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ISSUES & FORUMS
Economic Justice Forum:
We deal with issues that affect a person's or household's ability to financially survive in today's world. Working 40 hours a week does not ensure that one can afford the roof over their head, the food on their table, clothes for their children or to maintain a reliable automobile. Jobs must pay a living wage and every day costs must be contained to ensure that individuals and families don't fall further and further behind. And when they do fall behind, ensure that programs are in place to help lift them back up, allowing them to move forward while maintaining their dignity and self-worth. For more information on how to get involved, please contact Carol West, 563-359-7302.
Reading:
From the National Low Income Housing Coalition - This report compares housing prices to wages by state, city, and county for the whole country.
Past Actions:
After attending the March 10th meeting at United Neighbors and a meeting in the 1st ward on the 11th, it is apparent that the Davenport City Council made a costly and ill-advised decision in axing their Neighborhood Enhancement Department (Housing and Environmental Inspection) and giving the money to the Fire Department. Whatever the intentions of the architects of this "plan" it can only have two outcomes. If the same level of inspections is maintained, it will be MUCH more costly to the taxpayers than leaving the program where it is. A more likely outcome is to drastically curtail the inspections, which will cause deterioration in the neighborhoods.
The aldermen in favor of this "plan" say they only had three choices - raise taxes, cut firefighters or police, or completely eliminate this Department. At the meetings indicated above, it was pointed out that many more choices exist. Many of the property owners said they would rather have their taxes increased the small amount necessary to keep the services. Other options are to increase the fees for the inspections (currently the fees pay half of the cost of the program). If people need to be laid off, in the past the City has spread the layoffs between many Departments, not putting the entire burden on one Department. More solutions were offered.
The aldermen have been surprised by the negative reaction to their poorly thought out "plan". It appears that several would change their vote if they could come up with a suitable solution to the budget problem, therefore it is imperative that we contact them and voice our concerns ASAP! Email or call Mayor Winborn, their aldermen, and Mr. Malin, the City Administrator. Action has to be taken immediately, especially if the solution has anything to do with increasing taxes. Please make contact today!
City Administrator, Mayor, and Council Member's Contacts:
Ray Amborse rambrose@ci.davenport.ia.us, 324-7143
Barney Barnhill bbarnhill@ci.davenport.ia.us, 324-7670
Charlie Brooke cwb@ci.davenport.ia.us, 344-9738
Brian Dumas bdumas@ci.davenport.ia.us, 391-6930
Ian Frink lfrink@ci.davenport.ia.us, 322-6446
Shawn Hamerlilnk shamerlinck@ci.davenport.ia.us, 388-6338
Jamie Howard jlh@ci.davenport.ia.us, 355-5516
Billy Lynn bgl@ci.davenport.ia.us, 326-3359
Keith Meyer km@ci.davenport.ia.us, 326-0469
Ron VanFossen rvanfossen@ci.davenport.ia.us, 322-2615
Ed Winborn ewinborn@ci.davenport.ia.us, 324-5463
Craig Malin ctm@ci.davenport.ia.us, 888-2036.
After Action Report - Working Families Win
Davenport was the site of this winter's third Working Families Win town hall meeting, drawing a large crowd to St. Ambrose University on January 17.
Included in the crowd were members of Progressive Action for the Common Good, AFSCME, IAM, CWA, UFCW, ISEA, Churches United, Davenport Education Association, Davenport NAACP, St. Ambrose University Democrats, Scott County Housing Council, World Relief, Iowa for Health Care, staff members of three congressional candidates, a candidate for Iowa Secretary of State, a candidate for the Iowa House, a member of the Davenport School Board, three Scott County Supervisors, and other citizens committed to economic justice.
We talked about health care, housing, a living wage, Social Security, and the outsourcing of jobs in the Quad Cities, and many volunteered to host neighborhood house meetings to keep the conversation going.
The first Working Families Win neighborhood house meeting was held recently in Waterloo, with more being scheduled there as well as in Dubuque and Davenport. Working Families Win is committed to keeping economic issues at the top of the agenda, holding our elected officials and candidates accountable, and helping people to host grassroots house meetings to talk and take action with friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
If you would be interested in hosting a house party in your neighborhood, please contact Caroline Vernon at 563-676-7580.
Below is an article from Bloomberg.com, Jan. 17, 2006: "You are working
harder, and you are working longer, and you are deriving less benefits."
from David Leshtz
Working Families Win
319-621-4205
dleshtz@ia.net
www.workingfamilieswin.org
Bush's Expansion Leaves Workers Behind, Sparking Fed Friction
Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- American workers have rarely taken home a smaller share of the nation's prosperity, a condition that is undermining bipartisan support for free trade and creating friction between President George W. Bush's administration and the Federal Reserve.
After 16 consecutive quarters of economic growth, pay is rising at a slower rate than in any similar expansion since the end of World War II. Companies are paying less of their cash gains in the form of wages and salaries than at any time since the Great Depression, according to government figures. Such a disparity, partly the result of globalization of the labor market, helps explain why the Bush administration is struggling to muster support for lower trade barriers even with the jobless rate at a four-year low. The imbalance has also triggered a debate between Bush's Treasury Department and the Fed about how low unemployment can go without kindling inflation.
"There is no doubt that something is happening'' to reduce labor's share of income, says Robert Solow, a Nobel Prize- winning economist and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. An economy that doesn't distribute its gains widely is "poorly performing,'' he says. From the final quarter of 2001 through last year's third quarter, total compensation paid to employees by corporations, including health benefits, rose at a 4.3 percent average annual rate, according to government figures. That's the slowest growth for any similar period in post-war expansions lasting at least four years.
`Not Connecting'
Stripping away benefits, corporate wages and salaries rose at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the 16-quarter period, the slowest of any post-war expansion lasting that long. Wages and salaries as a share of the cash corporations are generating from the expansion stood at 51 percent in the second and third quarters, the lowest in government records going back to 1929. Including benefits, labor's share was the lowest since 1997.
"The good economic news is not connecting,'' says John Zogby, president of Zogby International Inc., a Utica, New York- based polling firm. "You've got fairly low unemployment, solid profits'' and gains in stock and housing markets and yet ``there is a considerable amount of economic anxiety.'' A December Zogby poll found 28 percent of Americans said they are better off than they were a year earlier, 52 percent said their finances were the same, and 20 percent said they were worse off, even as the economy grew by $787 billion. Only 38 percent said Bush is doing a "good'' or "excellent'' job in office.
`Tipping Point'
Treasury Secretary John Snow said Jan. 6 that wage growth will pick up. "We are at that tipping point where labor's share of national income will be rising,'' he said. That may require further declines in the unemployment rate, something the Fed is likely to resist. Fed policy makers flagged high levels of "resource utilization,'' meaning labor and productive capacity, as an inflation risk at their December policy meeting. Michael Moskow, Chicago Fed president, said Nov. 21 that the 5 percent unemployment rate reported for October, before revisions, "is probably close to the level associated with a healthy economy and little labor market slack.''
Treasury officials object to that idea. "Nobody knows what the full employment, non-inflationary number is,'' Snow said after the government published a 4.9 percent unemployment rate for December. "I'm confident it's considerably lower. We have room to bring it down.'' Solow says the Fed should seek the full employment rate, which is probably lower than the current 4.9 percent. "The standard economic argument for free trade involves the presumption that you keep the domestic economy fully employed,'' he says.
Free Trade
Arguments for free trade are losing their force with some members of Congress, who blame globalization for holding down wage growth in the U.S. The House recently approved a bill that requires employers to certify immigrants are eligible to work and allows for construction of 700 miles of fences along the Mexican border. Last July, a trade pact with Central America cleared the House by only two votes after Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Republicans. "Support for both trade and globalization is declining,'' says Representative Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat. "You are working harder, and you are working longer, and you are deriving less benefits. People say they are confused about what is going on.''
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that approves all trade accords, said Dec. 20 that a global agreement to lower trade barriers is likely to "go over like a lead balloon'' in Congress unless there are clear benefits for U.S. workers and companies. Minimum Wage Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott last October urged Congress to raise the minimum wage, which has remained at $5.15 an hour since 1997, saying the company's customers "are struggling to get by.'' The Senate that same month rejected a proposal by Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy to increase the minimum to $6.25 over 18 months. The weaker returns to labor, and the Fed's concerns about resource utilization, are even more perplexing when seen in the context of rising productivity.
Output per hour has grown at an average 3.6 percent annual rate over the past 16 quarters versus 2.6 percent the prior four years. Companies have room to boost pay without raising prices because productivity gains reduce production costs. They have little incentive to do so, though, with ready sources of low- cost labor overseas and declining union membership at home.
Pay Not Issue
"We are not finding compensation being the issue at all,'' says Terry Laudal, senior vice president of human resources at SAP America in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, a unit of Walldorf, Germany-based SAP AG, the world's largest maker of business- management software. "The issue is really the culture. Are you winning, are you investing in personal growth?'' Pay is typically a fourth- or fifth-rank issue for SAP job applicants, says Mark Steinke, the firm's vice president of staffing for North America. In a sign that employees are focusing on stability, SAP's turnover rates for sales and marketing in the U.S. and Canada dropped to 12 percent last year from around 18 percent in 2003, Laudal says.
The bursting of the Internet bubble and corporate accounting scandals, which shuttered dozens of firms, are causing workers to value job security more than pay raises, executives say. "When you put it all together you get what you have now, a tight labor market but no wage inflation,'' says Jeffrey Joerres, chairman of Manpower Inc., the Milwaukee-based employment services firm that places about 2 million people a year worldwide. "We are in a whole new territory.''
-- With reporting by Mark Drajem, Nicholas Johnston and Alison Fitzgerald in Washington.
Budget cuts to services for vulnerable populations
For more information on what budget cuts mean for the Quad Cities or to get involved with our campaign to roll back Bush's budget cuts contact Rick Schloemer at 309-738-0915.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: www.cbpp.org
Without Vision the People Perish
Federal Budget Off-Balance
By JEAN CURTISS and MINKIE MEDORA
TPACG recently sponsored a visit to town by the Oreomobile.
The trip was a very entertaining and effective visual demonstration of how the federal budget gets divided up , using giant Oreo cookies. It is the idea of Ben Cohen, founder of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and a founding member of True Majority.
True Majority is a non-profit, grass roots education and advocacy organization that offers its members the ability to send faxes on issues we all care about to members of Congress and national leaders.
Each Oreo represents $10 billion dollars. And, if five Oreos were taken from the Pentagon's $400 billion budget and re-distributed to other programs the US could save six million children from dying of hunger in impoverished countries, fund health care, early education, begin reducing the federal deficit by $10 billion a year and have $35 billion left over to give back to the States.
To learn more about the message the Oreomobile gives go to www.truemajority.org and click on "Serious Fun" and see the Oreomobile animated presentation.