We’re placing HUGE full-page ads in DC papers this Saturday to demand that the D.C. city council drop their plan to erase tens of thousands of Black votes. Will you chip $4 in to cover the cost?

Earlier this year, thousands of Black voters across the District voted overwhelmingly to pass Initiative 77, a ballot measure which would gradually raise the tipped minimum wage, which is currently just $3.89/hr, to the regular minimum wage of $15/hr PLUS tips for tipped workers in D.C.. Initiative 77 passed in the District with 56% of the vote, with the highest support coming from DC’s Blackest and lowest income neighborhoods.¹ But the mayor and a majority of the D.C. city council are working at the behest of the wealthy restaurant industry to shut down Initiative 77 before it’s implemented, effectively throwing out tens of thousands of Black votes.²

That’s why Color of Change is placing full-page ads in DC papers demanding the mayor and the council respect the will of Black voters – and letting them know that DC’s Black workers deserve more than poverty wages. But we need to raise $10,000 to make sure the ads run in the key local papers–can you chip in $4?

We know that in the District of Columbia, 66% of restaurant workers are people of color, with 53% of them being women. Due to the racism in the restaurant industry, Black women are significantly more likely to be excluded from the highest paying restaurants³ and waitresses in cities with lower tipped wages are twice as likely to experience sexual harassment on the job.⁴ These findings correlate to comments we’ve received directly from D.C. tipped workers who describe the sexual and racial harassment they’re subjected to in order to ensure they’ll get a good tip and don’t leave their shift feeling like they worked for free.

This is why Color Of Change is placing full page ads in the Washington City Paper and East of the River this Saturday demanding that the D.C. city council respect the will of the voters and let Initiative 77 stand. 

This full page ad could run in papers across the District on Saturday. Help us raise the $10,000 we need to place it!

 

 

Tipped workers have already told us that earning a fair wage would provide them and their families with more stability and help them deal with rising housing costs in a rapidly gentrifying city. Currently in D.C., a worker earning $13.25/hr would need to work 91 hours to be able to afford a one bedroom apartment at the market rate.⁵ In a city whose residents are already disenfranchised in Congress, it’s unconscionable that the mayor and city council would ignore the will of the voters and throw out the results of a fair and democratic election. Tipped workers deserve better. The residents of D.C. deserve better.

Will you chip in $4 to help us reach $10,000 to place this powerful ad?

 Until justice is real,

–Brandi, Rashad, Arisha, Jade, Evan, Johnny, Future, Corina, Chad, Mary, Saréya, Angela, Eesha, Samantha and the rest of the Color Of Change team

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References:

1. “D.C. Just Voted To End The Tipped Minimum Wage, But The Battle Isn’t Over”, HuffPost, 6 June 2018 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/77485?t=9&akid=17732%2E1174326%2EMiqhR5
2. “Majority of D.C. Council moves to overturn tipped-wage ballot measure”, Washington Post, 10 July 2018 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/77484?t=11&akid=17732%2E1174326%2EMiqhR5
3. “The Stark Racial Divide In Pay For Restaurant Workers”, NPR, 22 October 2015 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/37758?t=13&akid=17732%2E1174326%2EMiqhR5
4. “Why Sexual Harassment Rates Are So High In the Restaurant Industry”, CityLab, 21 November 2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/83349?t=15&akid=17732%2E1174326%2EMiqhR5
5. “Out of Reach 2018: District of Columbia”, National Low Income Housing Coalition http://act.colorofchange.org/go/77486?t=17&akid=17732%2E1174326%2EMiqhR5

Amber works in the adult entertainment industry and is joining together with fellow dancers to take on issues like high house fees, a lack of benefits or time off, often-dangerous working conditions, and more. Check out Amber’s story, then click here to contribute to Working Washington and support our efforts to organize workers across the state — including Amber and her fellow dancers.

I have been working as an exotic dancer in Seattle for almost 13 years. There are many things I love about my job. Chief among them is the freedom and flexibility that dancing provides. We can work as frequently or as infrequently as we choose. I have taken advantage of this by taking extended time off to travel or work on artistic projects. But there are many drawbacks as well.

“Dancers do not receive a paycheck from the club, instead relying solely on tips from customers for our income. We are not classified as employees but as business owners. We are responsible for reporting our income to the IRS and making quarterly payments. We do not qualify for benefits of any kind. If we get sick or injured and can’t work, our income drops to zero. Exotic dancers are also forced to pay fees to the club daily in order to work. The club I work at charges me $140 per shift. This is referred to as a “house fee” or “rent” because I am theoretically renting the club as a space to work in. The club expects us to pay the house fee in full at the end of every shift, regardless of how busy or slow the shift was. If I cannot pay the fee (for example, if I only made $80 in tips that night) then I owe the club the remainder of that money. This is referred to as “backrent.” Backrent must be paid off in cash. The club charges an extra $30 per shift to dancers who have backrent until it is paid off. I usually can pay out in full, but there are many dancers who struggle to earn their house fees and end up accumulating thousands of dollars in backrent. If you are scheduled for a shift and call in or miss that shift, the club will add the full $140 house fee to your backrent. I once acquired $420 worth of backrent because I had to call in for a week when I had the flu. On an average shift, I pay anywhere from $140 – $280 in house fees to the club and have to tip out $60 – $80 to the DJ, bouncers, and waitresses. Any money I make above and beyond that I get to keep. This means that the first $200-$300 I earn per shift, I don’t even think of as mine. On a slow night I can leave with $0 for myself. This happens to every dancer at my club occasionally. Even the high earners have nights where they work a full 8-hour shift and leave with nothing to show for it. In fact, it’s entirely possible to work a shift and end up in the hole, leaving with less than you had when you arrived, because now you owe the club backrent and you had to pay for parking downtown, food while you were at work, and more. This has happened to me, and it’s very discouraging. No one should work all day and earn nothing. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are clubs in other states (Alaska, for example) where the dancers get minimum wage paychecks and keep their tips. I have worked at clubs in Portland, Oregon, where there was no house fee and no backrent. I don’t understand why the clubs in Seattle charge such outrageous fees. I suppose the simple answer is because they can. Because no one is stopping them. I did the math once and realized that I pay 2 or 3 times as much “rent” to the club as I do to rent my 2-bedroom apartment each month. It’s a ridiculous amount of money to pay for the privilege to work. I love dancing. I love being an independent contractor. I’m happy to pay tips to the staff and even a reasonable house fee. I’m just frustrated with the abnormally large portion of my income that goes to some old white guy who I have never met (Roger Forbes, whose company owns almost all the strip clubs in Seattle). It shouldn’t be this way. Dancers work hard for our tips. We work long hours in sky-high heels. We should be able to keep more of what we earn.”

Dear Friends,

Yesterday was Labor Day, which ought to mean we’re still in Labor Week, right? And that’s a perfect reason to take a look back at all the good work we’ve accomplished together the past couple months.

Cheers,
Working Washington

Emily works in sales at a large upscale clothing chain in Seattle, and has struggled with hours that fluctuated wildly but never added up to enough to pay the bills. Since the city’s secure scheduling law took effect, she started getting 30 hours a week, and two weeks’ notice of her schedule so she can plan her life. Check out Emily’s story, then  answer a few questions about your own work schedule and help us show that unstable & unpredictable schedules don’t stop at the Seattle city limits.

When I first started my retail sales job in April 2016, my hours were fluctuating a lot. Some weeks I would work four hours, and other weeks I’d work 25. It all depended on the season and my managers’ needs. Everyone in the store was scheduled for part-time hours except the managers. That was just the way they did things.

It was really difficult to survive with that kind of work schedule — I was always asking my manager for more hours, asking if I could be put on the schedule more, asking if I could get a full 8-hour shift — and their response was always “no.”We only got about five days’ notice of our work schedules, so it was hard to plan our lives out. I couldn’t depend on stable pay at my job, and I couldn’t get a second job because I never knew when I’d be working. I was in school too, and between my classes and my fluctuating hours, I needed help just to get by. When I heard about the new secure scheduling ordinance in Seattle, I was really excited. It was finally a chance to get a set schedule and some consistency. After the law went into effect in July, our managers sat down with each of us one on one and created a schedule based on our personal schedules outside of work. Some people had other full-time jobs, so they were scheduled on the weekends. A couple other people were offered at least 25 hours/week. And for me and a couple other coworkers, it meant moving up to full-time hours. One of my coworkers had been working three different jobs before secure scheduling, and afterwards she was finally able to get a steady 40-hour schedule, so she was able to quit her other two jobs, which was a huge relief for her…” KEEP READING… workingwa.org

 

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Judge Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, in the East Room of the White House. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

By POLITICO STAFF 07/09/2018 09:15 PM EDT Updated 07/09/2018 10:00 PM EDT

 

Here is a sampling of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s most important decisions and past statements about policy issues:

Abortion and birth control: Kavanaugh argued in a 2015 dissent that Obamacare’s mandate for contraception coverage infringed on the rights of religious organizations, a stance some religious liberty groups have hailed. He also dissented from a decision last fall that permitted an undocumented immigrant teen to have an abortion — although some conservatives have accused him of being too cautious in that case, and have even called it grounds for keeping him off the Supreme Court.

Obamacare: He wrote a 2011 decision that his critics say laid the groundwork for Chief Justice John Roberts to later uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — under the reasoning that its mandate for individuals to buy health insurance could be considered a tax.

Digital privacy: He joined other judges in rejecting a challenge to the National Security Agency’s warrantless collection of phone “metadata” — writing that the operation, exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, “is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.” Furthermore, he wrote, a “critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program.”

He had a more mixed record in a case debating whether authorities needed a warrant to place a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car. On one hand, he and other Republican judges said, the suspect had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his public movements. But Kavanaugh separately said the government might have violated the suspect’s property rights by tampering with his vehicle — an argument that Justice Antonin Scalia later cited in ruling that authorities indeed need a warrant.

Workers’ rights: Kavanaugh wrote a 2016 opinion saying employers can require workers to waive their right to picket in arbitration agreements.

Immigration: Supporters of immigration restrictions praise Kavanaugh for two court cases: In one, he opposed granting special visas for Brazilian workers when American workers could also do the same job. In the other, he argued that a union election was void because undocumented immigrants had voted in it and “tainted” the result.

Religion and schools: Kavanaugh has suggested he may be open to widening the flow of public funding to religious schools. In an essay last year for the American Enterprise Institute, he cheered the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s efforts to reverse prior Supreme Court attempts at “erecting a strict wall of separation between church and state” — especially when it comes to schools. He also predicted during a CNN appearance in 2000 that the court would one day uphold school vouchers.

Kavanaugh also wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in December 1999 in favor of a Texas high school’s policy allowing the use of a public address system for student-led and student-initiated prayers at school football games.

Food labeling: He sided against U.S. meatpackers who argued that the Department of Agriculture was violating the First Amendment by requiring labels disclosing where each step of the meat production process took place. In a concurring opinion, Kavanaugh said the government has historically had an interest in supporting American manufacturers, farmers and ranchers against foreign competition. (Ultimately, Congress rescinded the regulation.)

Net neutrality: He called the FCC’s net neutrality order an “unlawful” First Amendment violation in a 2017 dissent.

Federal regulations writ large: Kavanaugh’s net neutrality dissent also suggested he’s skeptical about the Supreme Court’s so-called Chevron doctrine, a 1984 precedent that said courts should tend to defer to federal agencies’ regulatory decisions when the agencies are interpreting ambiguous statutes. A move by conservative justices to overturn Chevron could lead to far tighter restrictions on federal regulatory powers.

Environment and climate change: Kavanaugh has weighed in on dozens of environmental cases because of his seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — and he’s widely seen as critical of many Obama-era rules from the EPA. In 2012, for example, Kavanaugh wrote a decision that rejected EPA’s attempt to curb air pollution that crosses state lines. He has often leaned toward restricting the EPA’s powers when he believed the agency lacked specific authorization from Congress, including in courtroom comments surrounding the Obama administration’s climate rules for power plants.

“On the policy, I understand, it’s laudable, and the Earth is warming, and humans are contributing,” Kavanaugh said at the time. But, he added, “under our system of separation of powers … Congress is supposed to make the decision.” The D.C. Circuit never issued its ruling in the case, which has been on hold while President Donald Trump’s EPA reformulates the Obama regulation.

And in a 2014 ruling over an EPA rule on toxic mercury from power plants, Kavanaugh wrote in a dissent that EPA had acted wrongly in not weighing costs when it first decided to write a regulation. A year later, a 5-4 Supreme Court propelled Kavanaugh’s reasoning into the majority.

Taxes: The IRS doesn’t have the power to regulate paid tax preparers, Kavanaugh wrote in a 2014 opinion. Such oversight could make sense, he said, but “that is a decision for Congress and the President to make if they wish by enacting new legislation.”

Financial regulations: Kavanaugh delivered a huge victory to conservatives in October 2016 when he wrote an opinion declaring the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a powerful banking industry watchdog first envisioned by Elizabeth Warren — to be unconstitutional. Writing for a three-judge panel, Kavanaugh said the 2010 Dodd-Frank law had wrongly placed “enormous executive power” in the CFPB’s single director, which Republicans and the banking industry want to replace with a multi-member commission. Supporters of the CFPB accused Kavanaugh of acting as a partisan activist, and the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure was later upheld.

Affirmative action: Kavanaugh in 1999 wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The brief argued that a Hawaii law allowing only native Hawaiians to vote in elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was unconstitutional in prohibiting people from voting because of their race. (The Supreme Court agreed with that argument in a 7-2 decision.)

Dan Diamond, Andrew Hanna, Catherine Boudreau, Alex Guillén, Zachary Warmbrodt, Benjamin Wermund, Michael Stratford, Margaret Harding McGill, Aaron Lorenzo and Eric Geller contributed to this report.

politico.com