The Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) has released important research about the economy in the past few weeks. Here's a look at some of the key pieces it uncovered about the U.S. economy.
While the focus in the past week has been on Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage, voting rights and affirmative action, two other rulings released this week have made it easier for employees to be harassed in the workplace and reduced the legal recourse those workers have to end harassment. In two separate 5–4 rulings, in which the conservative justices sided against workers, the court made it harder to take recourse against a supervisor who is harassing a worker, and made it easier for bosses to punish workers who complain about discrimination.
Menards, the third-largest home improvement chain in the United States, encourages its employees to take a so-called "economics" course online that contains staunchly anti-Obama content and, while it doesn't endorse Mitt Romney, it talks in positive terms of policies similar to those the Republican presidential candidate has proposed.
Take a minute today (Oct. 11) and say “Happy Birthday” to Eleanor Roosevelt. A member of the Newspaper Guild for more than a quarter of a century, Roosevelt strongly believed in workers, their unions and their involvement in the political process.
Brigid O’Farrell, a member of the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 , writes if Roosevelt were alive today, she would be out campaigning against California’s Prop. 32 to silence workers in the political arena, while giving the wealthy and corporations free reign. Read more at the Roosevelt Institute's Next New Deal blog .
The middle class is the great engine of the American economy, but that engine is sputtering. Today, the National Employment Law Project ( NELP ), the AFL-CIO and more than a dozen other worker advocate and economic research organizations are proposing “ 10 Ways to Rebuild the Middle Class for Hard Working Americans: Making Work Pay in the 21st Century .”
Colombian unionists visited Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. government officials and ask for their support in ensuring the Colombia Labor Action Plan. The delegation included Miguel Conde, general secretary of the Puerto Wilches local of Sintrainagro, an agricultural worker union representing workers on palm oil plantations; Jhonsson Torres, a founding member and vice president of the cane cutters union; Sinalcorteros; and Jose Luciano Sanin, executive director of the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, National Union School). Getting assurance of continued support for implementation made the trip worthwhile for the Colombians, who are in the midst of a long-term struggle for an economy that provides workers with dignity, fair pay and benefits and respect for the exercise of free association and other fundamental rights.
OMG, look up! Is that a flying pig? That was my thought when I read the latest bulletin from the Republican-controlled House Education and Workforce Committee announcing a hearing that would be “Examining Proposals to Strengthen the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).”
The Obama administration today announced a new rule on how the wage rates employers must pay to H-2B temporary foreign workers will be calculated. But the new rule does not take effect until 2012.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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