The D.C. Council is considering a bill that would bar businesses from performing credit checks on job applicants. Supporters of the legislation say credit histories can be inaccurate and indicate little about workers’ character.[...]
“Our research shows poor credit more often tells a story of personal misfortune far more convincingly than one of poor work habits,” says Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos.[...]
According to the Demos report, credit checks were never intended to be used for hiring.
Federal deficit hawks in Congress, driven by ideology and the campaign donations of, for lack of a better term, millionaires and billionaires, held yet another hearing last week about the national debt — but U.S. lawmakers continue to ignore the debt that is causing real trouble for the nation.
The debt danger Americans should really worry about comes from credit cards and student loans.[...]
Amid soaring inequality and stagnant wages, consumers in the United States collectively accumulated a stunning $34.4 billion in credit card debt during the second quarter of 2016 alone, according to a new report from the personal finance website WalletHub.
On Labor Day, let’s all take a moment to thank our bosses for the rights and benefits they have so generously granted us.
Oh wait, that’s right. Decent wages and working conditions were never gifts. Workers organized, fought, and in many cases died for each and every improvement in our working lives. And workers are fighting today—to protect the rights we’ve won, and to advance new and needed labor laws.
Because blue-collar worker income in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is so high, Americans are often surprised to learn that none of the Nordic social democracies have minimum wage laws. The truth is that they don’t need them, thanks to the immense (albeit gradually waning) power of Scandinavian labor unions. Organized labor in that region of Europe has used its power to set a de facto wage floor, rendering parliamentary action superfluous.
In this election season, reining in Wall Street is clearly a burning issue for many voters. The passion for Wall Street reform is closely wrapped up with working class anger and anxiety driven by wage stagnation and economic insecurity, all within a climate of accelerating wealth and income inequality.
"There are no other countries that we would think of as advanced that don't offer some paid maternity leave," said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning public policy group. "So many countries started guaranteeing maternity leave as more woman started to enter the workplace, and the U.S. just has been a laggard."
I want to know what’s going to happen with the farm workers,” she said, through a translator. “Are you going to include us in this?”
Bhandary-Alexander said the hearing “couldn’t have been any better,” as a way to connect policy issues with individual narratives.
The board heard from economic experts from the Economic Policy Institute and Demos think tank in previous hearings about how minimum wage increases have affected other cities.
Over the last decade, an increasing number of cities and states passed laws limiting the use of credit checks in hiring, promotion, and firing. These laws have been motivated by the reality that personal credit history is not relevant to employment and that employment credit checks prevent otherwise qualified workers with flawed credit from finding jobs, and that unemployed workers and historically disadvantaged groups, including people of color, are disproportionately harmed by credit checks.
With the 2016 Presidential election bringing renewed attention to rising college costs, UC Berkeley researchers have just released a groundbreaking study on broad and growing financial inequalities in U.S. higher education. Entitled “The Financialization of U.S. Higher Education,” it’s available online here.
When we agreed to help reform the NYPD’s stop and frisk practice in the landmark class action Floyd v. the City of New York, we knew we were taking on a great responsibility.
The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of their limited wealth.