David Novak is the chief executive of Yum! Brands, the parent company that runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. Last year, while Yum! Brands and other restaurant companies lobbied against raising the minimum wage, Novak made at least $22 million—more than 1,000 times what the average fast-food worker makes in a year. In return for paying him so much, Yum! got a tax break.
The news has not been kind to the fast food industry over the past few years. From labor strikes to claims of wage theft, companies like McDonald's and Burger King have taken increasing criticism for treatment of workers and their low wage jobs. Now a new report from New York-based think tank Demos has added fuel to the fire.
David Novak, the CEO of YUM! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and KFC, took home more than $22 million last year after exercising stock options, according to proxy statements. The average full-time fast-food worker, by comparison, would have made about $19,000 on the year. [...]
Fast food CEOs were paid more than 1,200 times the average fast food worker in 2012, according to a new study released Tuesday by Demos, a public policy group.
On a conference call to discuss the report New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said such a wide income disparity could affect the city's pension fund, which holds millions of shares in several fast food companies. And it could trickle down to affect every day New Yorkers, he said. [...]
Fast-food restaurants are serving up plenty of food for discussion in the debate over income inequality.
Fast-food chief executives take home $1,000 for every $1 dollar earned by their average workers, making it the most unequal sector within the U.S. economy, according to a new report from public policy group Demos.
Shantel Walker has been working on and off for Papa John’s pizza since she was in high school. The 32-year-old New York City resident says that over her 15 years at a Brooklyn outlet of the Louisville, Ky.-based pizza chain, she’s received only two raises that weren’t mandated by federal or state minimum wage hikes. Today she makes $8.50 an hour, 50 cents above the New York State minimum wage, but her employer doesn’t currently use her more than 24 hours a week.
A sudden change of fortune for 32,400 Detroit pensioners in the city’s historic bankruptcy — from the threat of draconian pension cuts to a modest reduction in lifetime benefits — could face mathematical scrutiny as the case proceeds, experts say.
In just 10 months, Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has gone from offering pensioners double-digit percentage reductions in benefits to potentially settling for baseline cuts of as little as 4.5 percent.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes last week approved an agreement that has the city of Detroit paying $85 million to escape a disastrous interest-rate swap deal with two banks.
Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, for one, applauded the decision.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for Detroiters that will help the city reinvest in the services it provides its residents and businesses,” Orr said in a prepared statement. “We’re making good progress in reaching consensual resolutions with our creditors and stakeholders.”
The same day President Obama was at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference deriding and lambasting voter ID laws, I was on a plane with the pro-voter ID blogger J. Christian Adams. Between the two of us, you won’t find two people at farther opposing ends of the voting rights spectrum.
Roughly half of all U.S. families have no money set aside for retirement, Federal Reserve data show. Not a cent. But even that alarming savings deficit doesn't fully capture the emerging socioeconomic crisis facing what is, after all, a rapidly graying nation. [...]
Despite the fact that Tennessee has one of the most restrictive photo ID requirements for voting in the nation, the state is rarely discussed when voter ID is the topic. However, Tennessee’s law will now allow college students to use their university identification cards to vote, just like in Texas and North Carolina, the poster children of voter ID. In each case, it seems, students decided they were tired of being unseen and unheard.
New York is on the cusp of adopting a campaign finance reform that would amplify small donations with matching funds, reducing the power of big special interest money over the state's politics. It would also allow New Yorkers to claim the mantle of the first state to take back their democracy in the era of Citizens United and unprecedented campaign spending.
But adopting Fair Elections would accomplish something else badly needed in our democracy: more diverse representation in our political leadership.
Currently under consideration by state legislature, SB 975 is the third attempt to legalize payday loans (PDLs) in Pennsylvania since 2010. It claims to accommodate many of the criticisms against its predecessors, but the tweaks are superficial, and the basic impasse remains: that which makes payday lending profitable also makes it dangerous.
Anyone wearing an "assistant manager" name tag knows that the job carries a nice title but doesn't necessarily come with commensurate pay.
One of the biggest issues for assistant managers and other white-collar workers is unpaid overtime. That's because those employees are often expected to work 60 or 70 hours a week, pushing their pay down to minimum-wage level once all their hours are included.
A recent ProPublica article points to a number of pending lawsuits aimed at restoring key federal protections against racial voting discrimination. Up until last summer, certain states and jurisdictions with histories of preventing African Americans from voting were forced to have all election changes cleared by the federal government before implementation.
Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” But it's not just economists who believe that anymore. Such ideas are still widely accepted by thought leaders, journalists, and politicians who, together, form a strong consensus that the U.S. recovery should be bolstered by natural gas exploration and production.
Biola Jeje, 22, graduated Brooklyn College last May with a degree in political science and a mission: Force lawmakers to address the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis. [...]
Jeje left college with $9,500 in student loans, less than half the $29,400 national average for four-year college graduates. She and her fellow activists are mobilizing support to march on Albany, New York state’s capital, to deliver a message to legislators. [...]
Much of the rancor around why they opposed Debo Adegbile for heading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been about Mumia Abu-Jamal. But it seems from their line of questioning that there’s also an agenda to undermine the Civil Rights Divisions’ duties to enforce voting rights and protect Americans against discrimination.