Your tax dollars are subsidizing corporations that don’t pay emplotees a living wage. Robert Reich explains why raising the minimum wage is good business, and good for the economy.
Robert Reich website
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Belly up to the Genius Bar. Apple retail workers have voted to unionize.
“Workers at Apple’s Towson Town Center store in Maryland have voted to unionize, with 65 yeses and 33 nos. Around 110 employees were eligible to vote in the election.”
“Organizing at the Towson store has been done by a group of employees that called themselves AppleCORE (an acronym for Coalition of Organized Retail Employees). The workers have said they want to expand their rights, specifically asking for a say when it came to pay, hours, and safety. AppleCORE is associated with a larger, established union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.”
— “Apple retail workers vote to unionize a store in Maryland,” Mitchell Clark, The Verge (links added)
More:
“Apple workers in Maryland vote to join union, a first for the tech giant in US,” Edward Helmore, The Guardian
“Apple store workers vote to form first US union,” David Molloy, BBC News
“Apple Store workers approve union, the first in the U.S.,” Rachel Lerman, Aaron Gregg and Praveena Somasundaram Washington Post
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Image (“Apple Store, after a 1900 trade card by Tom Browne“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The U.S. Unemployment Rate is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Deparment of Labor, but BLS recognizes several joblessness measures. The one you read in the media is called U3, the percentage of unemployed civilian adults actively seeking fulltime nonfarm employment. Right now, the U3 rate is 7.9%. A broader measure, U6, includes those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs and people who want to work and have looked for jobs anytime in the past year. The latest U6 jobless rate is 12.8%.
But those aren’t the only — or most realistic — measures of unemployment. The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, founded by Gene Ludwig, former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, has a yardstick for U.S. functional unemployment, and it’s unnerving:
“A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1% ….”
“If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who isn’t earning a living wage, the rate rises even further, to 54.6%. For Black Americans, it’s 59.2%.”
“Only 46.1% of white Americans over the age of 16 — and a mere 40.8% of Black Americans — now have a full-time job paying more than $20,000 per year.”
— “America’s true unemployment rate,” Felix Salmon, Axios
More:
Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) website
If your grocery, food service, and delivery workers don’t get paid time off when they’re sick, then they need to work while sick, potenially infecting you. When corporations value profits over public safety, we all lose. A Vox video.
Related:
“The Trump administration issued a new rule that blocks guaranteed paid sick leave for 75% of American workers,” Isaac Scher, Business Insider
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Alexia Fernández Campbell explains what the US gets wrong about the minimum wage. A Vox video.
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“Food Chains,” a film by Sanjay Rawal, documents where your produce comes from, who makes it available to you, and the cost. Executive Producers: Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser. In theaters and also on iTunes.
More:
“Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser take on fairness for farmworkers in ‘Food Chains,’” Soraya Nadia McDonald, Washington Post
“Sanjay Rawal’s New Film ‘Food Chains’ Asks “Is My Food Fair?” Big Think
“‘Food Chains’ Looks at the Real Cost of Your Cheap Tomatoes,” Maddie Oatman, Mother Jones
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“Future of Hostess hangs on ultimatum to strikers,” Diane Stafford, Kansas City Star
“Hostess assesses possible liquidation as two sides trade barbs,” Diane Stafford, Kansas City Star
“Hostess Brands closing for good,” Chris Isidore and James O’Toole, CNN Money
The iconic 1932 photo of construction workers eating lunch on a steel beam high above Rockefeller Center, attributed to Charles C. Ebbets, is considered a documentary classic. There are many tributes (like the Sergio Furnari sculpture above) and parodies. Corbus, which owns the photo rights to “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” says it’s licensed more often than any of the snaps in the firm’s 20-million-image catalog.
“Lunchtime on Top of a Skyscraper,” by Sergio Furnario. Based on a 1932 photograph by Charles C. Ebbets.
Don’t know why it was on a truck on Bleecker Street last Sunday, but we enjoyed it immensely.
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Cellphone photo (of a Sergio Furnari sculpture) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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