Corruption Takes a Toll in Bell Progressives know government can be a powerful force for good in people’s lives. So it’s particularly devastating when the people charged with upholding the public trust — local officials with the potential to improve the lives of their constituents — instead betray the public. The year’s most notorious case …
Denver Sparks Parental Involvement En Espanol The experts agree: parental involvement has strong positive effects on students’ achievement in school. When parents are engaged with their child’s education, attendance improves, grades and test scores go up, and graduation rates rise. But how can school districts involve parents who don’t speak English? In Denver, where three …
It’s the city’s ninth round of budget cuts in three fiscal years, and the most brutal. Mayor Bloomberg calls for 6,201 layoffs of public workers in the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years. Instead of responding at our firehouses, serving our frail elderly, and helping job-seekers perfect their resumes on the library computer, former New York …
Should we tear down the city’s middle class? Or work to turn lousy jobs into good ones? That’s the policy choice facing New York’s city and state leaders. So far, their decisions aren’t encouraging: for years New York has failed to use its economic development programs to promote the creation of good, family-supporting jobs. Now …
New York’s Lousy Jobs (And How We Can Make Them Better) Read More »
It’s difficult to imagine anything more basic to a free economy than the right of an employee to be paid for his or her work. Yet this fundamental right is violated in New York’s low-wage industries as a matter of routine. Research from the National Employment Law Project concludes that a fifth of the city’s …
As New York continues to waver on enacting overwhelmingly popular legislation that would guarantee working people the right to earn paid sick time, other cities are catching up fast. Consider Philadelphia, where I had the opportunity to attend an event on earned paid sick leave yesterday. Spurred by advocates from PathWays PA, Women’s Way and …
A Race Between Philly and NYC on Paid Sick Leave? Read More »
Last week, the New York Times reported on Library Systems & Services, a private, for-profit company that an increasing number of towns are contracting to take over their local public libraries. The company pares budgets and turns a profit by, among others things, replacing long-term employees with those who will “work.” In the article, CEO …
Keeping it Public (If the Libraries Don’t Sway You, the Blazing House Might) Read More »
Talk to a working New Yorker, and the odds are one in four that she belongs to a union. That’s a rate of union membership more than twice as high as the country as a whole, note CUNY professor Ruth Milkman and graduate student Laura Braslow in their new study, “The State of the Unions: …
Why the State of New York’s Unions Should Concern Us All Read More »
Too often when economic times get tough, scapegoats are found in the wrong places. Wall Street greed and double-dealing sparked much of the nation’s recent near-financial collapse, yet many in the chattering classes instead are attacking public employees for this rolling recession. Economist Dean Baker puts the situation in perspective: Fifteen million people are not out of …
(Many people view Labor Day as just another day off from work, the end of summer, or a fine day for a barbecue. We think that it’s a holiday with a rich history, and an excellent occasion to examine what workers, and workers rights activism, means to this country. Our Taking Back Labor Day posts …
Obama’s Not Alone: Inviting Cities to the Labor Day Barbecue Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
