Sunday, April 27, 2014

McDonald's and low wages

Study
McDonald's Low Wages Cost Taxpayers $1.2 Billion Per Year
 
HufingtonPost.com -  - Oct. 15, 2013
 
mcdonalds wages taxpayers 
Kevin Cole protests outside a fast food restaurant on Thursday Aug. 29, 2013 in Los Angeles. According to a new study, McDonald's costs taxpayers $1.2 billion per year due to low wages. - AP Photo/Nick Ut
The fast food industry’s low wages are costing us all, new research finds.
Taxpayers are shelling out $1.2 billion a year to help pay workers at McDonald’s, according to an estimate from the National Employment Law Project published Tuesday. The organization used estimated figures from a study by University of California-Berkeley and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on how many fast food workers rely on public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid for its analysis.
Overall, low wages at the top 10 largest fast food chains cost taxpayers about $3.8 billion per year, NELP found.
As Republicans in Congress fight to curb spending on entitlement programs like food stamps, the report offers an often overlooked solution: Companies could pay workers more to decrease their reliance on public assistance.
"A very easy policy fix here would to raise the minimum wage," said Sylvia Allegretto, the co-chair of Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics and one of the authors of the Berkeley/UI study. "The firms that pay a large share of their workers at or near the minimum wage -- these workers disproportionately have to rely on public subsidies."
The National Restaurant Association, a trade group representing more than 500,000 restaurants, took issue with the reports. It argued that the Berkeley and UI researchers' decision to consider the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax break given to working, low-income families, as a subsidy "inflates" the study's findings.
McDonald's wrote in a statement that the company and its franchisees provide hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the country that offer opportunities for advancement.
"As with most small businesses, wages are based on local wage laws and are competitive to similar jobs in that market," the statement reads.
chart
To make its estimate, NELP used publicly available data about the fast food industry, like how many front-line workers each restaurant employs, along with the University of California-Berkeley/UI study.
The Berkeley/UI study found that 52 percent of families of front-line fast food workers -- defined as non-managers working more than 11 hours a week and over 27 weeks per year -- rely on at least one government assistance program. The researchers used enrollment data from government programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or food stamps), and cross-referenced that information with worker demographic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Pelhom Wiley is one of those workers. He’s been mopping floors, taking out the garbage and changing the grease in the frier pans for about a year as a maintenance worker at a Chicago McDonald’s. Wiley says his paycheck of $8.25 an hour at just under 40 hours per week isn’t enough for him to cover his about $600 per month in expenses like rent and transportation.
So Wiley uses Illinois’ foods stamp program to fill in the gaps. He often comes up short.
“We get paid Mondays, and by Wednesday or Thursday my check is pretty much gone,” he said. “It’s not fair. I’m the one that has to keep up the store. All of the big restaurants make billions of dollars, and we make the least of what all the stores get.”
Representatives from the restaurant industry have said in the past that fast food eateries operate on thin profit margins. They've argued that any wage boost could put franchisees -- which run most fast food restaurants -- out of business, or hamper their ability to hire.
Industry representatives have also said that entry-level fast food jobs are meant to be just that -- and therefore workers will only be earning bottom-barrel wages for a short period of their careers.
But the new economic reality counters that claim. Nearly 70 percent of the jobs created in the recovery have been in low-wage sectors like fast food and retail, while half the jobs lost during the recession paid between $38,000 and $68,000 per year.
That means that in many cases, it’s not just teenagers working fast food jobs for some extra cash. These low-wage workers are often older -- and in many cases are the breadwinners for their families.
“It’s not just that we need more jobs,” said Allegretto. “We need the jobs that we have and the jobs that are growing to be better-paying jobs and better-quality jobs.”
chart 2
This story has been updated with comments from McDonald's and the National Restaurant Association.
 

Friday, April 25, 2014

Useful information and some suggestions for activities

If you find a link not working, please let us know. If you have a link to an article or website that should be included here. Contact: amaki000@centurytel.net


Below is a link to the 
San Francisco $15 an hour minimum wage ballot measure (as submitted) that was worked out by labor unions and various community groups in the city and which, it should be noted, is currently opposed by the Democratic Party mayor.

http://sfgov2.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/elections/candidates/Jun2014/June2014_MinimumWageAct.pdf




President Barack Obama sent out this e-mail:

Organizing for Action
 

Right now, Congress is considering raising the minimum wage for the first time in years. 

At $7.25 an hour, someone who works full time earns a salary of just $14,500 a year. 

Most Americans agree that's not enough. So what do YOU think the minimum wage should be?

Take this quick one-question poll -- and tell us what you think:

http://my.barackobama.com/Minimum-Wage-Poll

Thanks,

Nico

Nico Probst
Director of Special Projects
Organizing for Action

P.S. -- When it comes to workers earning the minimum wage, we're not just talking about teenagers -- no matter what some of our opponents might say. The average worker who would benefit from raising the minimum wage is 35 years old. Tell us: How high would you raise the minimum wage?



A short script that activists can take
to any candidate's campaign rally and confront the candidate on their
stand on minimum wage.  Something like this: 

======================================================
Ms./Mr/or Title: . ___________________(name of candidate) ___________________

My name is _______________; I live at ________________  in (city) ____________.

I am here to express my concern about the fact that so many working people
in this district are still living in poverty.  The minimum wage as being proposed is NOT
a livable wage.  

(A bit of background on the specific issue.)

(The specific ask:  What is your position on this issue?  Will you work to get this
piece of legislation passed during the next  session of Congress (or the Legislature)
etc.)

[Allow time for dialogue or debate with the candidate.}

Thank you very much.



Nearly 1 in 2 Americans live in Poverty

 
According to former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, Peter Edelman, over half the jobs in America pay less than $34,000 a year...
 
 
"So Rich, So Poor": Peter Edelman on Ending U.S. Poverty & Why He Left Clinton Admin over Welfare Law (26:10)
 
Census data shows nearly one in two Americans live in poverty, and now the Congressional Budget Office warns things could soon get worse if President Obama and Congress remain at an impasse over the 2013 fiscal budget. House Republicans are calling for cuts to food aid, healthcare and social services, while protecting funds for the Pentagon. We discuss poverty with Peter Edelman, who resigned as assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services over then-President Bill Clinton’s signing of the 1996 welfare reform law that threw millions off the rolls. "Basically, right now, welfare is gone," Edelman says. "We have six million people in this country whose only income is food stamps. That’s an income at a third of the poverty line. ... Nineteen states serve less than 10 percent of their poor children. It’s a terrible hole in the safety net. Welfare has basically disappeared in large parts of this country." Now a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Edelman has written a new book, "So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America." "I’m very much supportive of Occupy," he adds. "The idea ... of the 1 percent and the 99 percent ... all fits together. We really should be all one country."
 
 
 
Robert Pollin: Full Employment Is Possible (16:36)
 
The latest book from Robert Pollin, economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the Political Economy Research Institute, is"Back to Full Employment." If the title seems bold, the roadmap Pollin lays out behind it is hardly outlandish. In this conversation with Laura Flanders, Pollin explains how the Federal Reserve can grow employment tremendously, without the need for any legislation.
 
 
 
The Struggle for Full Employment: Not a New Idea and Not a New Struggle (1:08:06)
 
Full Employment Conference - New Left Forum 2012

The presentation explores New Deal job creation efforts and FDR's Economic Bill of Rights that began with the right to a decent job. It discusses two major attempts to secure full employment, in the immediate post-World War II period and in the 1970s, the first ending in the defeat of full employment legislation and the second, in the failure to implement a watered-down full employment act. Full employment, the presentation shows, will take a fundamental break with neo-liberalism and a reorientation of power from big business and Wall Street to middle- and working-class people and will require the full-scale social movement that both earlier struggles lacked.
Panelists:

Chuck Bell
: Vice Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition, co-author of "Shared Prosperity: The Drive For Decent Work" (2006). Twenty years of experience in consumer and health care advocacy, and community movements for jobs and economic justice.

Helen Ginsburg: Professor Emerita of Economics, Brooklyn College, CUNY., and co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition. Author of books and articles on employment policy and strategies.

Gertrude S. Goldberg: The New Deal and Social Welfare Professor of Social Policy Emerita, Adelphi University School of Social Work where she directed the Ph.D. program. Chair of the National Jobs for All Coalition. Co-chair of the Columbia Seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare & Equity. Author/co-author and editor of six books and numerous book chapters and articles on social policy and employment.

Moderator: Sheila D. Collins, Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University and co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition.
 
 
 
The Return of Full Employment Policy: James K. Galbraith (42:18)
 
Professor James K. Galbraith talks at seminar The Return of Full Employment Policy on 3 December 2012 in Helsinki on the topic "A Question of Institutions: Why In Spite of Reactionary Economic Ideas the US Still Survived the Great Financial Crisis, and Europe Did Not".
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-SP8LkVd8


This is great.  A quick, fun display of Capuchin monkeys understanding inequality.

http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next?c=ufb3



Here is the link to the San Francisco Chronicle reporting on the ballot plan for $15 an hour minimum wage for SF (Apr. 8, 2014). 

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/SEIU-files-S-F-ballot-plan-for-15-an-hour-5384131.php


MINIMUM WAGE
How Americans are getting screwed
Compared to the rest of the industrialized world
 
 
Obama's $10.10 Minimum Wage Would Fundamentally Change America (???)
 
 
A Canadian replies to an article from an Obamabot at the Huffigton Post about the Minimum Wage...
 
 
"In Ontario Canada the minimum wage is 10.25, that comes with a Federal government guaranteed pension and tax payer funded medical care, and dental depending on your overall family paticulars.

How you guys do it down there is beyond me, glad I'm up here though."
 
 
 



List of minimum wages by country
 



MINIMUM WAGE State by State
 
 


 
States with Political Super-Majorities 
 - Jan. 2014
 
 
 
13 States have Democratic Party Super-Majorities in both State Legislatures and the Governor's office
 
In these following 13 States, the Democratic Party can basically push through any legislation they want!
 
This means that the Democrats could pass legislation this year raising the Minimum Wage to $15 an hour in these 13 States, and tie wages to Cost of Living factors.

Any politician in these 13 States that refuses to raise the Minimum Wage to at least $15 an hour, and instead continues to propose a Poverty Minimum Wage that they themselves couldn't live on, should not receive our vote in the November 2014 elections...
 
1) California
2) Oregon
3) Colorado
4) Minnesota
5) Illinois
6) West Virginia
7) Maryland
8) Delaware
9) Vermont
10) Massachusetts
11) Connecticut
12) Rhode Island
13) Hawaii



LOSING THE LEAD

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

BY DAVID LEONHARDT AND KEVIN QUEALY
After three decades of slow growth, middle-class incomes in the U.S. appear to trail those of Canada. Poor Americans now make less than the poor in several other countries.
Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/1kWtoSu



The Counter-Attack of Seattle’s Elites

by SHAMUS COOKE
Seattle’s corporations were blindsided, it all happened so fast. Socialist candidate Kshama Sawant’s successful City Council campaign tore through Seattle politics like a tornado, leaving the 1% devastated, unable to cope with a storm they didn’t see coming. The Seattle elite had no way to counter her arguments, silence her supporters, or keep her from gathering a tidal wave of support for the $15 campaign. The establishment was paralyzed, powerless.
But Sawant’s election victory was just the beginning of the humiliation for Seattle’s super wealthy. After singlehandedly transforming city politics, Sawant used her newly elected bully pulpit to torment the mayor and City Council and harangue Seattle’s corporations, while simultaneously mobilizing thousands in the streets to bulldoze through her progressive agenda. The 1% had absolutely no idea what to do — they’d never experienced anything like it. They conceded defeat and agreed to a $15 minimum wage — in words.



 
The Wall Street Journal - April 2, 2014
 
With President Obama's most recent call to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, the issue is once again back in the spotlight. First set in 1938 by Franklin Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, the dollar amount has risen over the years, but the actual value has fluctuated.
 
Video (1:50)
 




 
The Wall Steet Journal
 
President Obama is pushing to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. WSJ’s Sara Murray talked to American CEOs about the benefits and consequences of a higher minimum wage.
 
Video (2:45)
 


What Happened to Fast-Food Workers When San Jose Raised the Minimum Wage?
 
The Wall Street Journal Eric Morath - April 10, 2014
LayoffsWSJ
A 25% minimum-wage increase in San Jose, Calif., didn’t cause the region’s fast-food franchises to stop hiring. But it might have caused some heartburn.

A 2012 ballot initiative, started by San Jose State University students, resulted in a $2 increase to the city’s minimum wage. Opponents of the increase said it would lead to job losses. Initial data suggests that isn’t the case.

The pace of hiring at fast-food joints and other quick-service restaurants in the metro San Jose area slowed in December 2012 and January 2013. That was after San Jose voters approved the measure in November 2012 but before the increase took effect in March 2013.

Fast-food hiring in the region accelerated once the higher wage was in place. By early this year, the pace of employment gains in the San Jose area beat the improvement in the entire state of California. Nearly half of all minimum-wage workers are employed in food service.

The city of San Jose accounts for about half the population in the metro area, which also includes Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. The minimum wage in those neighboring cities is $8 an hour, matching the state level. (San Jose’s minimum wage rose in January to $10.15 an hour from $10 due to an automatic inflation adjustment.)
The results are far from conclusive. Still, they seems to fit with studies that found minimum-wage increases at a local level haven’t led to significant job losses at fast-food restaurants.

Those local findings stand in contrast to a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In a February report, the CBO estimated raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25 would reduce U.S. employment by 500,000 while pulling 900,000 people out of poverty.

Comments
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/09/what-happened-to-fast-food-workers-when-san-jose-raised-the-minimum-wage/



Below is the link to today's AFL-CIO NOW blog post by Robert Reich advocating $15 an hour. 

In my opinion, I think with the AFL-CIO publicly backing $15 an hour minimum wage it is more than safe to discuss further us using $15 an hour as what we fight for.

This will make it a lot easer to get local union endorsements, as well as community allies on board.




According to former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, Peter Edelman, over half the jobs in America pay less than $34,000 a year...
 
 
"So Rich, So Poor": Peter Edelman on Ending U.S. Poverty & Why He Left Clinton Admin over Welfare Law (26:10)
 
Census data shows nearly one in two Americans live in poverty, and now the Congressional Budget Office warns things could soon get worse if President Obama and Congress remain at an impasse over the 2013 fiscal budget. House Republicans are calling for cuts to food aid, healthcare and social services, while protecting funds for the Pentagon. We discuss poverty with Peter Edelman, who resigned as assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services over then-President Bill Clinton’s signing of the 1996 welfare reform law that threw millions off the rolls. "Basically, right now, welfare is gone," Edelman says. "We have six million people in this country whose only income is food stamps. That’s an income at a third of the poverty line. ... Nineteen states serve less than 10 percent of their poor children. It’s a terrible hole in the safety net. Welfare has basically disappeared in large parts of this country." Now a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Edelman has written a new book, "So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America." "I’m very much supportive of Occupy," he adds. "The idea ... of the 1 percent and the 99 percent ... all fits together. We really should be all one country."
 
 
 
Robert Pollin: Full Employment Is Possible (16:36)
 
The latest book from Robert Pollin, economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the Political Economy Research Institute, is"Back to Full Employment." If the title seems bold, the roadmap Pollin lays out behind it is hardly outlandish. In this conversation with Laura Flanders, Pollin explains how the Federal Reserve can grow employment tremendously, without the need for any legislation.
 
 
 
The Struggle for Full Employment: Not a New Idea and Not a New Struggle (1:08:06)
 
Full Employment Conference - New Left Forum 2012

The presentation explores New Deal job creation efforts and FDR's Economic Bill of Rights that began with the right to a decent job. It discusses two major attempts to secure full employment, in the immediate post-World War II period and in the 1970s, the first ending in the defeat of full employment legislation and the second, in the failure to implement a watered-down full employment act. Full employment, the presentation shows, will take a fundamental break with neo-liberalism and a reorientation of power from big business and Wall Street to middle- and working-class people and will require the full-scale social movement that both earlier struggles lacked.
Panelists:

Chuck Bell
: Vice Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition, co-author of "Shared Prosperity: The Drive For Decent Work" (2006). Twenty years of experience in consumer and health care advocacy, and community movements for jobs and economic justice.

Helen Ginsburg: Professor Emerita of Economics, Brooklyn College, CUNY., and co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition. Author of books and articles on employment policy and strategies.

Gertrude S. Goldberg: The New Deal and Social Welfare Professor of Social Policy Emerita, Adelphi University School of Social Work where she directed the Ph.D. program. Chair of the National Jobs for All Coalition. Co-chair of the Columbia Seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare & Equity. Author/co-author and editor of six books and numerous book chapters and articles on social policy and employment.

Moderator: Sheila D. Collins, Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University and co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition.
 
 
 
The Return of Full Employment Policy: James K. Galbraith (42:18)
 
Professor James K. Galbraith talks at seminar The Return of Full Employment Policy on 3 December 2012 in Helsinki on the topic "A Question of Institutions: Why In Spite of Reactionary Economic Ideas the US Still Survived the Great Financial Crisis, and Europe Did Not".
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-SP8LkVd8




SEIU 1021, which is a union local of about 50,000 in Northern California, has taken the step to put on the ballot a $15 an hour minimum wage with some phase in language. For example, small businesses (defined as 100 employees or less), would have a few years to complete the wage raise. This could be a really big showdown with the Democrats. We shall see.
The link is to this past Sundays SF Chronicle. 

Here's the Open Letter to Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton:


January 2014
An Open Letter . . .
TO:  Governor Mark Dayton and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party Legislative Caucus.
FROM:  Your Constituents

Enough!  We are not waiting any longer!
As DFL candidates, you campaigned on a promise to enact legislation that provides low-wage workers a real, living wage  not just a “minimum” wage.
Your campaign language explicitly called for “workers being entitled to living wages!”  It promised a Living Wage Act, but no progress was made in your first super-majority session.


All it would take, you said, was for Minnesotans to give the DFL a super-majority. Well, we voters delivered it to you!  You have it! But now, instead of advancing Living Wage legislation, the DFL is floating another “minimum wage” bill that will just perpetuate poverty wages for many Minnesota workers!


For years, the DFL leadership has claimed Republicans were the lone obstacle to establishing a Living Wage in our state. That obstacle has been removed. You are now in the driver’s seat!
We, the workers of Minnesota, gave you the legislative votes to enact the Living Wage legislation you promised us.
We expect you now to do so.  You could call it “The Minnesota Living Wage Act of 2014.”


Most importantly, we need to begin with a realistic dollar amount. Living Wages need to be calculated based on realistic levels of cost-of-living. U.S. Census data suggests at least $15 per hour; while, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), hourly wages of $22 and $26 at 40 hrs/week are needed to cover basic necessities. When making decisions on determining basic needs for a dignified life, the testimony from low-income Minnesotans should also be taken into consideration.


 A Living Wage must also be subject to regular cost-of-living adjustments. The Consumer Price Index is our best indicator, and it should be used to adjust a new Minnesota Living Wage level quarterly or at least semi-annually.


If you should fail to enact such legislation, we will assume that you were just baiting us with nice-sounding campaign rhetoric, and that you are pulling a switch on us by simply advancing more employer-friendly “minimum wage” legislation, that does nothing to alleviate the hardships of Minnesota’s working poor.


Perhaps you think any increase is better than nothing.  We don’t!


Minnesota has long been considered a progressive bellwether.  Do something significant now for her working men and women. It is what everybody morally deserves  —  the prospect of a dignified life.


Be courageous. Lead our state — and our nation — in securing the right of every worker to earn a decent living. 


It can begin with the Minnesota Living Wage Act of 2014.


You can make it happen!


Sincerely,


Your fellow Minnesotans 
(as the undersigned, with our signatures attached herein)