A March report by the Economic Policy Institute said that 14 states have either introduced or passed bills that roll back child labour laws.
The Independent
August 4, 2023
In a 2019 study, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that those concerns were real, and the tourist dollars that the services bring in are outweighed by the shrinking of the long-term rental market and the drop in tax hotel revenues.
Bloomberg
August 4, 2023
In a similar vein, the plan calls for reinstating a Trump-era rule that made it easier to classify people as independent contractors who lack many of the protections enjoyed by employees. Berry labels this plan, which the Economic Policy Institute estimated would cost workers more than $3 billion per year, a part of “Making Family-Sustaining Work Accessible.”
Mother Jones
August 4, 2023
Mattel shut down its last U.S. factory — in Murray, Ky. — in 2001. Barbie, Hot Wheels and other Mattel toys are now made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Thailand. It’s a familiar narrative. The U.S. has lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs to offshoring since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and the impact has been particularly hard on workers of color.
San Francisco Chronicle
August 4, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute said that talk of tariffs leading to rising inflation was “deeply dishonest”.
“The pre-Trump status quo in trade policy for decades was deeply damaging to working families and domestic business,” said Robert Scott, a research associate with EPI.
Forbes
August 4, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created to support the interests of low- and moderate-income workers, recently raised a warning flag over the growing trend among state legislatures to weaken child labor laws.
“In states across the country, lawmakers are engaged in a coordinated, corporate-backed campaign to weaken child labor protections,” the institute reported. “One type of protection — minimum ages to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants — has been eroded in seven states since 2021. While lowering the age to serve alcohol may sound benign, it is not. It puts young people at risk of sexual harassment, underage drinking, and other harms.”
Capitol Times
August 4, 2023
“Starbucks has employed both legal and illegal tactics in its effort to prevent workers from organizing,” said the Economic Policy Institute. Examples include requiring workers to attend “captive audience meetings,” a common union-busting tactic during which employers can discourage employees from joining a union, interrogate workers about the organizing campaign, and distribute anti-union materials. Starbucks is also alleged to have hired out-of-state support managers to monitor employee behavior and discourage unionization.
Up North News
August 4, 2023
“Something we should also celebrate is Georgia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation for African Americans and Hispanic Americans — well below the national average, according to the Economic Policy Institute,” Kemp said. “Georgia is and it should remain a place where all people have access to opportunity.”
Saporta Report
August 4, 2023
According to the Washington, DC-based Economic Policy Institute, the gender pay gap in the US widened from 20.3 percent in 2019 to 22.2 percent in 2022
Al Jazeera
August 4, 2023
“Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country, just as violations of these standards are rising,” Jennifer Sherer, the senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning labor think tank, said in a recent statement. “The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor, with the end goal of rewriting federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country.”
The American Independent
August 4, 2023
But according to a report published last week by the Economic Policy Institute, at least seven states have enacted laws to lower their alcohol service age since 2021, including West Virginia and Iowa, which lowered the minimum age to 16, and Michigan, which lowered it to 17. The bills are backed by restaurant lobbying groups as part of a broader effort to loosen child labor laws “to cut labor costs and deregulate employment”, the report writes – at a time when child labor violations are on the rise across the country.
The Guardian
August 4, 2023
A report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) last year showed the average weekly wages of teachers went up only $29 from 1996 to 2021.
The Hill
August 4, 2023
Twenty-four states have increased their minimum wages by legislation or ballot measure since 2016, according to the Economic Policy Institute. These include red states like Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas. The most recent statewide increases are going into effect this summer in Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington D.C.
24/7 Wall St.
August 4, 2023
Daniel Costa, who is the author of the report and the director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the EPI, noted that “an employer may select an entire workforce composed of a single nationality, gender, or age group” under the program.
Further, “employers and recruiters can also weed out workers who might dare to speak out against unlawful employment practices, assert their legal rights, or organize for better working conditions by joining or forming a union … by firing them and effectively forcing them to leave the country, or by threatening to blacklist them … ,” Costa said.
LA Progressive
August 4, 2023
At least nine states have introduced laws that would allow children as young as 14 to serve alcohol, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
These changes come amid a tight labor market across much of the U.S., with some employers still struggling to fill positions. But children working in factories or serving alcohol encounter safety risks, with the EPI noting that the latter puts kids at risk of sexual harassment and increases the chances that those child workers will consume alcohol.
CBS Moneywatch
August 4, 2023
“The lack of compliance with the limited [disclosures] that the law does require is just so shameful,” said Celine McNicholas, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
…
McNicholas, of the Economic Policy Institute, noted that large companies like Amazon have gotten attention for their big anti-union expenditures, but many smaller firms still spend “$200,000 as a matter of course.” She believes most people aren’t aware of the resources corporations pump into these campaigns.
“If there were greater transparency,” she said, “there would be greater outrage at how employers respond to union organizing.”
Huffpost
August 4, 2023
And the Economic Policy Institute says over 120,000 workers were involved in major work stoppages last year.
Newsy
August 4, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor economic think tank, estimated it would raise wages for close to 28 million workers, or nearly one-fifth of the American workforce, by about $3,100 a year. Focusing in on the restaurant industry, the Economic Policy Institute estimated the bill would raise wages for nearly 3.6 million restaurant workers directly, and drive up pay for some 2.3 million more, or what it estimated as 58% of the restaurant workforce.
Restaurant Dive
August 4, 2023
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“I am optimistic that we are getting a soft landing — that we are already seeing inflation moderate dramatically and we will continue to see inflation moderate and not see a big rise in unemployment,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor who is now director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “If we do have a recession, it will have been a policy failure. It will have been because the Fed raised rates too much,” she added.
Financial Times
August 4, 2023
The report also found that workers in lower-wage jobs are up to 14 times more likely to need to change occupations than those in highest-wage positions — another factor that doesn’t bode well for women. According to the Economic Policy Institute, women are paid roughly 22% less than men.
Entrepreneur
August 4, 2023
“It’s almost like wartime change in the composition of demand,” Josh Bivens, chief economist of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me. “We tried to shove a bunch of that demand into sectors whose global supply chains were collapsing because of Covid.”
VOX
August 4, 2023
The potential work stoppage comes as the nation is seeing a significant uptick in strikes as well as organizing drives. Earlier this year, the Economic Policy Institute reported that major strike activity in the country was up by 50 percent last year.
Insider NJ
August 4, 2023
Experts contend the new laws will harm poor children, children of color and undocumented children who would take these jobs out of necessity to survive.
“They’re seeking to expand employment to workers that can be paid less in order to keep wages low and still maintain the same levels of employment,” said Nina Mast, a state economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute. “At the same time, you also have our broken immigration system that has resulted in many unaccompanied migrant youth in this country without work authorization and sort of compelled by their economic circumstances to work. And that’s really a recipe for exploitation because they lack sort of the legal rights and support to demand safe and age-appropriate work.”
The Hill
August 4, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that undocumented workers, like Moreno, are more likely to be victims of workplace abuses, and substandard health and safety procedures.
Connecticut Public Radio
August 4, 2023
“Sexual harassment of teens in the workplace is a huge and widespread problem that is rarely talked about,” says Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative at the Economic Policy Institute, which has cataloged recent child-labor bills. The debate over the Iowa bill, she says, “did serve as a wake-up call and a reminder that the safeguards we have in place, as it is, aren’t preventive, and that many teens and many adults who look back on their teen work have experienced harassment.”
Barron’s
August 4, 2023
A March report by the Economic Policy Institute said that 14 states have either introduced or passed bills that roll back child labour laws.
The Independent
August 2, 2023
In a similar vein, the plan calls for reinstating a Trump-era rule that made it easier to classify people as independent contractors who lack many of the protections enjoyed by employees. Berry labels this plan, which the Economic Policy Institute estimated would cost workers more than $3 billion per year, a part of “Making Family-Sustaining Work Accessible.”
Mother Jones
August 2, 2023
In a 2019 study, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that those concerns were real, and the tourist dollars that the services bring in are outweighed by the shrinking of the long-term rental market and the drop in tax hotel revenues.
Bloomberg
August 2, 2023
Mattel shut down its last U.S. factory — in Murray, Ky. — in 2001. Barbie, Hot Wheels and other Mattel toys are now made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Thailand. It’s a familiar narrative. The U.S. has lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs to offshoring since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and the impact has been particularly hard on workers of color.
San Francisco Chronicle
August 2, 2023