As he's packed his proposed Cabinet with wealthy white men, President-elect Donald Trump has been criticized for assembling an administration that doesn't look like America, much less the "forgotten men and women" on whose behalf he claimed to have campaigned.
Happiness is a lot easier for those paid a fair wage, which apparently is not what many federal contractor employees get.
In a complaint filed Monday with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said the Lionel Henderson Corp. “has misclassified and underpays workers” who are customer service representatives for the National Flood Insurance Program.
[...]As the next CEO of America, Mr. Trump can turn his promise into policy. In his first 100 days in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump should sign an executive order to make sure that the $1.3 trillion in taxpayer-dollars our Government spends annually rewards corporations that create "more jobs and better wages" for Americans.
The D.C. Council is considering a bill that would bar businesses from performing credit checks on job applicants. Supporters of the legislation say credit histories can be inaccurate and indicate little about workers’ character.[...]
“Our research shows poor credit more often tells a story of personal misfortune far more convincingly than one of poor work habits,” says Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos.[...]
According to the Demos report, credit checks were never intended to be used for hiring.
D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie said he will introduce emergency legislation to bar contributions to political action committees during non-election years in an effort to close what some view as a major campaign finance loophole before the start of 2017.
“It’s important that we address the issue as soon as possible, before Jan. 1,” McDuffie (D-Ward 5) said. “There’s a lot of support for it from what we’ve seen from the public in general.”[...]
Imagine a rich person. For most Americans, the image that comes to mind is a wealthy white man. While white men certainly make up a disproportionate share of the wealthy, there is growing diversity among the wealthiest members of society. Given the increasing political salience of racial justice and gender equity, this diversity could have impacts on policy. I find that there are indeed large differences between rich men and rich women (defining that group as those earning more than $150,000 a year), as well as between rich white people and rich people of color.
Campaign finance reform crusaders on Wednesday lauded a D.C. Council measure that would forbid political action committees from raising unlimited funds in nonelection years and ban businesses from donating to candidates who could influence their contracts with the city.
The “Campaign Finance Transparency and Accountability Amendment Act of 2016” is part of a bevy of bills aimed at increasing the political distance between candidates and businesses in the District.[...]
Aside from the personal costs of running for office, and the structural problems stemming from the way we elect representatives, money is a major issue when it comes to the representation of people of color. While personal resources play a role in the decision to pursue elective office, it also takes money, sometimes a lot of money, to run for office.
Our city governments make decisions that affect us most, yet we know very little about the ways that money influences them. In a previous post I explored new evidence that people of color are not well represented by their councils. One possible reason is the overwhelmingly white municipal donor classes.
A Miami-Dade lobbyist [Eric Zichella] on Monday joined the court fight against a ballot item that would sharply limit campaign donations as advocates release a study claiming smaller donors to local races better reflect the county’s diversity.[...]
On Labor Day, let’s all take a moment to thank our bosses for the rights and benefits they have so generously granted us.
Oh wait, that’s right. Decent wages and working conditions were never gifts. Workers organized, fought, and in many cases died for each and every improvement in our working lives. And workers are fighting today—to protect the rights we’ve won, and to advance new and needed labor laws.
For the past year, Albuquerque has been experimenting with a pilot jobs program for its homeless population called “There’s a Better Way.” The initiative began as a push to connect the homeless with shelters and other assistance providers, but within a few months of its launch, the city also started offering needy residents $9 an hour to perform menial labor such as cleaning up litter. The program also offers lunch and overnight shelter to participants.
BREAKING CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The 127K petitions sit untouched, Mayor Gimenez refuses to act, and the campaign coalitions have begun holding direction actions and have filed a lawsuit in attempts to get the county to do their job and count the petitions.
When the Labor Department ruled last week that 674 workers in the cafeteria of the United States Senate had been denied their full pay in recent years, the contractor that runs the cafeteria said it was an accident. The workers said it was deliberate.
More bosses are weighing the credit worthiness of job candidates before making a hire — a practice that some lawmakers say unfairly keeps people with bad credit from landing a job.
On Thursday, the Senate takes up a proposal to restrict employers in most cases from using financial information such as credit scores to decide whom to hire, promote or fire. [...]
There's no one reason for the routine neglect of African-American areas, but a study released today by the civil rights advocacy group Demos pinpoints a huge government-access problem in South Florida: Black people, the study says, can't keep up with the deluge of campaign money coming from Miami's cadre of rich lawyers, lobbyists, investors, and real-estate tycoons.
Black people make up one-fifth of Miami-Dade County's population. It doesn't exactly take a Nobel Laureate to see the county hasn't always treated its majority-black neighborhoods with a ton of respect. (See: Beckham, David.)