Workers are striking during the coronavirus: Labor law must be reformed to strengthen this fundamental right [feedly]

Workers are striking during the coronavirus: Labor law must be reformed to strengthen this fundamental right
https://www.epi.org/blog/thousands-of-workers-have-gone-on-strike-during-the-coronavirus-labor-law-must-be-reformed-to-strengthen-this-fundamental-right/

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed much about work in the United States: There have been countless examples of workers speaking out against unsafe work conditions and demanding personal protective equipment (PPE) to try and stay healthy and safe on the job. We also have seen that essential workers are often not paid commensurate with the critical nature of their work. Few U.S. workers have access to paid sick time or paid leave of any kind. And, when workers have advocated for health and safety protections or wage increase, they have often been retaliated against, and even fired for doing so. As a result, many workers have decided to strike in an effort to have their voices heard.

Even before the pandemic, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed an upsurge in major strike activity in 2018 and 2019, marking a 35-year high for the number of workers involved in a major work stoppage over a two-year period. Further, 2019 recorded the greatest number of work stoppages involving 20,000 or more workers since at least 1993, when the BLS started providing data that made it possible to track work stoppages by size. In fact, after decades of decline, strike activity surged in 2018, with 485,200 workers involved in major work stoppages—a nearly twenty-fold increase from 25,300 workers in 2017. The surge in strike activity continued in 2019, with 425,500 workers involved in major work stoppages. On average in 2018 and in 2019, 455,400 workers were involved in major work stoppages—the largest two-year average in 35 years.

What is the right to strike and who has it?

Most private-sector workers in the United States are guaranteed the right to strike under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Section 7 of the Act grants workers the right "to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." This allows private-sector workers to engage in concerted activities such as strikes, regardless of whether the worker is in a union or covered by a collective bargaining contract. However, those in a union are better situated to engage in a long-term strike through strike funds. There is no federal law that gives public-sector workers the right to strike, but a dozen states grant public-sector workers the right to strike.

In general, there are two types of strikes: economic strikes and unfair labor practice strikes. In an economic strike, workers withhold their labor as leverage when bargaining for better pay and working conditions. While workers in economic strikes retain their status as employees and cannot be discharged, their employer has the right to permanently replace them. In an unfair labor practice strike, workers withhold their labor to protest their employer engaging in activities that they regard as a violation of labor law. Workers in an unfair labor practice strike cannot legally be discharged or permanently replaced.

However, not all strikes are protected under the law. For example, it is currently unlawful for workers to be involved in "secondary" strikes, which are strikes aimed at an employer other than the primary employer (for example, when workers from one company strike in solidarity with another company's workers). If a strike is deemed an "intermittent strike"—when workers strike on-and-off over a period of time—it is not protected as a lawful strike by the NLRA. In general, a strike is also unlawful if the collective bargaining agreement between a union and the employer is in effect and has a "no-strike, no-lockout" clause.

What data do we have on strikes?

Unfortunately, there are major data limitations around strikes. As a result, it is impossible to know the full extent of strike activity throughout the U.S. The main government source for strike data is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on major work stoppages. However, BLS data only include information on work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers that last at least one full shift. Unfortunately, comprehensive data on work stoppages that involve fewer than 1,000 workers, or that last less than one full shift, are not readily available from BLS or other sources.

The BLS's monthly data on work stoppages do not capture any strikes directly related to the coronavirus pandemic. However, it is evident essential workers are going on strike as seen in the recent walkouts organized by Amazon, Instacart, and Target workers as well as the dozens of strikes organized by fast food and delivery workers. Consequently, there is a large gap in knowledge about the true extent of strikes that occur during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.  

Based on the very limited data available, the resurgence of strike activity in recent years has given over a million workers an active role in demanding improvements in their pay and working conditions. Essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic are continuing this trend by demanding better pay and safer working conditions from their employers. However, without comprehensive data, it's impossible to understand the scope of how many workers are utilizing their fundamental right to strike. This knowledge gap makes it difficult for policymakers to adequately address the needs for workers in the United States, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics should be provided funding to gather comprehensive data on worker strikes. But even with the limited knowledge we have, it's evident that strikes are an effective tool to improve the pay and working conditions of working people. Therefore, strengthening the right to strike for workers needs to be at the heart of labor law reform going forward.

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Expert Focus: Leading Black scholars on U.S. economic inequality and growth [feedly]

Expert Focus: Leading Black scholars on U.S. economic inequality and growth
https://equitablegrowth.org/expert-focus-leading-black-scholars-on-u-s-economic-inequality-and-growth/

Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand whether and how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, "Expert Focus." This series will highlight scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

Understanding the historic and persistent role that structural racism plays in driving wealth and income inequality, particularly for Black Americans, is central to addressing the health and stability of the U.S. economy. In this installment of "Expert Focus," we highlight Black scholars whose cutting-edge research draws on the respective roles of history, power, and institutions in shaping economic behavior and trends. Though by no means an exhaustive list, the scholars highlighted here have influenced our understanding of the roots of racial inequities facing Black Americans and how to address those inequities through policy and research initiatives.

Ultimately, it is the collective responsibility of Equitable Growth and other policy and research organizations to actively confront our own biases and practices that reinforce anti-Blackness, as well as commit to addressing racism in economic and social institutions.

William A. Darity, Jr.

Duke University

William A. Darity, Jr., a member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth's Research Advisory Board, is the Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African American studies, and economics, and the founder and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Darity is the founder of stratification economics, an approach to economics that focuses on economic disparities between persons, groups, and regions, and the structure of social hierarchy. In an interview with Equitable Growth, he discusses the importance of stratification economics in understanding U.S. economic growth and inequality. He has been a leading figure on changing the way economics discusses poverty and inequality, as well as the current policy debate on reparations for Black descendants of enslaved Americans. He recently published From Here to Equality, co-authored with Kirsten Mullen, which focuses on reparations and the inequalities borne from systemic racism. In addition, his recent work on the relationship between incarceration and credit scores helps connect structural racism in law enforcement to Black wealth accumulation.

Dania V. Francis

University of Massachusetts Boston

Dania V. Francis, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston, studies racial and socioeconomic disparities in education, wealth accumulation, and labor markets. In an essay for Vision 2020: Evidence for a stronger economy, Francis tackles the critical issue of how to design and carry out a reparations program in the United States that would help close the racial wealth divide and address discrimination, which she also touched on during Equitable Growth's Vision 2020 conference last fall. Additionally, in a recent article with Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, who is also featured below, Francis highlights the racial inequalities within the economics profession itself and outlines much-needed initial steps to address anti-Black racism.

Trevon D. Logan

The Ohio State University

Trevon D. Logan is the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees distinguished professor of economics at The Ohio State University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Equitable Growth grantee. He specializes in economic history, economic demography, and applied microeconomics. His research in economic history concerns the development of measures of living standards that can be used to directly asses the question of how human well-being has changed over time. In his Vision 2020 essay, co-written with Equitable Growth grantee Bradley Hardy, Logan examines the historic links among intergenerational economic mobility, race, and the Black-White divide in income and wealth. They highlight recent research showing that school segregation, disinvestment from public goods, and divergent levels of investment in education since the 1950s have combined to create a nexus of low mobility for Black Americans. These and other policy decisions that persist today in terms of housing, education, and health continue to disadvantage Black Americans and limit the potential for overall U.S. economic growth.

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fanta Traore

The Sadie Collective

The team at the Sadie Collective organized its second annual conference in February 2020, named in honor of Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in economics and the second Black woman to receive a doctoral degree in the United States. Fueling this effort is a new generation of Black women pursuing doctorates and careers in economics, finance, data science, and public policy. As the share of Black women awarded doctorates in economics is declining, groups such as the Sadie Collective—co-founded by Opoku-Agyeman and Traore, a senior research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board—provide crucial support to help Black women thrive in fields where they are woefully underrepresented and where they can sometimes feel out of place. This year's conference featured conversations with Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Janet Yellen and Research Advisory Board member Lisa Cook. Recently, the Sadie Collective Community authored a powerful open letter to economic and policy institutions in the face of #BlackLivesMatter protests across the country. Also, listen to Opoku-Agyeman and Traore describe the Sadie Collective and their experience as Black women in economics here.

Jhacova Williams

Economic Policy Institute

Jhacova Williams is an economist for the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. At PREE, she explores the role of structural racism in shaping racial economic disparities in labor markets, housing, criminal justice, higher education, voting, and other areas that have a direct impact on economic outcomes. Prior to joining EPI, Williams served as an assistant professor at Clemson University. Williams' research focuses on southern culture and the extent to which historical events have impacted the political behavior and economic outcomes of southern Black Americans. Her recent working paper, which examines the negative relationship between Confederate symbols and local labor market conditions for Black people, is helping to improve how we identify and measure the specific impacts of racism through research.

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.

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Racism and the Working Class [feedly]

Racism and the Working Class
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/racism-and-the-working-class/

When I tell other middle-class professionals who don't know me well that I'm writing a book about working-class culture, it's amazing how often they respond approvingly that "white racism" is an important subject.  My reaction, depending on the circumstance, ranges from embarrassment to rage.

It's frustrating that "working class" reads as all white to so many people who should know better.  And it pisses me off that so many educated people assume that the white part of the working class is either uniformly racist and/or that racism is the most distinctive part of their culture. And it often seems there is a background assumption that little or no racism exists among the educated middle class, that all white racism is contained within the working class.

If there is a common working-class culture across racial and ethnic groups, as I think there is, white racism cannot be part of what is common in that culture, because about 40% of the American working class is not white.  So even if many working-class whites are vociferously racist, racism cannot characterize working-class culture as a whole. Nor have social scientists been able to establish with any certainty that white working-class people are more racist than other whites, let alone measure the difference.  White racism in various forms exists among middle-class professionals. And because they have more power, their racism likely has greater impact than the individual attitudes of working-class whites.

These extravagantly false assumptions are largely based on both educational and occupational snobbery, which plays out in all kinds of ways, some of them inconsequential.  But, as law professor Ian Haney Lopez has documented, they can have a toxic effect on American politics by strengthening racist dog whistles even when you are trying to combat those whistles.

In his 2019 book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, Lopez reports on a political narrative project he helped design after the 2016 election.  In an extensive, country-wide set of surveys and focus groups, the project presented several different political messages to respondents.  Researchers found that neither a message focused only on racial justice nor one focused only on economic justice was as popular and as effective against racist dog whistles as a message that combined calls for racial and economic justice – one that presented interracial solidarity as a necessary condition for economic justice.

To understand this, we have to see how white racism in the working class is layered within a class resentment against middle-class professionals, especially those whose exclusive focus on marginalized groups makes them seem unaware that a struggling white part of the working class faces many of the same economic conditions as black, brown, immigrant, and indigenous peoples.  When politicians and progressive advocates focus solely on racial justice, their messages call forth this class resentment. They also stoke fears that citizenship and whiteness may be the only assets these white workers have left.

Similarly, a message that seeks to appeal to broad class interests benefitting people of all races and genders, while attractive, seems to many black and brown people to gloss over injustices that affect only them or that affect them to a much greater degree.  What's more, colorblind economic populism, while popular among white workers, does not undermine racist dog whistles and their impact among whites.

Paradoxically, when politicians or media commentators denounce the use of dog whistles like "thugs," "law and order," and "illegal aliens" – let alone rhyming looting with shooting – the dog whistles actually become more effective. Because most whites do not want to see themselves or have others see them as racist, they hear critiques of this kind of language as dismissive of their legitimate concerns about crime, law and order, and illegal immigration. They resent being labeled as simply racist, and the result is a melding of both class and racial resentments.

Lopez's research shows that the most effective message went directly at dog whistles but not simply by denouncing them.  Rather, the best message focused on the purpose and effect of the whistles: to make it harder for the vast majority of Americans to see and pursue their self-interest by uniting to confront our economic and political oligarchy.  The winning message explained that attempts to divide us along racial lines undermines any attempt to redress our shared and growing inequalities of income, wealth, and power.  The winning message called for interracial solidarity as the essential requirement for effectively pursuing both racial and economic justice at the same time.

One of the project's most interesting findings was that the largest group of respondents (59%) embraced an inconsistent mix of progressive and reactionary views – including people who agreed with both a specific progressive view and its conflicting reactionary one.  For example, this majority group, whom Lopez calls "persuadables," found both racial-fear and racial-justice messages convincing in nearly equal measure.  And this was basically true of all racial groups, as 54% of African Americans and 60% of Latinx found the racial-fear message convincing, compared to 61% of whites.

Lopez concludes: "It's true that those [persuadables] – most whites and most people of color, too – filter the world through stereotypes and racist ideas.  It's also true, though, that they simultaneously hold progressive racial ideals.  The job ahead is not to start in educating the broad middle about racism, but to speak to the anti-racist convictions they already embrace."

Though Lopez does not provide a class breakdown, my guess is that the non-college-educated working class of all colors is over-represented among the persuadables and that middle-class professionals are over-represented among the smaller groups who expressed either consistently progressive or consistently reactionary views.  That guess is based on 30 years of teaching working-class adults of all colors.  In my early years, I insisted on simple consistency as a logical imperative, but I gradually learned that many apparent inconsistencies are not necessarily illogical if you dig deeper, and I came to respect people's ability to hold what they knew were contrary notions.  I must have heard hundreds of times students saying something like: "I know I'm contradicting myself, but that's how I feel.  What am I supposed to do – lie?"

College-educated professionals, on the other hand, tend to overvalue consistency and to be much less willing to express contrary notions.  Our earnest efforts to rely on evidence and logic often lead us to neglect how fear and hope are feelings before they are thoughts. Most Americans desperately want racial harmony, I'm guessing, precisely because they have such deep racial fears.

Lopez's counsel to speak to whites' anti-racist ideals is important for this moment because it so strongly warns against class-inflected finger-wagging and moral superiority. The inspiring explosion of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder has uncovered a surprising well of interracial solidarity, especially among young people.  As soon as protestors moved from police misconduct to wider issues of racial inequality, they inevitably enter terrain where class inequality merges with racial injustice.  A big part of our endemic racial disparities simply reflects the reality that people of color are disproportionately working class.  We cannot address the magnitude of racial injustice without simultaneously addressing economic injustice, and to achieve economic justice we're going to need the kind of interracial solidarity that's been marching in our streets these past few weeks.

Jack Metzgar

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triple crisis: Reviving the Economy, Creating the ‘New Normal’ [feedly]

Reviving the Economy, Creating the 'New Normal'
http://triplecrisis.com/reviving-the-economy-creating-the-new-normal/

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury

Republished from Inter Press Service.

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted most economies in the world. Its full impacts will not be felt, let alone measured, until it runs its course. Many countries are still struggling to contain contagion, while the costs on both lives and livelihoods will undoubtedly have long-term repercussions.

Back to the Future?

The pandemic has exposed economic vulnerabilities building up for decades, especially since the counter-revolution, against Keynesian and development economics in the 1980s, gathered pace with transnational corporation-led privatization, liberalization, and globalization.

As the world become more interdependent via trade, finance and communications, inequality and economic insecurity have waxed and waned unevenly, exacerbated by deregulation, reregulation, financialization, and less public social provisioning, undermining public health and social protection.

Policymakers shied away from addressing the fundamental causes of several financial crises from the 1990s (e.g., in Mexico, East Asia, and Russia) and during the first decade of this century, e.g., the dotcom, food, and global financial crises. Now, once again, all too many are focused on getting back to 'business as usual'.

What Multilateral Coordination?

The global economic situation remains unpredictable, with uncertainties about the varied nature of pandemic recessions. Government responses have not only been diverse, but often poorly conceived due to the novel nature of the crisis. Impacts have varied with the contagion and policy responses, unhelped by often confusing, if not misleading metrics.

Such uncertainty is also reflected in the wide-ranging growth forecasts by major international organizations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recognized the 'Great Lockdown' as due to 'self-imposed' contractions, leading to the "worst recession since the Great Depression".

The IMF has supported government fiscal and monetary initiatives, declaring that it "stands ready to mobilize its US$1 trillion lending capacity to help its membership". The World Bank has also promised an additional US$14 billion to help governments and businesses address the pandemic.

Plurilateralism Also Almost Irrelevant

A March G-7 countries' joint statement promised "a strongly coordinated international approach", with no specific actions mentioned or forthcoming thereafter. Instead, countries have pursued their own divergent strategies, even banning exports of medical equipment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to prioritise 'America First' while undermining most multilateral institutions and even plurilateral arrangements, including those created by the US, such as the G20.

Already, G20 members have been dragged into US-China tensions, as the White House blames China for the pandemic and other American problems. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the G20 chair for 2020, is itself embroiled in its own political and economic quagmire, undermined by falling oil revenues, worsened by its oil price war with Russia.

Poor Diagnosis, Bad Medicine

Economic growth slowdowns, especially in manufacturing, services and trade, started prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Yet, the pandemic's economic effects were expected to be short-term as factories and offices were closed, and strict 'stay in shelter' lockdowns were enforced to stop contagion.

The drop in economic output, as the epidemic began and spread to industrial hubs, has had international repercussions with supply chains disrupted.

Such supply disruptions have engendered and interacted with prolonged, wide-ranging demand shocks as Covid-19 crisis-induced policy responses and other uncertainties reduced consumption and investment spending, slowing economic growth and undermining employment.

Almost 2.7 billion workers, around 81% of the world's workforce, work and earn less due to the Covid-19 recession, with those in lower middle-income developing countries losing most. And almost 1.6 billion in the informal economy are in the hardest hit sectors or significantly impacted by lockdown measures.

The longer the lockdowns persist, the greater the economic disruption and adverse impacts as the effects spread via trade and finance linkages to an ever growing number of countries, firms and households.

Governments have adopted various monetary and fiscal measures to try to revive and sustain economic activity. Such measures include cash transfers to households, extending unemployment insurance or social security benefits, temporary deferment of tax payments, and increasing guarantees and loans to businesses.

Early 'stimulus packages' assumed that the 'pandemic shock' would be short-lived and easily reversible. They have largely ignored addressing the unsustainability, inequality, instability and other vulnerabilities of their economic, social and ecological systems.

Monetary Ruse, Liquidity Trap

Basel 3 recommended capital conservation and countercyclical capital buffers for all banks. Many central banks have cut interest rates and increased liquidity through a combination of measures, by lowering reserve and Basel 3 requirements, besides easing loan terms for new temporary loan facilities for banks and businesses.

Continued credit support, through unconventional monetary policies, has not addressed liquidity problems due to truncated business turnover. Increased liquidity provision has instead been captured by better 'credit risks', even fueling inflation while doing little for the most vulnerable and needy, deepening pre-Covid-19 inequalities.

Unconventional monetary policies before Covid-19 were already creating stock market bubbles, instead of financing investments in the real economy, thus contributing to growing inequality.

Central banks have not been able to repair their balance sheets or draw back excess liquidity, for fear of financial sector collapse, thus ironically increasing its fragility by pumping in more liquidity, increasing speculation and fueling inflation.

Fiscal Traps Unsustainable

Without better planned coordination, initial relief measures for households and businesses were often wrongly portrayed as fiscal stimulus packages while output has remained constrained by lockdown enforcement.

Despite cuts in government expenditure, especially for public health and social protection, there was little political will to increase progressive taxation. Still mounting government debt, already at historically high levels prior to the pandemic, has not helped.

Instead, earlier tax cuts have increased public debt, while the failure to improve fiscal capacities after the 2008 global financial crisis has meant eschewing productivity enhancing public investments, boosting revenue via progressive taxation, and strengthening universal health coverage and social protection.

Designing Recovery

The design of measures matters, crucially affecting likely effects. As countries prepare for recovery, they should ask what 'recovery' can and should mean. To address the many problems we have to contend with, it should not mean a return to 'business as usual'.

First, as workplaces and social spaces – where people meet, socialize, shop, etc. – have to be redesigned and repurposed to meet precautionary public health requirements, such as physical distancing. Second, the unsustainable, financialized and grossly unequal pre-Covid-19 economy needs to be fundamentally transformed.

Covid-19 policy responses have rarely addressed deeper prior malaises, such as stagnant or falling productivity growth and declining labour remuneration, not to speak of 'sustainable industrial policy' measures to address global warming, resource exhaustion and other sustainability problems.

Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

 

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Triple Crisis welcomes your comments. Please share your thoughts below.

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Confronting racism, repairing history [feedly]

Confronting racism, repairing history
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2020/06/16/confronting-racism-repairing-history/

The wave of mobilisation against racism and racial discrimination poses a crucial question: that of reparations for a past history involving slavery and colonisation. This is an issue which has still not been fully confronted. No matter how complex the question may be, it cannot be eluded for ever, either in the United States or in Europe.

In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the Republican, Abraham Lincoln promised freed slaves that after the victory they would get "40 acres and a mule" (roughly 16 hectares). The idea was both to compensate them for decades of ill treatment and unpaid labour and to enable them to look to the future as free workers. If this programme had been adopted, it would have represented an agrarian reform of considerable dimensions at the expense, in particular, of the leading slave-owners.

But, as soon as the war was over, the promise was forgotten: no text for compensation was ever adopted and the 40 acres and a mule became the symbol of the deception and hypocrisy of the Northerners (so much so that the film director, Spike Lee ironically made it the name of his production company). The Democrats regained control of the South and imposed racial segregation and discrimination for over a century, until the 1960s. There again no compensation was ever applied.

Curiously, other historical episodes have nevertheless given rise to quite different treatment. In 1988, Congress adopted a law granting $20.000 to the Japanese-Americans interned during World War Two. The compensation applied to those who were still alive in 1988 (approximately 80,000 persons of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans interned between 1942 and 1946); the cost amounted to 1.6 billion dollars. Compensation along the same lines paid to the Afro-Americans who were victims of segregation would have a strong symbolic value.

In the United Kingdom, as in France, the abolition of slavery was accompanied on each occasion by compensation of the owners paid out of public funds. For the 'liberal' intellectuals, like Toqueville or Schoelcher, this was obvious: if these owners were deprived of their property (which after all had been acquired legally) without fair compensation, where would this dangerous situation end? As far as the former slaves were concerned their apprenticeship of liberty involved extremely hard work. Their only compensation was the obligation to obtain a long-term work contract with a land-owner without which they were arrested for vagrancy. Other forms of forced labour were applied in the French colonies until 1950.

During the British abolition of slavery in 1833, the equivalent of 5% of the British national income (in present day currency, 120 billion Euros) was thus paid to some 4,000 slave owners, the average indemnity being 30 million Euros, which was the origin of numerous fortunes still visible today. Compensation to the owners was also paid in 1848 in Réunion, Gaudeloupe, Martinique and French Guyana. In 2001, during the debates on the question of the recognition of slavery as a crime against humanity, Christiane Taubira made an unsuccessful attempt to convince her fellow members of parliament to set up a commission to study the issue of compensation for descendants of slaves, in particular in terms of access to land and to property which was still highly concentrated in the hands of the descendants of planters.

The most extreme injustice is undoubtedly the case of Saint Domingue, the jewel of the French slave islands in the 18^th century, before their insurrection in 1791 and their proclamation of independence in 1804 under the name of Haiti. In 1825, the French state imposed a considerable debt on the country (300% of the Haitian GDP at the time) to compensate the French owners for their loss of slave property. Threatened with invasion, the island had no other choice but to comply and to repay this debt which the country dragged like a millstone until 1950, after multiple re-financing and interest paid to French and American bankers. Haiti is now requesting that France refund this iniquitous tribute (30 billion Euros today, which does not include the interest) and it is difficult not to agree with them. France refuses all discussion on the subject of a debt which France had imposed on Haitians (as a fine) for having wanted to put an end to their slavery. The payments made from 1825 to 1950 are well documented and are not challenged by anybody. Today compensation payment is still being made for spoliation which occurred during the two world wars. There is inevitably a risk of creating a huge feeling of injustice.

The same applies to the question of street names and statues, like that of the slave trader which has just been torn down in Bristol. Of course, it will not be easy to fix a frontier between the good and bad statues. But just as for the re-distribution of property we have no other choice than to trust to democratic discussion to endeavour to fix rules and criteria which are just. All refusal of discussion amounts to perpetuating injustice.

Over and above this difficult but necessary discussion concerning compensation we must also, and primarily, turn to the future. To repair the damage done to society by racism and colonialism we must change the economic system and establish a foundation of reduction of inequalities and equal access for all women and men to education, employment and property ownership (including a minimal heritage), independent of origins, for both Black people and Whites alike. The present mobilisation which brings together citizens of all backgrounds can contribute thereto.

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The Great Lockdown through a Global Lens [feedly]

The Great Lockdown through a Global Lens
https://blogs.imf.org/2020/06/16/the-great-lockdown-through-a-global-lens/

By Gita Gopinath

عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский 

The Great Lockdown is expected to play out in three phases, first as countries enter the lockdown, then as they exit, and finally as they escape the lockdown when there is a medical solution to the pandemic. Many countries are now in the second phase, as they reopen, with early signs of recovery, but with risks of second waves of infections and re-imposition of lockdowns. Surveying the economic landscape, the sheer scale and severity of the Global Lockdown are striking. Most tragically, this pandemic has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide. The resulting economic crisis is unlike anything the world has seen before.

Aside from its unprecedented scale, the Global Lockdown is playing out in ways that are very different from past crises.

This is a truly global crisis. Past crises, as deep and severe as they were, remained confined to smaller segments of the world, from Latin America during the 1980s to Asia in the 1990s. Even the global financial crisis 10 years ago had more modest effects on global output.

For the first time since the Great Depression, both advanced and emerging market economies will be in recession in 2020. The forthcoming June World Economic Outlook Update is likely to show negative growth rates even worse than previously estimated. This crisis will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.

Aside from its unprecedented scale, the Global Lockdown is playing out in ways that are very different from past crises. These unusual characteristics are emerging all over the world, irrespective of the size, geographic region, or production structure of economies.

First, this crisis has dealt a uniquely large blow to the services sector. In typical crises, the brunt is borne by manufacturing, reflecting a decline in investment, while the effect on services is generally muted as consumption demand is less affected. This time is different. In the peak months of the lockdown the contraction in services has been even larger than in manufacturing, and it is seen in advanced and emerging market economies alike. There are exceptions—like Sweden and Taiwan Province of China, which adopted a different approach to the health crisis, with limited government containment measures and a consequently proportionately smaller hit to services vis-à-vis manufacturing.

It is possible that with pent-up consumer demand there will be a quicker rebound, unlike after previous crises. However, this is not guaranteed in a health crisis as consumers may change spending behavior to minimize social interaction, and uncertainty can lead households to save more. In the case of China, one of the early exiters from lockdown, the recovery of the services sector lags manufacturing as such services as hospitality and travel struggle to regain demand. Of particular concern is the long-term impact on economies that rely significantly on such services—for example, tourism-dependent economies.

Second, despite the large supply shocks unique to this crisis, except for food inflation, we have thus far seen, if anything, a decline in inflation and inflation expectations pretty much across the board in both advanced and emerging market economies. Despite the considerable conventional and unconventional monetary and fiscal support across the globe, aggregate demand remains subdued and is weighing on inflation, alongside lower commodity prices. With high unemployment projected to stay for a while, countries with monetary policy credibility will likely see small risks of spiraling inflation.

Third, we see striking divergence of financial markets from the real economy, with financial indicators pointing to stronger prospects of a recovery than real activity suggests. Despite the recent correction, the S&P 500 has recouped most of its losses since the start of the crisis; the FTSE emerging market index and Africa index are substantially improved; the Bovespa rose significantly despite the recent surge in infection rates in Brazil; and portfolio flows to emerging and developing economies have stabilized.

With few exceptions, the rise in sovereign spreads and the depreciation of emerging market currencies are smaller than what we saw during the global financial crisis. This is notable considering the larger scale of the shock to emerging markets during the Great Lockdown.

This divergence may portend greater volatility in financial markets. Worse health and economic news can lead to sharp corrections. We will have more to say about this divergence in our forthcoming Global Financial Stability Report.

One likely factor behind this divergence is the stronger policy response during this crisis. Monetary policy has become accommodative across the board, with unprecedented support from major central banks, and monetary easing in emerging markets including through first time use of unconventional policies.

Discretionary fiscal policy has been sizable in advanced economies. Emerging markets have deployed smaller fiscal support, constrained to some extent by limited fiscal space. Furthermore, a unique challenge confronting emerging markets this time around is that the informal sector, typically a shock absorber, has not been able to play that role under containment policies and has instead required support. We are now in the early stages of the second phase as many countries begin to ease containment policies and gradually permit the resumption of economic activity. But there remains profound uncertainty about the path of the recovery.

A key challenge in escaping the Great Lockdown will be to ensure adequate production and distribution of vaccines and treatments when they become available—and this will require a global effort. For individual countries, minimizing the health uncertainty by using the least economically disruptive approaches such as testing, tracing, and isolation, tailored to country-specific circumstances with clear communication about the path of policies, should remain a priority to strengthen confidence in the recovery. As the recovery progresses, policies should support the reallocation of workers from shrinking sectors to sectors with stronger prospects.

The IMF, in coordination with other international organizations, will continue to do all it can to ensure adequate international liquidity, provide emergency financing, support the G20 debt service suspension initiative, and help countries maintain a manageable debt burden. The IMF will also provide advice and support through surveillance and capacity development, to help disseminate best practices, as countries learn from each other during this unprecedented crisis.

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A quarter of a year in, job losses remain at historic levels: More than one in five workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to get on [feedly]

A quarter of a year in, job losses remain at historic levels: More than one in five workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to get on
https://www.epi.org/blog/over-three-months-in-job-losses-remain-at-historic-levels-more-than-one-in-five-workers-are-either-on-unemployment-benefits-or-are-waiting-to-get-on/

Last week, 2.2 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the 13th week in a row—a full three months—that initial unemployment claims are more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.

Of the 2.2 million who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.4 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (UI) on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis, and 0.8 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program for workers who are out of work because of the virus but who are not eligible for regular UI (e.g., the self-employed). At this point, only 44 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico are reporting PUA claims.

How is it that we are still seeing large numbers of initial unemployment claims now, when the May jobs report shows we added jobs? The missing piece is hiring. If there are a large number of layoffs, there can still be job growth if there is also a lot of hiring (or rehiring). In today's gradually reopening coronavirus economy, hires (or rehires) are now outpacing job losses, but we are still seeing a huge number of people losing jobs. This means labor market "churn" is vastly greater than in normal times.

Further, some recent unemployment claims may be from people who lost their job in March or April but didn't apply right away (perhaps because they couldn't get through the system).

Many commentators are still reporting the cumulative number of initial regular state UI claims over the last 13 weeks as a measure of how many people are out of work because of the virus. I believe we should abandon that approach because it ignores PUA but overstates things in other ways (for example, some who were laid off and applied for UI in March or April may now be going back to work). Instead, we can calculate the total number of workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied and are waiting to see if they will get benefits, in the following way:

A total of 18.7 million workers had made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing as of June 6 (these are known as "continued claims" or "insured unemployment"), and 3.0 million had filed initial UI claims on top of that, but had not yet made it through the first round of processing. And, 9.3 million workers had made it through at least the first round of PUA processing by May 30, and 2.3 million had filed initial PUA claims on top of that but had not yet made it through the first round of processing. Even further, by May 30, another 1.3 million workers had made it through at least the first round of processing in one of the other unemployment benefits programs, or had filed initial claims in other programs on top of that. (The largest of the other programs are Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation—which is available to workers who have exhausted their regular state benefits—and Short-Time Compensation, which is an alternative to layoffs where employers reduce work hours rather than laying off workers, and workers get partial benefits.) Altogether, that's 34.5 million workers who are either on unemployment benefits or who have applied very recently and are waiting to see if they will get benefits. That is more than one in five U.S. workers.

It's important to note that of the 34.5 million workers "on" unemployment benefits, a third are on PUA. This is a sobering reminder of how enormous the gaps are in our regular state unemployment insurance programs and how important it is that Congress established PUA.

Figure A

Things are slowly improving, but remain at historic levels. Data on continuing claims in all programs are available over time, through May 30. Total continuing claims averaged 1.7 million per week in the year prior to the virus. They rose sharply starting in mid-March, and peaked during the week ending May 9, at 31.0 million. By May 30, they had come down slightly, to 29.2 million, still more than 27 million higher than the pre-virus period.

All in all, today's UI data highlight the deep recession we are now in. It's important to remember that this recession is going to exacerbate existing racial inequalities by causing greater job loss in Black and Hispanic households than in white households.

Policymakers need to act decisively to fight this recession and set our economy up for a strong recovery, which will not happen without substantial additional fiscal aid. For example, without massive federal aid to state and local governments, 5.3 million workers in the public and private sectors will likely lose their jobs by the end of 2021. Further, the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits, which was one of the most effective parts of the CARES Act on both humanitarian and economic grounds, should be extended well past its expiration in late July. We also need increased support for safety net programs, including SNAP (or food stamps). And importantly, we can't turn off federal relief too early. Automatic triggers (where provisions phase out as the unemployment rate falls or the employment-to-population ratio rises) would alleviate the very real threat that we turn off federal aid when the economy is still too weak, hamstringing the recovery.

A note on the unemployment benefits data: claims for UI and PUA should be completely non-overlapping because that is how the Department of Labor has directed state agencies to report them. However, some states may be misreporting claims so there may be some double-counting. Also, I focus on the not-seasonally-adjusted numbers for regular state UI claims because the way DOL does seasonal adjustments of unemployment insurance claims data is distortionary at a time like this. Claims from all other programs, including PUA, are only available on an unadjusted basis.

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