With the holiday shopping season fast approaching,Demos has released a new report showing how raising wages in the retail sector would benefit not just workers but the economy as a whole. The study looks at what would happen if the lowest-paid retail employees earned $25,000 a year (the current average is $21,000 for retail sales people and just $18,500 for cashiers).
As planned Black Friday strikes draw increasing media attention, Walmart continues to publicly dismiss the actions as stunts and the workers involved as an unrepresentative fringe. But workers charge that behind closed doors, the company is waging a stepped-up campaign to to intimidate them out of striking. That includes both alleged illegal threats and punishments, and likely legal mandatory meetings designed to discourage workers from joining the Black Friday rebellion.
Catherine Ruetschlin has produced an outside-the-box policy brief for Demos arguing for "a new wage floor for the lowest-paid retail workers equivalent to $25,000 per year for a full-time, year-round retail worker at the nation’s largest retail companies—those employing at least 1,000 workers."
Walmart executives worried about the recent spate of labor activity against the retailer would probably tell you that they cannot possibly offer higher wages to their employees while maintaining their brand identifier of low prices. They offer what the market will bear in terms of wages, they would say, and anything more would represent a loss for their business, and would impact shoppers on tight budgets. It’s just not possible.
Retail companies don't have to choose between high wages and high profits, argues a new report from the researchers at Demos.
In Retail’s Hidden Potential, policy analyst Catherine Ruetschlin says that higher wages across the retail industry would create jobs and reduce poverty without cutting significantly into employers’ profit margins.
Black Friday has heaped new pressure on big box stores to bump up worker pay, with a group of Walmart employees plotting a walkout on the country’s biggest shopping day and the think tank Demos releasing a study Monday that touts the benefits of higher wages.
Henry Ford famously decided in 1914 to pay many of his workers the then incredible sum of five dollars a day, which was substantially higher than the prevailing wage at the time.
Baby boomers are the first generation in American history to be entering retirement saddled with debt, including unpaid balances on credit cards.
The financial crisis in 2008 that sent the economy into a recession crippled many baby boomers’ retirement accounts, forcing many to stay in the workforce or significantly alter their retirement lifestyle plans. Now, the oldest of the boomer generation are receiving Social Security checks alongside notices from bill collectors.
Despite President Obama’s important, even landmark, accomplishments, by the time November 6 arrived, many Americans were disappointed with his first term. They expected him to be a “transformational” president who would somehow, single-handedly, change Washington’s political culture.
Just sixty-one individuals gave $285.2 million to Super PACs in the 2012 elections, contributing the same amount as 1,425,500 small grassroots donors to the major party presidential candidates, according to a new report from Demos and U.S. PIRG.
This report, the fourth in a series, focuses on "the overwhelming influence of a tiny number of wealthy donors."
No doubt the new International Energy Agency (IEA)'s latest World Energy Outlook will be cause for celebration for the fossil fuel industry. In it, IEA points to the strong oil and gas production in the U.S. and predicts that by within a decade or so, the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. By 2030, North America could be a net oil exporter and, around the same time, the U.S. will likely be energy independent.
Whatever your opinion of the election’s outcome, there seems to be have been a lot of agreement this year with President Obama’s assertion that the voting process itself is something “we have to fix.” One place to get a bird’s-eye view of Election Day chaos—besides your local polling place—was at one of the call centers set up by the Election Protection Coalition, a collection of voting and civil-rights advocates that runs a hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, to help voters on Election Day.
Of course, no one should attempt to vote if he or she is not legally registered, but documented cases of actual voter fraud are rare. True the Vote is aiming to train as many as one million poll “observers,” and the scope of that effort far exceeds any real problem of illegal voting; instead, it seems intended to intimidate voters. As True the Vote’s top organizer reportedly told recruits during a training session in South Florida, their job is to make voters feel as if they are “driving and seeing the police following you.” This isn’t a civics lesson.
WASHINGTON -- More than half of the nation's 400 richest citizens have contributed money to help elect President Barack Obama or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to the White House. These members of the Forbes 400, who boast a combined net worth of $1.7 trillion -- more than 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product -- have donated more to affect the outcome of the presidential race than ever before.
It's a sign of our shadowy times that the latest regulatory "reform" bill hasn't been laughed out of Washington. Same goes for the latest bankers' complaint, this time about being asked to cover their own bets. And if you think it's bad now, wait and see what happens if Romney takes over.
Think "global catastrophe."
While bank-friendly politicians offer insipid legislation, the world economy is still at risk. And it could get worse.
5. Will old-school voter intimidation and suppression come into play?
This refers to all the steps that have been taken by the GOP in recent years to complicate the voting process, discourage participation and scare off new voters.
The money is the story. The money is the only story. The money was not the only story ever since this campaign began, which was 15 minutes after the past one ended, but it became the only story on January 21, 2010, when the Supreme Court reversed a lower-court decision in the case of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, thereby demolishing almost a century of state and federal laws aimed at controlling the system by which we finance our political campaigns.
Several developments in the past three years suggest that the case for upholding section 5 against constitutional challenge has been strengthened compared to the situation in 2009.