More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime rule: Workers would receive $1.4 billion less than under the 2016 rule [feedly]

First rule of the Higher Wages Party: IF IT CUTS LABOR INCOME, ITS BAD!

More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime rule: Workers would receive $1.4 billion less than under the 2016 rule
https://www.epi.org/blog/more-than-eight-million-workers-will-be-left-behind-by-the-trump-overtime-rule-workers-would-receive-1-4-billion-less-than-under-the-2016-rule/

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced its final overtime rule, which will set the salary threshold under which salaried workers are automatically entitled to overtime pay to $35,568 a year. The rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration chose to abandon.

For quick details on the history of this rulemaking, see this statement. The two tables below show just how many workers this administration is turning its back on with this rule, and how much money workers will lose. Using the same methodology used by the Department of Labor in their estimates of the economic impact of the rule, I estimate that 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the 2016 rule will be left behind by the Trump administration's rule, including 3.2 million workers who would have gotten new overtime protections under the 2016 rule and 5.0 million who would have gotten strengthened overtime protections under the 2016 rule. As the table shows, this administration is turning its back on 4.2 million women, 2.7 million parents of children under the age of 18, 2.9 million people of color, and 4.6 million workers without a college degree.

Table 1

With this rule, the Trump administration is cheating workers out of billions. The annual wage gains from this rule are $1.4 billion dollars less than they would have been under the 2016 rule—and these annual earnings losses balloon over time because the Trump administration neglected to include automatic indexing in their rule. Once again, President Trump has turned his back on the working people of this country.

Table 2

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Re: Your post about cashiers

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Kristy Crane
Public Relations
Zippia.com

Zippia is a resource site for job seekers who want to empower their career aspirations with knowledgeable data. We've been featured in USA Today, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC and the NY Times, among other leading publications.

As a union leader, I've learned one big lesson: Workers can't just rely on promises from CEOs [feedly]

As a union leader, I've learned one big lesson: Workers can't just rely on promises from CEOs
https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-unions-fight-benefits-pay-not-rely-on-corporate-ceos-2019-9?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

• CEOs are promising to take better care of workers with stronger benefits and higher pay.
• But as a union leader, I know firsthand that workers can't take these promises for granted.
• I led a strike of 20,000 AT&T workers fighting for better pay and working conditions.
• Our strike proved that workers must be willing to put up a fight to get better conditions.
• Richard Honeycutt is the vice president for District 3 of the Communications Workers of America.
• Read all of Business Insider's WeWork coverage here.

Some say the era of corporate accountability is here, pointing to statements like the one recently put out by the Business Roundtable in which executives from companies like JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, and Walmart affirmed their commitment to doing right by customers, employees, and the communities in which they work.

But with another Labor Day behind us, and now 49,000 General Motors employees represented by the United Automobile Workers on strike around the US, the truth is that trusting corporations to hold themselves accountable is like trusting the fox to guard the henhouse. True accountability comes from workers who join together to fight for fairness, respect, and dignity for themselves and their communities.

That was made clear when more than 20,000 members of my union across nine Southeastern states launched an unfair-labor-practice strike against AT&T — the largest private-sector strike in the South in over a decade. We entered into contract negotiations with AT&T in good faith, but the company sent negotiators to the table who lacked the authority to make a deal.

Among the CEOs who signed the recent Business Roundtable statement was AT&T's Randall Stephenson. In recent years, when it has come to investing in employees by compensating them fairly, providing them important benefits, offering training and education opportunities, and supporting the communities where the company works, AT&T more often than not fails to back its talk with action.

Our experience with AT&T and other employers shows that workers can't rely on letters from CEOs to get the treatment they deserve but instead need to raise their voices as one to make sure they are treated and compensated fairly.

We had to fight for a fair shake

When we began bargaining for a new contact this summer, AT&T negotiators came to the table with a list of demands that would dramatically increase healthcare costs, require employees to take on more responsibilities without additional compensation, force employees to be on call at all times, and make it easier for the company to send work to low-wage contractors.

Not only did this multibillion-dollar corporation no longer feel the obligation to share its record-breaking profits with the people who make it all possible, but it wanted to pad those profits by taking even more away from its highly trained, dedicated union workforce.

CWA members at AT&T already put in long hours to support our business and residential customers. Because AT&T has been cutting jobs, they are often forced to work overtime, and night and weekend work requirements force them to be away from their families, missing important milestones. Customer-service representatives at call centers are not only expected to provide assistance to customers, but they must also sell additional services or risk being fired.

We brought our own list to the bargaining table, ready to negotiate fair wage increases, continued access to affordable healthcare, and improvements to job security. But once we got into the tough issues, we discovered that AT&T's negotiators thought we were on a one-way street. They had their list of demands but did not have the authority to make decisions on the issues our members had brought to the table. Once it became clear AT&T was not going to bargain in good faith, it was only a matter of time before workers walked off the job.

I've heard people say that unions are unnecessary, that if you don't like what the boss is offering, you should just find another job. Is that what we really want? Every person for themselves, giving up without a fight?

What I saw on the picket lines was amazing. In just four days, thousands of people from different backgrounds joined together as one family. They were unified, their unity was powerful, and it worked. AT&T came back to the negotiating table ready to make a deal, one that recognized workers had earned the right to share in the success of the company through family-supporting wages and benefits and job security.

Don't just rely on high-minded letters

The Business Roundtable executives want a pat on the back for stating what most Americans already thought was true — companies have a responsibility to customers, employees, and the communities they work in. By negotiating a fair contract, one grounded in the respect and loyalty we deserve, AT&T has taken a first step toward backing up its talk with action. But it took 20,000 workers walking off the job to get us here.

American corporations like AT&T have spent decades putting higher shareholder value above all other goals for their companies. The consequences have been devastating for working families. The Business Roundtable executives say they are reassessing their priorities and considering the well-being of all stakeholders, including workers, not just shareholders.

Well, AT&T now faces another chance to back that talk with action: The corporate raider Elliott Management announced plans this week to extract profits from AT&T by eliminating jobs and sending work to low-wage contractors. If AT&T's board of directors stands by the Business Roundtable letter, it should reject Elliott Management's proposals.

Time will tell whether the Business Roundtable pledge holds up, but for the foreseeable future workers won't expect executives to do us any favors. AT&T employees, like GM workers and working people across the country, know the accountability we see in corporate America is the result of workers' long and hard fights for fair pay and standards in the workplace.

What the AT&T strike made clear is that America's corporations won't be held accountable unless workers are willing to put up a fight.

Richard Honeycutt is the vice president for District 3 of the Communications Workers of America.

NOW WATCH: Nxivm leader Keith Raniere has been convicted. Here's what happened inside his sex-slave ring that recruited actresses and two billionaire heiresses.

See Also:

• Trump is starting to undermine health coverage, but the real danger is on the horizon
• Trump's plan to revoke California's power to set its own automotive-emissions standards isn't about cars or California — it's about Obama
• The US should amend the Constitution to put an end to gerrymandering and protect our democracy

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Merkel’s Climate Deal Will Cost Billions And Everyone Hates It [feedly]

Article Illustrates the kind of challenges we confront IF Dems WIN, or worse, if the fascists are not marginalized.

Merkel's Climate Deal Will Cost Billions And Everyone Hates It
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-21/merkel-s-climate-deal-will-cost-billions-but-everyone-hates-it

When it comes to Germany's $60 billion climate plan, environmentalists and polluters are in rare agreement. It's a dud.

Europe's economic engine wanted to regain its place on the frontlines in the battle over global warming. But instead, Chancellor Angela Merkel emerged from tortuous all-night negotiations with a package that failed to live up to the hype. Far from reclaiming her place as a climate champion, it exposed further the weakness of her leadership now in its twilight years.

Activists branded the measures, such as extra taxes on flights and incentives for electric cars, as insufficient for a "climate emergency." Economists criticized carbon price proposals as too shy an approach to spur emissions cuts. Big industry and some union leaders slammed Germany's go-it-alone approach, saying it would harm jobs and businesses.

In short, no one was happy. On Friday, thousands took to the streets in Berlin and around the world to demand action from the political class on what is rapidly becoming a key issue for voters. Among them were kids, inspired by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who within a year has become the face of the climate movement.

Global Climate Strike demonstration in Berlin, Sept. 20.

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

Merkel's fiercest political enemies were quick to seize the moment. "Merkel is bowing down to Greta's movement of school truants," Alternative for Germany leader Joerg Meuthen quipped on Twitter. "Permanent climate hysteria reigns."

The far-right party, a persistent thorn in Merkel's side, doubts the scientific evidence behind climate change and says Merkel's plan is "really expensive."

Polls, however, show an increasing share of Germans place greater weight on the environment than they do on jobs. Record-breaking heat waves, dwindling of the Rhine river and a series of powerful storms have turbocharged the climate debate and lifted the Green party to second place in election polls.

But environmentalists think Merkel's plan is nothing but "hot air and empty promises." Germany will miss its 2020 climate goals due to rising emissions from transport and heating, and the new plan intended to at least chart a path to a 55% cut in emissions by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

"I am bitterly disappointed," Annalena Baerbock, co-leader of the Green party, said of the measures. "The government has failed in the humanitarian task of climate protection."

After threatening to pull out of Merkel's coalition, the Social Democratic Party appeared to back down. In a comment on Saturday, SPD's parliamentary caucus head Matthias Miersch said the agreement lays the groundwork for fighting climate change.

Germany is not alone in struggling to reconcile climate needs with messy politics at a time when recession clouds gather. The task of trying to appease industrial interests, while grappling with a worsening economic situation and restive environmentalists is near impossible.

In Canada, October's election could be decided on Justin Trudeau's introduction of a carbon tax. In France, Yellow Vest activists have taken to the streets to protest Emmanuel Macron's environmental levies on gasoline. In the U.S., Donald Trump is taking the climate fight to California with a plan to revoke its right to regulate vehicle emissions.

Protesters arrive in Pariser Platz square near the Brandenburg Gate during the Global Climate Strike.

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

There are a lot of stakeholders in the game and the lesson Merkel is learning is that in trying to please everyone, you please no one.

While upsetting environmentalists, Merkel still didn't soothe the concerns of fossil-fuel industry leaders. For example, would an increase in taxes on flights put German airlines at a disadvantage against international competitors who don't face the same charges?

"This intensification of a unilateral approach in the highly competitive aviation market will not reduce CO2 emissions, but merely shift them, which is ecologically useless and economically harmful to airlines in Germany," said BDL chief executive Matthias von Randow, who runs the powerful airline lobby.

The union representing energy and chemical industry workers said the government avoided tackling the slow expansion of Germany's power grid with new cables needed to get renewable energy from north sea wind parks to the country's manufacturing heartlands further south. Attempts to build power lines have so far gotten snagged by "not in my backyard" protests from locals.

The measures "are exactly the flip-flopping that the chancellor said she wanted to avoid," IGBCE leader Michael Vassiliadis said in a statement.

Merkel may have also misjudged the public mood, with a mid-week ARD poll suggesting voters now place a higher priority on the environment than on economic wellbeing. As she heads to the United Nations climate conference next week, one has to wonder whether she could have done more.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

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In Case You Missed It... [feedly]

Updates from CBPP: In Case You Missed It...
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/in-case-you-missed-it-474

This week at CBPP, we focused on the federal budget, health, state budgets and taxes, federal taxes, and the economy.

• On the federal budget, Richard Kogan explained that the Senate majority plans to cut funding for the two appropriations bills that cover key human services programs.
• On health, Judith Solomon and Matt Broaddus detailed how new claims by opponents of Medicaid expansion rest on faulty analysis.
• On state budgets and taxes, Elizabeth McNichol stressed that state taxes on inherited wealth can be a powerful tool for building a more broadly shared prosperity.
• On federal taxes, we concluded that the expansions to the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit in the Working Families Tax Relief Act would benefit millions of Asian American households. We also updated our fact sheets on that legislation's benefits to Black and Latino households.
• On the economy, we updated our backgrounder on how many weeks of unemployment compensation are available and our chart book tracking the post-Great Recession economy.

Chart of the Week – Senate Majority 2020 Funding Plan Would Cut Key Human Services Programs

A variety of news outlets featured CBPP's work and experts this week. Here are some of the highlights:

Tennessee Reveals $7.9B Plan To Shift Medicaid Into Controversial Block Grant System
Kaiser Health News
September 18, 2019

Trump is starting to undermine health coverage, but the real danger is on the horizon
Business Insider
September 18, 2019

Trump's California trip marked by pair of clashes
CNN
September 18, 2019

How to Keep Teachers From Leaving the Profession
The Atlantic
September 19, 2019

Don't miss any of our posts, papers, or charts – follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Electric Vehicle Market So Far Belongs to China [feedly]

Electric Vehicle Market So Far Belongs to China

text only -- follow link to get graphs

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-20/electric-vehicle-market-so-far-belongs-to-china

This week, General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra spoke to the future of her company, the U.S.'s biggest automaker. "Once you start to believe in the science of global warming and look at the regulatory environment around the world, it becomes pretty clear that to win the future, you've got to win" electric and driverless personal transportation, she told Bloomberg Businessweek. If we look at today's data in key markets — and from some of Barra's biggest competitors — it also looks like an observation of the industry right now.

First things first: The global auto market is not only not growing, but it is also shrinking. Sales peaked in 2017 at nearly 86 million on a trailing-12-months basis; right now in 2019, sales are closer to 76 million.

Past the Peak

Global passenger vehicle sales, trailing 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

But electric vehicles are a growth market. Take Germany and the contrast between EV sales and all auto sales:

A Tale of Two Trends

Germany's EV sales vs. all automobile sales, trailing 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

The growth of EV sales combined with the decline in overall auto sales means electric vehicles now make up almost 5% of total sales.

Hard to Ignore

Germany's electric passenger vehicle sales as a percentage of total auto sales, trailing 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

Or take China, the world's largest auto market (and one where, incidentally, GM is a major player). China's sales of "alternative energy vehicles" — mostly electric, with some hybrids and a small number of natural gas combustion engines — are nearly 1.5 million. Meanwhile, sales of all passenger vehicles peaked at close to 25 million in the middle of 2018, and are now below 22 million.

Meanwhile, in China ...

Alternative energy vehicle sales vs. all passenger vehicle sales, trailing 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

That change in buying cars also means a change in fuel consumption. China's gasoline demand, after almost doubling between 2010 and July 2019, is now essentially flat. China diesel demand, meanwhile, peaked several years ago.

One Flattening, the Other Falling

China gasoline and diesel apparent demand, trailing 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

Electric vehicles certainly do look like a significant part of the future in these key markets, given their trajectories. A recent analysis by my BloombergNEF colleagues Nick Albanese and Josh Landess delineates that future by company using a new Automaker EV Exposure Score. For those used to seeing global auto giants at the head of any league table, it's striking.

Related: BloombergNEF's outlook for road transport fuels

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG leads all major automakers in revenue from electric passenger vehicle sales. 1  Its fellow Germans Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG are third and eighth, respectively. Nissan Motor Co. is seventh; GM is ninth. The rest of the top 10 automakers by revenue from electric vehicles are Chinese.

A German and Chinese Game

Estimated 2018 revenue from electric passenger vehicle sales

Source: BloombergNEF

Note: Excludes Tesla. Includes joint venture activity.

Look at the data from the perspective of EV revenue as a percentage of the total, and it's even more of a Chinese game. There is only one company in the top 10 by percent of electric passenger vehicle revenue that isn't Chinese: Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. Two Chinese automakers get more than 40% of revenue from electric vehicle sales; a third gets nearly a quarter of its revenue from EVs.

Chinese Domination

Estimated 2018 revenue from passenger EV sales, percentage of total

Source: BloombergNEF

Note: Excludes Tesla. Includes joint venture activity.

Albanese and Landess conclude their analysis with a score, which weights electric passenger vehicle sales volumes, revenue, and current and future model count, then assigns greater value to pure electric as opposed to plug-in sales. Of the top 10 automakers, nine are Chinese. BMW is the only international automaker in the top 10 today.

China Runs the Table

Top 10 automakers by BloombergNEF electric passenger vehicle exposure score

Source: BloombergNEF

 

But GM isn't the only global auto major with significant plans for electric vehicles. Each one sees not just a future in EVs, but also their company's place in that future. And lots of other major companies see electric vehicles as integral to the future of their businesses, too, even if their business isn't automobiles. It'll be every large automaker's challenge to see which companies can electrify their offerings on a global scale.  

Weekend reading

More than 630 companies from 43 countries have pegged their corporate emissions targets to the Science-Based Targets Initiative.
The University of California's $13.4 billion endowment will be "fossil free" by the end of September, according to university officials.
Harvard University's $38 billon endowment is joining Climate Action 100+ in order to directly engage with more than 100 "systematically important emitters" that account for two-thirds of global emissions.  
Tim Harford on why climate change economist Martin Weitzman "rocked my world."
Wealthy families are putting environmental, social and governance charters into the founding principles of their private investment firms.
An explainer on repo, the Federal Reserve repurchase agreements that allow banks to meet their short-term funding needs (and sprung back into action this week).
An examination of another kind of repo — repossession agents — and the private surveillance network they use to track automobile movements across the U.S.
Shira Ovide looks at Big Tech and the hunt for the "magic number."
Andreessen Horowitz general partner Alex Rampell has a fascinating history of the most valuable network of all time: the credit card.
Ford Motor Co. unveils a master plan to transform its Research & Engineering Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
A former Tesla engineer has set out to re-invent the humble home electrical panel.
Vikings probably hunted Iceland's walruses to extinction for their ivory.
YouTube is a revolutionary and hugely effective medium for transferring complex tacit knowledge.
"The Terraforming," an experimental postgraduate program at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.

Get Sparklines delivered to your inbox. Sign up here. And subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

This analysis excludes Tesla Inc., as its 2018 production volume is not sufficient to qualify it as a major automaker. Being a wholly electric automaker, Tesla naturally has the highest revenue from EV sales of any automaker of any size.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Nathaniel Bullard at nbullard@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net
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