This week has been one horrible story after another for working people, and the Trump years are guaranteed to be more of the same, and worse. But let’s take a minute to focus on a couple of positive stories just to alleviate the gloom a teeny tiny bit.
● A raise for some:
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan announced Tuesday the Charlotte-based company will raise wages for its lowest-paid workers to $15 an hour, the latest big bank to make such a move.
Moynihan briefly discussed the plan at an industry conference in New York but did not provide further details. Bank of America spokeswoman Ferris Morrison told the Observer the change, to take effect in early 2017, will increase the bank’s current minimum pay of $13.50.
● Good stuff in New York City:
If it passes — and council members are confident it will — the law would require fast-food employers to automatically deduct fees from the paychecks of workers who choose to be represented. The money would go to a member organization of their choosing, tasked with advocating on the worker’s behalf. It looks and sounds an awful lot like a union, in an industry where unionization is all but impossible under the current system.
● Also up in New York City, bills to protect retail and fast food workers from scheduling abuses.
● Ikea is expanding paid parental leave for U.S. employees.
● Columbia University graduate students voted to unionize.
● Here's the government contractor wage theft problem President Obama was fighting and Donald Trump will almost certainly encourage:
- A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation in 2010 said “the federal government has awarded contracts to companies that had been cited for large back-wage liabilities by Labor.”
- A report released Monday by Demos, a public policy organization based in New York, said “approximately 40 percent of all federal contracting dollars in 2013 went to contractors with health, safety or wage violations on their record” and “Americans working for federal contractors lose up to $2.5 billion each year to violations of minimum wage laws alone.”
● Speaking of which, federal contract workers protested wage theft on Wednesday. They called for Donald Trump to support American workers as he promised during the campaign. Hopefully that was a rhetorical move and they aren’t actually expecting anything, or else they’re in for a disappointment.
● Ohio Republicans passed a bill blocking local minimum wage increases, a move that’s getting less attention than their attacks on abortion rights.
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● Tar Heel heist: How the charter school industry is hijacking public education:
Charter schools take a sizeable cut from the funding pie for education in the Tar Heel state. According to the NC Law Project, local spending on charters exceeds traditional public schools by $215 per student. The study calculates, “If local funds were truly shared equally, charter schools would have sent $3 million to local school districts in FY 14-15.”
● Privatize, monetize, weaponize: How the DeVos family devoured Michigan's schools.