Category: Fuck the Poor

Gov. Rick Scott blocks local paid sick leave legislation.…

~ Boohunney

Orange County residents were poised to vote on legislation regarding mandatory paid leave time in a 2014 referendum. But, just in time, Rick Scott signed into law a bill that stops local governments from legislating paid sick leave.

The bill has made moot a 2014 referendum in Orange County that would have decided whether to require paid sick leave. More than 50,000 voters had tried to get the measure on the November 6 (2012) ballot but the County Commission voted it off. It made it on the ballot in 2014 thanks to a three-judge panel.

These bills are part of ALEC’s efforts to weaken wage and labor standards: Since 2011, 67 such ALEC-affiliated bills have been introduced in state legislatures, 11 of which had been signed into law before Scott signed this bill.

Governor Scott, taking the side of the business community, wasted no time in reviewing and signing the bill. He only used four days of a fifteen day legal review period before signing the legislation. The bill was supported by Disney, Darden Restaurant Group, and the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

“Protecting small businesses and jobs from union mandates that drive up costs makes Florida more competitive,” Mark Wilson, president and CEO of the Florida Chamber said in a statement.

“Florida businesses cannot survive with competing regulations on a county by county basis and this legislation now allows for a level playing field for job creation and expansion,” Carol Dover, president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, said.

Associated Industries of Florida CEO Tom Feeney:

“All Floridians need to be grateful to Gov. Scott for standing up to sweet-sounding promises of ‘free benefits’ and union demagoguery that would be the siren call for Florida’s economy, crashing us into another recession. On behalf of Florida’s business community, we thank the Governor for signing this job-saving legislation,” he said in a statement.

In other words, pretty much the same old cliché rationale for anti-worker laws such as this.

Opposition was very strong against this law and the consequences for the working poor. Scott’s office said four times as many emails arrived to him urging a veto the bill; 28 phone callers asked him to sign it, while more than 1,025 phoned in suggesting he reject it.

“By signing HB 655 Governor Scott shows once again he is beholden to Big Business (Disney, Darden) at any cost, even at the expense of women, children, workers, and those falling behind. The inequity of wealth in Florida just widened even more today and the real possibility of quality of life enhancements for the people of Florida vanished by a stroke of the pen by a heartless and uncaring man,” Fred Frost, Chairman, Miami Dade County Coalition for Healthy Families and Workplaces, said in a release.

A recent poll revealed that 80 percent of Floridians support earned sick leave.

I really don’t see how Gov. Scott is going to get reelected… Oh, I forgot, it’s Florida.

You deserve a break today

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

What kind of low-life bottom-feeders came up with this brilliant idea? I guess getting away with using these cards for government benefits just emboldened the bankers to push them for the working poor.

Can they get away with it? In this case, no, they can’t. Fortunately, Pennsylvania requires that workers be paid by cash or check. But I’m sure even as we speak that ALEC is working hard to pass a law in every state to allow employers to siphon off even more cash from the working poor:

All Natalie Gunshannon wanted was to be paid a fair wage for her work, she said.

Gunshannon, 27, of Dallas Township, worked at McDonald’s Restaurant on the Dallas Highway from April 24 to May 15. When she received her first paycheck, enclosed was a Chase Bank debit card with instructions on how to use it and the fees attached.

Her future earnings would be deposited into the debit card account and she could access her money from there. Gunshannon never signed the card and when she returned to work she asked her supervisor if she could be paid by check or by direct deposit. She was told the card was the only option.

Gunshannon, a single mother of one daughter, quit her job at McDonald’s and went to see an attorney, Mike Cefalo of West Pittston. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in Luzerne County Court by Cefalo on behalf of Gunshannon and other employees, seeking damages, fees and costs.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages and asks for punitive, compensatory and liquidated damages, plus legal fees and litigation costs against the company for its “ill-gotten gains contrary to justice, equity, good conscience and Pennsylvania law.”

Gunshannon said she didn’t sign the card and chose to not enroll in the payroll system offered because she felt the fees would be exorbitant and actually drop her earnings below minimum wage.

She was to be paid about $7.44 per hour – her paystub didn’t list her hourly rate. Minimum wage is $7.25.

According to the complaint filed, the JP Morgan Chase payroll card lists several fees, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 per balance inquiry, 75 cents per online bill payment and $15 for lost/stolen card.

Gunshannon said she had taken her concerns to the main office of the franchise holder – Albert and Carol Mueller, trading as McDonald’s, in Clarks Summit. She was told that the card was the only option, she said.

BoA gave cash bonuses for HAMP foreclosures

~ susie

No, it wasn’t just bad luck when that Bank of America rep kept telling you they “never got the paperwork.” We’ve been hearing these disgusting stories for a long time. Glad to hear they’re making their way into court, where there’s at least a chance that Bank of America might actually pay for some of their sins:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the second-biggest U.S. lender, rewarded staff with cash bonuses and gift cards for meeting quotas tied to sending distressed homeowners into foreclosure, former employees said in court documents.

Mortgage workers falsified records and were told to delay U.S. loan-assistance applications by requesting paperwork that the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank had already received, according to statements from ex-employees filed last week in federal court in Boston. The lender improperly disqualified applicants to the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, according to a May 23 statement from Simone Gordon, a loss-mitigation specialist who left the company in 2012.

Bank of America Corp. is being sued by homeowners who didn’t receive permanent loan modifications after making payments under trial programs, according to court papers.

“We were regularly drilled that it was our job to maximize fees for the bank by fostering and extending delay of the HAMP modification process by any means we could,” Gordon said. Managers instructed staff to “delay modifications by telling homeowners who called in that their documents were ‘under review,’ when in fact, there had been no review,” she said.

Bank of America, which has spent more than $45 billion to settle claims tied to its 2008 takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp., is being sued by homeowners who didn’t receive permanent loan modifications after making payments under trial programs, according to court papers. Statements from seven former loan employees were included in a filing last week as part of plaintiffs’ attempt to gain class-action status. The lender has denied the allegations.

Continue reading “BoA gave cash bonuses for HAMP foreclosures” →

Feels like a tinder box

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Everywhere these days:

SÃO PAULO—The latest in a string of protests against transportation-fare increases turned violent on Thursday, as tensions grow over unemployment and rising inflation in Brazil.

Thousands of protesters gathered in the late afternoon at the Municipal Theater in central São Paulo and marched through the city center. Just after 7 p.m., police began firing tear gas into the crowd, sending protesters running. People screamed “Fascist police!” and threw stones at the police as smoke filled the air.

The demonstration was the fourth since last week in response to a nearly 7% increase in public transport fares in the city to 3.20 reais, or about $1.50.

Earlier in the day, a strike by suburban rail workers had caused confusion in São Paulo, forcing hundreds of thousands of commuters to switch to emergency bus services or use their cars.

A similar demonstration Tuesday, also organized by the group called Movimento Passe Livre, or the free-pass movement, swelled to an estimated 12,000 people and also became violent, with protesters throwing stones and vandalizing buses and subway stations, and military police using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

http://youtu.be/ny7MPoaFy7Q

Elizabeth Warren calls for Trans-Pacific Partnership transparency

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

This is a truly vile agreement. I dare anyone to read it and stay an Obama booster:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday sent a letter to President Barack Obama’s nominee to head U.S. trade negotiations, expressing concerns about the administration’s lack of transparency in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal being negotiated largely in secret.

Labor unions, public health advocates and environmental groups have long decried so-called free trade policies for undermining important regulations in the pursuit of corporate profits. The letter signals that Warren’s tough stance on bank regulation extends to other major consumer and public interest matters.

What the public does know about the TPP has been learned through leaked documents. According to those documents, the Obama administration is seeking to grant corporations the ability to directly challenge regulations in countries involved in the talks — a political power that was typically reserved for sovereign nations until the 1990s. Obama opposed such policies as a presidential candidate in 2008. The leaked intellectual property chapter of the deal includes provisions that would increase the costs of life-saving medicines in poor countries.

Warren’s letter does not take issue with specific terms of the negotiations, but rather the secrecy surrounding the process. Members of Congress have been allowed to see TPP negotiation texts. Some have said they were insulted by the complex administrative procedures the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, imposed to actually access the texts — barriers not imposed on unelected corporate advisers.

Thanks to DUI Attorney Karin Porter.

How the few choose inequality for the many

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

And this is what I mean when I say our politics are now profoundly undemocratic:

The U.S has become a less equal society over the past 30 years, but it didn’t just happen. Inequality in the U.S. happened by design, not by chance. It is the direct result of government policy. David Cay Johnston writes that the top 1 percent had just 10 percent of all reported national income. By 1999 the top 1 percent claimed 20 percent of national income. Since 2000, they have claimed about 1 fifth of national income. During the recovery, from 2009 to 2011, 121 percent of gains in income went to the top 1 percent.

Tax cuts for the wealthy are have driven the wrist in inequality in two ways. The report cited by Johnston and Callahan says that “tax cuts may have led managerial energies to be diverted to increasing their remuneration at the expense of enterprise growth and employment.” That means CEOs are padding their portfolios at the expense of the companies they run. Tax policy not only made the “vulture capitalism” practiced and practically invented by Bain Capital possible, it incentivized and rewarded it.

What we know about tax cuts now is pretty straightforward. Tax cuts of the wealthy won’t stimulate the economy, won’t create jobs, and won’t spread prosperity, because the wealthy don’t spend their tax cuts. Instead, the wealthy save their tax windfalls, to invest when the stock market is booming.

Thus the money represented by tax cuts for the wealthy doesn’t get invested in jobs (outside of Wall Street hedge funds, that is). Much of it gets invested in creating more wealth, detached from actual work.

Besides investing their money in creating more wealth (known as “letting your money make money for you), the wealthy also invest their money in public policies that safeguard and/or further increase their wealth. Callahan writes, “The United States has chosen to become a less equal society over the past generation, and that choice has been made by an electoral and policy system dominated by private money and wealthy interests.”

Go read the rest.

Wheee

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Feel all that freedom trickling down:

The economic “recovery” just keeps getting worse for the average worker: U.S. employers squeezed their employees even harder than usual in the first quarter, leading to the biggest drop in hourly pay on record.

Hourly pay for nonfarm workers fell at a 3.8 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday. This was the biggest quarterly decline since the BLS started keeping track in 1947. Some of the drop was payback for a 9.9 percent surge in hourly pay in the fourth quarter of 2012, as employers shoveled money out the door to avoid tax changes they expected to take place in 2013.

But there have been plenty of such quarterly pay increases in the past. Many were even bigger. Some went on for several quarters at a time. And never has there been such a steep pay drop in response as there was in the first quarter of this year.

Smoothing out the quarterly ups and downs doesn’t make the picture look any better. Hourly worker pay rose just 1.9 percent in 2012, a pitiful increase that barely kept up with the 1.8 percent gain in the consumer price index. That was the third-weakest annual increase in hourly pay since 1947, topping only the 1.4 percent gain in 2009 and a 1.8-percent gain in 1994.

Hourly pay has grown by just 2 percent per year, on average, for the past four years, the weakest four-year stretch on record. At the same time, corporate profits are at record highs, and until a recent swoon, the stock market was setting records, too. Workers haven’t been reaping the rewards, but their employers have been.

Via Kush Arora.

Austerity!

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

See how well that works?

The government’s clampdown on benefits is forcing up, rather than cutting, the cost of housing low-income families in wealthy areas, as people are shifted into hotels and bed and breakfasts, according to new figures obtained for the Observer.

Charities are also reporting a chain of misery and chaos as children are forced to move schools, and parents have to spend much of their time ferrying them large distances to classes.

Data obtained through freedom of information requests shows that at Westminster council – one of the wealthiest areas in the country – the bill for homelessness has shot up by 63.5% since last year as new temporary accommodation has had to be found for those hit by cuts. The figures show that it has cost Westminster more to place thousands of people in temporary accommodation, including hotels, than the council has saved through the government’s welfare clampdown.

The council says it cut “around £40m” from its costs, thanks to the introduction in 2011 of restrictions to housing benefit. However, replies to FOI requests obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism show that it has cost the council £135.83m to rehouse homeless people since 2009.

The council’s bill for housing vulnerable families in temporary accommodation this financial year alone is estimated to be £41.8m, compared with £25.5m last year.

Via DUI attorney Kush Arora.