Brexit: A Blow to the Low-Paid? [feedly]

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Brexit: A Blow to the Low-Paid?
// Economist's View

Chris Dillow:

Brexit: a blow to the low-paid?: The CBI reported today that manufacturers' business confidence has fallen at its fastest rate since early 2009, causing falls in investment and hiring plans. This corroborates surveys by Deloitte, Markit (pdf), the Institute of Directors and, to a lesser extent the Bank of England* all of which suggest that the Brexit vote will depress economic activity. ...

What worries me is that the pain of this will disproportionately hit the low-paid. A new paper (pdf) from the Minneapolis Fed says:

It is precisely the households at the bottom of the wealth distribution with low savings rates and high propensities to consume out of current income that suffer the largest welfare losses from a severe recession. Further, these losses are much more severe than those sustained by the "average" household.

This is because the low-paid have no financial assets to cushion themselves against job loss and so must suffer either big falls in living standards or resort to high-cost payday lenders whereas the rich have savings and/or access to cheaper credit**. Also, firms faced with uncertainty might well respond by hoarding skilled labour – which is harder to find when needed – and trimming unskilled workers.

Although the coming downturn will probably not be as severe as the 2009 one, I suspect that these mechanisms will still operate. ...

What's more, for now we are only seeing the short-run effect of increased uncertainty. In the long-run, it's possible that by depressing world trade growth, the losers from Brexit will be those in more skilled manufacturing and finance jobs.

For now, though, it might be the low-paid that suffer the most from Brexit. These, though, were more likely (pdf) to have voted Leave. We might ask them Johnny Rotten's famous question: ""Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

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Great Minds Think Alike [feedly]

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Great Minds Think Alike
// Crooked Timber

In a pathbreaking ruling, the National Labor Relations Board announced yesterday that graduate student workers at private universities are employees with the right to organize unions.

For three decades, private universities have bitterly resisted this claim. Unions, these universities have argued, would impose a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach on the ineffably individual and heterogenous nature of graduate education. Unions might be appropriate for a factory, where all the work's the same, but they would destroy the diversity of the academy, ironing out those delicate and delightful idiosyncrasies that make each university what it is. As virtually every elite university now facing an organizing drive of its graduate students is making clear (h/t David Marcus for discovering these particular links).

Here, for example, is Columbia:

What if an individual student objected to a provision in the labor contract? Would he or she still be bound by it?

Yes. Collective bargaining is, by definition, collective in nature. This means that the union speaks and acts for all students in the bargaining unit, and the provisions in the labor contract it negotiates apply to all unit members, unless exceptions and differences are provided for explicitly in the contract.

Here's Yale:

10. What if an individual graduate student disagreed with a provision in the contract? Would he or she still be bound by it?
Yes. Collective bargaining is, as it sounds, collective in nature. That means that the union speaks for all graduate students in the bargaining unit, and the provisions in the contract it negotiates apply to all unit members, unless exceptions and differences are provided for in the agreement.

Here's the University of Chicago:

What if an individual graduate student objected to a provision in the labor contract? Would he or she still be bound by it?

Yes. Collective bargaining is, as it sounds, collectivist in nature. This means that the union speaks and acts for all graduate students in the bargaining unit, and the provisions in the labor contract it negotiates apply to all unit members, unless exceptions and differences are provided for in the contract.

And here's Princeton:

What if an individual graduate student objected to a provision in the labor contract? Would he or she still be bound by it?

Yes. Collective bargaining focuses on graduate students as a group, not as individuals. This means that a union would speak and act for all graduate students in the bargaining unit, and the provisions in the labor contract would apply to all unit members, unless exceptions are provided for in the contract.

Casual readers might conclude that the only thing standardized and cookie-cutter about unions in elite universities is the argument against them.

Or perhaps it's just that great minds sometimes really do think alike.

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Kentucky’s Medicaid Proposal Puts Recent Health Gains at Risk [feedly]

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Kentucky's Medicaid Proposal Puts Recent Health Gains at Risk
// Center on Budget: Comprehensive News Feed

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin today submitted a proposal to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that would change the state's Medicaid expansion, leading to tens of thousands of people becoming uninsured.  While Gov. Bevin says the changes are necessary to improve Kentuckians' health, research shows that Medicaid expansion has already fueled tremendous improvements in the health of the state's residents. 

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Why is President Obama making one last push for the TPP? [feedly]

Even if ALL. Scott's 'facts' are right, it does not mean that, in the absence of trade agreements, things would be ANY better..

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Why is President Obama making one last push for the TPP?
// Economic Policy Institute Blog

The White House is making one last push for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, most likely during the lame duck session of Congress, after the elections but before the end of the year. This is despite the fact that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton opposes the TPP, as did Bernie Sanders, her rival in the primary, and as do the majority of Democratic members of Congress.

Let's review the basic facts. Growing imports of goods from low-wage, less-developed countries, which nearly tripled from 2.9 percent of GDP in 1989 to 8.4 percent in 2011 (as shown in Figure A, below), reduced the wages of the typical non-college educated worker in 2011 by "5.5 percent, or by roughly $1,800—for a full-time, full year worker earning the average wage for workers without a four-year college degree," as shown by my colleague Josh Bivens.

Overall, there are nearly 100 million American workers without a 4-year degree. The wage losses suffered by this group likely amount to a full percentage point of GDP—roughly $180 billion per year. Crucially, trade theory and evidence indicate strongly that growing trade redistributes far more income than it creates. The modesty of net benefits from trade is highlighted by the U.S International Trade Commission report that recently estimated that the TPP would generate cumulative net gains of $57.3 billion over the next 16 years, or less than $4 billion per year.

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Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order makes contracting system more accountable [feedly]

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Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order makes contracting system more accountable
// Economic Policy Institute Blog

The final rule implementing President Obama's executive order on fair pay and safe workplaces has been issued, along with guidance from the Department of Labor. This is a big deal, affecting as many as 28 million employees in the workforce of hundreds of thousands of government contractors.

The executive order puts in place a commonsense principle: when choosing which companies to do business with, choose the ones that follow the rules rather than the law breakers. Tax dollars should go to contractors with a record of integrity and business ethics, and should not be spent on bad actors. The executive order makes it clear that violations of labor law are an indication of bad ethics and a lack of integrity that must be considered when contracts are awarded.

As part of the contract approval process, federal contractors will have to reveal to the contracting agency any labor law violations they have been found guilty of committing in the previous three years. An agency can refuse to grant a contract to a company that has not resolved its violations. Today, by contrast, it is perfectly normal that a company with several OSHA violations, a National Labor Relations Act violation, and a judgment for wage theft and overtime pay violations could win a $200 million contract from the Department of Transportation or the Defense Department. In fact, the GAO found that almost two-thirds of the 50 largest wage-and-hour violations and almost 40 percent of the 50 largest workplace health-and-safety penalties issued between FY 2005 and FY 2009 were made against companies that went on to receive new government contracts.

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Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2016/08/blog-post_24.html

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Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:

Its happening again: The are you crazy show on EPIC Radio

Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2016/08/its-are-you-crazy-show-on-epic-radio.html

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