Republicans claimed that their big corporate tax cut would raise wages and bonuses for workers. How’s that looking now? Surprise! Not so hot.
The Economic Policy Institute is out with two key pieces of research on this question, and by two different measures, the corporate tax giveaway failed to deliver for workers. For one thing, Republicans claimed the move would lead to increased investment, which would trickle down to workers. In fact, investment growth has stalled. “That’s not to say that the TCJA itself stopped the upward trend in investment growth,” Hunter Blair writes, “but it sure is nothing like the investment boom its proponents promised.”
Second, right after the Republican tax law passed, a bunch of corporations announced bonuses for workers. It looked like a corporate PR move to benefit Republicans … and it was. “The average bonus for 2018 was just $0.01 higher than in 2017,” Lawrence Mishel writes, drawing on Bureau of Labor statistics.
● A hotly contested race for NewsGuild president in the wake of a big win at the Los Angeles Times.
A flagging union has found new hope in a flurry of organizing victories. Now in the union’s presidential election, members are mulling what’s the best way to keep growing—stick with the incumbent, or replace him with a young leader from last year’s biggest organizing drive?
● Green energy jobs are growing fast, which is good news for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
● Uber drivers often don't know what they earn after expenses—and it can be shockingly little.
[Researchers] interviewed 40 Uber drivers in 2016, and found that all of them had a difficult time calculating their actual compensation. Some made as little as $5 an hour after taking expenses into account.
● Illinois has banned so-called right-to-work laws.
● U.S. schools struggle to hire and retain teachers:
The share of schools that were trying to fill a vacancy but couldn’t tripled from the 2011–2012 to 2015–2016 school years (increasing from 3.1 to 9.4 percent), and in the same period the share of schools that found it very difficult to fill a vacancy nearly doubled (from 19.7 to 36.2 percent).
