As I noted in my previous post, even before the winds died down in his home state, Oklahoma  Republican Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that additional disaster relief approved by Congress must be “paid for” by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. Coburn even defended his insistence on further slashing the federal budget to pay for emergency aid by invoking the children pulled from the rubble of two schools in Moore, OK.

The truth is, the federal government currently has about $11.6 billion in disaster aid relief. So, Oklahoma will likely get the disaster relief it needs, without further cuts to offset federal spending on recovery and rebuilding. But if Coburn sincerely believes this kind of spending should be “paid for” with cuts elsewhere, he can start in his own state.

Here are a couple of ideas.

Oil Subsidies

Oil is a huge part of Oklahoma’s economy. In fact, the energy sector accounts for 9.5 percent of Oklahoma’s gross state product, and 4.6 percent of the state’s non-farm labor force. It’s also an important source of revenue that funds everything from education to transportation in Oklahoma.

However, by the time you factor in tax breaks the state gives to the industry, big oil pays almost no state taxes in Oklahoma. According to the Oklahoma Policy institute, that’s about $645 million in tax breaks and rebates.

The oil and gas industry is unquestionably vital to Oklahoma’s economy. The energy sector accounts for nearly 9.5 percent of Oklahoma’s gross state product and employs 4.6 percent of the state’s nonfarm labor force.1 Although the state economy has diversified to some extent since the oil bust of the 1980s, our economic prosperity remains closely tied to the fortunes of the energy industry.

Revenue from oil and gas production is also a vital component of the state’s tax system. It provides the funding to educate our children, protect our communities, maintain our transportation grid, and assist those in need. Oklahoma assesses a 7 percent gross production tax on oil and gas extraction, except when prices fall below a certain floor. However, several production methods, including horizontal drilling and deep-well drilling, benefit from tax rebates and credits that lower the tax rate to just 1 percent for horizontally-drilled wells and 4 percent for deep wells.

These tax breaks were enacted when these drilling techniques were new and relatively risky. Today they are standard industry practice with far fewer risks. As a result, oil and gas production has shifted increasingly towards horizontal and deep well drilling, and the cost of these tax breaks has skyrocketed.

The state paid out or accrued $645 million in tax rebates and credits to the industry over the latest 3-year period (FY 2010 – FY 2012). Most of the credits – $537 million – went to producers of horizontal wells. Without legislative action to change course, the cost of these credits will continue to grow exponentially in coming years, reducing the resources available to fund core public services.

Cost was cited as one reason why so few homes and schools in the areas it hardest by the tornado had no storm shelters or safe rooms. The mayor of Moore, OK said that a small, sunken shelter might coast about $4,000. So, Oklahoma has given the oil industry enough in tax breaks to but over 160,000 such shelters.

Farm Subsidies

In 2010, about 27,000 people collected $81 million in farm subsidies as direct payments. Most collected less than $1,000, but six farms received more than $100,000. It’s probably a safe bet that Oklahoma legislators who rail against spending — but collect millions of dollars from the federal government — got some of the biggest checks from the government.

Roughly two dozen state lawmakers – some who have railed against government spending – have collected federal farm subsidies in recent years, either directly or through payments to spouses, a Tulsa World investigation found.

Some legislators who received payments are among the largest subsidy recipients in their communities. Others are not primarily farmers, and instead work as doctors or attorneys.

At least three state legislators apparently violated Oklahoma law by failing to report the payments to the Ethics Commission, according to statements of financial interest.

The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, have received a combination of crop, disaster and conservation subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

… The USDA paid at least 22 Oklahoma lawmakers or their spouses a total of $3.8 million since the mid-1990s, the World found.

That $3.8 million is another 950 or so tornado shelters, by the way. And since Oklahoma farmers are willing to take some some federal cuts, why not take them up on it?

This is what we came up with after just a bit of research today. Digging deeper might turn up even more.

Republicans have. How much disaster aid could these cuts pay for? It’s a moot question where Republicans are concerned.  The GOP would rather coddle the rich and take food stamps away from 2 million Americans — or cancel subsidized school lunches for 200,000 low-income children, and cancel unemployment insurance for millions of Americans.

Republicans like Tom Coburn would rather tax the poor and cut away the safety net — ostensibly to address a deficit that has already shrunk considerably since the Bush era — than ask the 1 percent, and corporate “people” the oil industry, to pay their share of taxes, which would be more than enough to offset or “pay for” disaster relief and then some.

Republicans would have us believe that American can’t afford to offer relief to those victimized by disaster, and aid poor, feed the hungry, help the jobless, heal the sick, etc. Republicans want Americans to believe we have to choose between these things; that in order to do one we must do less of the other.

In a sense, Sen. Corburn does have point, there are some things we could benefit from cutting, right in Coburn’s state.

President Obama has promised Oklahoma “everything that it needs right away” to begin the process of recovering and rebuilding, after the massive tornado touched down in the state on Monday, devastating the cities of Monroe and Newcastle. Already hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Association employees are the ground in Oklahoma, and millions of dollars in federal disaster relief will almost certainly follow. Oklahoma will recover.

But the debate in Washington is a reminder that we’re all threatened by a masssive, man-made disaster called sequestration, that could make the next natural disaster even worse.

Washington’s repsonse to the tornado in Oklahoma was twofold. President Obama expressed the nation’s sympathy and support for Oklahoman’s touched by the diaster and promised that the state would get “everything that it needs” to recover and rebuild. By Tuesday, more than 300 FEMA employees were on the ground in Olkahoma.

The winds had barely died down in Oklahoma when the hot air started flowing back in Washington. Even as rescuers began the delecate work picking throuh the rubble in search of survivors, Republicans in Congress were already talking cuts, and insisting that relief disaster relief for Oklahoma come at the cost of cuts elsewhere. And none other than Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn kicked off the grousing.

But although political leaders of both parties expressed sympathy for the victims, it took only hours for Washington to face off over the possible cost of repairing the devastation and how it would be paid. For the moment, it was a strictly hypothetical debate, since the government already has $11.6 billion available in a disaster relief fund. But it underscored the fact that even national tragedy does not always bring the capital together.

An Oklahoma senator, Tom Coburn, a Republican who is one of the most relentless budget hawks in Congress, kicked off the touchy dispute by saying that any additional disaster relief appropriated by Congress would have to be paid for by cutting other areas of the federal budget.

Some Republicans rushed to his defense, with Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin saying Mr. Coburn’s actions demonstrated “real leadership.”

At least Coburn is consistent. Earlier this year, Coburn and several other Oklahoma Republicans opposed disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy victims, insisting that the aid be “paid for” with cuts in other areas of the federal budget.

But where can cuts be made that, in the context of the sequester’s massive across-the-board cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, won’t be equally disastrous?

As it stands now, the sequester has cut deeply enough into disaster relief and preparedness, to put the government’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to natural disasters and emergencies at risk.

Due to the sequester, FEMA will lose $1 billion from its budget this year alone. Disaster relief takes the biggest hit, with $560 million cut. Another $100 million is slashed from state and local grants. Smaller programs are not spared. Funding to help state and local communities prepare for disaster is cut by $3 million under sequestration, and another $1.9 million is cut from funding for transportation and infrastructure repair.

Meanwhile, FEMA will pay out $10.8 billion in relief to storm victims this year, leaving it with just $2.5 billion in relief funding for the rest of the year. The government has $11.6 billion in a disaster relief fund. So Oklahoma will get what it needs. But if more disasters tax available funds, Congress may have to vote on additional disaster relief. And in this Congress that means more Republican hostage-taking, and relief bills loaded with all kinds of amendments.

Meanwhile, FEMA may have to respond to sequester by making life and work harder or employees like the 300 or so now helping Oklahoma’s tornado victims. Reducing hiring, hiring freezes, and the elimination of comp. time and overtime could leave FEMA with an over-stretched, underpaid workforce responding in an increasing number of natural disasters.

Things aren’t much better on the preparation side of the equation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the National Weather Service and other weather detection programs has been targeted for cuts. Just like the GOP has tried to gut FEMA ever since Hurricane Katrina, Republicans targeted the National Weather Service for  cuts after the 2010 elections. (Right after the agency played a crucial role in warning the West coast about the tsunami in Japan.) The sequester cuts the NOAA budget by 8.2 percent, including $266 million in cuts to crucial programs that fund the agencies satellite programs. 

Strapped for cash, the NOAA has implemented hiring freezes. As a result, the agencies vacancy rate has tripled in the past two years. There are now more than 200 unfilled positions, including nine major forecaster positions in major cities, and general forecaster vacancies across the country. As National Weather Service Employees Organization president David Sobein pointed out last month, vacancies put a strain on the agencies remaining employees, and could impact the quality of forecasting. 

Sobien gave the example of recent poor forecasting of the early March snowstorm predicted to hit Washington, D.C., as an example of what happens when forecasters are stretched thin. But that’s not the worst that can happen, he warned.

“People are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings. We’re going to miss a tornado warning or some other thing.”

That’s before the sequester’s impact. Sequestration further threatens the nation’s weather forecasting.

The Department of Commerce warned that not only will the loss of satellite data and imagery diminish the quality of forecasts, but so will other important weather data surrendered by spending cuts.

“Sequestration will also reduce the number of flight hours for NOAA aircraft, which serve important missions such as hurricane reconnaissance and coastal surveying,” said a DOC spokesperson. “NOAA will also need to curtail maintenance and operations of weather systems such as NEXRAD (the national radar network) and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (used by local weather forecast offices to process and monitor weather data), which could lead to longer service outages or reduced data availability for forecasters.”

In addition to program spending cuts, NOAA faces the possibility of staff furloughs and unfilled positions. While not specifying the number of NWS cuts, the DOC states up to 2,600 NOAA employees will have to be furloughed, 2,700 positions left vacant, and 1,400 contractor positions reduced if the sequester materializes.

“NOAA will face the loss of highly trained technical staff and partners,” a DOC spokesperson said. “As a result, the government runs the risk of significantly increasing forecast error and, the government’s ability to warn Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised”.

The National Weather Service saved lives in Oklahoma this week, by issuing early warnings that gave people time to seek shelter before the tornado hit. The agency issued a tornado warning 16 minutes before the tornado touched down outside of Newcastle, and 19 minutes before it reached Monroe. That may not sound like enough time, but in these situations every minute counts, and any early warning increases the likelihood of getting to safety before a twister strikes. 

Advances in forecasting technology and tornado prediction could mean earlier warnings in the future. New, experimental methods could increase warning times from 15-30 minutes to as much as six hours before a tornado. But it won’t happen if agencies like the NOAA and NWS don’t have the money to maintain and upgrade their satellites and forecasting technology. The best technology available won’t make a difference if no one’s there to operate and monitor it, because the NOAA and NWS don’t have the money hire new forecasters, or even keep their remaining employees on the job. 

Tornado season is upon us, and that means we could see more than 1,000 tornados.   Most will touch down in the Midwest, but the area traditionally known as “Tornado Alley” no longer has a monopoly on tornados. 

Literally and figuratively, Tornado Alley now could be almost anywhere; the “alley” is more like a field that seems to spread by the year.

That funnel cloud in The Wizard of Oz (actually a 35-foot tapered stocking) was remote and exotic to audiences for much of the last century. But the Oklahoma disaster is a reminder that Tornado Alley is less a geographic description than a state of mind, as twisters seem to range farther afield and extreme weather in general turns up in unexpected places — a deadly tornado in western Massachusetts (June 2011), an earthquake in central Virginia (August 2011), storm surge on Wall Street (October 2012).

The number of recorded tornadoes has shot up over the years, but Tom Jeffrey, a hazard scientist with CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, Calif., analytics firm, says it’s not clear if that’s because there are more tornadoes or more people reporting them.

He gives several explanations for our increased concern about tornadoes and all kinds of very bad weather. Climate change seems to portend meteorological extremes; cable TV news and social media focus national attention; meteorologists are much better able to detect, track and measure tornadoes; and the population is larger and more dispersed — a fatter target.

Disasters happen. But the man-made disaster known as “the sequester” didn’t have to happen, and it doesn’t have continue. It’s possible that Congress will approve yet another “exception” to the sequester, for agencies like FEMA, the NOAA and NWS. But Congress can simply repeal the sequester.

We don’t have to sequester the next disaster, but every day that the sequester stands makes it more likely that we will. The only questions are: When and where will it happen? And who will suffer the consequences?

Did you know that Washington, DC is the 9th most expensive American city to live in? Did you also know that thousands of private sector workers whose jobs are supported by taxpayer dollars don’t earn enough to live in the city where they work? Tomorrow, those workers are rallying for livable wages, in America’s 9th most expensive city. You can join them at noon, tomorrow, at Columbus Circle, in front of Union Station, in Washington, DC.

For anyone who lives and/or works here, it’s not exact news that the metro-Washington area is an expensive place to live. It’s no accident that some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country are right here. It takes quite money to just to maintain a modest in the metro-Washington area. Even just “getting by” doesn’t come cheap here. (Even living outside of the district and commuting in to work, I can attest, doesn’t make things less expensive. The farther out you live, the longer and more expensive your commute.)

According to folks at the Council for Community and Economic Research, the Washington area traditionally managed to just miss being in the top ten high-cost urban area. For the third year in a row, the Council’s cost-of-living index, places the Washington area in the top ten most expensive places to live.

The areas ranked as the most expensive places to live included most of the usual suspects, with New York’s Manhattan and Brooklyn boroughs taking the top two slots on the list. But for the third year in a row, Washington snagged a spot in the top 10, driven by the region’s high-priced housing market and relative immunity from the economic downturn.

“Since the beginning of the Great Recession, Washington has catapulted itself into the top 10 based on the housing market,” said Dean Frutiger, project manager for the Cost of Living Index at the council. Washington – which took ninth place in the first quarter- traditionally remained just shy of the top 10 high-cost urban areas, often swapping places with Boston, Frutiger said.

On average, the Washington area is 41.7 percent more expensive compared with the national average. Housing here is more than twice as expensive as in the rest of the country. Groceries are 12.8 percent more expensive, while health care is 1.6 percent more expensive.The region’s cost of living dropped slightly from the same time last year but is higher than 2011.

Washington’s high-priced housing market may have put the Washington in the top ten, but the index is compiled based on the cost of basic essentials – like housing, utilities, transportation, groceries, and health care – that many workers employed by private companies that contract with the federal government can’t afford on what they’re paid.

We find that nearly two million private sector employees working on behalf of America earn wages too low to support a family, making $12 or less per hour. This is more than the number of low-wage workers at Walmart and McDonalds combined.1 Yet, if anything, this figure underestimates the total number of poorly-paid workers funded by our tax dollars. Our analysis encompasses U.S. workers employed by government contractors, paid by federal health care spending, supported by Small Business Administration loans, working on federal construction grants, and maintaining buildings leased by the federal government. This encompasses the largest share of poorly-paid workers funded by our taxes. However, other streams of funding have yet to be analyzed. For example, loans and subsidies from the Department of Agriculture fund giant agribusinesses that employ more than a million farm workers, while grants from the Department of Education fund low-wage assistant teachers, bus monitors and cooks in Head Start and other programs. Due to lack of data, retail and food service workers for concessionaires of the National Parks Service and other federal agencies also fall outside our analysis.

These are employees working on behalf of America, doing jobs that we have decided are worthy of public funding-yet they’re being treated in a very un-American way. Our nation has a history of ensuring our tax dollars provide decent jobs. From the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act to Executive Order 11246 of 1965, and a host of other laws and executive actions, our laws have mandated that companies working on behalf of the American people are upholding high standards of employment practices. Yet as the nature and prevalence of federal contracting, lending and grant-making have changed, and some laws have been weakened, working people have fallen through the cracks.

When our tax dollars underwrite bad jobs, the economy as a whole is weakened and all of us are negatively affected. There is a ripple effect as low-paid workers and their families have little money to spend, hindering economic growth that could be creating more jobs. Poorly-paid workers also contribute less in taxes and are more likely to rely on public benefits to care for their families. In contrast, we would all benefit from an economy where workers earn good wages-and we have a special responsibility to see that the people working on behalf of our nation are paid and treated fairly. Raising standards for people working on behalf of America is one important piece to providing opportunities for workers to reach the middle class.

Behind those numbers are real people, hard-working people, who just want to earn a wage that helps them afford the essentials that don’t come cheap in the Washington area.

• Lucilia Ramirez, who has cleaned Union Station for 21 years spoke of making $8.75 an hour, with no benefits. Struggling to pay their mortgage on her small salary, Ramirez and her husband were forced to rent out bedrooms to strangers just to keep a roof over their heads.
• Katina Washington, who earns $9.65 an hour cleaning offices rented by the Department of Justice, lives with her cousin because she can’t afford her own apartment, and has to rely on food stamps to help with groceries.
• Nelly Garcia, 55, works at the Old Post Office Building, for a company that makes lots of money from federal contracts. But Garcia only earns $9.00 an hour, which isn’t enough to afford food or pay for the subway commute to work. A cancer survivor, Garcia has no health benefits, and must rely on Medicaid as a result.

According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single adult needs to earn about $28,425 a year to afford the cost of basic necessities like housing, utilities, transportation, groceries, and health care. That requires an hourly wage of at least $13.67 an hour. For a single adult and a child, the annual costs are $54,805 – nearly double the cost-of-living for a single adult – and would require an hourly wage of at least $26.35.

Most private sector employees of federal contracts earn far less than a livable wage in an area as expensive as Washington. Yet everything one needs to live in Washington, from housing to groceries to transportation, is still more expensive than most other places, because Washington is area where lots of people can pay more.

Paying more for food, housing, etc., isn’t a hardship if your the CEO of a company with a federal contract. After all, federal benchmark compensation for CEO Reimbursement for work on a federal contract is over $760,000.00, but the lowest compensation reported by workers on federal contracts is $6.50 an hour. You can earn over $760,000 on a federal contract, while not paying your employees enough to live on. How’s that for inequality? And it’s all supported with your tax dollars and mine.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather Nelly Garcia be able to buy groceries and have benefits than have my tax dollars help a federal contractor CEO redo his Rosslyn, VA penthouse again. If you feel the same way, then stand with these workers tomorrow, and join them in demanding a livable wage. Because nobody can live in Washington on minimum wage. Not in the 9th most expensive city in America.

For weeks, I’ve been writing that the movement to increase the minimum wage near you. Next week, however, that movement will arrive in my own back yard. Low-wage workers organized by Good Jobs Nation are coming to Washington, DC to rally for living wages, on Tuesday, May 21st, at 12:00pm, at Columbus Circle, in front of Union Station.

But this protest isn’t targeting fast food restaurants like McDonald’s or Burger King or retail shops like TJMaxx. On Tuesday, low-wage workers will take their demands to the biggest low-wage job creator in the country — the one funded by taxpayers like you and me: the federal government.

Early this month, a study by Demos, “Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality,” revealed that the federal government revealed that millions of low wage workers employed by private businesses, who serve the federal government in a variety of ways, can’t afford basic necessities like health care, food and housing, because they’re paid such low wages.

We find that nearly two million private sector employees working on behalf of America earn wages too low to support a family, making $12 or less per hour. This is more than the number of low-wage workers at Walmart and McDonalds combined.1 Yet, if anything, this figure underestimates the total number of poorly-paid workers funded by our tax dollars. Our analysis encompasses U.S. workers employed by government contractors, paid by federal health care spending, supported by Small Business Administration loans, working on federal construction grants, and maintaining buildings leased by the federal government. This encompasses the largest share of poorly-paid workers funded by our taxes. However, other streams of funding have yet to be analyzed. For example, loans and subsidies from the Department of Agriculture fund giant agribusinesses that employ more than a million farm workers, while grants from the Department of Education fund low-wage assistant teachers, bus monitors and cooks in Head Start and other programs. Due to lack of data, retail and food service workers for concessionaires of the National Parks Service and other federal agencies also fall outside our analysis.

These are employees working on behalf of America, doing jobs that we have decided are worthy of public funding—yet they’re being treated in a very un-American way. Our nation has a history of ensuring our tax dollars provide decent jobs. From the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act to Executive Order 11246 of 1965, and a host of other laws and executive actions, our laws have mandated that companies working on behalf of the American people are upholding high standards of employment practices. Yet as the nature and prevalence of federal contracting, lending and grant-making have changed, and some laws have been weakened, working people have fallen through the cracks.

When our tax dollars underwrite bad jobs, the economy as a whole is weakened and all of us are negatively affected. There is a ripple effect as low-paid workers and their families have little money to spend, hindering economic growth that could be creating more jobs. Poorly-paid workers also contribute less in taxes and are more likely to rely on public benefits to care for their families. In contrast, we would all benefit from an economy where workers earn good wages—and we have a special responsibility to see that the people working on behalf of our nation are paid and treated fairly. Raising standards for people working on behalf of America is one important piece to providing opportunities for workers to reach the middle class.

At a press conference announcing the launch of Good Jobs Nation earlier this month, workers bore witness to the “ripple effect” federally-funded low-wage jobs.

• Lucilia Ramirez, who has cleaned Union Station for 21 years spoke of making $8.75 an hour, with no benefits. Struggling to pay their mortgage on her small salary, Ramirez and her husband were forced to rent out bedrooms to strangers just to keep a roof over their heads.
• Katina Washington, who earns $9.65 an hour cleaning offices rented by the Department of Justice, lives with her cousin because she can’t afford her own apartment, and has to rely on food stamps to help with groceries.
• Nelly Garcia, 55, works at the Old Post Office Building, for a company that makes lots of money from federal contracts. But Garcia only earns $9.00 an hour, which isn’t enough to afford food or pay for the subway commute to work. A cancer survivor, Garcia has no health benefits, and must rely on Medicaid as a result.

These are just a few of the voices of the over 4 million low-wage workers employed by private companies on behalf of the federal government. Many of them can’t afford basic essentials like food, shelter, and medical care. Some 30 percent of them actually make less than minimum wage. Forty percent must depend on food stamps, Medicaid, and other public assistance to survive. Sixty-five percent of them struggle to pay for things like rent, utilities, and food.

If, like me, you live and/or work in the Washington area, you probably walk past these workers every day. We smile, and say “Hello,” “Good morning,”  or “Good night.” We live and work in a place that is one of the biggest examples of economic inequality, in an “recovery” where most of the new jobs created are low-wage jobs. Seven of the ten wealthiest zip codes in the country are in the Washington, DC area, yet DC would have the third highest poverty rate in the country — if DC counted as a state. Federal benchmark compensation for CEO Reimbursement for work on a federal contract is about $760,000.00, but the lowest compensation reported by workers on federal contracts is $6.50 an hour.

Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in federal contracts, loans, and leases go to corporations that pocket billions and pay their CEOs millions in bonuses, but pay such low wages that workers can’t afford food and shelter. Taxpayer dollars go to corporations that pay their employees so little that many of them have to rely on public assistance.

Like I said yesterday, when an employer pays workers so little that workers have to rely on public assistance, is should count as “corporate welfare.” Big, profitable contractors are forcing taxpayers to subsidize their unlivable wages. These companies are receiving funding from the federal government, but they are further burdening taxpayers by leaving their employees to rely on food stamps and other public assistance programs instead of paying them a living wage.

This has to stop. That’s why federally funded low-wage workers are joining together for a living wage and a voice on the job. The federal government has a responsibility to ensure taxpayer-funded contracts help the economy by paying workers enough to afford the basics like rent and food and to put money back into their local economies.

Next week, Washingtonians have a chance to stand with low wage workers, instead of just passing by them every day on our way to or from our homes, condos, and apartments in and around Washington, DC. More than ever, Americans need good jobs, with liveable wages, and real benefits. Maybe the place to start is right in our own back yards.

It’s official. Minimum wage workers going on strike is no longer a mere trend. It’s a movement. Not that there was ever any doubt, after minimum wage workers in the fast food and retail sectors of major cities like New York City, Chicago, St.Louis, and Detroit walked off the job, demanding better wages and better treatment in the workplace. 

Yesterday, the movement reached Wisconsin, where fast food workers in Milwaukee took to the streets to demand a $15 minimum wage. You can show your support by signing their petition.

Fast-food and retail workers walked off the job in Milwaukee, Wis., on Wednesday, prompting labor organizers to speak of “spreading unrest” in the service industry.

The strike followed similar one-day walkouts over the last two months in Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York, as well as a nationwide walkout by Walmart workers on Black Friday.

Like those who have gone on strike in other cities, the Milwaukee workers are demanding a “living wage” of $15 an hour and the right to form a union.

“I feel that I do so much work and get so little pay,” said Stephanie Sanders, a 33-year-old McDonald’s employee who earns the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour at the Milwaukee restaurant where she works.

Since the recession, low-paying work has comprised more than half the country’s new jobs. Although many corporations are earning more than they did before the downturn, workers’ wages have not improved. Fast-food and retail companies are among the nation’s largest employers of low-wage workers.

Like Detroit, Milwaukee is reeling from the decline in American manufacturing, which has cost Milwaukee 100,00o jobs since the 1980s. And, as in Detroit, the loss of manufacturing jobs hit African Americans particularly hard.

“Milwaukee has a really special history particularly for African Americans,” said Jennifer Epps of the group Wisconsin Citizen Action, which helped organize the strikes. “We had the highest per capita income for black workers in the country, now we have one of the lowest.”

A report from the University of Milwaukee found that in 1970, over 54 percent of black men in the city were employed in factories, more than twice the percentage of whites. But, as Milwaukee’s Sentinel Journal reports, 100,000 jobs in Delco Electronics, Pabst Brewing Company and other factories left the city since 1980. By 2009, under 15 percent of black men held manufacturing these jobs, about equivalent to the percentage as white workers.

As these jobs disappeared, Milwaukee’s rate of black unemployment spiked. Before the recession, the city rivaled Buffalo, NY with the highest rates of black unemployment, according to a report from the University. And those who have found work are now far more likely to be relegated to non-union, minimum wage jobs. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development projects that food preparation and serving jobs, including those in fast food, will grow by 12 percent in the next decade, three times the rate of jobs overall.

Over 200 workers from fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell joined workers from retailers like TJ Maxx, Dollar Tree and FootAction joined the growing “McJobs” rebellion.

With the average Walmart salesperson making only $8.81 per hour, the six heirs to the Walmart fortune have pocketed about $100 billion in wealth – more than the least well-off 41 percent of Americans combined.

McDonald’s raked in $5.5 billion in profits in 2012, while Yum! Brands, which includes KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, took home $1.6 billion in profits.

With government failing to act and corporations succeeding in keeping out unions, the Robin-Hood-in-reverse economy – taking from workers to give to the rich – is steadily getting worse. A majority of jobs created in the economic recovery have been in low-wage industries. Unless pay levels are raised, seven out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage positions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So what do participants in the Raise Up Milwaukee campaign, and their counterparts in other cities, want? A basic wage of $15 per hour, and the right to form unions without corporate interference and intimidation. They understand that big corporations in the service industries can afford to pay more, but that these companies won’t do so unless workers join together and demand wages that support families. Like workers have through U.S. history, they are turning to unions to help solve a low-wage problem that is dragging our entire economy down.

Raises and the right to form unions would shift money back to working families for basic necessities, instead of sending it off to distant corporate headquarters to pad profits for executives and Wall Street stockholders. That shift, in turn, would help support small businesses and jobs in local communities.

Minimum wage workers in Wisconsin currently earn $7.25 an hour. Working 40 hours a week at that rate, a worker would earn about $15,080 a year — more than $400 below Wisconsin’s poverty line for a family of two. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would still fall short of a wage to support a family of two.

Workers earning $7.25 and working a consistent 40 hours a week earn $15,080 a year—over $400 under the Wisconsin poverty line for a family of two. While a $9 minimum wage would increase that annual income to $18,720, an increase to $15 would make it a full $31,200. That’s still barely three quarters of what’s needed to comfortably support one adult and one child in Wisconsin, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Minimum Wage Calculator, but it would be a dramatic upgrade from current conditions.

It gets worse if you take wage theft into consideration. According to a new survey by Fast Food Forward, 84 percent of fast food workers in New York City have experienced various forms of wage theft in the past year.

• 36 percent report being forced to work while off the clock
• 32 percent of cashiers reported being required to pay their employers if their registers were short
• 30 percent report working more than 40 hours in a week without receiving time-and-a-half for overtime
• 46 percent report begin the victim of at least one illegal paycheck deduction, such as paying for meals not eaten or for company-required uniforms
• 30 percent report receiving their paychecks late, or having their paychecks bounce

Thus McDonald’s, KFC, and Taco Bell are raking in billions in profits, while employees like 34-year-old Tessie Harrell, struggle to afford basic necessities, and have to rely on food stamps. If taxpayers are supplementing wages for the employees of corporations earning billions of dollars in profit  (and paying little to no taxes themselves), maybe we need to start thinking of food stamps, etc., as a form of  ”corporate welfare.” 

Or we can join minimum wage workers in Milwaukee in demanding a $15 minimum wage, and the right to unionize. 

Yesterday I wrote about how obstructionist Republican tactics are hollowing out our government, hobbling its agencies, and diminishing its responsiveness to the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our court system, where Republican obstructionism may have far-reaching, disastrous consequences for public policy. And, again, that’s just fine with Republicans.

With 82 empty seats in our federal district and appellate courts, nearly 10 percent of federal judicial seats are vacant, and have been since President Obama took office. That’s the longest period of judicial vacancies in 35 years. Judicial vacancies have increased 51 percent since President Obama took office, compared to declining by 65 percent and 34 percent under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively.

To make matters worse, 40 percent of those vacancies are in districts that have been declared “judicial emergencies” — where vacancies have persisted for 18 months or more, and the hundreds of backlogged cases wait for someone to rule on them. Businesses and individuals wait longer for their claims to be resolved.

In the 35 circuits/districts declared “judicial emergencies,” people are literally waiting for justice, and often end up settling for something less. Since federal judges must give priority to criminal cases (which have increased by 70% in the past ten years), they’re forced to delay civil cases for years. According to a People for the American Way fact sheet, “Overloaded Courts, Not Enough Judges: The Impact on Real People,” that means longer delays for Americans seeking justice in cases involving:

• discrimination
• civil rights
• predatory lending practices
• consumer fraud
• immigrant rights
• environment
• government benefits
• business contracts
• mergers
• copyright infringement

For Dave Calder, in Utah, it meant a long wait for justice after a faulty gas can exploded in his trailer, killing his daughter and leaving him with severe burns over a third of his body. He sued in 2007. His medical bills reached $200,000 during the 4 1/2 years that passed before the case reached a jury verdict.

For Elizabeth and Nicholas Power, in Illinois, it mean settling for far less, after suing their employer for sex discrimination in 2008. By the time the case finally reached jury selection in 2011, the judge had to halt the trial in order to deal with a growing docket of criminal cases. The Powers settled the case, rather than continue to wait for a trial

It’s not that there aren’t nominees waiting. There are 22 judicial nominees just waiting for Senate confirmation. Their confirmations would fill 1/4 of the vacancies on the bench, and increase diversity of the federal (9 are women.) Of the 22 nominees, 13 were unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and 15 are waiting for Senate floor votes. (The rest are still waiting for hearings.)

Judicial nominees are probably in for a long wait. Some may sail through committee, but just about all them can expect long waits. In fact, President Obama’s judicial nominees have waited much, much longer than those of his predecessors. Obama’s judicial nominees wait an average of 116 days for a floor vote in the Senate, compared to an average wait of 34 days for President George W. Bush’s nominees.

That’s just the average. Some waiting periods are “above average.”

• Richard Taranto waited 484 days to be confirmed to the Federal Circuit Court, by a 91-0 vote.
• William Kayatta waited 300 days to be confirmed for the First Circuit from Maine, 88-12.
• Robert Bacharach waited 263 days to be confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals, 93-0.
• Patty Schwartz waited 18 months to be confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals last month, after the president nominated her in October 2011.

It’s not that the Senate has not confirmed President Obama’s nominees. It’s just confirming fewer than it has under previous administrations; just 160 during Obama’s first term, compared to 200 during Bill Clinton’s fist term and 205 During George W. Bush’s first term. Late last year, the Senate went into recess without any action on 19 non-controversial nominees with support from both parties.

In just four years, judicial vacancies are up, confirmations are down, and delays are longer. What gives?

To hear Republican Senators tell it, the White House is at fault for presenting fewer nominees, due to time-consuming background checks and an incredibly extensive vetting process. But despite those factors, the president isn’t far behind his predecessors. Obama offered 215 nominations in his first term, compared to 247 in Bill Clinton’s first term, and 231 in George W. Bush’s first term.

It’s not up to the president alone to nominate potential judges. Senators have always had a role in the process. Republicans have simply refused to participate in recommending potential nominees.

On its face, the absence of nominees would appear to be a sign that President Barack Obama is slacking. After all, he is responsible for nominating judges, and he did put forward fewer nominees at the end of his first term than his two predecessors. But a closer look at data on judicial nominees, and conversations with people involved in the nomination process, reveals the bigger problem is Republican senators quietly refusing to recommend potential judges in the first place.

The process for moving judicial nominees is simple enough. A president takes the lead on circuit court nominees, while, per longstanding tradition, a senator kickstarts the process for district court nominees, which make up the bulk of the federal court system. Senators make recommendations from their home states, and the president works with them to get at least some of the nominees confirmed — the idea being that senators, regardless of party, are motivated to advocate for nominees from their states. The White House may look at other nominees on its own, but typically won’t move forward without input from the corresponding senators. Once a nominee is submitted to the Senate, he or she receives a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. If approved, the nomination heads to the Senate floor for a full vote.

According to a fact sheet from the Alliance for Justice, the majority of judicial vacancies without nominees are in states with one or more Republican senators (24 in states with two Republican senators, 17 in states with 1 Republican and one Democratic senator). Some of those states, like Texas and Arizona, have judicial vacancies that have been open for more than 1,000 days, without their Republican senators recommending potential nominees.

In total, 25 of the 61 vacancies without nominees are in states with two Republican senators, and another 14 are in states with one Republican senator and one Democratic senator. Seventeen are in states with two Democratic senators, and the remaining five are in other districts. That means many of the vacancies without nominees can be traced back to Senate Republicans who just aren’t participating in the process — a reality that flies in the face of Republicans’ chief complaint that Obama isn’t putting forward enough judicial nominees.

“It’s disingenuous at best for Republicans to complain about the number of judicial vacancies without nominees when Republicans themselves are responsible for the majority of those vacancies,” said Michelle Schwartz, director of Justice Programs for Alliance for Justice. “Nearly two-thirds of the vacancies without nominees are in states with at least one Republican senator, most of whom have consistently refused to work with the White House in good faith to identify qualified candidates.”

It’s not hard to figure out what Senate Republicans are up to here. Some of it’s just good old fashioned “payback,” for Democrats blocking nominations during the George W. Bush administration. But a big part of it is about blocking Obama’s effort to shift the rightward tilt of our courts, starting with powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where four vacancies leave the second-most-powerful court in the country with a Republican majority. Republicans blocked Obama’s previous nominee for 2 1/2 years, before the nomination was finally withdrawn.

President Obama has pressed senators from both parties in recent weeks to confirm a new federal judge for one of the country’s most powerful courts, using an aggressive strategy to campaign for a judicial nominee whom White House officials consider a potentially crucial figure in boosting the president’s second-term agenda.

The effort reflects a new White House effort to tilt in its favor the conservative-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is one notch below the Supreme Court and considers many challenges to executive actions.

… Giving liberals a greater say on the D.C. Circuit is important for Obama as he looks for ways to circumvent the Republican-led House and a polarized Senate on a number of policy fronts through executive order and other administrative procedures.

The D.C. Circuit, with four Republican and three Democratic appointees, has four vacancies. It proved an obstacle for Obama during his first term – blocking proposed rules, for instance, to curb interstate air pollution and enhance cigarette labeling. The court also has put on hold dozens of cases relating to rules on workers’ rights, and it has challenged the president’s authority to name recess appointees.

For working Americans and their families, vacancies and the conservative majority on the D.C. Circuit Court has serious consequences. In January of this year, the conservative majority on the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were invalid. The president resorted to the recess appointments after Republicans blocked nominations, to keep the NLRB from issuing rulings. In March, the court’s conservative majority overturned an NRLB requirement that employers put up posters explaining to workers that they have a right to unionize, because it violated employers “freedom of speech.”

Naturally, Republicans want to keep the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stacked with conservatives.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is known for its conservative leanings. Republicans like it this way and have filibustered nominations of non-conservative-movement nominees to the court. Now four seats are vacant. An April editorial in the Washington Post, Republicans’ D.C. Circuit barricade, explains,

LAST MONTH Senate Republicans unjustifiably blocked an up-or-down confirmation vote on Caitlin J. Halligan, nominated by President Obama to fill one of four empty spots on one of the country’s top courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Despite her impeccable credentials and the support of conservative legal luminaries, only a single Republican voted to break a GOP filibuster.

Again, Republicans are keeping four seats on this court vacant in order to keep these kinds of rulings coming.

In their continued efforts to block President Obama from doing what voters elected him to do — and what they failed to convince voters to elect them to do — Republicans are courting disaster for million of Americans, by keeping our nations courts and government agencies running on empty.

Republicans in Congress have a new tactic for shrinking government: making sure that nobody’s there to run it. Well into the president’s second term, an alarming and unprecedented number of vital positions in every branch of government remain vacant. As Republicans use and abuse processes that helped government run smoothly once upon a time not so very long ago, government grinds to a halt, and the consequences trickle down to Main Street America. And apparently that’s just fine with Republicans.

As President Obama settles into his second term, a number of presidentially-appointed positions that require Senate confirmation remain vacant – more than were vacant at the end of Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s first terms in office. Of the 68 positions that remained vacant at the end of Obama’s first term in office, 43 had been vacant for more than a year. Those vacancies, spread across several agencies, have the effect of nearly bringing government to a griding halt. Agencies operating under acting directors, without fully authorized leadership, effectively operate in “stand-down mode”

The lack of appointed leaders can create problems. Too many vacancies can put agencies “in stand-down, waiting for policymakers to show up,” said Terry Sullivan, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina who has studied appointments.

Acting heads of agencies “don’t make any big decisions,” said Cal Mackenzie, a professor of government at Colby College who has studied appointments since the 1970s. “Your authority is not going to be recognized in the same way a Senate-confirmed appointee is going to be recognized.”

Therein lies the problem. In a 2010 Brookings Institution paper titled “A Half-Empty Government Can’t Govern: Why Everyone Wants to Fix the Appointments Process, Why It Never Happens, and How We Can Get It Done,” E.J. Dionne and William A. Galston describe a system clogged by abuses of the Senate confirmation process, and end up weakening both the executive and legislative branches, and alter the very structure of our government.

Abuses of the confirmation process, far from strengthening the executive’s accountability to the legislative branch, instead call forth ever more creative executive actions to get around Congressional scrutiny. And that creativity has, in turn, led to an executive branch potentially weaker and less able to control and influence the departments and agencies it depends on to implement its policies.

Without any formal Constitutional change, the very structure of the American government is being altered. A confirmation process designed to safeguard Congress’ prerogatives has, in important ways, undermined them.

As we know all too well by now, Senators wield considerable power over confirmations. Individual Senators can single-handedly shut down the whole “terrible, horrible, no-good Senate confirmation process” by placing “holds” on confirmations, which amount to “silent filibusters” that prevent a vote unless the Senate can round of a two-thirds majority and squeeze in time for debate. Republicans have used such “holds,” and exploited every trick in the book to keep block President Obama’s nominees.

Most recently, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee refused to even show up for a vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection agency. Republicans resorted to the parliamentary equivalent of holding their breath, because they claimed McCarthy failed to comply with their “very reasonable” request that she answer over 1,000 questions (a record number, which The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky labeled “the new McCarthyism.” ). Republicans notified Democrats 30 minutes before the hearing that they would not show up to hear the answers they complained about getting.

(McCarthy’s not alone. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received 444 questions from senators before his confirmation; more than the last seven nominees combined.)

The Republican’s “boycott” of McCarthy Hearing was merely a tactic employed in the service of the underlying GOP agenda: making sure the EPA could not fulfill its mission. Republicans aren’t going to confirm McCarthy unless she stoops to answer their questions about the “underlying data used to justify EPA’s job-killing regulations,” and promises to force the EPA to subject everything it does to a “business-friendly analysis,” and force the agency to undertake a “whole economy” cost-benefit analysis of its rules and regulations. The result would be enough bureaucratic red tape to ensure that the EPA did almost nothing else. By insisting on conditions that no nominee to head the agency is likely to agree to, the GOP could ensure that the EPA operates in “stand-down” mode for the duration of Obama’s presidency.

The vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board are another example of how GOP obstructionist tactics are impacting government.

After President Obama took office anti-union Senators rolled out a strategy of blocking confirmation of any appointees to the NLRB to keep the agency from having a quorum so it could not operate.

In 2010 the anti-union judges on the Supreme Court ruled that the NLRB could not issue rulings without at least three confirmed members.

Anti-union Senators continued to block confirmations to the NLRB.

In January, 2012 President Obama made recess appointments to the NLRB to enable it to operate again.

In January, 2013 anti-union judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) were unconstitutional.

(As Dave’s post points out, the courts play a huge role in this, Republican obstruction of court appointments has far-reaching implications that are better addressed in a separate post.)

The list of top-level vacancies is long and disturbing.

• The IRS has been without an appointed commissioner since last November, when Bush administration holdover Douglas Shulman resigned.
• A quarter of the senior positions at the State Department remain unfilled.
• Republicans blocked President Obama’s appointees to Election Assistance Commission — an agency charged with helping Americans vote, and which Republicans wanted to do away with in 2011.
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hasn’t had a director since 2006, and still doesn’t since Republicans blocked a vote on Donald Berwick’s nomination. (Obama managed a recess appointment for Berwick, who has since resigned.)
• A hearing on Tom Perez’s nomination as Secretary of Labor was postponed after Republicans threatened to invoke an obscure procedural rule to stop the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee from meeting. The move was driven purely by objections to Perez’s “ideological background.”
• Republicans are attempting to sabotage health care reform by refusing to offer Republican nominees to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, charged with achieving savings in Medicare without sacrificing quality.

Without a presidentially-appointed, Senate confirmed director, the EPA can’t effectively fulfill its mission to “protect human health and the environment.” The NRLB cannot effectively safeguard “employees’ rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative, if it lacks enough members to operate. Health Care Reform can’t be fully implemented, and thus can’t help 32 million uninsured Americans, if the agencies that must implement it are without leaders who have the authority to set policy.

All of this is just fine with Republicans in Congress. Keeping government running on empty by keeping offices vacant, through ongoing obstruction of presidential nominees, is a tactic that serves the conservative agenda.

It’s not that the GOP is “no longer a serious partner in governing,” as a New York Times editorial put it. That which Republicans didn’t win the right to govern last November, they have resolved to make ungovernable. But Republicans aren’t just disrupting the agenda that won President Obama a second term. By keeping vital government positions vacant, they are implementing an un-mandated shrinking of government.

Conservatives have always said that government doesn’t work, when they really believe that it shouldn’t work. Given enough power to do so, once elected they set about making damn sure government can’t work. And, like I said earlier, government can’t work if there’s nobody around to run it.

I told you so. When minimum wage workers in Chicago, IL went on strike, I said that the movement to raise the minimum wage would not go away. When fast food workers in St. Louis, MO walked off the job, demanding better pay and better treatment, I predicted that the movement for a livable wage would soon be coming to a lunch counter near you.

If you happen to be in Detroit right now, I was right.

In what’s being called the biggest fast food strike so far, more than 400 worker’s at Detroit’s biggest fast food chains walked off the job today, demanding better wages, better treatment, and the right to unionize. You can show your support by signing their petition demanding a $15 minimum wage.

Hundreds of fast-food workers in Detroit are poised to walk off their jobs on Friday, joining a growing wave of protest against the wages paid in one of the most rapidly growing segment of the nation’s labor market.

The strike in Detroit – a city ravaged by crumbling municipal finances, a hollowed-out urban core and the long-term decline of auto industry jobs – follows similar labor actions that hobbled fast-food restaurants and prominent retailers in New York, Chicago and, this week, St. Louis. In these cities, the unusual coalition of workers, who traditionally have not been unionized, took to the streets to complain about low pay and what they call often-shabby treatment by their employers.

Protest supporters say the job actions have broad implications for the nation’s workforce. With the long decline of manufacturing jobs and other well-paying positions that do not require advanced educational credentials accelerating during the recession, jobs at fast-food restaurants and retailers represent the future of work for many Americans. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations over the next decade will be low-wage ones, such as home health aides, store clerks, food preparation workers and laborers.

Detroit 15, a coalition of religious and labor groups organizing the protests in that city, is pushing for fast-food restaurants to raise their pay, eventually to $15 an hour. Right now, workers, many of whom are paid close to Michigan’s $7.40 per hour minimum wage, say they are barely getting by.

I written about Detroit a few times. My huband is from Michigan, most of his family lives in the suburbs aronnd Detroit. In the past 12 years, I’ve heard about how Detroit was hollowed out by the long exodus of manufacturing jobs from the U.S. As the jobs disappeared, so did the people. In one decade, the city lost 25% of its population, which dropped from 9510,000 in 2000 to 790,00 in 2010. Of course, by 2010, the population was less than half its peak of nearly 2 million in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, the city became a depressing example of what de-industrialization looks like.

It’s unlikely that the city will ever be the economic powerhouse it once was, or that it will again be home to industries that offered good jobs at good wages, and the possibility upward mobility for working-class Americans. Instead, it faces a kind of final solution: what’s left abandoned in Detroit is being razed. The city government can’t afford to keep waiting for a comeback.

Those who could get out did so. Those who couldn’t have endured all the consequences of industry’s collapse and the city’s decline. According to the census, the median income in Detroit is nearly half the national average, and more than one third of the population lives in poverty. Its 18% unemployment rate (as of February 2013) is more than half the national unemployment rate.

The evocative documentary Detropia gives a sense of how the people of Detroit have suffered, coped, and held on in the midst of decay and decline.

Many who have held on in Detrois have turned to minimum wage jobs, often in fast food and retail, in the absence of the good jobs that once were. According to the Michigan Worker’s Organizing Committee, there are 53,000 fast food jobs in the Detroit area — more than twice as many as the auto-manufacturing sector — and those jobs are expected to grow by 12.3 percent by 2018.

These jobs are the lowest paying in Detroit. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, Michigan’s $7.40 per hour minimum wage isn’t a livable wage for a single individual working full time. It would take at least $9.01 for a worker to make enough to afford essentials like food, shelter, medical care, and transportation. A family of four would need $18.49 per hour.

Meanwhile the average hour wage for managers in the Detroit area is $42.54. Detroit’s minimum wage workers aren’t asking for half that. Paying them a livable wage isn’t just the right thing to do. It might be the best thing to happen to Detroit’s economiy in decades.

The Michigan Workers Organizing Committee’s campaign, D15, seeks to put money back in the pockets of the more than 53,000 men and women who work hard in the Detroit-area’s fast food chains but still can’t afford basic necessities like food, clothing, and rent. A single adult in Detroit with a child actually needs to make nearly $18 an hour to get by, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. If workers were paid more, they’d spend more, helping to get Detroit’s economy moving again.

“Can anybody really feed children and take care of a family on the current minimum wage $7.40 an hour?” asked Pastor Charles Williams II of Historic King Solomon Baptist Church. “If we truly want to stimulate the economy then we must stimulate the wages of those who collectively have the buying power to strengthen the economy. It’s simple. I support the workers today because, raising their wage, raises our economy.”

Where will the movement for a $15 minimum wage strike next? Hopefully, at your local fast food restaurant.

It started in New York City, and last month it happened again in Chicago. Today, the movement for decent wages is taking another big step forward in St. Louis, Mo., where hundreds of fast food workers will rally for better wages.

Fast food workers, most of which are adults with a family to support, simply can’t survive on $7.35 an hour. They don’t make enough to cover basic needs – like food, health care, rent, and transportation. What’s worse, many workers are kept from working full-time so that their employers don’t have to cover their health care. It’s a shame that we let this happen here in St. Louis. And it has to stop.

Paying workers a living wage is the right thing to do – and it will also help fix St. Louis’s economy by putting much needed money into the hands of consumers, who will spend it on the basic things anyone needs to support a family.

If you think workers should be able to earn enough to pay for basic needs like food, shelter, health care, transportation — or if you believe something is fundamentally wrong when a CEO makes 1,795 times a workers salary, while workers don’t earn enough to meet basic needs — then it’s time to stand with the people who stand at the cash register, behind the sales counter, or on the work floor.

If you’re in St. Louis, it’s time to stand with workers on the corner of Delmar Blvd. and Kingland Ave. You can use the link above to RSVP. If you’re not in St. Louis, you can still stand with workers in St. Louis and everywhere, by signing our petition to raise the minimum wage, and signing the St, Louis worker’s petition.

Today’s rally is actually the second day of action in St. Louis. Hundreds of workers walked off the job on Wednesday, in a “surprise strike” that spread from one restaurant to another. It started when worker’s at Jimmy John’s in Soulard went on strike, to protest low wages and humiliating treatment in the workplace.

Garth-Rhodes said Jimmy John’s employees were subjected to forms of mental abuse.

“In the past several months, Jimmy John’s managers have required workers to publicly hold signs when they don’t perform up to the sandwich chain’s ‘freaky fast’ job expectations,” Garth-Rhodes said.

One worker was ordered to hold a sign stating, “I made 3 wrong sandwiches today,” Garth-Rhodes said; while another was forced to hold a sign that said, “I was more than 13 seconds in the drive thru.”

St. Louis Jimmy John’s workers also picketed in front of the Soulard location Thursday morning.

Gerneisha Clark has worked at that location for five months and picketed Thursday. She said she is one of the workers subjected to management abuse of power.

“They have a lack of respect for the people that work for them and they just do us any kind of way,” she said. “I’m one of the people that had to hold up a sign as punishment for making a mistake.”

Clark not only had to endure the embarrassment of having to wear a sign, but management actually expected her to “smile for the camera” too.

Clark said it’s time for people to stand up because keeping quiet won’t improve working conditions.

“When he (her manager) had me hold the sign up, he told me don’t be offended while he took a picture with his cell phone,” she said. “He didn’t have to make me hold up a sign. I felt humiliated.”

Miller said this is a selfless act and said she is fearful of being fired.

“When is enough going to be enough,” she asked. “You have to fight for what you believe in, and hopefully there is a great outcome afterward.”

(If this is the way to handle mistakes made on the job, when does Jamie Dimon get his sign, and do we all get to take a picture?)

The campaign, “STL Can’t Survive on $7.35,” is aptly named, because according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, $7.35 an hour doesn’t even add up to a living wage for a single adult. Add just one child, and it gets worse. A single adult with a child in St. Louis actually needs to earn $17 an hour, just to pay for food, child care, medical care, housing, transportation, and other essentials. A family of four — with 2 adults and 2 children — would need to earn $18 an hour just to afford basic necessities. (Two adults working full-time for minimum wage still can’t make ends meet.)

If raising the minimum wage for St. Louis’ fast food workers from $7.35 to $15 per hour, keep in mind that the typical hourly wage for management in St. Louis currently stands at about $38. Fast food workers in St. Louis currently earn less than quarter of what managers typically earn. At $15 per hour, their wages would still be less than half of what managers earn, but it would a livable wage.

The STL Can’t Survive on $7.35 says that kind of inequality has implications for the entire economy.

The St. Louis strike comes amid growing concern from economists and other experts that the proliferation of low-wage work is hampering the nation’s recovery. In a speech last month, Federal Reserve Board Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin suggested the types of jobs being created are slowing economic growth. “Those jobs will directly affect the fortunes and challenges of households and neighborhoods as well as the course of the recovery,” she said. It also comes as major national companies like McDonald’s and Walmart are facing increasing questions about whether low wages are causing breakdowns in customer service.

“I’ve been at Jack in the Box for four years, cleaning and prepping food and all I get paid is $7.55 without any benefits,” said Anita Gregory, a mother of one, who is expecting her second child in the next few weeks. “I’m tired of having to struggle to survive while working so hard.”

Fast food workers bring $1 billion a year into the cash registers of St. Louis, yet most of these workers earn Missouri’s minimum wage of $7.35, or just above it, and are forced to rely on public assistance programs to provide for their families and gethealthcare for their children. It would take a typical St. Louis fast food worker minimum-wage full-time worker more than 1,300 years to earn as much as the CEO of YUM! Brands— which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut— made in 2012.

The St. Louis Organizing Committee campaign, STL Can’t Survive on $7.35, seeks to put money back in the pockets of the 36,000 men and women who work hard in the St. Louis-area’s fast food chains but still can’t afford basic necessities like food, clothing, and rent. A single adult in St. Louis with a child actuallyneeds to make more than $17 an hour to get by, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. If workers were paid more, they’d spend more, helping to get St. Louis’ economy moving again.

“Workers in fast-food jobs are no longer freckle-faced teenagers looking for some summer pocket change,” said the Rev. Martin Rafanan, director of STL $7.35. “Increasingly, fast food jobs are the only options for St. Louisans, but these workers can’t even afford to pay for rent, food and carfare. If they workers earned more, fast food workers would spend that money at local businesses here in St. Louis and help lift our economy.”

After the Chicago strike, I wrote that this movement doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. As with New York and Chicago, it won’t stop with St Louis. St. Louis organizers hope their action will spread to other areas, and it most likely will. Just as word spread from one restaurant to another when Jimmy John’s employees walked out, courage may prove to be contagious, and the next strike may coming soon to a lunch counter near you. When it does, join it.

If, like me, you’re a working parent or any other adult struggling to balance the demands of work and family, you know the two biggest challenges to pulling off that balancing act: Time and Money. We never have enough of either, and have precious little control over what we do have. Now, House Republicans have introduced a bill to make sure we have even less.

It’s called the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013″ (H.R. 1406), and it’s as Orwellian as it sounds.

In fact, it fits this Wikipedia definition of “Orwellian” rather nicely: “Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socioeconomic disintegration of the family.”

The bill is scheduled for a vote on the House floor tomorrow. It isn’t any more likely to be signed into law than it was in 1997, 2003, or any of the other times Republicans introduced it in one form or another. In fact, it won’t go any further than the House. If it did, working families would end up with even less time and less money, in exchange for the GOP’s favorite variety of faux “flexibility.”

It’s (Not) Your Time

This “Working Family Flexibility Act” does not give workers the “flexibility” to take time off when they want. You have to ask for it, but you might not get it. According to the language of the bill, an employee “shall be permitted by the employee’s employer to use such time within a reasonable period after making the request if the use of the compensatory time does not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.”

A few key phrases stand out.

• “… shall be permitted …”: Workers “shall be permitted” to use their comp time by their employers. In other words, an employer may allow you to use your comp time when you need it, but you don’t have a right to use your comp time when you need it. You must ask permission to use your time, and then you must be allowed to use it.
• “… within a reasonable period …”: What’s a reasonable period of time? Who decides? The same people who decide whether you can use your time or not: your employer. Maybe it’s a month, maybe two weeks, maybe you have until the end of the week. Actually, employers are the ones with all the flexibility here. They can decide to put all time over 40 hours into a “pot” to be used for future time off, over which they have complete control.
• “… does not unduly disrupt …”: What constitutes “unduly disruption” of your employers business? Who decides? Again, the same people who’ve made all the decisions so far: your employer.

Do you need to use your comp time to attend a critical parent/teacher conference at your child’s school? Tough luck if your employer decides that  your absence would be too much a “disruption.” Getting that big order out the door, finishing that major report, or even just staffing the dinner rush trumps everything else — including family.

“It’s your time,” intones the TV spot for the bill. “You shouldn’t have to choose between work or family.” Well, it’s not “your time.” As far as this bill is concerned, “your time” belongs to your employer, to be doled out (or not) as they see fit. You can request it, sure. But, as we say where I come from, “Asking ain’t getting.” Your request can be denied.

As for “choosing between work and family,” don’t worry. You won’t be the one making the choice. Your employer will decide, and will grant you use of “your time” if it doesn’t disrupt their business or their bottom line.

It’s (Not) Your Money

Every day thousands of Americans volunteer to work overtime, and even jump at the chance, because they need the money to pay for various family-related expenses. Sometimes, overtime pay can mean the difference between putting food on the table and keeping the lights on, or going hungry and sitting in the dark. Sometimes, it helps pay for medical expenses, or defrays the cost of putting kids through school.

Time-and-a-half pay can make a huge difference for working families. The “Working Family Flexibility Act” will insure that many working famines have even less money, by reducing take-home pay. Families will lose the supplemental income that overtime pay provides, and that money will end up in employers’ hands instead.

An employer can not only decide to put all time exceeding 40 hours a week into a “pot” of time off to be doled out at a later date, but employers can also decide when that date will be. Employers can hold on to that “pot” until the end of the year. Employers can even designate “a 12-month period other than the calendar year,” so long as they tell their employees.

Workers, then, are not paid for their overtime work during the current pay period. Instead, their overtime pay becomes an interest-free loan to the employer, to be paid back to the worker at the end of the year – or even later.

The flexibility in this comp time bill would have employees working unpaid overtime hours beyond the 40-hour workweek and accruing as many as 160 hours of compensatory time. A low-paid worker making $10 an hour who accrued that much comp time in lieu of overtime pay would effectively give his or her employer an interest-free loan of $1,600 – equal to a month’s pay. That’s a lot to ask of a worker making about $20,000 a year. Indeed, any worker who accrues 160 hours of comp time will in effect have loaned his or her employer a month’s pay. This same arithmetic provides employers with a powerful incentive to increase workers’ overtime hours. Instead of having to pay time-and-a-half wages when an hourly-paid employee works longer than the standard 40-hour work week, the employer incurs no financial cost at the time the extra hours are worked.

Even then, workers get extra days off, not the extra money overtime provided before it was transformed into comp time.

The bill includes a “safety valve”  provision for workers to “cash out” of such agreements. But, as the Chicago Tribune’s Rex Huppke pointed out, those safety valves would be fine in a perfect world,  but they don’t always work in the real world.

It’s Not Your Choice

The bill presents the whole comp-time exchange as optional. Employers can choose to offer comp time instead of overtime, and employees can choose to enter into comp-time agreements with their employers. But Huppke asks “What happens if your employer tries to deny you the hours you have accrued?”

The bill explicitly prohibits that, but in the real world the interminable recession and the reality of working in a “no-quit” economy make it simple enough for an employer to make you “an offer you can’t refuse.”

In principle a worker’s agreement to receive comp time instead of overtime pay is supposed to be voluntary. But anyone who has worked at a $10 an hour job understands what it is to get an offer from your employer that you can’t refuse. Under the provisions of the bill, employers are not supposed to threaten, intimidate or coerce employees into agreeing to comp time in lieu of wages. But employers don’t need to resort to such tactics. Everyone understands that in this economy, with unemployment still at recession levels, the employer holds all the cards. Workers who refuse to go along with an employer’s request for comp time instead of wages know that their commitment to their employer will be questioned. They fear that in a crunch they will be vulnerable to having their hours cut or being let go. In a weak job market, very few hourly-paid workers can risk that. Without a union to protect their right to refuse to trade overtime pay for comp time, and with no funds in the bill for enforcement of these provisions, the voluntary nature of such agreements is highly suspect.

Faux “Flexibility”

When Republicans start touting “flexibility” working Americans and their families should make haste to their battle-stations, because it’s an attack. If Republicans are offering your “flexibility” with one hand, they are usually taking away a lot more with the other hand. (For example, giving states more “flexibility” in administering Medicaid actually means slashing Medicaid’s federal funding, and block-granting the remains to the states to administer as they please.)

In conservative doublespeak, “flexibility” stands in for “freedom,” but for middle-class, working-class and low-income Americans, it means “freedom” to try and get by with a lot less. That’s  because the “Working Families Flexibility Act,” doesn’t actually give working family more flexibility. (The Healthy Families Act introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, which would allow the 40 percent of private-sector American workers who have no access to paid sick days to accrue paid sick leave, does a much better job of this.) It takes flexibility away from our families and gives employers more flexibility to make their employers work longer and harder for less.

A quick comparison of organizations supporting the “Working Families Flexibility Act” and the organizations opposing it makes it clear that this bill is really about taking flexibility away from working families, and given employers even more flexibility to make their employees work harder and longer for less. On one side, we’ve got the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and the International Foodservice Distributors Association, representing companies that employ many low-wage workers who rely on overtime, and have little enough “flexibility” already. On the other side, organizations like the Family Values At Work Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Main Street Alliance, the National Employment Law Project, and the Service Employees International Union speak for the working families who would be harmed by this Republican-backed bill.

The National Partnership for Women and Families spells out exactly what’s wrong with the “Family Flexibility Act.”

The Working Families Flexibility Act offers a false choice between time and pay. The bill’s supporters claim H.R. 1406 would give hourly workers more flexibility and time with their loved ones by allowing them to choose paid time off, rather than time-and-a-half wages, as compensation for working more than 40 hours in one week (“comp time”). But the irony is that workers will only get more time with their families after they’ve spent long hours away at work. And there is nothing in H.R. 1406 that guarantees that workers will be able to use the comp time they have earned when they need it.

The worker flexibility offered by H.R. 1406 is nothing more than a mirage. That’s because this proposal gives the employer, not the employee, the “flexibility” to decide when and even if comp time can be used. The bill permits the employer to deny the request entirely if the employee’s use of comp time would “unduly disrupt” operations or to grant leave on a day other than the day requested by the employee. This means that H.R. 1406 provides no guarantee that workers can use their earned time when a child falls ill, to attend a parent-teacher conference, or to help an aging parent settle in to a nursing home. Employers can veto an employee’s request to use comp time even in cases of urgent need.

H.R. 1406 would put workers at very real risk and provides an interest-free loan to employers. An employee who does not accept comp time could be penalized with fewer hours, bad shifts and loss of overtime hours. And because it is cheaper to provide comp time than to pay overtime wages, there is a significant incentive for employers to hire fewer people and rely on overtime hours – paid for in future comp time – to get work done. It would permit employers to defer compensation for unused comp time for as long as 13 months, creating an interest-free loan for employers and hardships for workers.

Once again, Republicans are advancing policies that benefit the powerful at the expense of hard-working Americans, and selling it as “flexibility” instead of calling it was it really is — class warfare against working families.