All posts by carldavidson

Economy, Poverty, trade unions

Why We Need More Unions and Higher Wages

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Typical Pennsylvania Wage is too Little to Pay the Average Rent

By Tim Grant
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

March 13, 2013 – When a basic two-bedroom apartment in Pennsylvania costs an average $895 a month, renters must earn at least $17.21 an hour — 2.4 times the state minimum wage — to afford a decent roof over their heads.

Although the cost of renting a two-bedroom unit in the Pittsburgh region is lower at $772 a month, Pittsburgh households still must earn about $14.85 an hour to afford the apartment, which amounts to more than twice the state minimum wage and 117 percent of what the average city renter earns.

An estimated 56 percent of Pittsburgh-area renters cannot afford to meet the expenses for a two-bedroom apartment.

"The [typical] renter’s hourly wage in Pittsburgh is $12.70. That means the most they could afford to pay is $660 a month in rent," said Liz Hersh, executive director of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. Her estimate is based on renters paying no more than one-third of their income on rent and utilities.

Continue reading Why We Need More Unions and Higher Wages →

Banks, Wall Street

It’s Official: Banks Too Big to Fail are Too Big to Jail

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By Robert Borosage
Beaver County Blue

March 7, 2013 – For years, the Obama Administration has been pummeled for failing to bring criminal charges against a single major Wall Street bank or a single leading Wall Street banker for what the FBI termed an “epidemic of fraud” that blew up the entire economy.  Investigations revealed the banks committed routine fraud in peddling mortgage securities they knew were garbage, trampled basic property laws, laundered money from Iran, Libya and Mexican drug lords, conspired to game the basic measure of interest rates and more.  Yet, time after time, the Justice Department and regulatory agencies settled for sweetheart deals, with no admission of guilt, no banker held accountable, and fines that were the equivalent in earnings of a speeding ticket to the average family.

Yesterday Attorney General Holder stated openly what was already apparent.  The Justice Department believes that Too Big to Fail Banks are Too Big to Jail.  Criminal indictments against banks or leading bankers might endanger the economy and thus were too big a risk.

Here’s what Holder said

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” he said. “And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”

Holder was responding to questions by Republican Senator Charles Grassley about why the Justice Department brought no criminal charges against the large British bank HSBC after it admitted laundering money for parties in Iran, Libya and Mexican drug lords. 

Continue reading It’s Official: Banks Too Big to Fail are Too Big to Jail →

Immigrant Rights, Organizing, trade unions, Youth and students

McDonald’s ‘Guest Workers’ in Harrisburg Area Stage Surprise Strike

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McDonald’s Workers in NYC

By Josh Eidelson
Beaver County Blue via The Nation

March 6, 2013 – Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike at 11 this morning. The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program. Their employer is one of the thousands of McDonald’s franchisees with whom the company contracts to run its ubiquitous stores.

“We are afraid,” striker Jorge Victor Rios told The Nation prior to the work stoppage. “But we are trying to overcome our fear.”

The McDonald’s corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The J-1 visa program is officially intended to promote educational and cultural exchange. But advocates allege that J-1, like the other guest worker programs that collectively bring hundreds of thousands of workers in and out of the United States each year, is rife with abuse. The National Guestworker Alliance (NGA), the organization spearheading today’s strike, charges that such programs—whose future is intimately tied up with the fate of comprehensive immigration reform—offer ample opportunities for employers to intimidate workers, suppress organizing and drive down labor standards.

“McDonald’s is just the latest in a long line of corporations that have hijacked the US guest worker program to get cheap, exploitable labor, and that’s what the students are,” NGA Executive Director Saket Soni told The Nation. “The conditions are horrific, but have become the norm for guest workers.”

The workers are striking over what they charge are rampant abuses at their stores in Harrisburg and nearby Lemoyne and Camp Hill. According to NGA, the visiting students each paid $3,000 or more for the chance to come and work, and were promised full-time employment; most received only a handful of hours a week, while others worked shifts as long as twenty-five hours straight, without being paid overtime. “Their employer is also their landlord,” said Soni. “They’re earning sub-minimum wages, and then paying it back in rent” to share a room with up to seven co-workers. “Their weekly net pay is actually sometimes brought as low as zero.”

Continue reading McDonald’s ‘Guest Workers’ in Harrisburg Area Stage Surprise Strike →

Economy, GOP, Poverty, safety net

GOP Worships the ‘Hand,’ Disrespects Those Who Work With Them

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By Leo Gerard
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost

March 4, 2013 – The invisible hand of the market, which the GOP worships as an infallible god, is curled into a fist and is pounding America’s lowest-paid workers.

Those workers have complained about the grinding poverty level of minimum wage. Wal-Mart warehouse workers and New York fast food workers recently demonstrated. They’re fed up. Well, they would be if they could afford enough to eat. President Obama responded, asking Congress to raise the minimum wage, which was last increased to $7.25 an hour in 2009.

Republicans, the party of NO, replied to Obama’s request with a surly, "No way!" Respect the hand, they said, referring to their beloved spectral regulator of the market. Government, Republicans said, must not tell business what to do, must not "burden" business by requiring it to pay a little more. Republicans never mention the burden under which 18 million minimum wage workers struggle, working full-time for $15,080 a year, barely enough to feed, clothe and house themselves. That’s because Republicans revere non-humans — corporations and invisible hands — while denigrating and disrespecting humans who work with their hands to serve food, care for the elderly and stock shelves.

The disrespect could be heard in Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s voice as he derided 47 percent of all Americans as "takers." That huge number Romney despises includes minimum wage workers – 84 percent of whom are 20 or older — whose children receive immunizations and antibiotics through Medicaid because employers paying minimum wage virtually never provide health insurance.

Continue reading GOP Worships the ‘Hand,’ Disrespects Those Who Work With Them →

fair trade, Organizing, trade unions, Youth and students

Pitt Students in Solidarity with Garment Workers

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University of Pittsburgh heats up over sweatshops

By Alex Zimmerman

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Feb. 24, 2013 – When Joe Thomas dropped off a letter signed by 25 student organizations at University of Pittsburgh chancellor Mark Nordenberg’s office, he thought he’d get a response.

When he didn’t get one, he helped persuade 24 more student organizations — including Pitt’s student government board — to drop off letters themselves.

"We were dropping off letters just about every day," Mr. Thomas said.

The letters ask Pitt to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring organization that works with 180 universities across the country to investigate factories where university-licensed apparel is manufactured.

Continue reading Pitt Students in Solidarity with Garment Workers →

labor, Obama, Poverty, safety net

The Minimum Wage Would Be $21.72 An Hour If It Rose With Productivity Since 1968

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From boldprogressives.org

Activists are mobilizing around President Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $9.00, and polling shows that Americans across the political spectrum agree with such a policy.

But here’s an interesting fact about what the minimum wage could be instead. The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s John Dewitt looked at what the minimum wage would be if it simply rose with productivity — that is, if workers were actually paid for the increasing amount of output — since 1968, and found that it would be almost 3 times what it is now:

Since 1968, however, productivity growth has far outpaced the minimum wage. If the minimum wage had continued to move with average productivity after1968, it would have reached $21.72 per hour in 2012 – a rate well above the average production worker wage. If minimum-wage workers received only half of the productivity gains over the period, the federal minimum would be $15.34.

Even Obama’s modest plan to raise the minimum wage is expected to face intense opposition from Big Business and its lobbyists.

Economy, health care, Poverty, safety net, Seniors, social security, unemployment

US Capitalism Redistributing Wealth ‘Upward’

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Nine Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin

By Lynn Stuart Parramore
Beaver County Blue via Alternet.org

Feb 18, 2013  |  How much will you need for medical expenses in retirement? What does it cost to keep 2.5 million Americans behind bars? Here are a few facts and figures that might surprise you.

1. Recovery for the rich, recession for the rest.

Economic recovery is in rather limited supply, it seems. Research by economist Emmanuel Saez shows that the top 1 percent has enjoyed income growth of over 11 percent [3] since the official end of the recession. The other 99 percent hasn’t fared so well, seeing a 0.4 percent decline in income.

The top 10 percent of earners hauled in 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917 – and that doesn’t even include money earned from investments. The wealthy have benefitted from favorable tax status and the rise in stock prices, while the rest have been hit with a continuing unemployment crisis that has kept wages down. Saez believes this trend will continue in 2013.

2. Half of us are poor or barely scraping by.

The latest Census Bureau data shows that one in two Americans currently falls into either the “low income” category or is living in poverty. Low-income is defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level. Adjusted for inflation, the earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have dropped from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000. Earnings for the next 20 percent have been stuck at $37,000.

States in the South and West had the highest proportion of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, where politicians are eagerly shredding the social safety net.

Continue reading US Capitalism Redistributing Wealth ‘Upward’ →

Banks, Democrats, Economy, PDA

Why We Like Elizabeth Warren!

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Elizabeth Warren Grills Banking Regulators at First Hearing

By Rachel Rose Hatman

Yahoo News

Democrats eager to see consumer champion Elizabeth Warren take Wall Street’s biggest banks to task got their wish on Thursday when the newly elected Democratic senator made her debut at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

"What I’d like to know is tell me a little bit about the last few times you’ve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial," the Massachusetts lawmaker said to applause, speaking to the federal regulators gathered for a hearing on Wall Street reform.

No witnesses spoke up.

Warren raised her eyebrows. "Anybody?" she asked.

Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, spoke up: "We’ve actually had a fair number of consent orders. We do not have to bring people to a trial…"

"I appreciate that you say you don’t have to bring them to trial," Warren said. "My question is, when did you bring them to trial?"

"We have not had to do it as a practical matter to achieve our supervisory goals," Curry said.

Warren moved on to the rest of the panel, knowing full well that none of the regulators present have brought a Wall Street bank to trial.

"I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial,’" Warren later said.

Warren ousted Republican Sen. Scott Brown in November in a hard-fought campaign. She was President Barack Obama’s first pick in 2011 to head up the government’s newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an entity the former Harvard University law professor and attorney helped create. But Republicans in Washington essentially killed her nomination, citing her record of taking on big banks and Wall Street. That opposition helped boost Warren’s reputation and led Democrats nationwide to embrace her decision to run for U.S. Senate.

Community, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, labor

Street Heat over Mass Transit in the Harrisburg Statehouse

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Transit supporters rally for more state funding

By Mark Shade

Beaver county Blue via Phillyburbs.com

HARRISBURG, Feb 12 — Gov. Tom Corbett is talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in new transportation spending in his proposed 2013-14 budget, but transit proponents don’t like what they’re hearing and many of them took the bus to tell him about it Monday.

Molly Nichols, a volunteer with Pittsburghers for Public Transit, told about 200 transit operators and customers from her city, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and elsewhere that people have a right to public transit.

“Bus lines and transit lines are our lifelines,” Nichols said in between the chants she led. “We use them to get to school, to work, to the doctor’s office, to churches, to shops … and current transit service is not efficient or affordable for our residents.”

She said public transportation operators are facing a severe funding crisis that needs more attention from the governor and lawmakers. Continue reading Street Heat over Mass Transit in the Harrisburg Statehouse →