It's time to ensure that workers, no matter what their immigration status, have the same rights, and that their status isn't used an excuse to justify abusive behavior.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, plenty of Americans have seen their credit scores tank. But can that really affect your ability to get a job? Yes, because employers increasingly are relying on workers' credit histories in screening applications.
New York, NY -- In his State of the Union last night, President Obama hit on four key issues where Demos is engaged and where progress is long overdue: voting reform, the minimum wage, universal pre-K, and higher education.
On the bipartisan voting commission, Brenda Wright, Vice President of Legal Strategies:
This Explainer explores how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used in measuring our economic growth and whether alternative measures are also needed to provide a more comprehensive outlook of economic progress.
Using political power to keep employees from organizing unions can be highly effective. That’s one forceful lesson to draw from the new figures on union membership.
US labor markets ended 2012 with a whimper, as Friday’s release of the December unemployment numbers showed all major indicators essentially unchanged.
A new analysis of state spending on higher education finds that states with a diverse economy, low unemployment, and a history of support for higher education are likely to maintain public spending on colleges. Conversely, states that do not have those characteristics have a hard time overcoming fiscal challenges to create a robust system of higher education.
New York -- In response to the late night passage of a tax deal by the US House of Representatives, Miles Rapoport, president of the national nonpartisan public policy organization Demos released the following statement:
"It is in the nature of a complicated bipartisan agreement that it looks very different depending on what prism you look at it through. Two elements are critically important: what is actually in the bill that passed and the President will sign, and how its passage ‘sets up’ the future fiscal debates.
Access to a post-secondary education is a vital aspect of the American dream, allowing for equality of opportunity and a stable pathway to the middle class for all who are willing to work for it regardless of their background or socioeconomic status. Higher education not only improves the prospects for the employment and earnings of individuals, but has benefits that feed back into communities and society as a whole, including increases in civic participation and productivity, and preparedness for success in the global economy. Our shared commitment to these values is reflected
NEW YORK -- The United States faces a retirement crisis that threatens future retirees and the next generation of workers. The voluntary employer-sponsored retirement system covers fewer and fewer Americans, often leaving Social Security, originally intended as a supplement to other forms of retirement, as the major source of income for 40 percent of older Americans. Even workers still covered by an employer retirement plan have had their benefits weakened.
It is really terrific to see retailers here giving critical attention to the Demos study. As a former business owner in the health services industry, I do realize that these problems are more than just abstract theory. That's one of the reasons why Demos and I thought it would be useful to evaluate the possibilities for adopting this business model across the retail sector, especially as the importance of retail to the US economy continues to grow.
“Black Friday” sales are debt traps for people to rush out and buy on credit.
But we can fix this on both the wage and profit ends of the continuum. It’s not that complex a fix, but it requires seeing our country as a whole, as one people who rise and fall together.
We can fix this whole mess and have something for which we could really give thanks, if we just paid workers a little more.
Walmart has been on something of a charm offensive where the public is concerned (and anintimidation offensive where its workers are concerned), hoping to blunt the impact of the Black Friday rebellion.
"Everyone is part-timed to death at these stores," Walton said. "When they sign up for these shifts, it's 'I don't get enough hours, I'm dying for hours, so I'll work these shifts.' Until we do something to stop the part-timing of the workforce, we're going to see this happen."
"Workers want to stop this before it becomes an absolute standard to work on Thanksgiving," Walton added.
More broadly, the widening inequality reflected in the gap between the pay of Walmart workers and the returns to Walmart investors, including the Walton fammily, haunts the American economy.
A new study released by the progressive think tank Demos on Monday estimated that if retail workers were given a living wage, hundreds of thousands of Americans would be lifted out of poverty and the wage boost would significantly bolster the economy.