Alex Rowell Archives - Talk Poverty https://talkpoverty.org/person/alex-rowell/ Real People. Real Stories. Real Solutions. Mon, 05 Mar 2018 22:24:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://cdn.talkpoverty.org/content/uploads/2016/02/29205224/tp-logo.png Alex Rowell Archives - Talk Poverty https://talkpoverty.org/person/alex-rowell/ 32 32 Trump Has Already Broken All of the Promises He Made to Workers During the State of the Union https://talkpoverty.org/2018/01/31/trump-already-broken-promises-made-workers-state-union/ Wed, 31 Jan 2018 14:56:19 +0000 https://talkpoverty.org/?p=25120 Last night, President Donald Trump gave his first official State of the Union speech. The script was as expected: He bragged about his tax bill, repeated some promises about infrastructure, and promoted his administration’s latest wish list of anti-immigrant policies. He even claimed to be concerned for “America’s struggling workers.” But a lot was conspicuously absent from the speech—including all the ways his administration has harmed those very workers.

When he was a candidate, Trump pledged to turn the Republican Party into a “worker’s party.” He claimed that each of his policy decisions would hinge on whether it creates “more jobs and better wages for Americans” and promised to side with workers instead of “special interests” and the “financial elite.” But throughout his first year, he sided with corporations and the wealthy instead.

In 2017, Trump used his executive authority to pare down worker safety protections, make it harder for workers to receive the pay they earned, and hamstring their ability to collectively bargain for decent wages and benefits. His administration took action to weaken mine inspection rules, undermine the quality and pay of apprenticeship programs, and delay and roll back rules that will prevent construction and agricultural workers from being exposed to toxic chemicals.

Under Trump’s watch, the Department of Labor has signaled that it will use its regulatory power to roll back overtime coverage and protections for millions of workers and allow companies to legally confiscate employees’ tips. It withdrew guidance that held corporations accountable for wage theft. And the National Labor Relations Board is trying to slow the process for workers to request a union election.

Already, Trump’s agency appointees overturned a 2015 precedent that protected workers’ rights to bargain with companies that influence their workplaces. These so-called “joint-employer” protections are increasingly important since large corporations are more often relying on temporary staffing agencies, labor subcontractors, and franchises to supply their labor force. Now corporate interests are pushing even more extreme legislation: A bill to roll back protections for minimum wage, overtime, and child labor violations by joint employers has already passed the House. A president who cares about the rights of workers would fight hard against such a proposal.

Trump’s war on workers extends to the public sector as well. The Trump administration has backed union opponents that want to eliminate fair-share fees in the public sector, attempting to overturn a 40-year-old Supreme Court precedent and weaken public sector unions. And last night, he promised to make it easier for political appointees to fire federal public sector employees.

Just like last year’s joint address to Congress, the president promised last night to create jobs with a new infrastructure program. However, his fiscal year 2018 budget shows that this “new plan” is a shell game, since it would be paid for in part by cutting $138 billion from the Highway Trust Fund, which currently funds highway and public transportation projects across the United States, and eliminating existing job-creating infrastructure programs like TIGER and New Starts grants.

And while Trump touted his infrastructure plan, he didn’t guarantee that the jobs created will actually support a family. While the federal government has upheld Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards for nearly 90 years to ensure that construction jobs funded through federal spending provide decent wages, many on the right are pressuring the administration to leave out these protections. Trump failed to mention them last night. If the president really wants to help workers, he should guarantee that all jobs created by the infrastructure package include the prevailing wage protections and pay at least $15 per hour, and expand contracting job quality protections broadly to ensure that all government spending creates well-paying jobs for workers.

The president also boasted about the performance of the U.S. stock market and the benefits of his tax cut bill. Yet neither today’s market performance nor the tax bill will make substantial, long-term improvements in the lives of everyday Americans. The run-up in stock market value predominantly benefits the rich, as 80 percent of U.S. stock value is held by the wealthiest 10 percent of households. Meanwhile, despite Trump’s false claim that “we are finally seeing rising wages,” the average wage of production and non-supervisory workers rose by only four cents in 2017 when adjusted for inflation—a growth rate of just 0.17 percent, below the last four years of wage growth.  And the tax bill—which Trump previously justified by saying working- and middle-class taxpayers would “receive the biggest benefit – it won’t even be close”—in fact gives the most to the richest taxpayers. This year, taxpayers making over $1 million will bring home a tax cut 100 times larger than the average tax cut for families in the bottom 80 percent by income. And in 2027, once individual tax cuts expire, nearly 92 million families making less than $200,000 annually will be paying more in taxes.

Viewers also heard Trump boast about one-time bonuses from companies seeking favor with the administration. However, the fact that some of these companies laid off thousands of workers as they were announcing the bonuses failed to make it to the presidential teleprompter.

Trump’s claims during last night’s speech can’t hide the truth: Month after month, the Trump administration took action to benefit wealthy donors instead of working people. From denying overtime protections for millions of Americans, to raising health insurance premiums, to weakening safety protections for workers, he has continually failed to stand up for those he claims to support. His pledge to lead a new “worker’s party” was a bait-and-switch, and he should be held accountable for this failure.

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Why Conservatives’ Plans for Pregnancy 401(k)s Fall Short https://talkpoverty.org/2016/04/21/conservatives-plan-pregnancy-401ks-falls-short/ Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:10:30 +0000 https://talkpoverty.org/?p=15724 Eighty-seven percent of workers lack paid family leave, including the vast majority of low-income workers. Fortunately, some conservatives have offered a bold new solution: pregnancy IRAs.

That’s right. In an apparent attempt to cement the United States’ status as the last industrialized nation on Earth without paid family leave, the Independent Women’s Forum proposed a system of Personal Care Accounts (PCAs) in which workers would save for their own paid leave based on the same 401(k) model that has left millions at risk of an insecure retirement.

The proposal would, of course, place the burden on individuals to save for their time off during the lowest-earning years of their lives. As Jeffrey Hayes from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research explains, the fact that women have kids early in their life means that there is very little time for parents’ savings to compound—limiting the main benefit of tax-free savings accounts as well as the savings of most people who aren’t already in the privileged position of being able to take time off.

And, there are other reasons why this proposal pales in comparison to existing plans to guarantee paid family leave.

“Personal Care Accounts” would leave out many young parents

The PCA is modeled after tax-exempt savings accounts such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and 401(k)s. These savings vehicles are supposed to make it easier to accumulate wealth by allowing workers to defer paying taxes on contributions from themselves and their employer. Unfortunately, over two-thirds of 401(k) tax benefits go to the top 20 percent of households and most low-income households—the ones most unlikely to have paid leave—do not have access to a retirement account at work.  Notably, the IWF is also opposed to requiring employers to provide retirement benefits, indicating that their commitment to access is about as robust as our current paid leave laws.

The PCA would actually help even fewer people than does the 401(k) since younger workers have less money to save and are in a lower tax bracket, which means they benefit less from deferring taxes than older households. Indeed, the median income of a household headed by individuals between the ages of 25-34 is just $53,000 compared to $84,000 for 45-54 year olds. Given their lower incomes, it is no surprise that young adults have not been able to build very much wealth: the median young household actually has saved $0 for retirement. And so, at a time when half of all households say they could not come up with $400 for a financial emergency without selling assets or borrowing money, it is not credible to claim that young people should save for their paid leave—which they may similarly need unexpectedly—in yet another account.

Further limiting access, in order to use the PCA, a worker would have to have access to unpaid time off at work. However, the Family and Medical Leave Act—the current law that guarantees job-protected, unpaid time off—fails to cover about 40 percent of workers.

The likely use of PCAs? Increasing the limit on tax-free savings for the rich.

Low- and moderate-income households already pay little in federal taxes because of their low incomes: the bottom three quintiles of families with children pay an average of just $3,700 per year in individual and payroll taxes combined. So they don’t have much to gain from tax-free savings.

But, there is one group that does indeed stand to benefit from the use of PCAs: the rich. A saver in the top tax bracket would avoid paying about 40 cents in federal income taxes for every dollar they contribute—a huge subsidy from the government. PCAs would simply increase the number of accounts that well-off Americans can use to reduce their tax burden—after maxing out their 401(k), IRA, and health savings account, they would be able to stow away another $5,000 tax-free per year. The IWF did cap PCAs at $30,000—roughly two years of working full-time at the federal minimum wage—to limit the amount of sheltered income. But that means the plan will allow wealthy individuals to accumulate an additional $30,000 in tax-sheltered savings—or $60,000 per couple—resulting in less revenue for government services that would benefit the very low-income people left out in the cold under this policy proposal.

IWF itself doesn’t think PCAs will do the job

Strikingly, IWF itself implicitly admits that its proposal of tax-deferred saving would not be enough for working women by saying that wealthy individuals and corporations could fund PCAs out of charity. The report says:

“Additionally, non-profits could be established by generous individuals as well as larger corporations as part of their social corporate responsibility efforts to help set up and fund PCAs for lower income workers, in order to help provide leave benefits for those facing the biggest financial challenges. Many generous individuals and foundations are interested in helping people during times of childbirth or illness and would support such a cause.”

In other words, IWF is counting on a magical change in corporate and philanthropic behavior to pay for parental leave. Take retirement as an example. Although middle-class workers are facing a retirement crisis, there is no sign that corporations have decided to fill empty 401(k)s with their social responsibility funds. Surely, nothing will stop these same generous individuals and larger corporations from stepping up to fund paid leave for lower-income workers today.

To be sure, making it easier for Americans to save for the future is very important.  But when it comes to providing paid leave, there are much better solutions than hoping that individuals save enough during the lowest-earning years of their lives to cover their time off. Policies put forward by progressive members of Congress would substantially increase access to paid family and medical leave, instead of just giving yet another tax break to those who can already afford to save. It’s well past time to ensure that all Americans, no matter where they live—or how much they’re able to save—are able to take time off to care for their families.

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