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unemployment ~ Sage, Working Washington


We are Working Washington

Check this out  — unemployment in Washington just hit a record low. In fact it’s the lowest it’s been in the history of state unemployment stats, going back more than 40 years.

WA unemployment hits record low

Do you think this record-low unemployment rate has anything to do with the fact that we just raised the minimum wage?

  • For sure!
    Higher wages lift up the whole economy — when more people have more money, it means more customers for more businesses.
  • Who cares?
    I’m no economist, but jobs are growing and wages are up, so it’s all good.
  • No way.
    Maybe unemployment would have been even lower than the lowest it’s ever been if the minimum wage had been voted down? 

Anyway, just wanted to make sure you heard the good news. And thanks for taking a moment to let us know what you think!

Cheers,
Sage, Working Washington

Source: Washington State Employment Security Department, 6/14/2017

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Trump can block VoteVets on Twitter, but we will NOT be silenced. Stand with us today


VoteVets

 

The morning started with an official statement (tweet) from the president about his illegal Muslim ban. Below is what happened immediately after that led to him blocking VoteVets on Twitter.

Read the exchange and chip in $3 to help us continue the elevate the voices of veterans who are willing to stand up to President Trump. A presidential block won’t stop us. It only makes us stronger.

Here’s the president’s initial tweet:

Iraq War Veteran and Director of Government Relations, Will Fischer, took to Twitter on the VoteVets handle to respond with a series of tweets of our own:

And that was it… as the most powerful man in the world sat somewhere in the White House, probably with cable television on and looking at his Twitter mentions, he gave us the presidential block.

Like we said, Trump can block VoteVets on Twitter, the voice of 500,000 progressive veterans, military family members, and their civilian supporters, but we will NOT be silenced. Stand with us today:

Make a $3 donation to VoteVets today as a way of saying that you will not let President Trump silence progressive veterans and military family members who are fighting to resist his dangerous agenda.

Thank you for standing with us. Supporters like you power our work. And we are making a difference. That much has never been more clear.

All my best,

Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran & Chairman
VoteVets

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Exposing Injustice at Walmart, Victory for NY Workers, & More!


A Better Balance
Headlines from the Frontlines—June 2017
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ABB Publishes Revealing Report on Walmart Practices
Last month, ABB, along with our partners, filed a national class action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of pregnant workers discriminated against by Walmart. This month, we published a new report, Pointing Out: How Walmart Unlawfully Punishes Workers for Medical Absences. The report, which has received significant media attention following an exclusive feature in The New York Times, is based on a survey of more than 1,000 current and former Walmart workers around the country. Drawing on their stories, it reveals how Walmart’s absence control system often runs afoul of federal, state, and local laws that protect workers who need time off to care for their own health needs or those of a family member. Senator Bernie Sanders and other prominent figures and organizations have shared the report, generating comments from Walmart workers across the country attesting to Walmart’s unjust, and in many cases illegal, practice of punishing workers for medical absences. We will continue to fight for change at Walmart so that no worker is forced to put their job before their health or their family.
A Fair Work Week Is Coming to New York City
In May, New York City became the third city to enact a package of Fair Work Week bills to tackle abusive scheduling practices.  New York City’s law which covers a large variety of practices that hurt workers focuses on two of the most ubiquitous and low-paying industries in the city—fast food and retail. ABB was deeply involved in drafting and steering these bills to passage. For fast food workers, these bills will require two weeks notice of schedules, allow for rest time between the last shift of the day and the first shift of the following day and guarantee first refusal to current workers when extra hours are offered by an employer. For retail workers, we are especially proud of Intro. 1387, which prohibits on-call scheduling for retail employees. This ground-breaking law will ensure that no retail workers have to hold their time open for potential shifts, lining up childcare, transportation, and other necessary arrangements to make themselves available, without any guarantee that they will get called into work or even be paid for their time. This is another sterling example of local government pushing ahead on progressive change despite a federal government in retrograde.
ABB Presents at New York State Perinatal Association Conference
Last week, ABB attended the New York State Perinatal Association’s 2017 conference in Albany, “Birth Outcomes Matter: Merging Research, Policy & Practice.” ABB Co-President Dina Bakst presented a training geared toward physicians on New York State’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, explaining that pregnant workers in New York have clear legal protections to help them stay healthy and on the job. The training included guidance on how to write an effective doctor’s note and other practical tips for physicians whose patients are facing challenges at work related to pregnancy. Bakst also explained how New York State’s new paid family leave program will work, once benefits begin on January 1, 2018.
Know Your Rights

ABB’s Director of the Southern Office Elizabeth Gedmark trained members of the Tennessee Breastfeeding Coalition at their quarterly meeting about federal and state breastfeeding legal protections for workers. Attendees, mostly public health professionals and healthcare providers, traveled from across the state to participate and ask ABB questions about the laws. The presentation paid particular attention to enforcement.
ABB Speaks at Research Forum
On June 7th, ABB participated in From Persistence to Power: Facts, Truth, & Equity for Women, a convening in Washington D.C. organized by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Spelman College’s Women’s Research & Resource Center, and the Wellesley Centers for Women. Jared Make, ABB’s Senior Staff Attorney, moderated a panel that examined opportunities to achieve paid sick days and paid family and medical leave through research and public policy. Jared also delivered remarks on the progress of the paid leave movement throughout the country, the importance of ensuring that cities can continue to lead on paid leave, and the need for inclusive and realistic family definitions in paid leave laws.

Victory for Workers and Local Democracy in Minnesota

Last year, ABB worked successfully with advocates in Minnesota to help research, draft, and win paid sick and safe time laws in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. In an anti-democratic attempt to undermine the will of voters and their elected officials in both cities, state lawmakers passed a bill that would have invalidated these important measures by stripping all Minnesota localities of their ability to pass workplace standards laws—like increases to the minimum wage as well as sick time—to protect workers and promote economic justice. On May 30th, in a tremendous victory for workers, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the bill. This means that the Minneapolis and Saint Paul paid sick and safe time laws will take effect as planned. Our efforts along with other national partners to place op eds and obtain an editorial in the New York Times were important factors in the veto. But most of all, Governor Dayton’s veto is a victory for our partners and allies at TakeAction Minnesota who have worked so hard to make paid sick and safe time a reality in the Twin Cities.

Voices from the Clinic

“I was fired from my job, I was scared, I didn’t know what to do, it was unfair. ABB helped me and advised me and thanks to them I was able to get back on my feet. Thanks so much. Together we can succeed.”
— Jowell Soto, who was retaliated against by his employer for asserting his rights under New York City’s Earned Sick Time Act
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Three things to know this week


We are Working Washington

BossFeed Briefing for June 12, 2017. The special session of the State Legislature continues to continue this week… and continues to continue to not show any visible signs of progress towards agreement on a budget. Reports have recently been picking up that Republicans in the U.S. Senate may be close to reaching agreement on a healthcare repeal bill. And while paid holidays are not required under Federal law, BossFeed was in fact on vacation last week.

Catching up 

Three things to know this week:

scared Every previous U.S. Labor Department under every previous presidential administration has held that a worker’s immigration status does not affect their right to minimum wage and other labor standards. But workers and advocates are increasingly concerned this practice has changed, creating new barriers to enforcement, and effectively incentivizing wage theft.

Canadian flag Ontario, Canada is raising its provincial minimum wage to $15/hour, lifting pay for 675,000 workers. At the current exchange rate, $15 Canadian is about $11.14/hour in U.S. currency.

cart Amazon is offering discounted Prime memberships to people who receive any form of government assistance through an EBT card. About half of all U.S. households are currently Prime members.

Two things to ask:

ring But do they tip the catering staff? A “five-star wedding” runs about $5,000 a guest, according to people who work to organize the weddings of the ultra-rich, but reject the job title of “wedding planner” because they associate it with Jennifer Lopez. New-money clients sometimes hire consultants to provide social media and PR strategy for the weddings, while old money clients like fifth-generation Rockefellers supposedly “will put the au pairs and the nannies and whoever raised them at the head table.”

horse Anyone have any ideas? Vacation resorts charging up to $1,200 a night say they’re struggling to find staff who can maintain their high standards, and also tend to their horses. Seems like there must be something that could be raised the would make more workers interested in taking a given job, but the notion seems not to have occurred to the stressed-out luxury peddlers.

 

And one thing that’s worth a closer look:

zzzzzz Surveying the political landscape in Great Britain, anthropologist, political thinker, and early Occupy activist David Graeber asks if people can become bored of being hopeless. Graeber suggests that despite the many defeats of working class politics in the UK, the aftermath of the Great Recession there has provoked a return to utopian thinking. The provocative piece — even more valuable in view of last week’s strong electoral performance by Labour — touches on everything from steampunk to Scottish science fiction, asking if perhaps despair has run its course and we’re on the cusp of historic change.

 

Read this far?

tophat Consider yourself briefed, boss.

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NWLC to Betsy DeVos: We’re taking you to court


Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos won’t say whether her agency is doing anything to curb sexual harassment in schools. Did they think we would just let that slide?

We deserve to know if our schools are safe.

National Women’s Law Center v. United States Department of Education
Here at NWLC, we believe no one should be pushed out of school because they’ve experienced sexual harassment or assault. Yet that’s the heartbreaking reality for too many survivors when their schools ignore their obligations under Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded schools. With that in mind, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Department of Education this past January to learn whether and how the department has been handling investigations of sexual harassment and assault.

They refused to respond. Given Secretary DeVos’ ongoing failure to commit to Title IX enforcement—and Donald “When you’re a star, they let you do it” Trump’s terrible personal record on sexual assault, plus his administration’s poor civil rights record overall—their silence leaves us deeply concerned that this administration is doing nothing on behalf of survivors. That’s why we filed suit today, to compel them to live up to their legal responsibilities and turn over information about their sexual assault cases.

  • Read more about why we’re suing the U.S. Department of Education.
  • Share this graphic to spread the word: we deserve to know if they’re taking action to make sure our schools are safe.

Stopping the Attempt to Sneak Through a Dangerous Attack on Our Health Care
Late last week, it became clear that GOP leaders in Congress are moving at lightning speed to finalize their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and gut the Medicaid program. So far, they’ve been keeping the bill language secret, but if they do what we expect, it would be devastating. Tens of millions of people will lose health care coverage, millions more could end up with insurance that doesn’t cover critical health care needs, like maternity care, and insurance plans could once again charge a survivor of breast cancer more for insurance. We’ve fought hard to get these protections written into law, and we refuse to go back to a time when simply being a woman was treated like a pre-existing condition.

#DisarmHate
Today marks a year since the killing of 49 and wounding of 58 members of the LGBTQ community at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. This coming Saturdaymarks two years since the massacre of nine Black worshippers at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. To honor the victims of these attacks and the nearly 300,000 hate crimes that happen in America each year, and to speak up for common sense solutions to our country’s horrific gun violence epidemic, we have joined with Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and a variety of organizations around the country to observe Disarm Hate Week.

  • A newly re-introduced bill in Congress would prohibit anyone convicted of a hate crime from purchasing or owning a gun. Read more about the bill in Newsweek.
  • Speak out: Use the hashtag #DisarmHate to join the conversation about how to end gun violence and hate crimes.
  • Members of the LGBTQ, Muslim, Latinx communities and allies are coming together to demonstrate unity in remembrance of the Pulse victims. Read why.

Resistance Must-Reads

 

We the Resistance is our fight to protect our rights and freedoms and to defend the most vulnerable among us through powerful collective action. Every conversation you have with a loved one about the issues important to you, every call you make to Congress, every rally you attend is a part of that resistance. Join us — sign on to the We The Resistance manifesto.

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