boehner told The Hill last week. Drumming up support for Republican candidates in November is just one part of the equation, and already Obama’s support among white Independent voters in slipping.
Photo: Getty Images/Joe Raedle
Jobless Claims Rise As Congress Goes On Recess
originally posted by Jamilah King for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 1st
Newly released data from the Department of Labor shows that the country’s jobless claims are on the rise.
Over the past two weeks, initial claims increased to over 470,000. The jump in claims isn’t exactly news to most analysts, who expected as much since thousands of temporary Census jobs ended this month. But it does add another degree of scrutiny to Congress’s stalemate on the decision to extend jobless benefits to millions of workers whose insurance ran out last week. Now, over a million workers who’ve been unemployed for more than six months will have to wait until after the July 4 recess to find out if any relief is on the way. For weeks, efforts to extend benefits have stalled in both the House and the Senate amid fears that the $33 billion unemployment package is too costly.
While states typically offer benefits for up to 26 weeks, Congress enacted emergency benefits in 2008 and expanded them in last year’s stimulus.
United Farm Workers Boldly Call Restrictionists’ Bluff on Unemployment
originally posted by Seth Hoy for Immigration Impact [click here]
Jul 1st
In response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that “undocumented immigrants steal American jobs,” the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) is asking restrictionists and the unemployed to walk the walk…all the way to the farm. Last week, the UFW launched a new campaign, Take Our Jobs, which “aims at hiring U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill jobs that often go to undocumented farm workers.” On the campaign website, the UFW allows applicants to sign up under the “I Want to be a Farm Worker” banner and then sends their information to a state job bank “indicating their interest to work in agriculture.” Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” is expected to plug the campaign on July 8.
As the Associated Press points out, while the campaign’s premise may be satirical, the need for immigration reform is serious business. Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America, said that farm workers have had enough of the punditry and anti-immigrant rhetoric targeting immigrants for unemployment.
Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy.
The reality is farmworkers who are here today aren’t taking any American jobs away. They work in often unbearable situations. I don’t think there will be many takers, but the offer is being made. Let’s see what happens.
The truth is that America’s agricultural industry depends on immigrant labor—many of whom are undocumented. According to agricultural labor economist James Holt, less than 2% of the U.S. workforce is engaged in farm work. However, more than 550,000 U.S. farmers hire workers to fill more than 3 million agricultural jobs each year—jobs where workers are often underpaid and work under harsh conditions. Which is why the United Farm Workers is advocating for the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act (part of the REPAIR proposal outlined by Sens. Schumer, Reid, Menendez, Feinstein, and Leahy back in April) which would “provide a legal, stable labor supply and help ensure that farmworkers are treated fairly” through an earned legalization program.
All satire aside, the UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign’s take home message is that the continued anti-immigrant rhetoric blaming immigrants for stealing American jobs—besides being untrue—only undermines the larger problems within our immigration system and agriculture industry. Keeping undocumented farm workers undocumented only exacerbates the problems of poor wages and working conditions and results in weak bargaining power for all workers. The UFW is hoping that the realization “that the food we all eat—at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias— comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers” is enough to motivate the American public to support workers’ rights.
So the next time you hear someone say, “Oh, well, you know, those illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs,” kindly direct him/her to TakeOurJobs.org where he/she can test their work ethic in America’s agricultural fields.
Photo by tpmartins.
Santelli Rants While Jobless Face Congressional Abyss
originally posted by Jamilah King for Colorlines [click here]
Jun 30th
Update 10:42am:
Jobless aid stalled late last night in the Senate, falling one vote shy of the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster. More than 2 million people will have their checks cut off before Congress returns from the holiday break.
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CNBC editor Rick Santelli’s at it again. A year after lighting the flame that ignited what we now know as the Tea Party, Santelli went off again this week as he railed against government spending. But he didn’t just rail. He flailed his arms around and shouted “stop spending!” over and over again, just in case viewers didn’t get the point.
And after weeks of congressional wrangling over whether or not to extend unemployment insurance, at least 1.2 million people without jobs may hear Santelli’s message loud and clear. That’s how many people are expected to be kicked off the roles after being unemployed for 26 weeks–even though the average unemployed worker has been jobless for 34 weeks if Congress doesn’t vote to extend jobless benefits this week.
As Seth Freed Wessler pointed out yesterday, if an extension isn’t passed, it would mark an ugly historical precedent: lawmakers haven’t let benefits fizzle while the jobless rate was above 7.2 percent since 1959. Currently, 9.3 percent of the nation is unemployed, while Black and Latino unemployment rates are nearly double that.
This latest political slump comes after days of wrangling in Congress. Last week a Republican-led filibuster squashed an attempt at reauthorization, calling the effort “too costly” given the nation’s $13 trillion debt. The unemployment package would cost an estimated $33 billion.
“We have a basic responsibility to help our constituents respond to emergencies,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev told Salon today. “We have a fundamental obligation not to deny them the help they need when they need it the most.”
We’ll see how that goes. Salon’s reporting that the bill keeps getting delayed in the House, while the Senate’s supposed to take up a vote tomorrow. Meanwhile, The Hill’s reporting that Congress is set to head into the holiday break without moving the bill at all.