More bosses are weighing the credit worthiness of job candidates before making a hire — a practice that some lawmakers say unfairly keeps people with bad credit from landing a job.
On Thursday, the Senate takes up a proposal to restrict employers in most cases from using financial information such as credit scores to decide whom to hire, promote or fire. [...]
Today, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced major new additions to her plan to provide debt-free public college and reduce the burden of student debt for those struggling to repay. Clinton’s plan would eliminate tuition and fees for working- and middle-class students, which combined with expanded Pell Grants will allow millions of students to graduate with no debt.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. And while many Americans believe fervently and faithfully in expanding opportunity, America’s internship-industrial complex does just the opposite.
Without protecting and expanding public pension systems, black retirees may lose much of the retirement security they have gained in the last 50 years, a new Demos report finds. The public sector has long been a strong source of employment for African Americans, with 21.2 percent of all black women and 15.4 percent of all black men working in the public sector.
In 2014, public pensions and Social Security together accounted for 57 percent of black retirees’ income compared to 49 percent for white retirees.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its long-standing view that colleges and universities may seek to foster diversity in higher education by considering race and ethnicity as one factor in a holistic admissions process.
Demos applauds this decision, and agrees that a diverse student body is of vital importance to the mission of higher education in America.
“America is the world's boldest experiment in a multi-racial democracy, and yet we are still working to fulfill the ideal of an equal say and an equal chance for all,” s
League of Women Voters of Virginia says proposed purge could threaten eligible voters in November election
Tomorrow, a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, will address a request by the League of Women Voters of Virginia to intervene in an ongoing legal battle there, where a self-styled “election integrity” group has sued the city’s registrar in an attempt to pressure her into conducting an unnecessary and improper purge of the voter rolls in advance of the 2016 election.
The first platform committee meeting for the 2016 Democratic National Convention, featuring representatives from both campaigns as well as DNC neutrals, took place on Wednesday. Their deliberations will likely feature tough negotiations on a range of issues — a $15 minimum wage, fracking, the legitimacy of giant banks — that were points of contention during the campaigning, helping clarify the political and ideological shift that has taken place in the party since the mid-1990s when Robert Rubin was its intellectual lodestar.
Brenda Wright, an attorney with the public policy group Demos — which backed the lawsuit along with the Prison Policy Initiative — said the the litigation was aimed at getting localities to account for prisoners where it truly counts.
The ruling concluded that Cranston artificially inflated the population of Ward 6 by treating all inmates of the ACI as residents of the prison for redistricting purposes.
``I’m thrilled that our fight for equal representation has been successful,’’ said Karen Davidson, lead plaintiff, in a news release. ``Fairness in redistricting is a fundamental right and I’m glad the court has vindicated our claims.’’
Lagueux gave the city thirty days to redraw the districts.
“This is a big win for democracy,” said Adam Lioz of Demos, counsel for the plaintiffs. “Prison gerrymandering distorts representation and should no longer be tolerated. This decision should pave the way for other courts to address this long-standing problem.”
Plaintiffs argued that the "prison gerrymandering" improperly considered ACI prisoners as constituents of local elected officials when they are instead "residents of their pre-incarceration communities for virtually all legal purposes, including voting."
"I'm thrilled that our fight for equal representation has been successful," said lead plaintiff Karen Davidson, of Cranston. "Fairness in redistricting is a fundamental right and I'm glad that the court has vindicated our claims."
(BOSTON, Mass.)- Today, a broad coalition of consumer, civil rights, labor, and community organizations issued a letter strongly urging members of the U.S. House of Representatives to support of H.R. 5282, the Comprehensive Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 2016, introduced today by Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Lobbyists are often frowned upon for doing the bidding of major corporations. A list of the organizations that spend the most on lobbying, maintained by the websiteOpenSecrets.org, is full of corporations like Boeing, General Electric, and AT&T, as well as associations like the National Association of Realtors.
Millions more workers could soon be making more money thanks to overtime changes the Obama administration announced today.
Starting December 1, the regulations being issued by the Labor Department would double the threshold under which salaried workers must be paid overtime, from to $47,476 from $23,660.
This rule is part of the patchwork of changes on the national, state, and even municipal level to raise wages for workers that have small businesses and large corporations figuring out how to balance the books, by either cutting workers or raising prices.
It’s not every day that low-paid workers — cleaners mopping the floors of Washington’s Union Station, vendors selling pretzels at the National Zoo, servers dishing out hot lunch at congressional cafeterias — speak out and win a voice in setting national policy. Yet three years ago, that’s exactly what began to happen.
In May 2013, workers employed by private companies under contract with the federal government came together to form Good Jobs Nation – and walked out on strike in the nation’s capital.
Today, the working class are most likely to work as caregivers, retail workers, cashiers, fast food workers, and janitors. How are the working class movements such as “Fight for $15” minimum wage shifting the political and economic landscape? Join the conversation, on the next Your Call, with Rose Aguilar, and you.
Some 63 percent of white students who graduate from public four-year colleges and universities borrow to do so, but 81 percent of black graduates go that route, according to a study of student debt by Demos, a public policy research organization. When it comes to associate's degrees, 57 percent of black students borrow, versus 43 percent of whites — and the black students borrow an average of $2,000 more.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) took the necessary first steps toward improving voter registration services offered online and at its 174 field offices across the state, though it still will need to address some major issues.
Beginning this month, people who are eligible and affirmatively choose to register when applying for or renewing a driver license or identification card at a DMV field office will: