Center for Community Change, May 2012
Caregiving is critical work and a fundamental part of our society. In our earliest years and in our final ones, we often depend on the care provided by a family member or friend. This care is a vital service to young children, the millions of ill and disabled individuals, and especially to the rapidly growing number of elderly Americans.… Continue reading »
At the end of the 2013 legislative session, Governor Mark Dayton, Speaker of the House Paul Thissen, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk agreed on one thing: they will need to take up the minimum wage again in 2014 session. Beyond that: they have differences. The Governor has indicated he “would settle” for an increase to $9.50/hr. The House has passed a bill that would raise it to $9.50/hr by 2015. The Senate’s bill raises it to only $7.75/hr.
Before the next legislative session begins on February 25, 2014 you can expect to hear a lot more about these dollar figures (as well as the rest of the minimum wage improvements being proposed.) As you do, it’s important to place them in some context. How high is too high? How low is too low? What do people need to make per hour in order to just get by? Here is a simple guide to the minimum wage dollar figure debate:
$28.34: This is what the minimum wage would be had it grown at the same rate as the income as the top 1% since 1968 (the year in which the federal minimum wage was at its highest).
$18.72: This is what the minimum wage would be had it grown with the productivity of the U.S.… Continue reading »
Monday, Oct. 21 saw a community forum at Grand Rapids’ Community Presbyterian Church on raising Minnesota’s hourly minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.50 by 2015.
The forum was presented by representatives of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition (JRLC), a Minnesota religious lobby for social justice that is managed by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Minnesota Council of Churches, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota.
Representatives from JRLC included Brian Rusche, executive director, and Reverend Alison Killeen, director of organizing and practical theology.
Kathleen Blake was first to speak on the proposed minimum wage increase. Blake is a Grand Rapids resident and a longtime member of JRLC, as well as an organizer for TakeAction Minnesota, a grassroots organization working to engage communities on issues of social, economic, and racial justice.
If minimum wage had been adequately adjusted for inflation, said Blake, then it should now be $10.68 an hour. If it had been adjusted for companies’ average productivity gains, it would sit at nearly $22.00 an hour.
Contrary to the stereotypical portrait of minimum wage workers as teenagers, 77 percent of minimum wage workers are adults, Blake said.
Congressional Research Service, September 2012. Income tax rates have been at the center of recent policy debates over taxes. Some policymakers have argued that raising tax rates, especially on higher income taxpayers, to increase tax revenues is part of the solution for long-term debt reduction. For example, the Senate recently passed the Middle Class Tax Cut (S. 3412), which would allow the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts to expire for taxpayers with income over $250,000 ($200,000 for single taxpayers). The Senate recently considered legislation, the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012 (S. 2230), that would implement the “Buffett rule” by raising the tax rate on millionaires.… Continue reading »
For the last five years my wife and I have had a string of top-notch babysitters. Our two daughters have had the benefit of getting to spend time with young musicians, burgeoning scientists, and up & coming early childhood educators.
Talented, caring, and thoroughly underemployed: all of them were college educated.
What’s been true in my experience has also been reflected by the employment data of the recession. According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, the rates of underemployment for recent college graduates have grown from 27.4% in 2007 to 37% on 2012. Paired with straight up unemployment that means 1 of every 2 recent college graduates are under- or unemployed.
What underlies this trend, however, is not lazy students, bad schools, or superfluous college majors, what drives this trend is lousy jobs. According to a 2012 report by the Center for Economic Policy Research, since 1979 the U.S. economy has lost about the one-third of its ability create good jobs. If we were creating good jobs (meaning those that pay $18.50 an hour and have health insurance and retirement benefits) in the same way we were in 1979, 34.2% of workers would have good jobs. Instead only a shrinking 24.6% of U.S.… Continue reading »
I truly believe we can create an economy that works more effectively to create jobs and economic justice while still promoting entrepreneurship and attracting investment into Minnesota. Will you join me?
… Continue reading »I am working to ensure that folks like my mother, who work HARD for a living aren’t left on the margins of society. It feels good, also, to WORK towards change and not just sit by and watch it happen! Will you join me?… Continue reading »
I’m involved with TakeAction Minnesota because I want to affect meaningful change in my state around economic justice. I want Minnesota to support all people. Will you join me?… Continue reading »
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)–or “NAFTA on Steroids”–is poised to become the largest trade agreement ever enacted.
More than a “free-trade” agreement, the TPP is part of the Wall Street agenda to make the world safe for corporate investment and profits by reducing labor costs and undercutting workers’ rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health and financial laws and regulations; and setting up processes for dealing with disputes that go through special international tribunals rather than our own court system.
From growing income inequality to the erosion of workplace standards, it is growing harder for Minnesotans to join and remain in the middle class. As our Members of Congress face urgent deadlines, we believe it is critical that Congress act to increase family security and raise revenues fairly. 
Ensuring Retirement Security: The promise of a secure retirement has been at the core of the American dream for generations. No one should have to live in poverty after a lifetime of work. Still, the basic tenets of this promise are under threat. People are paid too little to save; pensions are undermined by employers; and public systems like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are being attacked by a well-funded, corporate-backed austerity lobby. We oppose cuts to these programs but also believe we need to work proactively to improve them. We can do so by:
Raising the Minimum Wage: After decades of wage stagnation, Minnesota’s families are getting paid less and less to do more and more. … Continue reading »
The expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts–raising state income taxes on the top 2%–and closing $411 million in state corporate tax loopholes have been a promising turn toward tax fairness and, for a time, have blunted the cuts-only strategy of the right-wing, austerity lobby.
These are successes we must build on in upcoming years. The good news is the public still strongly supports a more fair tax system and the investments it would make possible. The bad news is the compelling public needs that require these investments are still bearing down on everyday Minnesotans. We urgently need to reverse racial inequities, prepare for the senior boom, address the growing cost of higher education, and respond to climate instability. Addressing each of these problems will require going beyond a no-more-cuts, hope-we-can-break-even approach to tax advocacy.
Over the next two years we will take on new revenue solutions that ask the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share and that make new, shared solutions possible. If you want to find out more about this work, please contact Chris Conry at 651-379-0760 or chris@takeactionminnesota.org… Continue reading »
No Minnesotan should ever have to choose between earning a paycheck and caring for a loved one.
But more than one million working Minnesotans do not earn paid time off to care for themselves or their family when they’re sick or threatened by domestic violence.
We’re fighting to change that. Will you join us? Get in touch today.
Minnesota 2020, October 08, 2013
Raising Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour is good public policy. It would boost the state’s consumer economy by providing workers an additional $470 million in increased spending power. This analysis examines the various groups of Minnesotans who would be impacted by a $9.50 minimum wage.
Examining Minnesota employment data for workers whose wages are below $9.50 (and those slightly above who would likely see a raise due to the “spillover effect”), Raise the Wage Coalition member JOBS NOW estimates that a $9.50 an hour minimum wage would mean a raise for 357,000 Minnesotans.… Continue reading »
Effort focused on pushing state Senate to go higher
Back in August, under a pavilion at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in 95-degree heat, supporters of increasing the minimum wage in Minnesota kicked off what would soon become a very public campaign.
Before then, talk of raising the state’s minimum wage of $6.15 per hour — one of the lowest rates in the nation — was mostly confined to the halls of the state Capitol, where differing House and Senate bills were considered last session but failed to yield any agreement by the time the legislative clock ran out. The House bill set an increase from $6.15 to $9.50 per hour, while the Senate offered a more modest proposal to increase the minimum wage to $7.75 per hour. Gov. Mark Dayton, alongside House Democrats and union members, thought the interim would be a good time to publicly pressure the Senate to move their way on minimum wage next session.
John Clay, Jobs Now Coalition, September 25, 2013
A $9.50 an hour Minnesota minimum wage would help working families and working adults pay for basic needs, according to an upcoming report by Jobs Now Coalition in Saint Paul. The report looks at Minnesota workers whose wages are below $9.50 as well as those slightly above, who would see a raise due to what economists call the “spillover effect.”
Out of a total of 357,000 Minnesota workers across the demographic spectrum who would see a raise, about 77 percent are age 20 or older. And 33 percent are married or are parents.… Continue reading »
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research, The Exchange (Yahoo! Finance), September 9, 2013
The fast food industry has put its lobbyists into hyper-drive. Their concern is the growing public support for striking workers at the major chains who are demanding $15 an hour. The lobbying groups argue that this sort of pay hike would inevitably backfire, leading to job loss and higher unemployment.
I’ve taken a special interest in this argument since I have apparently become a prop in their efforts, being cited as an economist who agrees that there would be job loss from a sudden increase in wages in the industry to $15 an hour. Undoubtedly there would be somewhat fewer jobs in the industry if wages doubled for low-end workers, but to seriously assess the merits of the policy we need to do a bit more arithmetic.… Continue reading »
Katherine Gallagher Robbins and Julie Vogtman, National Women’s Law Center, September 2013
Women working full time, year round typically make only 77 percent of what their male counterparts make–leaving a wage gap of 23 cents on the dollar. One reason for this gap is that women are concentrated in low-wage jobs: two-thirds of minimum wage workers and workers in tipped occupations are women, disproportionately women of color. Raising the minimum wage would help close this gap by increasing wages for workers at the bottom of the spectrum. Raising the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage are important steps towards fair pay for women–especially women of color.… Continue reading »
John Schmitt, Janelle Jones, Center for Economic and Policy Research, August 2013
In recent weeks, fast-food workers have gone on strike in seven U.S. cities. Their demand for a $15 per hour minimum wage in their industry–about $30,000 per year for a full-time worker, typically with no benefits – has underscored just how low the $7.25 federal minimum wage is relative to what workers need to get by.
One argument frequently made against higher wages for fast-food workers is that the industry is dominated by teenagers and workers with less than a high school degree, who somehow “deserve” the low wages they receive.
An analysis of government data on fast-food workers, however, tells a different story. First of all, only about 30 percent of fast-food workers are teenagers. Another 30 percent are between the ages of 20 and 24. The remaining 40 percent are 25 and older. (All the data we present here are from the government’s Current Population Survey, where we have combined data for the years 2010 through 2012 in order to provide a large enough sample for analysis.) Half of fast food workers are 23 or older. Many teenagers do work in fast-food, but the majority of fast-food workers are not teenagers.… Continue reading »
Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, Michael Reich, Department of Economics and Institute for Research on Labor and Employment,University of California, Berkeley, July 20, 2013
We provide the first estimates of the effects of minimum wages on employment flows in the U.S. labor market, identifying the impact by using policy discontinuities at state borders. We find that minimum wages have a sizeable negative effect on employment flows but not stocks. Separations and accessions fall among affected workers, especially those with low tenure. We do not find changes in the duration of non-employment for separations or hires. This evidence is consistent with search models with endogenous separations, but explanations focused only on quits or only on layoffs are unlikely to explain the full complement of findings.… Continue reading »
ST. PAUL, Minn. — No state is set to embrace the Affordable Care Act as thoroughly as Minnesota, the only one that will implement the “big three” components of health insurance expansion.
That means Minnesota will expand the Medicaid program, develop an online insurance marketplace and offer a basic health program.
It’s the third component that really sets the state apart. Only Minnesota has committed to offering a basic health program, a safety net for people who have too much income to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. By enacting that third element of the act, Minnesota will take implementation of the federal health care overhaul further than any other state.
Advocates of Minnesota’s approach say moving forward on three of the health law’s biggest initiatives means far more Minnesotans will have access to affordable coverage. But it also means Minnesota will be a unique testing ground for the various moving parts of the ambitious and complex new system.
Minnesota 2020, July 2013
Adjusted for various accounting shifts and state takeovers, state general fund
spending has declined by $5.2 billion over the last decade in constant FY 2012-
13 dollars. If we further adjust general fund spending for population growth,
annual per capita spending has declined by $730 or 18.3 percent.… Continue reading »
National Women’s Law Center, July 2013.
Women have regained a large number of the jobs they lost during the recession, but their gains are highly concentrated in low-wage occupations. Sixty percent of the increase in employment for women between 2009 and 2012 was in the 10 largest occupations that typically pay less than $10.10 per hour (“the 10 largest low-wage occupations”). In contrast, these 10 low-wage occupations accounted for only 20 percent of men’s employment growth over the same period.… Continue reading »
National Employment Law Project, July 2013
A previous NELP analysis found that while job losses during the recession were heavily concentrated in mid-wage occupations, the early recovery was led by employment growth in lower-paying occupations. This fact sheet turns from analyzing employment to analyzing occupational wage trends during the recovery to date.… Continue reading »
Nick Hanauer, Bloomberg.com, June 19, 2013
The fundamental law of capitalism is that if workers have no money, businesses have no customers. That’s why the extreme, and widening, wealth gap in our economy presents not just a moral challenge, but an economic one, too. In a capitalist system, rising inequality creates a death spiral of falling demand that ultimately takes everyone down.
Low-wage jobs are fast replacing middle-class ones in the U.S. economy. Sixty percent of the jobs lost in the last recession were middle-income, while 59 percent of the new positions during the past two years of recovery were in low-wage industries that continue to expand such as retail, food services, cleaning and health-care support. By 2020, 48 percent of jobs will be in those service sectors.… Continue reading »
Turns out, Ban the Box is just the beginning.
A victor of the 2013 legislative session, the new bill requires employers to remove the question, and the check box, that asks potential employees about their criminal records. Beginning Jan. 2, 2014, employers can ask about criminal histories only after selecting applicants for interviews.
Advocates of second chances are saying, thank you, thank you. … And, now that we have your attention, here’s what we need you to do next.
“Ban the Box is a big step forward,” said Greta Bergstrom, spokeswoman for TakeAction Minnesota, a statewide people’s network working for social, racial and economic justice. “But it’s not an end unto itself.”
John Schmitt, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Democracy, June 12, 2013
Between 1979 and 2012, after accounting for inflation, the productivity of the average American worker increased about 85 percent. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted wage of the median worker rose only about 6 percent, and the value of the minimum wage fell 21 percent. As a country, we got richer, but workers in the middle saw little of the gains, and workers at the bottom actually fell behind.… Continue reading »
“That is the task which we begin today: to inaugurate an age in which our will is equal to our hopes. I believe that our people are waiting, and are ready, for such an age. They are waiting for government to catch up with them.” – Gov. Wendell R. Anderson, Inaugural Address, January 6, 1971
Changing our tax code is a long-run project, and it’s controversial every step of the way. There’s a good reason for that: We negotiate and renegotiate our social contract through taxes. It’s where we sort out who pays and how much and for what. Everybody has a stake and everybody has an opinion. The tax changes coming in Minnesota’s next biennium are no exception.
Advocates are pressing Minnesota legislators to close tax loopholes and prevent companies from shifting income to offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes.
TakeAction Minnesota says that companies are avoiding paying millions in taxes, which either results in service reductions around the state or higher taxes for all Minnesotans.
“Minnesota families cannot continue to pay for corporate tax avoidance,” said Greta Bergstrom, spokeswoman for Take Action Minnesota, an advocacy group.
Legislators are exploring a proposal to close some tax loopholes, which would bring in an additional $36.5 million over the next two years. If legislators closed all tax loopholes, the state could potentially take in an additional $350 million.
Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, April 2013
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities appreciates the opportunity to submit testimony for the record in support of current proposals to reform Minnesota’s tax treatment of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations.… Continue reading »
National Women’s Law Center, April 2013
Women have a particular stake in raising the minimum wage. Women are the majority of workers in each of the ten largest occupations that typically pay less than $10.10 per hour, and about two-thirds or more of the workers in seven of these occupations. Increasing the minimum wage and tipped minimum wage are key steps toward fair pay for women.… Continue reading »
