Four-year-old John Kaykay is a serious and quiet boy—“my thoughtful one,” his dad calls him. When the official greeters at the front door of the McClure early-childhood center in Tulsa welcome him with their clipboards and electric cheer—“Good morning, John! How are you today?”—he just slowly nods his small chin in their direction. When he gets to Christie Housley’s large, sunny classroom, he focuses intensely on signing in, writing the four letters of his name with a crayon as his dad crouches behind him.
It's widely known that the U.S. is way out of step with the rest of the world in not having paid maternity leave. We are now one of only three nations—rich and poor - that don't guarantee job-protected time off with some amount of income after the birth of a child.
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.
Lewis Powell wanted executives selling tires or aspirin to take on an additional job: selling capitalism itself. Today, the disparate strands of the progressive movement must learn the same lesson, advocating not just for people but for the very idea of the people. Ours is the world’s greatest experiment in democracy: to create one, mutually supporting community of interest out of ancestral strangers—geographically distant, multi-origin, multi-ethnic, multiracial. Our inability to do that has been the Achilles’ heel of liberalism. It’s why we are not yet the 99 percent.
Our nation is on the brink of a retirement crisis that could have severe consequences for both future retirees and society as a whole. The steady erosion in the voluntary employer-sponsored retirement system has made it more difficult for workers to save for retirement. This crisis will not only impact retirees, but the next generation of workers, who will be left with the tab when federal, state, and local governments are forced to expand to help millions of additional elderly Americans who will be living in poverty.1
The share of workers without any retirement plan at work has risen dramatically over the past decade. The percentage of workers whose employer did not sponsor any type of retirement plan rose from 39 percent to 47 percent—a 21 percent increase.1 This alarming trend is a call to action for state and local policymakers who want to prevent old age hardship by ensuring all workers can invest adequately, efficiently, and safely for their own retirement. protecting funds from the volatility of the stock market.
As Americans across the country head out en masse to malls and shopping centers to kickoff the holiday spending season today, it's important to remember that too many of the retail workers bringing us those deals earn meager wages.
The ranks of America's retail workforce have surged to more than 4.5 million workers, making it one of the nation's largest job categories. Their numbers swell further during the holiday crush, as stores take on additional seasonal employees. The U.S. is expected to add another 740,000 of retail jobs by 2020.
With Thanksgiving come and gone, we are now officially in the thick of the holiday shopping season, which means a good chunk of the country will be driving down to Walmart, Target, and other giant discounters to pick up gifts for friends and family. When they do, they'll be rewarding some of the largest companies in America for paying many of their front line workers poverty wages.
This Black Friday the lives of low-wage retail workers were thrust into the spot light as employees of a variety of stores weent to work on Thanksgiving Day and strikersdescended on Walmart stores in 100 cities.
Thousands of Walmart workers around the country are planning to strike on Black Friday, hoping to end retaliation they claim the massive retail chain’s workers receive when they speak out for better working conditions.
New Mexico’s current political leadership is undoing state and regional policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even as the risks posed by global warming to the state’s economy and population become more evident.[1] Experts foresee even more difficult problems in the future unless steps are taken to stabilize the climate. Some of the challenges New Mexico faces include:
Today’s prolonged economic slump is fundamentally different from an ordinary recession. In the aftermath of a severe financial collapse, an economy is at risk of succumbing to a prolonged deflationary undertow. With asset prices reduced, the financial system damaged, unemployment high, consumer demand depressed, and businesses reluctant to invest, the economy gets stuck well below its full employment potential.
Chances are you missed this particular bargain on Black Friday: Agree to spend 15 cents more on every shopping trip, and Walmart, Target, and other large retailers will agree to pay their workers at least $25,000 a year.
On a talk show this past Sunday, Walmart worker Greg Fletcher spoke about the realities of struggling to provide for his family on the company's infamous low wages. David Frum, a conservative columnist atNewsweek, pointedly asked Greg whether he got the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax refund meant to supplement the earnings of low-wage workers.
“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.
FORTUNE -- Thousands of Wal-Mart employees won't be pushing away from the Thanksgiving meal today to visit with family, watch football, or even clean the dishes. Instead, they'll be heading to work to welcome bargain-hunting shoppers.
As Black Friday approached, the honchos at Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, found themselves at a loss to respond to a nationwide rebellion within the ranks of their near-captive workers -- people who work for an average wage of $8.81 per hour, according to The National Memo, often in areas where Walmart is the only game in town for a job if you don’t have a college degree (or even if you do).
Forget the stampeding shoppers, the half-priced waffle irons, or the pepper spray wielding wackos: barring a federal intervention, the main event this Black Friday could turn out to be a showdown between organized labor and its arch corporate nemesis, Wal-Mart.