Posts tagged Bernie Sanders
Commentary: Analysis shows $17 minimum wage could exacerbate rising prices, pushing child care costs up 20%
August 15, 2023 // Such massive cost increases would almost certainly price some families out of child care completely. Some parents who want to work would be pushed out of the labor force, leading to lower household incomes. Households that have only one parent and must use child care would be more likely to turn to non-licensed, typically illegal, child care. On top of that, child care jobs would be lost, even as employment among child care workers, declined by 18.2% between 2019 and 2022. While not all parents want or need full-time child care, a $17 minimum wage could also hurt families who use only part-time child care or even occasional babysitters. For example, a family who currently pays $10 per hour for 10 hours of after-school care per week would face an extra $70 per week, or $3,640 per year, in added costs.
Joe Biden and fellow Democrats are bullying job creators to boost unions
August 4, 2023 // Cassidy called out President Biden’s Department of Labor for “weaponizing its enforcement power against business,” specifically by ratcheting up rhetoric against job creators while loosening regulations on unions. Yet such actions are par for the course in an administration whose leader promised to be “the most pro-union president” in history.
Hotel Workers Strike against Scab Staffing App and Anti-Black Racism
August 2, 2023 // Bradley said he’s been trying to get a permanent hotel job for more than a decade, and suggested that discrimination was the reason he was passed over. “I think I’ve proven myself, and it’s still not enough,” he said. UNITE HERE has negotiated contract language to push hotels to hire Black workers, starting in Local 1 in Chicago in 2006, with similar language in contracts in Boston and Los Angeles. “Often we’re put against each other, right?” said Briceño. “So through all these years that we’ve been bargaining, we take the opportunity to educate our top leaders, folks that come to the negotiation, to understand the need to speak with one voice for the workers and the inclusion of Black workers.”
‘It feels like it’s strike summer’: US unions flex muscles across industries
July 31, 2023 // “In the wake of the Patco strike, companies saw strikes as opportunities to weaken unions or even break them. That’s not the case today. Today there’s no fear that calling a strike will result in disaster,” said Lichtenstein. “Today there’s a sense that unions are on the offensive,” Lichtenstein continued. “Take the actors. They say they don’t want just a good contract. They want a transformative contract.”
Organized Labor Is Causing ‘Union Joe’ Biden A Lot Of Headaches
July 28, 2023 // “Biden likes to look pro-union, he’ll turn on those running the unions when it’s politically advantageous—as it was during the railway strike,” David Osborne, fellow at the Institute for the American Worker, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Union executives rarely take issue with it, because doing so would threaten their own political celebrity. Unfortunately, rank-and-file employees are caught in the middle, and they’re the ones with the most to lose when negotiations break down or workers go on strike. The rank-and-file workers will blame Biden, but because they represent such a small percentage of the electorate—and their union executives will endorse Biden anyway—Biden won’t know about it and won’t care.”
Democrats want to make the minimum wage $17 an hour and give nearly 28 million workers a raise
July 27, 2023 // Sen. Bernie Sanders is once again pushing for a higher minimum wage. Sanders, alongside 29 senators and nearly 150 House representatives, introduced new legislation to bring up the federal minimum rate for the first time since 2009.
Summer of discontent: will US strikes spell trouble for ‘union guy’ Biden?
July 24, 2023 // On Thursday he was at the Philadelphia Shipyard in Pennsylvania to promote “Bidenomics”, a recently adopted slogan. The president said: “We have a plan that’s turning things around pretty quickly. ‘Bidenomics’ is just another way of saying ‘Restore the American Dream’.” But that message is still struggling to break through with voters. In a CNBC All-America Economic Survey released this week, 37% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and 58% disapprove. In a Monmouth University poll, only three in 10 Americans feel the country is doing a better job recovering economically than the rest of the world since the pandemic. There is a baffling disconnect between these opinions and data that shows America defying predictions of recession and curbing price rises faster than other major economies. Inflation has fallen from 9% to 3% and is now at its lowest point in more than two years.
San Fran socialists killed historic Anchor Brewing, critics say
July 19, 2023 // But locals such as Greenberg told The Post that a cadre of Democratic Socialists of America drove the push to unionize Anchor’s modest 61-member workforce — in hopes of inspiring the masses to “take on the power of capital.” In 2020, the Anchor Union’s first contract kicked hourly pay up by as much as 28% — a substantial bump that exacerbated the company’s pandemic slump. “I’m very sympathetic to the workers, but there also has to be some reality,” Roth said. “And that’s the problem with socialism: in the real world, the economic and math tenets quite literally do not add up.”
OP-ED: BIDEN IS INVESTING IN GREEN ENERGY ACROSS THE SOUTH — THROWING SWING STATE UNION WORKERS UNDER THE BUS
July 12, 2023 // The success of the climate program will require continued federal commitment. Biden is placing a bet that clean energy investments could ultimately work the same way as the military-industrial complex. The military and its allied contractors have made sure to set up bases and/or manufacturing facilities in nearly every congressional district in the country, with extra attention paid to areas represented by key lawmakers. That has produced durable support for ever-expanding military budgets. Whether the same could be accomplished for the clean energy industry is an open question, but so far, Republicans from districts that have won federal awards have nevertheless voted to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which funds the tax breaks. By subsidizing the decline of union jobs, the Biden administration risks empowering lawmakers who will then move to end the subsidies altogether. “The total lack of consideration for workers could certainly make the difference in 2024.” “What Biden is doing is politically insane, environmentally bankrupt, and it’s poor economics,” Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America and board member of Our Revolution, told The Intercept.
Commentary: How Much Longer Will Democrats Support the PRO Act?
June 29, 2023 // When the act was introduced in 2019 and 2021, I voted against it both times. Members should not be fooled by the so-called pro-worker rhetoric that has accompanied the PRO Act. You can be pro-worker without hitching your wagon to a poisonous bill that advances an ideological attack on small business owners. So next time your sink backs up or your chimney needs sweeping, think of the PRO Act and those who are pushing it.