There was little merry or bright this holiday season for millions of unemployed Americans who are losing their extended unemployment benefits.
Many depend on these meager payments, a federal extension of state unemployment programs that expired as of the last Saturday of 2013, to stay afloat. After tapping out their savings, downsizing their living space, and draining their retirement funds, one-time managers and MBA grads bought Christmas gifts secondhand and worry over what the new year will bring. [...]
The New York Times reported this morning (echoing the reporting of Greg Sargent and others earlier this year) that Democrats plan to campaign on raising the minimum wage during the election season. Aside from being good economic policy, raising the minimum wage is quite popular,
According to human resources surveys, nearly half of all employers now conduct credit checks as part of their hiring process. Yet there is little basis for this practice.
“A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.” So said President Obama in his recent speech on increasing economic inequality, which he said “challenges the very essence of who we are as a people.”
NEW YORK — Demos applauds the work of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who today introduced The Equal Employment for All Act, legislation that would prohibit the widespread use of personal credit history in employment. The use of employment credit checks is an unjust practice that poses a serious barrier to economic security for many Americans and leads to discriminatory hiring practices against people of color and the long-term unemployed.
WASHINGTON—Today,Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced The Equal Employment for All Act. This legislation would prohibit the widespread use of personal credit history in employment, an unjust practice that poses a serious barrier to economic security for many Americans and leads to discriminatory hiring practices against people of color and the long-term unemployed.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would prohibit employers from requiring job applicants to disclose their credit history.
In a conference call with reporters, Warren argued that a person's poor credit history is often the result of medical bills, job loss or divorce and does not reflect his ability to perform a job.
Job-hunters are increasingly being asked to agree to allow potential employers to view their personal credit information, a development that Sen. Elizabeth Warren says is unfairly keeping people out of the job market who've had financial setbacks or have reports that contain inaccurate information.
Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour.
Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said Tuesday in an interview. [...]
The holiday season is upon us. Sadly, the big retailers are Scrooges when it comes to paying their workers. Undergirding the sale prices is an army of workers earning the minimum wage or a fraction above it, living check to check on their meager pay and benefits.
When I was 18, I spent a year and change flipping burgers in one of those restaurants where customers eat from a tray balanced across their car windows. It was one of the three jobs I held at the time, affording a simple budget and enough left over to save up to go to college after a couple of years. I put in hard hours for my employer and it eventually worked out just fine for me. It also makes for a nice story, but one that is embarrassingly dated.
Thousands of fast food workers plan to walk off the job in 100 U.S. cities today, a major escalation in labor’s strongest-ever challenge to an industry that’s become ever more central to the present and future of U.S. work. One year after a surprise work stoppage by 200 New York City fast food workers, two questions raised by that first-of-its-kind walkout have already been answered: Could workers sustain and grow their numbers in the months after returning to the job?
Low wages are not just keeping workers in poverty, they are also holding back the economy by weakening consumer demand and keeping employers from realizing the benefits that accompany investments in the work force. Retail and fast food companies that pay poverty wages sabotage their own bottom lines and the health of the American economy, but a raise for the lowest paid would have benefits that extend to workers, consumers, and employers across industries.
Progressives are starting to worry that President Obama may be more talk than walk when it comes to raising the minimum wage. Again, on Wednesday, the president said, "It's well past the time to raise a minimum wage that, in real terms right now, is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office."
The White House has offered “no response” to a months-old call from congressional Democrats to bypass Congress and use executive action to raise workers’ wages, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told Salon Tuesday afternoon.
Next November, Californians will decide whether to raise the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour -- which would be the highest level of any state and not so far from the $15 an hour goal often mentioned by labor activists.
In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman takes on the plight of low-wage retail and fast food workers, who have seen their real wages fall almost 30 percent since 1973 even as this sector has become a larger part of our economy. During a season when Americans flood the stores for holiday shopping, Krugman asks whether anything can be done for low-wage retail and restaurant employees.