We are changing the conversation around our democracy and economy by telling influential new stories about our country and its people. Get our latest media updates here.
Demos policy analyst Catherine Ruetschlin joins Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! to discuss global fast food strikes taking place, protesting the vast wage disparities between executi
At $9.85 an hour, 25-year-old Terran Lyons supports herself and two kids as a crew trainer at a McDonald’s in Seattle’s university district. That’s a jump from the $9.19 an hour the high school dropout got when she started, and a step above the state’s $9.32 minimum wage. But it’s hardly enough to be self-sufficient. Lyons is on food stamps. She wouldn’t even be able to afford a Big Mac if it weren’t for the 50 percent employee discount.
It seems every day that a well-regarded economist is telling us that the US economy is in dire straits. Larry Summers has warned that we are entering a period of “secular stagnation.” This is a condition in which low-interest rate monetary policy no longer stimulates growth of the economy and well-paying jobs.
Twenty-four cents. That’s what black children in Clarendon, South Carolina were worth per every dollar spent on white children’s education. That's why South Carolina was one of the five states challenged in the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case.
Fast-food workers and labor organizers are planning a strike of global proportions Thursday, based on the premise that low-wage occupations should still be “living wage” occupations. In the US, Thursday’s date – May 15 – carries numerical significance, as actions in as many as 150 cities aim to win a pay raise to at least $15-an-hour from restaurant chains in the industry, as they also push to unionize the companies.
WASHINGTON, DC – Citing a recent report which found an alarming 1000-to-1 pay disparity between fast food CEOs and their front line workers, Senator Menendez again called on Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White to finalize its rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEO and median worker, as directed by Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform Act”.
READ
I've written a few times in recent months about the breakdown of traditional employment relationships. Organizations of all kinds—mainly in the private sector, but also universities and other nonprofits—have grown super savvy about outsourcing any number of functions they used to do in-house to contractors. And, no, I'm not talking about shipping jobs to China.
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) recently filed a federal complaint challenging the constitutionality of several Connecticut statutes that regulate campaign expenditures made without the consent, coordination, or consultation of candidates for state office (“independent expenditures”).