Spring/Summer 2019 v Racial Wage Gaps Across Major Metropolitan Areas v Enforcing New York City’s New Worker Rights Laws: A Conversation with DCWP Commissioner Lorelei Salas v Is America Fated to a Future of Fast Food Jobs? v Tech Brogrammers Exposed in the #MeToo Era v Overworked And Underpaid in No-Vacation Nation
REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW
REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW Of the New York Metropolitan Area
Editor-in-Chief Gregory DeFreitas
Editorial Board Debra Comer Niev Duffy Russell Harrison Conrad Herold Sharryn Kasmir Oren Levin-Waldman Bhaswati Sengupta Marc Silver Lonnie Stevans Martha Weisel
Editorial Office Regional Labor Review Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy 200 Barnard Hall 104 Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 Fax: 516-463-6519 Email: laborstudies@hofstra.edu
Regional Labor Review is published twice each year by the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy at Hofstra University. The opinions and conclusions expressed in each article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, or Hofstra University. © 2019 by Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University. All rights reserved. Requests to reprint articles from Regional Labor Review should be sent to the editorial office. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy. RLR articles are indexed in the Alternative Press Index. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Annual Subscription Rates: In U.S.: $25 for individuals; $50 for institutions. For other countries: add $3 to cover postage. Correspondence regarding subscriptions should be addressed to the editorial office. A subscription form is on the last page of each issue. SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES: We welcome unsolicited contributions of original articles, interviews or book reviews, but we request that authors first send brief query letters or emails (250 words or less). Our primary focus is on the analysis of labor issues in the New York City/Long Island metropolitan area. All articles should be written in a clear, accessible style and kept to a length of 1000-7000 words. Two print copies should be sent along with a PC diskette copy or e-mail attachment (formatted in Microsoft Word). Manuscripts and diskettes can only be returned if accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. For detailed instructions, see our style sheet on the Internet at: http://www.hofstra.edu/cld ISSN 1540-8426
Regional Labor Review VOLUME 21
Spring/Summer 2019
Racial Wage Gaps Across Major Metro Areas v by Gregory DeFreitas
p. 5
Latest Trends in Key Labor Market Indicators: Spring 2019
p. 12
Enforcing New York City’s New Worker Rights Laws: A Conversation with DCWP Commissioner Lorelei Salas v by Oren Levin-Waldman and Gregory DeFreitas
p. 16
Is America Fated to a Future of Fast Food Jobs? v by Lusine Gazeryan
p. 26
Overworked and Underpaid in No-Vacation Nation v by Lindsey Parent
p. 28
Tech Brogrammers Exposed in the #MeToo Era v by Kimberly Lum
p. 31
Calendar
p. 36
3
4
THE CURRENT JOB OUTLOOK
Racial Wage Gaps Across Major Metro Areas, 2007-2018 by Gregory DeFreitas
S
ince the current economic expansion began a decade ago, the country’s labor markets have steadily tightened for all racial and ethnic groups. But earnings growth for most workers has markedly lagged job and profit increases through most years since the Great Recession. The result has been ever more extreme income inequality between the super-rich and everyone else. While these broad trends are well-documented and oft-cited in media reports and political debates, important questions persist about their causes and consequences. Thus, some recent research has found evidence of a substantial widening of the average wage gap between white and black working people nationwide. Among the main causal forces identified for this worrisome trend are declining union membership and bargaining strength and increasing racial discrimination in education and employment of new black job market entrants.
Americans are still paid 14 to 16 percent less than comparable white employees in metropolitan labor markets. • In the New York/New Jersey Metro Area, African Americans earn 17.8% less than comparable white workers. In New York City and Long Island, among those with a 4-year college degree or advanced degree, the median black worker is paid 18 to 20% less than similarly educated whites. • While women have made hard-won progress narrowing the gender pay gap, sizeable gaps persist for both white and black women compared to white men. Controlling for differences in workers’ years of job experience, education and other characteristics, women are still at a significant gender pay disadvantage nationally, as well as in the NY/NJ Metro Area. African American women suffer a substantially steeper wage disadvantage relative to white men.
In this article I try to dig beneath the national trends to find out how well or poorly they fit local patterns in racial wage gaps in a subset of our largest metropolitan areas over the years 2007–2018. Separate results are also provided for the New York/New Jersey Metro Area, the nation’s biggest, as well as for its most populous components: New York City and Long Island. Better understanding of ongoing changes in black-white earnings inequality is important to measuring the pay impacts of job growth and in gauging how much progress is still needed to reach racial parity in access to affordable high-quality schooling, apprenticeships, job networks, and promotional parity on the job. It can also contribute to evaluations of the effectiveness of current anti-discrimination policies and government enforcement efforts.
Analysis Each month, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts an ambitious national survey for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, interviewing random samples of 50,000 to 65,000 households. The survey questionnaire asks about a rich variety of demographic, geographic and employment-related matters. Sampled households are interviewed once each month for four consecutive months. One year later, each of these “rotation groups” is again interviewed for a final four consecutive months.1 Crucially for our study, among the information gathered from all wage and salary employees in these groups (excluding the self-employed) are weekly earnings, number of employees at the respondent’s workplace and union membership and coverage. I here utilized the Outgoing Rotation Group files (CPS-ORG) for all the years from 2007 (the last prerecession peak) through 2018.
My main findings in brief are: • African Americans in major metropolitan areas earn 16-20% less, at the median, than the typical white non-Hispanic worker in those same metros. • The narrowest racial wage gap is among the lowest paid workers, where recent increases in many state and municipal minimum wage floors have substantially raised both black’s and white’s wages. • The wide racial earnings gap cannot be accounted for by blacks’ lower rates of higher education alone. Once we statistically control for differences in workers’ years of job experience, education and other characteristics, it turns out that African
The data set is not, of course, without limitations. In particular, it lacks sufficient single-year sample size for much detailed analysis of metropolitan subsets of the workforce. Even with the large national sample size, the CPS metro- and city-level subsamples are generally not large enough for a single year to yield statistically significant estimates on many narrowly defined demographic or economic subgroups. Such analysis requires focusing on only the very largest metro areas and/or pooling survey data across multiple years for smaller areas.
5
who report positive earnings.2 Excluded are: the selfemployed (incorporated), enrolled students, and institutionalized residents of group quarters (prisons, nursing homes, etc.).
Figure 1 Note: Wage statistics in this and following charts and tables are inflation adjusted with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to reflect purchasing power in 2019:Q1. Unless otherwise noted, they are median estimates. See text for more details. Figure 1 Source: This and following charts and tables are from author’s analysis of CPS-ORG microdata files.
Findings Figure 1 charts the median hourly wage rates, inflationadjusted, of non-Hispanic whites and blacks in the largest metro areas over the past decade, from the last prerecession year of 2007 to the recession’s official end-year of 2009, then on through 2018. The recession dragged down the median white worker’s real wage from $18.30 in 2007 to a low of $16.59 by 2014 – a 9.3% decline (Table 1). African Americans’ real wage also fell, from a 2007 level of $14.66 (nearly $4 below the white wage that year) to $13.88 by 2014. So, the fact that the ratio of median black to white wages rose slightly over this period simply reflects the fact that, while black wages were plunging, they were dropping at a slightly slower rate (8.7%) than whites’ pay rates. Though small year-to-year fluctuations are common, and the real wages of both the median white and black worker had recovered their 2007 levels by 2018, the racial wage ratio (80.6% – in bottom rows of Table 1) was only marginally different from its level a decade earlier.
To better take into account the intersectionality of race and income class, in Table 1 I present not only overall median wage stats, but also breakdowns by low-, medium- and high-percentile employees in four years: 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2018. Among both whites and African Americans, the highest average annual growth rates over the full decade 2007-18 were in the lowest (10th) and highest (99th) percentiles. The pay improvements in the lowest percentile coincided with sometimes sizeable hikes in state minimum wage
In what follows, I use both approaches. Most of the analysis is on the NY/NJ MSA plus the 20 next-largest metro areas. In addition, in order to have large enough data samples for reliable estimates of more detailed analysis of New York City and its near-suburbs, I pooled the CPS data into three-year groupings. The study sample consists of non-Hispanic white and black wage and salary employees ages 16-70 residing in the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area, the country’s largest, and the 20 next most populous metro areas 6
TABLE 1: Real Wages by Race & Pay Percentiles in Largest Metro Areas [median real hourly wage rates, ratios & changes; in $2019] MAJOR METROS WAGE by PERCENTILE WHITES
10th
25th
50th
75th
90th
95th
99th
2007
$9.78
$12.23
$18.30
$25.36
$36.66
$45.66
$62.38
2012
$9.80
$12.14
$16.71
$24.83
$36.91
$44.13
$66.20
2017
$10.33
$12.53
$17.17
$25.83
$37.20
$45.94
$67.17
2018
$10.59
$13.11
$18.16
$25.82
$37.33
$45.90
$67.59
-0.42
0.13
-0.67
1.22
% Changes [annual avg] 2007-2012
0.04
-0.15
-1.74
2012-2018
1.34
1.33
1.45
0.66
0.19
0.67
0.35
2017-2018
2.52
4.63
5.77
-0.04
0.35
-0.09
0.63
2007-2018
0.75
0.65
-0.07
0.16
0.17
0.05
0.76
2007
$9.41
$11.30
$14.66
$19.95
$29.33
$35.44
$50.10
2012
$8.83
$11.03
$13.90
$19.86
$27.58
$35.31
$52.96
2017
$9.30
$10.85
$14.45
$19.59
$27.59
$32.97
$48.56
2018
$9.96
$11.10
$14.63
$19.17
$28.25
$35.31
$53.56
BLACKS
% Changes [annual avg] 2007-2012
-1.24
-0.48
-1.04
-0.09
-1.19
-0.07
1.14
2012-2018
2.14
0.11
0.88
-0.58
0.40
0.00
0.19
2017-2018
7.10
2.30
1.25
-2.14
2.39
7.10
10.30
2007-2018
0.53
-0.16
-0.02
-0.36
-0.33
-0.03
0.63
B/W WAGE RATIOS [%] 2007
96.2
92.4
80.1
78.7
80.0
77.6
80.3
2012
90.1
90.9
83.2
80.0
74.7
80.0
80.0
2017
90.0
86.6
84.2
75.8
74.2
71.8
72.3
2018
94.1
84.7
80.6
74.2
75.7
76.9
79.2
Table 1 Source: CPS-ORG data on NY/NJ Metro & 20 other top metro areas. Median wage/hr inflation adjusted with CPI to $2019. floors. Last year alone, local minimum wages went up in 21 states and Washington DC. In our 21-metro study sample, over half (11) of the major metro areas experienced these minimum wage increases: Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Phoenix, Riverside/San Bernardino, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
gains of the one-percenters did nothing to improve the black-white pay ratio. Aside from the poorest 10% – and even with the unusual burst of wage growth in 2017-18 – the black-white wage ratio was either lower or insignificantly higher in 2018 than a decade earlier.
Unadjusted & Adjusted Pay Gaps Many factors – individual, institutional, social and discriminatory –could potentially contribute to black-white wage differentials. Of individual worker characteristics, age, education and work experience have traditionally drawn most of the attention of orthodox neoclassical economists. While the Civil Rights Movement achieved considerable progress in helping narrow the
The well-documented concentration of decades of U.S. income growth in the hands of the top 1% is evident in the rightmost columns of this table. Whether through educational or occupational disadvantage or continuing employment discrimination, African American are grossly underrepresented among the rich. So the 7
respondent self-reports race as non-Hispanic black or African American (0 otherwise). Other factors controlled for are: years of education completed, years of postschooling work experience, sex (female=1; 0 otherwise) and region of residence. By limiting our sample to large metropolitan areas alone, we are already controlling for additional variations in cost of living and other attributes of more urbanized geographic locations. The unadjusted black wage disadvantage in 2018 was: -20.5% in all major metro areas nationwide, compared to -23.3% in the NY/NJ Metro Area. enormous educational disadvantages that African Americans long faced, today they still are far less likely than whites to hold higher education degrees. In 2018 in major metro areas, over 30% of white adults 25 and over hold a BA degree, but only 20% of African Americans. And whites are twice as likely to have obtained a JD, MBA or other advanced degree.
Next, to control for worker differences in skill-related characteristics, I expand the set of explanatory variables in the regression model to control for differentials in years of work experience and educational attainment, as well as control variables for each worker’s sex and region of residence. The results are shown in the rightmost cluster of bars in Figures 4 (covering all 21 major metro areas) and Figure 5 (NY/NJ Metro alone). The national findings reveal that taking into account black’s lower average years of schooling does account for some of their estimated wage disadvantage. But even after adjusting for this and other characteristics, African Americans still earn -16.3% lower weekly wages than their white counterparts with similar education and experience.3
The impacts of workers’ educational, age and work experience differences can be taken into account by the standard statistical method of estimating a multivariate regression of individual earnings on a dichotomous variable set equal to 1 if a survey
Racial Gaps and Gender Gaps Intertwined with this class and racial wage inequality are large and chronic gender pay gaps. The median earnings of white and black women in major metro areas were little improved, after inflation adjustment, in 2018 compared to their 2007 levels: $16.54 and $14.12, respectively. Like men, women’s wages fell in the 2008-09 recession and the years immediately following, but by less than men’s pay. The result was a brief rise in their within-race gender pay ratios: 8
Metro Area, there is an even steeper jump in women’s regressionadjusted pay disadvantage to 17.4%.4
TABLE 2: Wages by Race in NYC and Long Island, 2016-2018 [median real hourly wage rates by sex and education level, in $2019] NYC 2016-2018
Long Island 2016-2018
White
$17.15
$17.15
Black
$14.47
$15.13
84.4
88.2
White
$18.41
$18.84
Black
$15.50
$13.62
84.2
72.3
White
$15.83
$15.83
Black
$13.72
$15.84
86.7
100.1
Decomposing the gender gap by race, we find that among white workers, the median pay of women in 2018 ($16.54) was 15% below that of white men. Among African Americans, women working in major metro areas earned a median hourly wage ($14.12) just 7% less than that of black men. But the median black working woman’s hourly pay was nearly $2.50 lower than the white female level, so faced a correspondingly wider gender pay disadvantage when compared to white men. The black-female-to-white-male median wage ratio is just 73% – that is, a 27% pay disadvantage.
ALL, ages 16-70
B/W ratio(%)
New York Metro Area Within the major metro sample used in this study, there is considerable variability in the wage gap experienced by African Americans. As seen in Figure 3, high-cost San Francisco has the most extreme racial pay inequality: the median black worker is today paid 29% less than his/her white counterpart there. Close behind are St. Louis and San Diego, both with 25% black-white pay gaps. Even though African Americans’ wage disadvantage in New York is a sizeable 20%, this just ranks it in the middle of the nation’s largest metros. At the other extreme are low single-digit black wage gaps in Atlanta (5%) and Riverside/San Bernardino (0.2%). However, low sample sizes for these metro areas require interpreting my estimates here with caution.
Men, 16+
B/W ratio(%) Women, 16+
B/W ratio(%)
ALL, Ages 25-70, HS Grad Only White
$17.15
$15.83
Black
$14.12
$14.25
82.3
90.0
White
$17.31
$19.12
Black $16.28
$16.36
B/W ratio(%)
94.0
85.6
White
$21.11
$22.73
Black
$17.30
$18.16
81.9
79.9
B/W ratio(%)
Since most of the metro subsamples were too small for much detailed single-year analysis, I pooled the three most recent years of CPS data for the single largest metro area, New York/New Jersey. Table 2 presents median 2016-18 real wages and black-white wage ratios for New York City and Long Island separately. The median black wage in the city ($14.47) is about 66 cents/hour (or 4.5%) lower than on Long Island and the NYC black-white wage ratio (84.4%) is some four percentage points lower as well. African American workers on Long Island are far more likely to hold a BA and advanced degrees and the high fraction with union coverage benefit from a much stronger union wage advantage over nonunion workers than do the city’s black workforce.5 Still today, even among college grads, African Americans in both city and suburb are 18 to 20% less than white New Yorkers.
College, No Degree
BA & Above
B/W ratio(%)
One aspect of the post-recession job structure in many metro job markets that may have had a disproportionately negative impact on black middle-income workers was the widespread hiring freezes and layoffs in the municipal and statewide public sector. While private sector employment growth has slowly but steadily replenished its job count to surpass pre-recession levels, state and local government’s share of all jobs has remained depressed far longer. By 2017, the public job share had plunged to 13.5 percent, the lowest level in a half-century.
I applied the regression model described above to estimate the gender wage gap with and without controls for education, work experience, race and region. In 2018, before controlling for these factors, the unadjusted gender gap for all metro areas average 9.6%. Since women now average more years of schooling than men, this estimate may understate the actual pay gap between similarly educated men and women. Indeed, after adding years of schooling and the other controls, the wage gap estimate actually rises sharply to 13.7%. And in separate estimates for the NY/NY
On the eve of the last recession in 2007, 15.2% of African American workers in major metro areas were employed by state or local governments, compared to just 12.6% of whites (Table 3). But by 9
TABLE 3: Blacks More Vulnerable to Public Sector Job Cuts: % Workers in State/Local Govt. Jobs, by Race: 2007 & 2018
won gains in public sector employment can withstand future austerity measures aimed at government workers.
Conclusions A decade of economic expansion 2007 2018 that has produced over 100 18.5 18.1 continuous months of job growth has so far failed to narrow this 15.16 14.24 country’s wide racial earnings 16.8 20.3 gaps. This article aimed to investigate recent trends in the 21 20.3 black-white wage gap in major metropolitan areas, with a special focus on the greater New York City region. After statistical analysis of 2007-2018 data sets, the findings show wide racial pay gaps persist.
Whites
Blacks
2007
2018
NY/NJ Metro
17.4
15.4
Other Big Metros
12.6
11.65
NYC
12.2
12.9
Long Island
23.2
23.1
2018, the public sector job share had declined by a full percentage point for both blacks and whites. In the greater New York Metro Area, the fraction of blacks’ jobs in state and local government also fell, though only from 18.5% to 18.1%. This reflected countertendencies in New York City and the balance of the metro area. While Long Island and most other parts of the metro area followed the national austerity pattern, the city under Mayor de Blasio has been unique among major cities in its robust hiring. As of this spring, New York City’s municipal full-time headcount has risen to a record-breaking 305,000.6 One-fifth of African American workers are now employed in the city’s public sector, up from 16.8% a decade earlier.
These findings are broadly similar to those in recent studies of nationwide samples. For example, Valerie Wilson and William M. Rodgers III recently investigated nationwide trends in racial pay gaps over the years 1979 to 2015.9 They concluded that the blackwhite wage gap was wider in 2015 than in the late seventies, but not as a result of continuous decline. Their empirical work identified three contrasting phases: 1979-85, when economic recession and a political backlash against affirmative action and anti-discrimination policies widened black–white wage gaps; the 1994-2000 narrowing of racial wage gaps, reflecting both an historic economic boom as well as stepped-up enforcement efforts against employment discrimination; and 2003-15, a renewed worsening of the racial pay gap during years of slow growth leading to the disastrous 2008-09
Public sector jobs have for decades played an important role in expanding economic opportunities to long-disadvantaged women and minority workers.7 As I found in an earlier study, a typical New Yorker working in the public sector today earns higher weekly wages, at the median, than the typical private sector employee. The median governmental pay advantage is $215 in New York City, $491 in Nassau-Suffolk, and $232 statewide. This reflects in part the older average age of government employees and the fact that they far better-educated than the private sector workforce. New York’s state and local government employees are more than twice as likely as private sector New Yorkers to have an advanced degree beyond a 4-year B.A. (39.6 percent vs. 16.8 percent). And over four in five state and local government employees in New York are covered by union contracts, compared to just under one-fifth of the private sector.8 So, in New York as elsewhere, one sign of the racial wage gap’s future direction will be whether African Americans’ hard10
2 The
New York–Newark–Jersey City, NY–NJ–PA Metropolitan Statistical Area encompasses nearly 20 million people in the following counties. All except Pike Co., PA have sufficient observations for inclusion in my CPS study samples: NYC (Bronx, Kings, Queens, New York County, & Richmond Counties, NY) Long Island: Nassau & Suffolk Counties, NY; Northern NY Suburbs: Westchester, Putnam, Orange & Rockland Counties, NY; Northern New Jersey: Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex & Union Counties, NJ. 3 Note that all variables’ coefficient estimates in all results cited in this report were highly statistically significant, and the addition of the full set of controls raised the Adjusted R-squared significantly. Recent studies of national samples with both metro and non-metro areas have found broadly similar results. See for example: Gould, Elise, “Wage Inequality Marches On – and Is Even Threatening Data Reliability,” State of Working America 2018, Economic Policy Institute (2/20/2019): www.epi. org and Gould, Elise, “Stark Black-White Divide in Wages is Widening Further,” State of Working America 2018, Economic Policy Institute (2/27/2019): www.epi.org. 4 For a detailed analysis of the gender pay gap in New York City and Long Island, see: Sengupta, Bhaswati, “The Gender Pay Gap in New York: 1995-2013,” Regional Labor Review (Spring/ Summer 2016). 5 DeFreitas, Gregory and Sengupta, Bhaswati, “The State of New York Unions 2017,” Regional Labor Review (Fall 2017). 6 Goodman, J. David, “Now Hiring: Under de Blasio, New York’s Government Grows to Record Level,” NY Times (10/11/2016); NYC Office of the Comptroller, Comments on New York City’s FY 2020 Fiscal Year Budget (5/23/2019): http://comptroller.nyc. gov/reports. 7 See DeFreitas, Gregory, “Is New York’s Public Sector Workforce Overpaid?” Regional Labor Review, vol. 20 (Spring 2018). See also, for example, Cohen, Patricia, “Public Sector Jobs Vanish, Hitting Blacks Hard,” NY Times (5/24/15); and “State and Local Jobs Under Siege as a Middle-Class Gateway,” NY Times (4/22/18). 8 DeFreitas, Gregory and Sengupta, Bhaswati, “The State of New York Unions 2017,” Regional Labor Review (Fall 2017). 9 Wilson, Valerie and William Rodgers III, “Black-White Wage Gaps Expand with Rising Wage Inequality,” EPI Report. Economic Policy Institute (9/16/2016): www.epi.org. 10 Likewise, multiple such approaches have also been applied to estimation of discrimination’s contribution to male-female pay gaps. See, for example, Blau, Francine and Lawrence Kahn, “The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends and Explanations,” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 55 (Sept. 2017).
Great Recession, and followed by a slow-moving recovery. Over the long stretch since the early 1980s, they attribute most of the wage gap’s widening to declining union membership and bargaining strength for new black job market entrants and increasing racial discrimination in education and employment. Economists’ efforts to measure the precise contribution of racial discrimination to existing black-white wage gaps have followed several empirical approaches that go beyond the scope of my article.10 One relies on audit studies that use white and black actors boasting near-identical qualifications who apply for the same job openings. The extent of differential hiring and salary outcomes of the black applicants is the basis of measured discrimination. Another method is based on court records of judgements in racial discrimination lawsuits. Still another, much favored by academic economic journals, relies on more conservative multivariate regression methods. While I have reported some regression findings here, more elaborate regression specifications based on added assumptions and applied to other data sets may yield different results. Nevertheless, the evidence here of wide and widening racial wage gaps this far into such a long economic expansion should, at a minimum, cast further doubt on employers’ and politicians’ claims of widely shared benefits from trickle-down strategies alone.
Gregory DeFreitas is Professor of Economics at Hofstra University and Director, Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy. REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 21, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). © 2019 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University
NOTES 1 This study uses microdata from the US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, its monthly nationwide survey. I use the merged Outgoing Rotation Group extracts that are taken from the fourth and eighth months of such surveys, when usual earnings and related job questions are asked. Note that the Census Bureau top-codes the small share of very high-income responses by assigning a single value to all earnings above its annual cap. I follow standard practice in working with estimates of average income above the Census top-code value that assumes the distributional tails follow a Pareto distribution. To adjust earnings figures for price inflation, I deflate nominal wages by the Consumer Price Index through 2019:Q1. For data descriptions and documentation, see: http://www.bls.gov/cps/ documentation.htm. The specific microdata source is from IPUMS files; for file details see: Flood, Sarah, Miriam King, Steven Ruggles, and J. Robert Warren. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 5.0. [dataset]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V5.0. 11
DATA FILE
Latest Trends in Key Labor Market Indicators: Spring 2019
% Change
Table 1: Number of Nonfarm Jobs: New York City, Long Island and All U.S., 2018-2019
March 2019
March 2018
149,867
NY State
Net
%
147,368
2,499
1.7
9,671
9,567
104
1.1
NYC
4,603
4,521
82
1.8
Long Island
1,333
1,324
9
0.7
U.S.
(in thousands, not seasonally adjusted)
2018-2019 Change
Table 1 Source: Establishment survey data from US Department of Labor. Note that data reflect regular revisions by Dept. of Labor.
Table 2 Civilian Labor Force, Employment & Unemployment (in thousands, not seasonally adjusted)
Labor Force AREA
Employed
Unemployed
Unemp. Rate
March 2019
March 2018
March 2019
March 2018
March 2019
March 2018
March 2019
March 2018
U.S.
162,823
161,548
156,441
154,877
6,382
6,671
3.9%
4.1%
NYC
4,128.5
4,144.1
3,954.4
3,964.6
174.1
179.5
4.2
4.3
Bronx
606.5
610.0
572.0
573.5
34.5
36.5
5.7
6.0
1,214.8
1,218.8
1,162.1
1,165.2
52.7
53.6
4.3
4.4
Manhattan
921.1
924.7
886.7
889.0
34.4
35.7
3.7
3.9
Queens
165.1
1,168.8
121.8
1,124.7
43.3
44.1
3.7
3.8
Staten Island
220.9
221.7
211.7
212.2
9.2
9.5
4.2
4.3
1,489.0
1,471.1
1,436.8
1,409.9
52.2
61.2
3.5 4
4.3
Nassau Co.
709.4
700.2
686.1
673.2
23.3
27.0
3.3
3.9
Suffolk Co.
779.5
770.9
750.7
736.7
28.8
34.2
3.7
4.4
Brooklyn
LONG ISLAND
Table 2 source: CPS household survey data from NYS Dept. of Labor. Data reflect regular revisions by Dept. of Labor.
12
Figure 1
Unemployment Rates in U.S., NYC & Long Island, 2017-19 (seasonally adjusted)
Figure 2
NYC Job Growth by Industry: March 2018-2019 (in 1,000s of jobs, and percent change)
13
Figure 3
Long Island Job Growth by Industry: March 2018-2019 (in 1,000s of jobs, and percent change)
Figure 4
Unemployment Rate, NYC & 20 Other Largest Metros, February 2019
14
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INTERVIEW
Enforcing New York City’s New Worker Rights Laws: A Conversation with DCWP Commissioner Lorelei Salas by Oren Levin-Waldman and Gregory DeFreitas
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n January 2019, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that the Department of Consumer Affairs was being renamed the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The name change appears intended to breathe new life into a large and influential department. In recent years, the City has been passing a spate of labor laws, including: a living wage, a city-wide minimum wage, retail work scheduling standards, and paid parental leave. In addition to the enforcement of these new laws, DCWP also sets contracting and pay frequency standards for the city’s swelling volume of freelancers. DCWP has also been mounting an advertising campaign throughout the sprawling transit system to apprise employers and workers of its new name and enforcement mandate. Although the revamped department has a bold mission, questions still remain about its capacity to publicize and effectively enforce all these new laws, with its current limited staff and budget.
in the New York State Department of Labor, supervising enforcement of the labor laws across the state. So, to me, what really appealed about this particular position was that, at the same time that I was asked to join the Department of Consumer Affairs, the administration was making a decision as to where to place the Office of Labor Policy and Standards (OLPS). And the agency itself had already been enforcing the Paid Sick Leave Law. At the time, it was just paid sick leave and safe leave was added later. It became effective back in April 2014, and the enforcement of that law became part of this agency. But we had a very small team of people who did that work. So when, in 2016, the City Council passed the law creating the Office of Labor Policy and Standards, it basically built on the paid sick leave enforcement. To me it was a very exciting opportunity to come into an agency that was going to really start building up this work and really expanding it, knowing that the City Council and administration were both very, very interested in creative ideas to improve workers’ rights in New York City.
This new enlarged department has, since May 2016, been led by Commissioner Lorelei Salas, an experienced labor lawyer and veteran of enforcing New York labor laws in the State Attorney General’s Office. She has held multiple senior leadership positions managing labor law enforcement at the NYS Department of Labor. And she was formerly Legal Services Director at Catholic Migration Services. She was also nominated by President Obama to be Wage and Hours Administrator in the U.S. Department of Labor.
I would say that we’ve been super-busy. As you just mentioned, there have been quite a few laws that have come into the books, and they are laws that are designed to address issues that are pressing now in the workforce, in our economy now. It’s a very interesting time to be doing this work with laws that are just getting designed and written to think about issues that workers are facing today, because a lot of the laws that we have on the books, as you know, have been around for decades.
On May 20th, at DCWP headquarters in Lower Manhattan, we met with Commissioner Salas on the third anniversary of her appointment to discuss the department, its enlarged mission, and the challenges it faces.
This is an opportunity, really to think about what we’re setting in place now. It needs to be serving needs of workers for the next few decades, right? It’s a huge responsibility to make sure that we think about the role of government in enforcing these laws in a very smart way. I’m sure you also have heard about the budget constraints and we’re thinking about how to really be smart with the resources that we have.
Q: This January, Mayor de Blasio announced that the name of your agency was being changed to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP). You already have a massive mandate on consumer protection. So how, with all the City’s new labor laws – the Fair Workweek Law, the Freelance Isn’t Free Law and others – how are you managing this? LS: I have a background in wage and hour enforcement. I used to work for the New York State government, first as an Assistant Attorney General in the Labor Bureau of the AG’s office, and then
So I’m really actually pleased about the collaboration that we’ve had with both the City Council and the administration when they are thinking about new laws to really bring us on board early on and get our feedback as an agency that will be enforcing the provisions of the law. 16
Q: What is the budget now? Have they expanded it this year to deal with these things? LS: No, it’s about the same. It’s about $40 million.
so in an agency that is small already – for New York City agency sizes, we’re pretty small. We’re 450 employees. But if you look at some of the agencies around the city, obviously, they have thousands of workers.
Q: But that’s for Consumer Affairs and – LS: Yes, for the entire agency.
But for us, a new division puts strains all over the agency: in our communications team, in our human resources team. So just funding the division and the work is not enough when these people are going to need support from the rest of the agency. My point is that there are expenses or costs that are not necessarily visible when you think about enforcement, but are necessary to fully support the work.
Q: And about how much goes to OLPS, would you say? LS: It’s about $3 million that goes just for OLPS staff. Q: How big is the staff? LS: We have about 45 lines in OLPS right now. We probably have about 41 or 42 people in place, and we have three or four vacancies that we’re recruiting for.
So I would say that, thinking about the announcement from Mayor de Blasio to really expand, he announced a couple of things this year. In addition to the name change of the agency, he announced the proposal to work on paid personal time, which is a new law that would guarantee that workers have access to personal time to use as vacation or to take time off to go to their kids’ performances, whatever it is that they need.
Q: How many of them are investigators? LS: About 15 investigators. Then another maybe ten lawyers, between line attorneys and supervisors. And then we have a couple support staff who do intake and just general administration. So yes, about $3 million. Q: Obviously every agency faces budget constraints. And you’re very experienced. But in a city of eight and a half million people, what would it take ideally – not to investigate every employer – but what would you want the City Lorelei Salas Council to seriously consider in terms of a budget and staff? LS: I would say that the number of investigators that we have are probably okay for now to investigate the laws that we have in place today. But as our portfolio continues to increase, we need to keep expanding those resources.
Q: Who pays for that? The employers? LS: Yes, the requirement is on employers. He also announced expanding on the work that we do around the Freelancers Isn’t Free Law. And also we’re developing an alternative dispute resolution pilot program for handling cases of domestic workers. So all of those initiatives are going to require additional staffing. And we’re working together right now with the Office of Management and Budget to figure out what the needs are and how will we support the work going forward.
And then there are the needs that people don’t think about necessarily that are not about investigators, but about how, when you think about the full cycle of a case, right, investigations, you need investigators, then you need lawyers in case the case doesn’t get resolved and you need to go to the tribunal. But after that, there’s still work that needs to be done, with having a strong collections team and to also continue to have money to do the kind of public awareness campaign that you’ve seen in the subways. We had a little bit of money this year, but we didn’t have it every time a new law comes into place.
Q: Have you met with the Mayor this year, since the name change? LS: Yes. I mean, especially with respect to thinking about the paid personal time legislation, there have been several conversations with the Mayor, and then with the policy team at City Hall. Q: So you’ve met with him a few times this year, or is it more sort of over the phone with staff and the like? LS: I would say I had one or two in-person meetings with the Mayor when we first talked about this idea and how we would roll it out.
And so it’s harder to really get the message out there that people have these new rights, and that they can come to us to file a complaint if they don’t see that realized in the workplace. There are the needs that go along, the investigations or the enforcement staff that people don’t think about naturally, but in terms of increasing staff around collections, every time that you get a new law in place, having some money dedicated to outreach. Similarly, when you have a division like that that has 45 people or
Q: This year, you mean? LS: Yes, this year. But then we’ve had weekly meetings with the team of people at City Hall who are working on making sure that the paid personal time legislation actually gets introduced. 17
Q: Are those City Council people or the Mayor’s people? LS: The Mayor’s people, at City Hall.
And so what happens is freelancers call us and say, “I didn’t get paid.” And our first step is to send a letter to the hiring company saying, “What do you have to say? We have a complaint that you haven’t met the contract terms.”
Q: How many freelancers do you have in the city, just roughly, as a percentage of the workforce? LS: That’s an interesting question, because there is not clear data that’s just New York City-based, on the universe of freelancers. We have a conservative estimate of about 500,000, but that data is probably a couple of years old.
At that point, the company can dispute the claim. They can say, "Well, the freelancer didn’t complete the terms in the contract." And then the case really has to go to small claims court or to state court. I mean, we don’t – we’re not a tribunal in that sense. We don’t handle that dispute for the freelancers.
The Freelancers Union would tell you there’s more, closer to a million freelancers in New York City. The data that we use is what gets filed with the NYC Department of Finance for people who are filing a 1099. But not all freelancers are people who are part time employed in freelance work, will file a 1099. So obviously, the numbers that we have are very, very conservative. They don’t include people who just may not file, even though they’re working freelance.
Q: Where do the Office of Administrative Tribunal and Hearing (OATH) judges come in? LS: Well, they do come in for most of our cases, but not for freelancers, because that’s really a contractual relationship between a freelancer and the hiring company. But what happens is that, frankly, a lot of the companies, the ones that get a call from the government, from us, if they owe the money, they pay. Because we tell them: "Look, the law says that you have to pay double damages. You will have to pay attorney’s fees. If you don’t pay now, and you’re just delaying the payment it’s going to cost you more." So, about 60% of the freelancers who call us, they get paid within 90 days of calling and filing a complaint with us, again, because I think the incentives are there to really change the balance of power.
Q: Given the number of freelancers and that it’s going to grow, is there any talk of the City offering a public option for people to buy into health insurance. LS: The administration is already offering universal health care for all in NYC. The thinking about benefits for gig economy workers is definitely something of a priority for the administration. I would say that we’ve started with the taxi industry, and so this is not really my agency, but the Taxi and Limousine Commission or TLC. Already there’s legislation that requires TLC to set up a benefits fund for taxi drivers, starting with a study to determine most important needs for drivers.
Q: So they get a letter from a lawyer with your letterhead saying, “This is the law. Pay up.” LS: Yes Q: And about 60% just automatically said – LS: Yes, and then if the company ignores us, the law says that there’s a presumption, and we can give a letter to the freelancer that the hiring company never responded. Under the law there’s a presumption that they are not in compliance with the law, and they can take that to court.
I have to say that, for me, the Freelance Isn’t Free Law is a really good example of a law that was designed really well, because it has put the right incentives into the law that are already changing the dynamic and the balance of power between freelancers and hiring companies.
Now, I haven’t seen it tested yet. I don’t know if the judges are actually giving deference to the presumption or not. But by now, we have paid over a million dollars in wages recovered for freelancers, and we’ve been two years enforcing the law. But the typical underpayment for freelancers is between $2,000 to $3,000.
Our role is limited in enforcing this law. A freelancer files a complaint with us that they didn’t get paid under their contract, and we look at a few things. The law now says contracts have to be in writing. If they are not in writing, the hiring company can have fines assessed against them. They have to pay on time, and if the contract is silent on when the payment is due, then the law says the default is 30 days.
So it’s good. These individuals have gotten paid without having to hire a lawyer, which was the whole point. It is too costly to hire a
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lawyer to recover $2,000. It doesn’t make sense. I think it’s a welldesigned law with the right incentives and the right role for us as an enforcement agency.
in terms of scheduling. So definitely they played a big part on that. But for us as an agency, it was one of the laws that we thought could really have a huge impact.
Q: Did the Freelancers Union consult with you about that, give you their wish list or something? LS: They definitely were the force behind the law. They were advocating for this, having people come testify at our hearings and talk to us about their challenges. And it was pretty devastating, because it’s the kind of issue that, you know, I’m used to seeing in low-wage industries. Wage theft, underpayment of wages, nonpayment of wages.
I talked about how the Office of Labor Policy and Standards, which was placed here about three years ago. For a long time, we’ve had both the consumer protection arm, and we’ve had an Office of Financial Empowerment, which is an office that is dedicated to looking at the financial health of New Yorkers. So we have a number of programs there. The reason why I mention this is because we did some work to try to really integrate OLPS within the entire agency, and to find what is the common thing that – the common thread among the different divisions. What is it that really makes us one agency?
But to see that freelancers are facing this – we had a public hearing almost at the beginning of my time here, where we had workers from different industries come and testify. And quite a few freelancers showed up, and they testified that they had to live off their credit cards because they were owed for three or four jobs, and it was really hard for them to just get paid.
And we decided that it was talking about the daily economic lives of New Yorkers, because we’re talking about your daily wages or pay or the right to sick leave. But also, if you need a license to operate in the city, most likely you’re going to have to come to us. We manage most of the business licenses in New York City. So you need that for your business. And our Office of Financial Empowerment, that does a lot of programs with respect to providing free services to New Yorkers, with free tax prep and financial coaching to name a couple.
We had adjunct professors come and testify that they were not getting paid.
Q: Yeah, I can believe it. LS: So it’s an issue. And the Freelancers Union was very strong in lobbying the City Council also to make sure that the sponsor really moved the bill. I would say there was a lot of back-and-forth to really get to what we have now on the books.
And so one of the big issues for us is, if we’re thinking about daily economic lives of New Yorkers, one of the big challenges is the income instability or unpredictability of income. There is a lot of research at the national level that shows that people don’t have $400 in savings.
Q: You mentioned wage theft. Now, do you guys have to enforce the living wage, or is that another agency? LS: You know, it’s a very complicated relationship between the Comptroller’s Office and us, because the law basically requires the Comptroller’s Office to do an investigation of living wage compliance, and only if they find that there are violations or issues, and they’re not resolved, that they can refer the case to us for enforcement. I think in my time, we’ve had one case referred by them. So the enforcement is not really squarely within us. It’s really the Comptroller’s Office. They take the first look at whatever complaints they get.
And how can we address income instability? One way obviously is to have predictable schedules. How are you going to plan your life or your budget for next month if you don’t know how many hours you’re working? So it fits squarely within what we think is one of the most urgent needs of New Yorkers, to have more stability in their lives, in their incomes. For the fast food industry – the Fair Workweek Law – we’ve just been enforcing the law since November last year. So it’s been about a year now that the law has been in place. And we have probably the most complaints in the fast food industry, not as much in retail.
Q: So they have their own staff of investigators and lawyers? LS: Yes, they do.
Q: Does fast food include things like Starbucks, or is it more the usual chains that you think of? LS: Starbucks is included. We use the same definition that is in the New York State fast food wage order.
Q: Where did the Fair Workweek Law come from? SEIU and RWDSU? Q: I would say 32BJ, and then Fast Food Justice, this nonprofit organization that has been fighting for fast food workers on a number of things, like the Fight for $15, increasing the minimum wage.
Q: So all of retail is included in the scheduling part, though not in the part that they have to offer shifts to current workers? LS: Right. Yes, the retail law is a bit different. The notice requirements are also shorter. It’s 72 hours, and not two weeks, like it is for the fast food industry.
They also organized to have the Governor set up the public hearings around the fast food wage order, and also worked hard to get all of us to pay attention to the issues that fast food workers have 19
There were obviously lots of negotiations, between the City Council, the administration and some of the unions and the workers’ groups, and also the business community about what the law should include or not include. The only requirement right now, to offer shifts to permanent employees before you go out and hire someone else, is in the fast food industry. And it is the goal. In reality, that’s one of the things that people need the most – to be able to get to full-time employment if they want to.
I can tell you that we’ve done one special initiative recently where we looked at the home care agencies, the home care industry, because we have both a mandate to look at the paid care industry, which includes both domestic workers and home care, home health aides and cleaners. We have a mandate to look at that industry because the City also created a paid care division so that we could be thinking about how to improve the standards, the work standards for both home care workers and domestic workers. So that’s in the law, within the Office of Labor Policy and Standards.
Q: That law could be useful for lots of other workers negotiating with employers. ”Look, fast food workers get these protections. Why don’t you give them to us?” In terms of a labor standard, it can really have genuine impacts. But again, it’s a huge mandate. I mean, do you have any ballpark, how many retail establishments are in New York? LS: I don’t know off the top of my head, but I could see if we can get them for you. We have a small team of research analysts here. They are the ones looking at data. We were recently looking at that because of the paid personal time legislation. So we’re just looking at different industries, how many workers. How many part-time workers, or how many workers in total, workers who don’t have vacation?
Q: Oh, and did they provide a budget for that? LS: We have a couple of people who are fully designated in the division. But then what we do is we draw from the rest of the division. So, to give you an example, we have the paid care advocate, who is the person who’s like leading the working group. We work together with domestic workers’ groups and with employer groups and policymakers to really think about, “Okay, what are the recommendations that this group should make to improve the lives of these workers?” But at the same time, if their recommendation is that we need to enforce the law, the laws that we have on the books, we use the rest of the enforcement staff, obviously, to do that work.
Q: Can you say a few words about how you decide who to investigate? I saw in your annual report the breakdown between directed investigations and complaint-based investigations. So how do you decide what you’re going to have your staff do there? LS: Right now, at least for the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law, we are the only body that can actually investigate those cases. There’s no private right of action in the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law. So we have to take those complaints and investigate them, because there’s no one else who can do that. We take every complaint, and if we have jurisdiction, we investigate it.
Our proactive investigation covered 40 home care agencies across New York City, and we looked at violations of not just the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law, but we also identified wage and hour violations, and violations of the NYS wage parity law. And when we find those violations, we then work closely with the New York State Department of Labor, the Attorney General’s Office, and we refer other cases to the Department of Health and the Office of Medicaid Inspector General. So we try to use our law and really think about other things, other problems that workers are facing in that industry, and how can we be a pressure point to get other agencies to really look at these issues.
We try to make room for proactive investigations, because we think that this is really the way to have the most impact in our work is to proactively look at industries in which we know there’s information showing high rates of violations of the labor law. Not always the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law, but maybe wage and hour. If an employer is not complying with wage and hour laws, they are likely not complying with Paid Safe and Sick Leave or other laws that apply in the workplace. So, we do that analysis.
Q: So you’re in constant contact, then, on cases like this, with all these different agencies, like DOL? LS: Yes, yes. And so that’s one way to really prioritize the work. For us, again, it was – it’s both in the statute that we need to be looking
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Q: So mostly small business? LS: A lot of small businesses, yes. But our consumer protection laws cover all New York City businesses. So we’re enforcing both the licensing laws and the consumer protection laws. And that’s been our work for 50 years. There’s a volume of investigations that we do in that work, and you can’t really – there’s no more I can pull from there to move over to OLPS.
at this industry, but home care agencies are also one of the industries for which we get the highest number of complaints from workers that are not getting paid sick leave, you know, their rights under that law. So that’s one industry where we’ll be going into full speed. We are still working on the initiative. Quite a few of those cases did not really get resolved yet, because we’re talking about large groups of workers. Our investigations covered 30,000 workers in the industry. So we are litigating some of those cases at OATH, which is our tribunal.
Q: It says in your report that developing policies is one of the hopes of the agency. I mean, when you think about your mandates here, it’s just a year now for some of this, but are things already coming up that you’d think, “Gee, this would sure improve if the City Council would think about this, put together a bill on this, it would really improve our work?” LS: Yes.
Q: What do you mean, “our tribunal?” Only your agency’s? LS: New York City’s tribunal. In a lot of the cases that enforcement agencies handle and investigate, we issue our final orders. But employers then have a chance to appeal that order, and they have to take it to OATH. Q: And what if OATH rules against the employer? Do they have any other right of appeal? LS: Yes. They could file an Article 78 petition.
Q: Aside from expanding your staff and budget, I mean. LS: I think one of the biggest issues that workers still face in New York City and New York State is underpayment of wages. So you have these new laws that say that now employers have to pay $15 an hour minimum wage, but that’s not the reality unless employers really feel that there’s enforcement happening. You need to really invest in enforcement in a way that makes sense.
Q: You mentioned earlier that you have a staff of 450. LS: In the agency, yes. Q: Okay. And so only 41 of those are just OLPS, then? LS: Yes.
Both to send a message out there to employers and workers that these laws are real, but also because the businesses that are already complying with the laws are going to be disadvantaged by those that don’t comply with the laws.
Q: One-tenth, less than one-tenth of the department’s staff! Do you have investigators doing consumer investigations, financial investigations? LS: Yes.
And so definitely putting enough resources in enforcement makes sense. And so, because wage and hour laws are the biggest problem for workers – if I’m not getting paid my wages, the last thing I think about is my sick day. I’m thinking more about, “I didn’t get my full week wages.” I think for us, it would be interesting to see what kind of role New York City can play in ensuring workers get paid their wages.
Q: If you have an overload of cases in OLPS, do you ask folks to use their skills there? LS: What we’ve done, to really come up with 45 lines, we’ve drawn from lines in other divisions to fill those since our budget did not increase. So we’ve used other vacancies within the agency to start filling positions at OLPS.
Now, we are not the state and federal government, so we cannot enforce the minimum wage and overtime laws. But this is why we’re thinking about the alternative dispute resolution program for domestic workers, because, you know, the state doesn’t have enough resources to devote to enforcing the laws, the labor laws that are in place in New York State, and we see a lot of gaps.
But the subject matter is just very different from the consumer protection work and the licensing work. We have another team of lawyers that does the consumer work and the licensing work. we’ve been doing this for years, we are licensing close to 80,000 businesses. And so a lot of the litigation that comes out of that comes out from us addresses noncompliance with licensing laws and regulations and we might initiate proceedings to revoke a business’ license. So, there is limited room for me to pull people from there and move them to this other division.
And there are some industries, like the domestic worker industry, where enforcement is especially difficult. We’re talking about a relationship between employers and workers where sometimes you cross the line between being an employee and being almost part of the family, so the relationship is much more difficult to regulate.
Our licenses cover more than 55 categories of businesses. It includes anything from ticket sellers – the people who sell tickets to attractions in the streets – to car washes, to laundries, to tobacco retail dealers.
And we thought about this mediation program because we think that we can offer an alternative. Especially for employment relationships where the worker is still employed, and they realize they’re not getting paid minimum wage – and maybe the employer doesn’t even know that they’re supposed to be paying $15 an hour 21
LS: Absolutely, absolutely. But I think that, because we play that role, that we don’t have the stick of enforcement, we can have the mediations that are confidential, employers can can come in, and they – if they don’t agree, they can leave. They don’t have to resolve it with us.
– offering them the opportunity to come together and to try to resolve that issue and at least fix it going forward. It’s an alternative to the enforcement that the NYS Department of Labor is supposed to be doing on a daily basis, which is, make sure that employers are paying at least minimum wage and overtime.
But right now, the enforcement that is happening is not sufficient. Whatever is happening already is not sufficient. And I’m all about thinking about what is the next thing we can try.
Q: But what is there to negotiate? I mean, they’re breaking the law. So why does ADR come into play? LS: If you ask any of the advocates who are working in this space, who work with domestic workers, they’ll tell you that the only workers that actually file a complaint or litigate their cases are those that have already left their employer. That while they’re still employed, it’s really difficult to do that.
You know, we’re not doing this alone, because I don’t believe in us doing things without having the voice of the workers in the mix. We talked to NDWA, National Domestic Workers Alliance in New York City. They’re actually across the street from us. And we said, “What do you think about this as an alternative?” It’s not as great as enforcement, but we don’t have the stick. And they said For people who are currently employed, and they want that relationship with their employer to continue, they’re never going to file a complaint. But they might be interested in this mediation option. And so We’re going to try it. We’re going to see if it works. And I think that that’s part of our role. I think we have an opportunity to fill a gap, because unfortunately, compliance is not the norm in that industry.
And then the complaints get filed at the NYS Department of Labor. And look, full disclosure, I used to be there when the domestic workers’ bill of rights came into place. It’s not easy to enforce the law. You can’t – you don’t have the authority to go door to door and say – knock on the door and say, “I want to investigate this workplace, and I want to see how many domestic workers you have, and I want to see your payroll and time cards,” which we do with other industries, or I used to do there with other industries. You could go door to door.
Q: So these are directed investigations, because nobody’s complaining, right? So you just pick a home care, and you go to the major like 40 or whatever agencies, and do you just say flat out, “We assume you’re violating the law. Let’s do ADR?” LS: There are two separate things. The home care agencies, we have the paid sick leave enforcement tool. So those were really investigations. Those were not mediations. We investigated them. It is one of the industries where we have the highest number of complaints of the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law.
So the enforcement is not easy, and when people come to file complaints, it’s usually when they’ve left the employer, and there’s less of – the employers have less of an incentive to really fix the problem. The worker is no longer there and cases can take a long time. If you ask the advocates in the industry, they’ll tell you enforcement is not really working. Let’s offer an option. Let’s figure out, could this improve workers’ rights if workers are able to come to the table with a current employer and think about the things that they want going forward? Yes, there’s a violation of the law, but we can’t enforce it, because we’re New York City. We’re not New York State.
So we have investigated 40. But we wanted to do an industry-wide look, and we chose them depending on size. We wanted to capture at least – a third of the industry, which is about 30,000 workers. But that’s fully within our investigatory powers.
Q: So, as somebody who came from the state agency that could enforce the law, what do you see as the principal limitation going to a local agency like this, where you have limitations on what you can do, because you don’t have the full authority of the state, and you also have the problem that employers can simply pick up and leave if they –
What we couldn’t do was wage and hour enforcement, but again, we referred them to agencies that are able to look at that problem. This mediation program hasn’t started yet, but this would be working very closely with domestic workers organizers who will identify themselves situations in which domestic workers come to them and say, “Yes, I know I’m not getting paid minimum wage, 22
Q: Are you going to do another annual report this year, do you think, in the fall or whatever? LS: Yes, we’re doing another one that will published early next year and will cover calendar year 2019.
but I don’t want to file a complaint, because I really like my boss, and I want to stay here.” And they will offer, “Well, DCWP has this option. Do you think your employer would be interested in that?” We can make an invitation and see if they come forward.
Q: This is pretty pioneering work you’re doing here. It’s only happening so far in a handful of cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco. It must be very challenging. LS: Yes, it’s interesting. It’s really interesting. I mean, still we have challenges. Like any new office, even though we had a small group doing the paid safe sick leave enforcement, once you start adding all these new laws, you really have to build out the office. And people don’t think about that. They think the law is in place, and you can start running and enforcing it right away. But you have to hire people, right? We had to expand hiring people, training them on the new laws, because these are new laws.
Q: And it’s totally confidential, so the worker is never identified to the employer? You just say, “We have heard ...” LS: Well, we’re still designing this model, but in this case, because it’s mediation, both parties have to know. The understanding is that the worker herself or himself decides the mediation is an option with that particular employer. Q: If they’re too scared to complain to the state DOL, wouldn’t they be scared to complain to any administrative agency, if they’re going to be identified? LS: But it’s a different thing to say, “Employer, you know, I’ve been learning about my rights. I’d be interested in sitting down with you, and the city has this free mediation program.”
Then building a case management, all the things that people don’t think about, like where are you going to save your cases? How are you going to get reports if you don’t have a system that addresses that? And we have a very old system that does some of the licensing work, but it’s not designed for lawyers to keep track of their cases, investigators, right? So there is that.
Again, we can’t do anything about those violations, if they occurred. We can’t do anything about them if it’s about wages, minimum wage, overtime, because we don’t have the authority to do anything there. And if it’s confidential, then we wouldn’t be able to disclose it to other parties.
There’s the challenge of having to do a lot of outreach on the ground, because we didn’t always have enough money to do like a full citywide campaign. And then thinking about, in this new world where people are more and more worried about coming forward and filing a complaint with a government agency, how do we then deal with the most vulnerable workers? How do we make sure we’re covering those industries where there are the higher rates of violations.
We may find that employers still don’t want to come forward with their workers and mediate their issues. I don’t know, because we haven’t tried it yet.
Q: When are you going to start trying it? LS: We are hoping early fall. That’s what we’re hoping for.
And part of that response is doing proactive investigations. And we do that across all the work in the agency, not just in OLPS, but we do it in consumer protection and other areas, being proactive, not waiting for complaints.
Q: Who’s the Director of OLPS? LS: Until just a few weeks ago, Liz Vladeck was the Director of the Office of Labor Policy and Standards. She’s now working with City Hall, and I’m in the middle of actually recruiting, doing interviews to fill that position.
In OLPS, we have a retaliation unit. Basically, we start an investigation, and we hear a complaint of retaliation, we immediately start a second-track retaliation investigation. We want to react quickly. Immediately contact the employer, and really stop that retaliation on its tracks, because that’s the worst thing, for workers to spread the word that they filed a complaint with us, and they got
So for now, the Acting Director is my First Deputy, who also comes from having worked at the State Department of Labor, and prior to that the Attorney General’s office. Her name is Sandra Abeles. And she basically had almost the same job I had at the NYS DOL after I left. 23
fired, and then no one comes, right? So we take that very seriously. We have to deal with a lot of workers and employers who speak other languages and are not fluent in English. So having all our materials translated and making sure we have language capacity on staff to really answer those questions, all of that takes a lot of time and resources.
issues, right? There are some who just don’t know what the law is. There are some who, once they get caught once, they want to fix it. They don’t want to be in trouble again. And there are others who really don’t want to. They just want to ignore the law. And that’s where you need the strongest tools, really, when employers really do not want to comply with the law.
And then there’s the challenge that everyone has, all enforcement agencies, for as far as I can tell, on collections, right? Actually once you’ve made your findings, and maybe the employer didn’t settle already and agree to pay, then you have to go through the whole litigation, and then at the end of it, the employer still doesn’t want to pay. How do you collect, right? How do you collect the money that the employers owe?
Q: Anything else that you’d want to get out there in terms of such challenges? LS: I would say that we are, as a locality that is constantly coming up with creative solutions in the law to address issues in the workplace, we’re subject to plenty of preemption challenges. For almost every law that has gotten into the books, we’ve gotten sued by the industry – the restaurant industry, the hospitality industry.
Sometimes, depending on how long it’s taken, employers may sell the business or get rid of their assets, and that’s an issue that all enforcement agencies face, right? I’ve faced that at the NYS Department of Labor. We face it with our consumer cases. So making sure collections operation is strong is something we also need to think about.
So there’s those challenges – so far we’ve been very successful at fighting them off. And then at the federal level, there are some attempts to also take away localities’ ability to enforce workplace laws. We’re always on the lookout for that. It’s one thing if the federal government wants to implement or get a paid sick leave law that is uniform that covers all workers across the country. That’s one thing. But to just say, "We don’t want the localities to do it," is a problem for us. Because we think that we’ve been successful as a city in keeping jobs and making sure that people have these basic rights in place.
Q: And that has to be in-house, or is there a City agency that will do that for you? LS: We have a very limited collections unit here. A lot of the cases actually end up going to the Law Department that then contracts out with a collections law firm. But, you know, by the time it gets there, more time has come by, and it just makes it harder to collect.
And when the small business community was up in arms, saying, “This is going to destroy us. We’re going to go out of business,” it hasn’t happened. It’s been five years already of enforcing this [Paid Safe and Sick Leave] law and it hasn’t happened. Five days of sick leave a year is really not a lot. People don’t abuse it, because you only have five days. Therefore, you’re not going to be taking them all off to go to the beach when you might get sick, or your child might get sick, in two months. We don’t see that; we don’t have complaints of abuse of the law. So for us, it’s really important that we fight off attempts at the federal level to take away our ability to enforce laws like these.
Q: The City Law Department? LS: Yes, Corporation Counsel, Law Department. Q: So if you have the staff and the time, you guys do it in-house, because that’s much faster? LS: We do a lot of the initial collections attempts. And then if we can’t collect, then we send it to the Law Department. At the state level, there are legal services organizations and coalitions that are working on passing legislation that would allow for a lien to be placed on the business earlier in the case so that – even if they want to get rid of the assets or change a corporation’s name, they can’t do it until the case is really resolved, and they make employees whole.
Oren Levin-Waldman is professor of public policy in the School for Public Affairs and Administration at Metropolitan College of New York and a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. His most recent book is Restoring the Middle Class Through Wage Policy: Arguments for a Minimum Wage (Palgrave).
Now, that will probably not address our issue here in New York City, but at least there’s an effort, a recognition at the state level that you need to do something to make sure that collections are emphasized.
Q: And that’s in the labor area at the state level? LS: Yes, yes.
Gregory DeFreitas is Professor of Economics at Hofstra University and Director, Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy.
Q: It already exists, or it’s a proposal? LS: It’s a proposal.
REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 21, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). © 2019 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University
Q: Would you want to have that power here? LS: Yes. Well, I mean, ideally, we want employers to resolve the 24
NYC Workplace Laws Enforced by OLPS Paid Safe and Sick Leave The Earned Safe and Sick Time Act requires certain employers to give their employees safe and sick leave. Employees who work 80+ hours a year at any size business or nonprofit in NYC can earn up to 40 hours of safe and sick leave each year. Employees can use leave for themselves or to help anyone they consider family for care and treatment, or to seek help or take other safety measures for any act or threat of domestic violence, unwanted sexual contact, stalking, or human trafficking. Retaliation is illegal. Fair Workweek and Fast Food Deductions Law requires fast food employers to give employees good faith estimates of when and how many hours they will work, predictable work schedules, and the opportunity to work newly available shifts before hiring new workers. Retail employers in NYC must also give employees predictable work schedules. The Fast Food Deductions Law requires these employers to honor employee requests to deduct voluntary payments from their paychecks to send to qualified nonprofits. The law does not allow contributions to labor organizations. Retaliation is illegal. Freelance Isn’t Free Law establishes and enhances protections for freelance workers, including the right to a written contract and timely and full payment. Penalties for violations of these rights include statutory damages, double damages, injunctive relief, and attorneys’ fees and costs. Retaliation is illegal. Paid Care Division Local Law 98 set up a Paid Care Division in 2016 to focus on the needs of paid care workers, such as domestic workers and home care aides (often women and immigrants) and to develop education and other resources. The Division develops policies and programs for paid care workers; conducts public outreach and information campaigns for paid care workers, employers, and care recipients; conducts and promotes research on the paid care industry; and coordinates with stakeholders to provide programming and training. Grocery Worker Retention Law requires new grocery store owners to retain employees of the previous owner for a 90-day transitional period following a change in control of the grocery store. Living and Prevailing Wage Law requires certain employers that receive at least $1 million of financial assistance from the City or a City economic development entity to pay no less than the living wage to their employees at the project site. For details see: www. comptroller.nyc.gov/nyc-wage-standards. Temporary Schedule Change Law requires employers to grant a temporary change to hours, times, or locations of work to accommodate a worker’s “personal event.” Employees have the right to two (2) temporary schedule changes per year—up to one (1) business day per request, or two (2) business days for one request. Retaliation is illegal. TO REPORT VIOLATIONS OF THE ABOVE LAWS, call the NYC complaint line: 311. Source: 2nd Annual Report on State of NYC Workers’ Rights (OLPS, 2019): App. B: nyc.gov/dca.
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BOOK REVIEW
Working Fast and Poor Here and Abroad We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages, sby Annelise Orleck (Beacon Press, 2018) Reviewed by Lusine Gazeryan
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istorian Annelise Orleck opens this book by immediately immersing readers in her central concern: the erosion of many millions of workers’ real wages, working conditions and organizing rights under the onslaught of globalization. Each chapter is rich in stories of individuals, unions, and other labor market actors in sectors as diverse as farming, hotel housekeeping, and even college teaching. Orleck is not afraid to expose wellknown giants like McDonald’s, Driscoll, Walmart, and Nike for their global labor practices. As multinational corporations keep growing in size and profits, they also grow in power, which she sees driving both their outsize impact on public policy and the negative effects of globalization on most workers. Left unchecked, their race-to-the-bottom labor strategy will drive down pay and labor standards at home as it continues outsourcing jobs to countries that have even lower minimum wages, longer work hours, and weaker safety and job protections.
But this is not a despairing book: she moves from critique to cautious optimism over policy proposals and public campaigns for paid parental leave, fair work hours, safe working conditions, and high minimum wage. She gives vibrant accounts of how these campaigns were built by diverse coalitions of fast food workers, immigrant advocates, home healthcare aides, labor unions, worker centers, Walmart employees and others. The book opens with a section titled: “Poverty Wages We’re Not Lovin’ It: Roots and Branches of a Global Uprising.” Here she describes the recent spread of extreme inequality around the world while introducing topics and recurring figures mentioned throughout the book. She introduces fast food workers from Florida, Walmart workers and the OUR Walmart union in California, and hotel maids in Rhode Island. These jobs all have sad similarities: they offer minimal or no benefits, low wages, long hours, unpredictable work schedules and an overall corrupt management system. She describes employees’ frustration within each industry, and how both organized labor and individual activists gained momentum in establishing improved workplace rights. Although workplace rights is a difficult and broad topic to address, Orleck does a succinct job of explaining applications of key labor laws. The introduction is fair, unbiased and serious, setting the tone for the rest of the book.
Orleck is well-suited to tackle such daunting issues. A professor of history at Dartmouth College, she has written five books on US working women, immigration, and labor activism. In this volume she put together immense amounts of research from 140 interviews, foundation reports, government documents, organizational websites and records, and insights from scholars of labor, globalization, transnational capitalism. Her combination of data analysis with a great storytelling approach made the book both eye-opening and interesting to read. Her clear writing style and use of so many interviews and real-life accounts seemed to be directed at everyday Americans.
Her next section, “The Rising of The Global Precariat,” explains how activist workers across different sectors organized their ideas and demands into movement building. Everyone seeks wage increases, but disagreements abound over how far to go with pay demands. While many simply wanted enough to buy food and support their families’ basic needs, bolder voices backed a seemingly unrealistic goal of $15 an hour. Another common concern: overwork. In extreme cases pregnant Walmart employees experienced miscarriages because of heavy lifting on the job. Another example is McDonalds employees clocking out and then be asked to work “off-the-clock” an additional 1-2 hours without compensation. Although she is clearly a liberal, pro-labor author, Orleck simply invites individuals to tell their story instead of asking leading questions, thereby keeping her personal opinions to
It is difficult to read this and not sympathize with the employees involved, while being angered with the employers. The people being affected by globalization, wage stagnation, and unfair labor practices are not only Cambodian garment workers and Latin American farmers, but also Americans serving meals, stocking store shelves and operating factory equipment daily. She frames the people she meets and their workplace issues in a familiar, accessible manner to help readers better understand that millions of hard-working Americans even today are significantly impacted by poverty wages.
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the side. Of course, interviewing people who are upset with their circumstances may often lead to critical views. However, the fact that so many disconnected individuals share the same narrative displays a consistency in workplace abuses that makes it unlikely a scholar like Orleck is simply handpicking information to fit her thesis.
Although there is a somber tone to the subject there are also instances where change and progress are being made in the U.S. and around the world. The book’s final section, “They Said it Was Impossible: Local Victories and Transformative Visions,” enthusiastically recounts successful protests against companies like Walmart, McDonalds, Driscoll, and even government institutions like the Supreme Court and the ICC. Among her highlighted case studies are: cities creating stable union jobs in public transit (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles), South African women creating vineyards as entrepreneurial endeavors, and lowwage activists and union supporters winning minimum wage hikes to $15/hour in states and localities now accounting for nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce. These successes prove that although the modern worker is struggling there are hard-won strides being made around the world. Globalization has amplified labor violations, but has also served as a tool to combat injustice by connecting labor activists around the world to project their voices, increase their political, community and workplace power and create change. Orleck’s message is thus ultimately a hopeful one: that mass movements can gain power to build safer, fairer work environments by countering greedy corporate interests and their political servants.
Her section on Bangladesh, source of so many Americans’ lowcost daily clothing, will feel especially personal for many readers. Titled “Garment Workers Organizing In the Age of Fast Fashion,” it describes major events in the country’s tortuous history serving the manufacturing needs of American and European retail giants. Now the second biggest garment-exporting country in the world, Bangladesh has also been the site of factory disasters like Rana Plaza that have killed thousands. Young people are routinely expected to produce about 1,000-2,000 articles of clothing for pennies a day in often rundown workplaces. Many workers do not have regular food or bathroom breaks. And all this still goes on even after two decades of anti-sweatshop clothing movements by activist college students across North America and Europe. Learning through this book that so many overworked poor people in unsafe factories are the hidden workforce of fast fashion will likely make even more sedentary readers think twice about what they may be supporting through their purchases. “No Rice Without Freedom, No Freedom Without Rice: The Global Uprising of Peasant and Farmworkers” delves into similar issues within the farming sector. This section addresses modern food crises, land grabs, and migrant labor, among other topics. Major food-growing companies have been displacing families for decades. In 2003 about 770,000 Cambodian farmers and their families were displaced to make room for rubber and sugar farms. The final section leaves the reader feeling hopeful about the future.
Lusine Gazeryan is a 2019 graduate in Economics at Hofstra University. REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 21, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). © 2019 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University
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xxxx REVIEW BOOK
America Overworked and Underpaid in No-Vacation Nation Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, by Alissa Quart (HarperCollins, 2018) Reviewed by Lindsey Parent
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hy do so many people feel as though they just can’t seem to get ahead nowadays? In Squeezed, author Alissa Quart roamed the country to seek answers to that common question, interviewing large numbers of both close contacts and strangers with varying occupations and backgrounds. Quart found that they had one thing in common: all felt drained both financially and physically, but with scant sense of progress. They worried that the so-called “American Dream” no longer applied and had simply imploded in the faces of anxious middleclass Americans. Author Quart explains that insecure jobs, outrageous childcare costs and pay flatlined by profit-centric employers have left too many Americans burdened with college debt and living paycheck to paycheck. While it has always been every parent’s dream to give their children a better life than what they had, many adults are finding that they are struggling to even achieve the standard of living that their parents once had, never mind going above and beyond that.
working-age population: the scarcity of paid parental leave and the debt load borne by college-educated Americans who are now struggling financially. Alissa Quart’s decision to start her book with the chapter title of “Inconceivable: Pregnant and Squeezed” was a great idea because it immediately grabs the reader’s attention. While Quart seems mostly of a liberal bent, the majority of Americans of all political persuasions are either experiencing or know someone dealing with the financial pressures of having children, so they can easily relate. Quart starts by describing Daniela Nanau, a woman in her thirties working for a law firm in New York City when she unexpectedly gets pregnant. Why focus on Nanau, one might reasonably ask? The author feels confident from her research that she is representative of huge numbers of other struggling Americans. Nanau explained that she had purposely put off having children because she knew how costly it would be, but mainly because she knew her career did not support the childbearing process. There are so many families across the country that feel as though they can’t afford to have children. However, this is no surprise since only 14% of American workers have paid family leave. Quart argues that the employers are not the only ones to blame. The U.S. is alone among advanced economies in its lack of a national law that requires all employers to offer paid family leave each year.
Quart, a Columbia Journalism School alumna who is now executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, has been nominated for an Emmy and a National Magazine Award and published four acclaimed books including Branded and Monetized. Her motivation in this latest was to share the common experiences that so many families, including her own, have been dealing with for years. By writing Squeezed she not only wanted to highlight those struggling financially, but also some potential solutions proposed to improve their condition.
Nanau, just like many other women, immediately upon finding out that she and her husband were expecting their first child, thought of how this would affect her career. She knew that “if she wanted to survive in the field, she couldn’t have children until her forties.” She considered hiding her pregnancy in fear of being laid off or of hurting her chances of moving up in the law firm. Eventually she decided to tell her boss that she was expecting and, sure enough, the poor treatment followed immediately. Nanau’s boss began ignoring her completely and when they did speak he said nothing but rude remarks, all because he didn’t support her decision to have a child. Eventually Nanau quit her job due to the cruel treatment she was receiving just like so many other women who shared with Quart that their pregnancies got them fired or ruined their careers. So many people wonder why this behavior is still allowed in the workplace and the truth is that there are some laws against such discrimination,
Every chapter shares a different family’s experience of living in an America where they feel the system is constantly working against them. From nurses, to lawyers, to professors, to caregivers, each chapter tells the exhausting story of just how hard people are “fighting to stay in a class that may be melting away.” Squeezed not only assures the millions of struggling Americans that they aren’t alone, but it also strives to draw policy makers’ attention to the kinds of legal and institutional changes that could transform those people’s work lives. Out of all of the topics Quart tries to cover, she gives particular attention to two issues that currently affect a large share of the U.S. 28
but they clearly aren’t enough to stop many employers’ bad behavior. She reports that pregnancy-related discrimination charges are on the rise, increasing 23 percent from 2005 to 2011.
between 2007 and 2010, and those with a Ph.D. who received assistance rose from 9,776 to 33,655.” Not only are people trying to pay off their student debt, but they are also trying to support their families and pay for their other expenses.
Quart compares U.S. policies on family leave to that of other countries like Canada and Sweden. Not only do these countries have better policies for their citizens, but almost all actually qualify to receive these benefits. “In Quebec, Canada, for instance, the state maternity and paternity leave insurance gives a parent up to 75 percent of his or her salary and covers up to either 15 or 18 continuous weeks for the mother and three to five weeks for the father.” When countries offer such incredible benefits like these to their citizens, she argues, both individual and social benefits result: workers can start a family when they desire without fear of job loss, employers gain happier, more motivated long-term employees and society reaps the resulting productivity gains and population growth. The United States now offers 12 weeks annually of paid leave to only one in seven workers. While the Family and Medical Leave Act does give 12 weeks of unpaid leave, however, “the population not covered by it will only grow, along with the rise of the Middle Precariat.”
Young college grads today often find “that their parents were more economically comfortable than they were, even though their parents often had far fewer educational attainments.” Is student debt the only reason to blame for this or is it because too many people go to college in pursuit of unrealistic goals? As terrible as it may sound, Lauren Berlant, a University of Chicago professor explains that, “the cruel optimism” that so many Americans are experiencing is that they “believe they can ‘have it all’ even when America no longer aids us in having our lives and careers add up to something.” Too many find themselves underemployed, exploited and paid far less than their skills and effort deserve. Eventually the spark that so many had when they first pursued their passion is quickly put out by the flood of student loan debt and monthly budget woes that are inevitable for these squeezed Americans. In order to help combat the problems that so many Americans are facing, Quart suggests that debt consolidation, a student debt forgiveness policy, along with paid family leave will help to alleviate the compression that so many Americans are dealing with. Quart also mentions that if there were more affordable daycare centers that parents could trust their children with then more women would be employed and less likely to put off having children. She also implies that the U.S. should implement a more generous child tax credit like those already in place in many countries. Although families can currently receive a tax credit of $2,000 per child, Quart explains that this just isn’t enough to support families who are trying to raise their children.
Quart also argues that the negative stigma in the United States behind men taking paternity leave has to change if we want to see any type of progress made. Although taking paternity leave is very common and encouraged in many other countries, it is often frowned upon in the U.S. Men typically don’t take paternity leave because they are treated differently in the workplace for it. “Many fathers do not take parental leave because they see it as a risk to their status and competitiveness at work, however in Sweden, the government has implemented incentives to make sure dads take the leave they are entitled to.” Clearly large U.S. employers can afford and the government could incentivize widespread paid family leave for both men and women. But the needed changes could come quicker if, where such leave is already offered, men felt more encouraged and protected in their careers to share leave time with their partners to help change the stigma. If we all think long term, eventually the goal would be for both mothers and fathers to take paid leave and be present for what is considered the most crucial stage of development in a child’s life.
Another suggestion Quart makes to aid squeezed Americans is better subsidized daycare across the country. The cost of decent childcare in the U.S. has become so astonishingly high, “it is currently considered a sign of social privilege.” So many families with working parents rely on childcare, yet cannot really afford to devote so much of their paychecks to it. Quart suggests a public pre-K program across the country as well as far more corporations adding their own day care facilities on their premises for employees. Both of these recommendations will help so many families who, though still self-identified as middle class, are still struggling to make ends meet.
Another major topic Quart discusses is what she calls, “HyperEducated and Poor.” She personalizes this section by focusing on Brianne Bolin a professor at Columbia College in Chicago. Her story is similar to many Americans today in their late 30’s and 40’s. Bolin explains that she thought she was making the right decision by continuing her education and going on to college to earn both a bachelors and master’s degree, yet she finds herself struggling financially. “Where did I go wrong?” seemed to be the question that she and many others asked Quart, as they tried to pay back their student loans while simultaneously being forced to rely heavily on food stamps and welfare. “In the post-crash world of today, a good education may not keep you from hovering near the poverty line.” Quart explains that, “the number of people with graduate degrees receiving food assistance or other forms of federal aid nearly tripled
Alissa Quart does a phenomenal job of touching on many different ways that Americans have become squeezed. The book is not without its flaws. In particular, one can question potential selection bias in the relatively small samples she interviews. Although she argues they represent the vast majority of Americans who are experiencing similar financial burdens, a more randomized and systematic process would improve her credibility. Her generally liberal-leaning conclusions would also carry greater weight had she more fully explored opposing points of view – on both the left and right. 29
The solution with which Quart chose to end her book was more of a mindset shift that all of us can make as squeezed Americans. She stressed the importance of, first, understanding that you aren’t alone in this situation and, second, that you have to stop blaming yourself because it’s not necessarily the decisions you made that got you here, but rather a system that is constantly working against you. While we continue to make these shifts in our thinking, educate our children and strive to improve their future work life prospects, it is also essential to fight for remedial action from corporations and our political leaders. From history we know that the best chance for such action to succeed comes when there are popular movements of concerned citizens struggling together for social change.
Lindsey Parent is a 2019 graduate in Management, with an Economics minor, at Hofstra University. REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 21, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). © 2019 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University
CALL FOR PAPERS The Regional Labor Review, a refereed multidisciplinary journal now entering its 21st year of publication, invites submissions of original articles on a range of subjects that we hope to explore in upcoming issues. These include the following: v v v v v v v v v
Young Workers in Gig Economy Jobs Death of the Affordable Care Act? How Will New Yorkers Be Affected? Minimum wage and living wage policy impacts Immigrant workers: their impacts on local industries and on unionization Racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities in earnings and occupational status Case studies of workplace privacy issues & sexual harassment Labor Law: Case studies of recent influential cases with broad implications Union organizing successes and failures: recent case studies of a specific industry or a large employer Labor History of New York City & its metropolitan region in the 19th and/or 20th centuries
We welcome articles on these issues in a national and international context, so long as their relevance to New York workers is made clear. Articles should be 2,000-7,000 words in length and written in a clear style, without academic jargon, and accessible to a broad audience. All text, tables, charts, and references should be consistent with earlier issues of RLR (see our Style Sheet, available online at: www.hofstra.edu/cld). Three print copies should be submitted along with a PC diskette copy (formatted in Word for Windows). Manuscripts can only be returned if a self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed. Copyright can revert to author upon publication. Please send papers or article proposals to: Regional Labor Review 200 Barnard Hall 104 Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 Or email to: laborstudies@hofstra.edu. For a sample of recent articles, email us for a free sample of our latest issue and visit our archive of past articles on the website: www.hofstra.edu/cld.
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BOOK REVIEW
Tech Brogrammers in the #MeToo Era: Meritocracy or Male Mafia? Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley, by Emily Chang (Portfolio, 2018) Reviewed by Kimberly Lum
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mily Chang is one of the country’s best-known tech journalists and host of the daily television show Bloomberg Technology. Since it debuted in 2011, the San-Francisco-based program has showcased Chang’s industry analysis and interviews with most of nearby Silicon Valley’s high-tech leadership. With such a highprofile author, publication of her industry expose’ Brotopia was sure to garner immediate attention. But far from being just another glossy insider account of the billionaire nerdocracy, it is instead a wellwritten look at the still-wide gender disparities in the computer and telecom industries. It gives an overview of the history of their employment trends, documenting the evolution of the idea of the “ideal programmer,” as well as the rise of the concept of meritocracy in the hiring and promotion process. While the book mostly succeeds in scrutinizing the gender hypocrisies of Silicon Valley, this reader felt that it is in places guilty of a few unfounded gender assumptions of its own.
The famed “Paypal Mafia” refers to the initial founders and key members who made their fortune through the creation and selling of Paypal. These members have gone on to start their own projects and are known for either hiring their friends or others within the Paypal Mafia circle into top positions, or have them invest in their projects. Brotopia addresses the fact that the concept of meritocracy itself is flawed, since a person’s achievements could easily have been bolstered by privilege. Examples include the many CEOs and top executives that came from upper-middle class families and attended Ivy League and a few other elite universities. There’s also the factor of being at the right place at the right time. One surprise for me while reading Brotopia was its speculation that a contributing factor of the Dot-Com Bust was that there were very few women working in the industry at the time. Chang writes that, “But if investors’ love affair with bro style helped fuel the boom - and it did – it’s fair to ask, if more tech leaders of the 1990s had been women, could they have helped avoid the bust, or mitigated it?” (38). While there’s some tangential evidence – like the fact that Google, with slightly more equal representation in upper management, fared better in the years during and after the Dot-Com Bust – her speculation makes some stereotypical assumptions about the differences between men and women that encompass a larger part of the book.
A best-seller named one of the “Best Books of 2018” by the Financial Times, Brotopia begins by illuminating the gender dynamics of the early history of computers. From the 1940s to the 1960s, computer programming was seen as a feminine job due to its association with tedious manual labor and typing skills. However, the 1980s saw the rise of the antisocial computer nerd stereotype that began excluding women from the computer science profession since employers believed this personality type would produce better work over others. What perpetuated this stereotype was the Cannon-Perry personality test, which argued that people with low social skills and a high propensity towards puzzle solving would make the best programmers. Many companies began screening for these traits to the detriment of others and this, Brotopia argues, is what began the exclusion of women in the computer science sector, since the combined traits of liking puzzles and a dislike for communicating are much more common in males.
While Chang overall does a great job advocating for women in the computer industry, she makes questionable assumptions on how women work and the traits most tend to have. Throughout the book, she assumes that women work better with people, are more willing to collaborate and compromise, and have a less combative management style. While these are ingrained into our social unconscious, and women are largely socialized to have these traits, it’s presumptuous to assume that all women will have these traits in the workplace and especially in positions of power since there’s so little precedent for women in upper management compared to men in the first place. A true test of such assumptions may only come when and if women claim far greater representation on corporate boards and in executive suites than their recent efforts have won them so far.
As the computer industry expanded dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s, the antisocial nerd stereotype was replaced with the hyperconfident “brogrammer”. This further discouraged women both with the perception that this personality type would be more successful, and the kind of workplace environment this personality tends to breed. Chang mainly attributes this shift to the brief popularity of software company Trilogy, which perpetuated a cult-like culture of long work hours followed by extravagant parties, and Steve Jobs of Apple, who presented himself as a confident, charismatic leader.
Kimberly Lum is a junior drama major at Hofstra University.
Another major theme throughout the book is the concept of meritocracy. Silicon Valley moguls claim that they hire based on merit, but often the truth is that they really hire based on nepotism.
REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 21, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). © 2019 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University
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Labor Studies at Hofstra University
Earn a Hofstra University Certificate in Labor Studies The world of work is rapidly changing, as are modern relationships among workers, between workers and labor unions, and between labor and management. Labor Studies is an interdisciplinary program designed to offer students up-to-date understanding of today’s workplace in an international context. The valuable skills acquired will prove useful in careers in labor unions, government, labor law, education, and human resource management. The Hofstra Certificate in Labor Studies is a special, affordable offering designed for adults who are not presently enrolled as full-time degree-seeking Hofstra undergraduates, but who instead wish only to take 1 or 2 courses per semester in a focused program of study on labor-management relations, union organization and operations, and related legal and socioeconomic issues. The Certificate is granted after successful completion of 5 required courses (Introduction to Labor Studies; Legal Rights At Work; Collective Bargaining; & Labor Economics; Public Speaking) and 1 elective .
Advantages: v v v v
Outstanding courses taught by a distinguished full-time faculty Regularly scheduled late afternoon and evening undergraduate courses. Undergraduate B.A. degree credit option available for the normal tuition. Highly regarded specific training of value in many careers.
HOW to REGISTER REGISTRATION IS EASY: By Telephone: if you wish, you may register using a major credit card by calling: tel 516/463-7200; Email ce@hofstra.edu By Internet: download a reg. form from the web site: www.hofstra.edu/ce. Cost: Only for this special non-credit certificate, course tuition is just $450. Courses may be taken for credit at the standard rate. For information on the certificate program. For more information on the program, email laborstudies@hofstra.edu, or visit our website: www.hofstra.edu/laborstudies
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Public Speaking
FALL SEMESTER 2019 • 4-WEEK EVENING COURSE Wednesdays, 6:15-8:15 p.m.
LABOR STUDIES CERTIFICATE Course #H1240 4 weeks: Oct. 2-Oct. 23, 2019 Prof. MaryAnne Trasciatti This course is one of just 6 courses needed to be awarded a Hofstra Certificate in Labor Studies. Develop effective communication skills through a variety of communicative experiences. Emphasis on critical thinking, listening, and the art of criticism. Practice in speech composition and delivery, stressing principles of clarity, interest, and audience analysis. Speeches to inform and to persuade are stressed. Prerequisite: None. The professor, Dr. Mary Anne Trasciatti is Associate Prof. of Rhetoric and director of the Hofstra Labor Studies Program at Hofstra. Enrollment for this course on a noncredit basis costs $450. Registration is easy: contact Hofstra’s Continuing Education School: tel 516/463-7200; Email ce@hofstra.edu. Pre-requisites: None. Questions on course content? Email the professor at: Mary.Anne.Trasciatti@hofstra.edu
For more information, call or email: Labor Studies Office Tel: 516/463-5427 Or visit our website: www.hofstra.edu/laborstudies
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CALENDAR
Local & National Events: Spring-Summer 2019 NY METRO March 28 – “Equal PayDay 2019.” Featured speakers are Lynda Perdomo-Ayala (Deputy Commissioner, Suffolk Co. Human Rights Commission) and Alexandra Howell (Employment Lawyer). Facilitator: Dr. Cindy Bogard, Hofstra Sociology Professor. At 11am–12:30 pm in the Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater (Axinn Library, 1st floor), Hofstra U. Join the discussion in this free annual event presented by Hofstra’s Labor Studies and Women’s Studies Programs. For more information, visit: hofstra. edu/laborstudies or e-mail questions to laborstudies@hofstra.edu. May 1 – “Mayday At The Movies: Comedy & Tragedy At Work,” the 18th annual labor film festival at Hofstra, showcases new and classic movies on work and working people's lives. At 12:50 – 6 pm in the Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Student Center, Hofstra U. Free admission, no reservations. For a film schedule, visit www.hofstra.edu/laborstudies. May 3 – Labor & Employment Relations Association of Long Island Annual Conference. Starts 9 am, at Tam O’Shanter Club, Old Brookville, NY. Panels and scholarships awarded to top Labor Studies students. For info. call: 516/746-9307, or visit: www. lilera.org. June 19 – Labor & Employment Relations Association of Long Island Meeting. Starts 6 pm at Davenport Press, Mineola, NY. For info. call: 516/746-9307, or visit: www.lilera.org. July 27-31 – 44th annual Northeast UALE Summer School for Union Women. Five-day residential program of trainings and events at Hofstra U., Hempstead, NY. Co-sponsored by CUNY School of Labor & Urban Studies. For info., see the United Assoc. for Labor Education website: www.uale.org and contact Mary.Anne.Trasciatti@hofstra.edu Sept. 7 – Labor Day Parade. Starts at 10 am., Fifth Avenue and 44th Street, Manhattan. For info., see www.nycclc.org.
NATIONAL June 13-16 – Labor & Employment Relations Assoc. (LERA) 71st Annual Meeting, "Ahead of the Curve: Technology and the New Workforce,” at Westin Downtown Hotel, in Cleveland, OH. For info. visit www.leraweb.org.
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RELEASE DATES FOR MONTHLY LABOR MARKET INDICATORS
NATIONAL
REGIONAL
2019 RELEASE DATE
U.S. Employment & Unemployment
Job Openings & Turnover
Real Earnings
NYC/LI Metro Jobs Count
NYC/LI Metro Unemployment
MAY
3
7
10
16
21
JUNE
7
10
12
20
25
JULY
5
9
11
18
23
AUGUST
2
6
13
15
20
SEPTEMBER
6
10
12
19
24
OCTOBER
4
9
10
17
22
Sources: National Statistics – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): The Employment Situation; Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT); & Real Earning: http://www.bls.gov NY State and Local Statistics – NY State Dept. of Labor: Monthly Press Release. http://www.labor.state.ny.us.
NOTE TO READERS: If you know of upcoming labor-related meetings or conferences, collective bargaining contract expirations or renewals, or other events you would like considered for our next Calendar, please send us a brief description, together with the time, place, contact person, and their telephone number. Either fax this information, with a cover sheet addressed to Regional Labor Review, to fax # 516-463-6519; or email us at: laborstudies@hofstra.edu.
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Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy 104 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549
The Center for the Study of Labor & Democracy, publisher of the Regional Labor Review, is a research institute that aims to contribute to public education and debate about important labor issues. CLD pursues a distinctively interdisciplinary approach to labor problems and institutions, extending from the local Long Island and New York City labor markets to the national and global economies. This approach is designed to both inform and stimulate discussion of policy alternatives that promote sustainable improvements in living standards, fairness in economic opportunities, and democratic decision-making processes throughout the world. The Center’s Main Activities Include: v sponsorship of original research projects v designing and implementing surveys v organizing lectures, workshops, seminars, debates, and conferences v publication of the Regional Labor Review and a working papers series v hosting visiting international scholars v maintaining an active web site on the Internet: http://www.hofstra.edu/cld v serving as a resource center for and active liaison between students, researchers, community and labor organizations, employers, and government officials
Director & Research Associates Greg DeFreitas, (CLD Director), PhD. in Economics, Columbia University. Debra Comer, PhD. in Organizational Behavior, Yale University. Niev Duffy, PhD. in Economics, New York University. Robert Guttmann, PhD. in Economics, University of London. Sharryn Kasmir, PhD. in Anthropology, City University of New York. Cheryl R. Lehman, PhD in Accounting, New York University. Martin Melkonian, M.S. in Economics, New School for Social Research. Bhaswati Sengupta, Ph.D. in Economics, North Carolina State University Marc Silver, PhD. in Sociology, Columbia University. Lonnie Stevans, PhD. in Economics and Statistics, Oklahoma State University. Martha Weisel, JD., St. John’s University James Wiley, PhD. in Geography, Rutgers University
Board of Advisors Robert Archer, Senior Partner, Archer, Byington, Glennon & Levine Elaine Bernard, Director, Trade Union Program, Harvard University. Susan Borenstein, Executive Director, UI Appeal Board, NYS Dept. of Labor Roger Clayman, Executive Director, Long Island Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) Benjamin Coriat, Director, CREI, University of Paris. Drucilla Cornell, Professor of Law and Political Science, Rutgers University. John Coverdale, Director, Nassau County, New York State United Teachers Robert Dow, Former Commissioner of Labor, Suffolk Co., NY John Durso, President, RWDSU/UFCW Local 338 & President, Long Island Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) Nicholas LaMorte, Regional President, Civil Service Employees Association Adriana Marshall, Senior Fellow, National Research Council of Argentina, Buenos Aires. Ray Marshall, Former U.S. Secretary of Labor and University Professor, University of Texas. Lawrence Mishel, President, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. Cathy Ruckelshaus, Co-Director, National Employment Law Project Cheryl Smyler-George, Executive Board, Women's Fund of Long Island Center for the Edward Wolff, Professor of Economics, New York University. Study of Labor & Democracy Michael Zweig, Professor of Economics, SUNY Stony Brook 200 Barnard Hall,
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