The United States is heading for a major retirement crisis, with the shift from pensions to 401(k)s leaving at least half of households in danger of running short of money in retirement. There are a lot of possible solutions to that, and one of them doesn’t even involve employers paying their workers more:
What if people who wait tables, wash cars, take care of children, or perform other low-wage jobs for small businesses—which often don’t offer 401(k) savings plans—could have money taken out of every paycheck and deposited into a low-cost retirement savings account operated through the state government? Five states have enacted plans that are making this possible, and 28 states are at various stages of considering such plans. If all of these states did enact these laws, 63 million people could have access to retirement savings options.
This was the goal of the Obama administration, which put in place regulations to help states that wanted to provide retirement savings options. Though some states had set out on this path before, this new policy that made it easier and safer for states to offer these plans, paved the way for this positive development in the states. This was great news for millions of workers! Make it easy for people whose employers don’t offer retirement savings option to do the responsible thing: put away money every month toward their retirement in a way that limits the amount of their savings that is lost to fees and commissions. It helps people prepare for their old age. It chips away at a looming retirement crisis. What’s not to like?
You know where this is going, right? Of course you do. Republicans don’t like it because of this part: “in a way that limits the amount of their savings that is lost to fees and commissions.” Those fees and commissions don’t vanish into thin air, they go into the bank accounts of rich people. Plus, letting workers save their own money toward retirement creates a little extra work for employers, and there are a lot of crappy bosses out there who’d rather not bother, even if it means their workers will suffer in retirement. So the regulation helping states offer this retirement option is one more regulation being slashed by congressional Republicans.
● Illinois state workers authorize strike against governor who invoked the legacy of PATCO.
● Yale graduate teaching assistants have voted to form a union:
Yale organizers took an unusual approach of having individual departments hold separate elections to speed up recognition by the university and build support for unionizing. Eight of the nine departments that held elections, including English, history and math, voted in favor of forming a union, while graduate teachers in the physics department voted against. There are a few uncounted ballots in the East Asian languages and political science departments that must be resolved by the NLRB.
● Jared Bernstein on why it's important to have a Labor Department that works for workers:
With the rise of franchises, subcontractors (often regular workers who’ve been misclassified), and outsourced tasks that used to [be] done in-house, the distance between worker and employer is ever more arms-length. David Weil, who ran the [Wage and Hour division] under Secretary Tom Perez, labels this evolving model the “fissured workplace,” and research shows that as it spreads, violation of wage and hour laws, if not downright wage theft (the division now has a Workers Owed Wages database of employers with such violations), become more common.
In response, WHD shifted more of its resources from passive (wait to hear about violations) toward proactive investigations focused on industries such as hotels, fast food, janitors, truckers and home health care. Weil told me that in the Obama years, the WHD “secured nearly $1.8 billion in back wages for more than 2.0 million workers in over 240,000 investigations.” That’s about three weeks of earnings for a low-wage worker. One study found that in 2008, one-quarter of their sample of low-wage workers in three large cities were paid less than the legally required minimum wage.
● It’s a first for billionaire casino mogul and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson: some of his workers have unionized and have a contract after years of struggle. And the workers aren’t in heavily unionized Las Vegas—they’re in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
● Interviews for resistance: Protests show immigrants' economic power cannot be ignored.
● Charter schools often drive out the most challenging students to preserve higher test scores, but here’s a different twist:
Sunshine [a charter alternative school] takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent — and its rating an “A” under Florida’s all-important grading system for schools — partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine. Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than $1.5 million-a-year “management fee,” 2015 financial records show — more than what the school spends on instruction.
But students lose out, a ProPublica investigation found. Once enrolled at Sunshine, hundreds of them exit quickly with no degree and limited prospects. The departures expose a practice in which officials in the nation’s tenth-largest school district have for years quietly funneled thousands of disadvantaged students — some say against their wishes — into alternative charter schools that allow them to disappear without counting as dropouts.
● AFSCME is suing to block Iowa's new Scott Walker-style law attacking public workers.
● Automation and working class displacement, or, why Erik Loomis thinks “the Trump election may be seen in the future as the first of the Automation Era.”
● New study: Michigan test score gains are lowest in the country. Hi there, Betsy DeVos!
● Workers Independent News:
