Workers and Poverty News
"'Driving growth off of low-wage jobs is no way to jump-start consumer demand,' said Annette Bernhardt, the worker-advocacy group's policy co-director and the author of the report."
"As part of the stimulus package, the federal government was willing to directly cover the wages of people who worked either for small businesses or local governments. Across the country, about 130,000 low-income adults got jobs. The program will expire at the end of September..."
"The growth of these low-wage jobs began in the 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s and began to really take off in the 2000s. Losing out in the shuffle, Dr. Autor said, were jobs that he described as 'middle-skill, middle-wage' — entry-level white-collar positions..."
"'They're certainly acting together,' he said. Passel said illegal immigrants now find it more expensive and dangerous to cross into the U.S. and also have less incentive to do given the languishing job market in construction and other low-wage industries."
"'The town where I'm from, it's like being in jail, it's like a death,' said Hernandez, who is from a mountain village in the impoverished southern state of Puebla. 'You have to think twice about crossing the desert, but when you don't have any money, you need to look for a better life.'"
"The fair trade mission is to help farmers lift themselves out of poverty. TransFair estimates that since it started certifying in 1998, farmers have received almost $200 million more than they would have without fair-trade status."
"Mr. Moore, 37, was a 'perma-temp,' one of thousands of workers in the Chicago area's massive warehouse complexes who are laid off and rehired every few months by temporary-staffing agencies."
"Mr. Appelbaum and similar union groups say that the chain stores knock out mom-and-pop businesses and that their wages and health care practices are unfair to workers."
"The recession has been particularly harsh for many of the District's Latino residents, who are heavily represented in some of the lowest-paying jobs and have clustered in neighborhoods where rents and condominium conversions soared during the decade, according to an Urban Institute study."
"Council members said the Fenty administration took money needed by other impoverished residents, particularly the city's homeless, and used it for summer jobs instead. And they said Fenty (D) shifted funds without informing the council."
"Many of the workers had been job-hunting for months and snapped up the graveyard or weekend shifts scrubbing Safeway's bakery floors, cleaning heavy equipment and scanning grocery inventory."
"Some people look at an impoverished immigrant laborer and immediately think "illegal," with all the stigma that word carries. Others see that same person and think: There goes a worker."
"A strong minimum wage puts money into the pockets of low-income families who spend it in their local communities, increasing local buying power on which our economy depends... [L]ast year's rise in the minimum wage... generated $5.5 billion in new consumer spending."
"Meanwhile, fliers featuring a dissident member of the Engineers and Architects Assn. have been distributed in city buildings with a warning that the new agreement will force the union's members to 'retire into poverty.'"
"'These people are making wages that are underneath the poverty line," Legis. Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) said. 'To take away their dollar would require a very high standard of proof. I don't believe the industry met that proof.'"
"It's also true that while men still dominate the American power elite, they also dominate the bottom rungs of the ladder. By some counts, America's prisoners are 90 percent male, and most estimates are that homeless people are disproportionately male."
"Members of the Nassau County Legislature criticized the home health care industry yesterday for failing to justify its request for legislation that would defer a promised $1 hourly pay raise due to its low-income workers."
"In 1998, NBC News reopened the case of the migrant, paid pitifully low wages and given no job security or benefits for picking fruits and vegetables destined for more fortunate citizens in the Land of Plenty."
"I recently purchased a short book titled The Moral Underground in which the author, Professor Lisa Dodson, paints a rather depressing picture of the way some corporations treat their low-income workers."
"Putting an end to years-long litigation, a judge Thursday threw out a multimillion-dollar jury verdict awarded in 2007 to six Nicaraguan men claiming they were sterilized by a pesticide while working on American-run banana farms."
"In reality, I, as well as other agricultural employers, will have to cut workers' hours by adding seasonal labor, switch to a two-shift system, or pay lower wages to reduce the impact of more overtime hours."
"Thousands of low-income workers providing home care and other social services in Nassau County face the loss of a promised $1-per-hour pay increase Aug. 1 under a bill that would delay the hike for at least six months."
"Employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work, that Americans continue to shun despite the recession."
"A Harvard-educated businessman who cracked the racial barrier to become state transportation secretary in the 1990s has been fined for failing to pay thousands of dollars in wages to immigrant workers at a Popeyes chicken franchise in Boston."
"Gov. Quinn Monday ridiculed GOP rival Bill Brady as a tax-dodging millionaire who wants to cut the pay of Illinois' lowest wage-earners who are due for a raise this week."
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