President Obama should sign a Good Jobs executive order to encourage contractors to improve workplace benefits and respect their employees’ rights to bargain collectively.
Workers at many of the nation’s largest and most profitable employers struggle to get enough work hours (and sufficiently stable hours) to make ends meet, making fair scheduling as important as raising wages for millions of workers.
In May 2013, low-wage workers in federal buildings in Washington began walking off the job in a series of one-day strikes. Employed by concessionaires and janitorial contractors at places like the Smithsonian and the Ronald Reagan Building, the workers said their rock-bottom wages weren't enough to survive on. Like the Walmart and fast-food workers also going on strike, they asked for better working conditions and a greater share of the spoils.
Today, President Obama will sign an Executive Order that will encourage federal agencies to not contract with companies that violate labor laws, and require federal contractors to disclose any record of wage, labor and anti-discrimination law violations.
When Walmart pays its workers so little that they need food stamps to survive, they're also investing in a steady profit stream. Even though their prices are roughly the same or even more than their local competition, Walmart's excessive marketing of "low prices" makes them a first-choice supermarket for people living in poverty, including their employees.
Eliminating poverty seems like an impossibly utopian goal, but it's actually pretty easy: we can just give people enough money that they're above the poverty line. That idea, known as a basic income, has been around forever, but it's made a comeback in recent years.
Demos Policy Analyst Robert Hiltonsmith testifies before the Congressional Progressive Caucus on wage theft and its effects on the earnings of low-income workers.
Embedded gender and racial discrimination and lack of bargaining power are major causes of not only low pay for home health care aides but for many of the country’s low-wage, fast-growing occupations.
President Barack Obama recently defied Republican threats to file suit against him for his use of executive orders. "If House Republicans are really concerned about me taking too many executive actions, the best solution to that is passing bills," the president said. "Pass a bill, solve a problem."
Sharon Lerner, a senior fellow at the public policy organization Demos, has spent the past year interviewing a diverse sample of New Jersey employers about the effect of paid leave. Those who admitted they’d feared being deluged by workers abusing the policy said they’d learned such fears were unfounded. None of the employers in the survey reported that paid leave had negatively affected their company’s productivity, profitability, or turnover, and some reported improved morale.
Another major retailer in the United States is giving a boost to its base salary, although the size of the increase will vary from state to state. On Thursday morning, the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA announced that it would be adopting a new wage structure which is expected to increase pay for about 50% of its American employees. The change in company policy will take effect on January 1, 2015.
As the White House convenes its summit on the issues facing working families this week, it’s easy to feel discouraged. The proposals topping the agenda–paid leave, flexible work, childcare–are all great ideas. The problem is they’re the same great ideas advocates have been suggesting for years—decades, even.
Once upon a time, the term “government job” was not synonymous with boondoggles, corruption or the perennial “waste, fraud and abuse.” During the New Deal, the state proudly created jobs and spent public money as a vital intervention to check the excesses of market capitalism. Today, the public is disgusted with both fiscal policy and the free market.
A public policy group instrumental in a successful campaign to win a higher minimum wage for federal contract workers is now aiming at a larger target — federal contracting companies.
Demos, in a report released Wednesday, said Uncle Sam could better use his $1.3 trillion in purchasing power by pushing government contractors to improve conditions for their employees.