Daily Kos

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday a very strong gain in jobs for November. Seasonally adjusted, the economy added 314,000 new private-sector jobs. Another 7,000 new jobs were created in the public sector. It was the biggest gain since January 2012. It also made November the strongest jobs report of the year, and the 10th month of 2014 in which more than 200,000 new jobs were added.

Revisions in the November report raised the number of previously calculated new jobs in September from 256,000 to 271,000 and in October from 214,000 to 243,000. The bureau now says there are 1.54 million more jobs than there were at the pre-recession peak. More than 10 million new jobs have been created since the employment low point in February 2010.

The November headline unemployment rate, called U3 in BLS jargon, remained unchanged at 5.8 percent, the lowest since July 2008. U6—a BLS measure of unemployment and underemployment that includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want full-time jobs but can't find one and many "discouraged" workers—fell 0.1 percent to 11.4 percent in November, having fallen 0.3 percent in October.

It's always good to remember the BLS caveat that "the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 90,000." That means the "real" number of new jobs created in November wasn't 321,000, but, BLS statisticians calculate, somewhere in a band between 231,000 and 411,000. This is one of the reasons revisions in the two months following each report can be quite large.

By the bureau's count, 9.1 million people were officially out of work in November. This tally does not include the millions of workers who have left the workforce because they have given up on finding a job.

The employment-population ratio remained unchanged at 59.2 percent, the best it's been since July 2009. The labor force participation rate also remained unchanged at 62.8 percent. Only once in the past 36 years has the percentage been lower than that, which was in September this year. It peaked at 67.2 percent in April 2000. The civilian labor force increased by 119,000 after increasing by 416,000 in October.

In its totals for the month, the BLS doesn't distinguish between full-time and part-time jobs. Most recent hiring has been for full time jobs but only about one-third of those are high-wage positions. Middle-wage positions are still lagging. What that means is that, on average, people fortunate enough to take new jobs have found that they pay less than the ones lost in the Great Recession.

People counted as "part time for economic reasons" in November remained unchanged at 6.9 million. These workers want full-time jobs but have only been able to find part-time positions or have had their full-time hours reduced.

For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.

• What's wrong with using data to grade teachers? A lot, and this article is a helpful primer.
• At the hotel Harvard University owns, Harvard is just another crappy boss, but Lydia DePillis uses the situation to highlight how inequality works even within a building or an industry.
• This is really sad news for labor coverage in the United States: The New York Times' Steven Greenhouse is taking a buyout. He's a great reporter, and there aren't enough labor reporters at major newspapers, and he will be missed.
• Two months old, but new to me, a study has found that Chicago charter schools underperform their traditional counterparts.

Fast food workers are on strike across the country once again, seeking $15 an hour and the right to join a union. This time, two years after the historic first one-day strike by New York City fast food workers, similar actions were expected in 190 cities. The movement has spurred significant minimum wage victories in some cities and states, and it has developed its own leaders. One of those, Terrance Wise, is profiled by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times, making clear that workers know the stakes of their fight:

“I have never seen a movement like this,” said Mr. Wise, in his crisp tenor voice. “We’ve seen how the civil rights movement won civil rights and we’ve seen how women won the right to vote. Those things weren’t given to us. People faced hoses and beatings.

“Some people even died. We have to bring the same pressure for today’s times and make the companies listen to us. We have to do whatever it takes to win.”

The fast food workers' fight is spreading, becoming a movement beyond just the one industry. Airport workers, home care workers, and convenience store workers were joining the fast food workers in some cities, recognizing a common cause among low-wage workers across industries. And why not? It's not just fast food employers that pay poverty wages, give workers too few hours and unpredictable schedules, and intimidate or retaliate against those who speak out.

Striking workers remain a minority in their industries, but their numbers are growing. They're going up against a huge industry—now, up against more than one huge industry—but they haven't been crushed and, after two years, they've shown that they are in this fight for the long haul.

The Supreme Court is taking on the question of whether companies can refuse to accommodate women's needs during pregnancy. The case in question involves a UPS driver, Peggy Young, who in 2006 was forced onto unpaid leave because she couldn't lift more than 20 pounds, rather than being allowed by the company to continue doing her job, which rarely required her to lift more than 20 pounds. That meant that, while pregnant, Young lost her health coverage as well as her income.

Circumstances have changed since Young's pregnancy—UPS has changed its policy and Congress has amended the Americans with Disabilities Act to include temporary disabilities, which includes pregnancy. However, the notoriously sexist Supreme Court will now decide whether Young should get back pay and damages under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law courts have generally interpreted to allow discrimination against pregnant women under many circumstances. UPS says that since it wouldn't have given light duty to a man who hurt himself off the job, Young's pregnancy didn't merit light duty, either. However:

Representing Peggy Young in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos will tell the justices that drivers who lost their licenses were assigned light duty until they could get their licenses back — in other words, that nonpregnant workers with temporary disabilities were treated more favorably than pregnant workers.

He says that UPS had drivers who had strokes and hypertension who were reassigned to light duty to allow them to get their health back so they could once again qualify for driving. "And that's exactly the same treatment that UPS refused to give Peggy Young," he contends.

UPS would reassign a driver who lost his or her commercial driver's license because of drunk driving, but not a pregnant woman. And pregnancy discrimination remains common. Republicans have blocked a federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, but several states and cities have acted to strengthen protections for pregnant workers. Workers and advocacy groups, meanwhile, have pushed to keep the issue in the public eye; Walmart workers, who have had their own struggles with their company's failure to accommodate pregnant women, rallied in support of Young outside the Supreme Court Wednesday.

So, what will the Supreme Court do? There's lots of reason to be pessimistic. As the National Women's Law Center's Emily Martin writes:

The specific legal questions raised in Hobby Lobby and Young are quite different, but the fundamental question of whether women’s reproductive health needs should be afforded equal treatment with other health needs is the common thread that runs through both. Over the years, this Court has shown a discomforting willingness to permit legal obstacles to be placed in the path of women seeking abortion. Last term, it permitted employers to place obstacles in front of women seeking birth control. This term, it will decide whether employers may also place obstacles in the path of women seeking to maintain healthy pregnancies.

Like I said, reason for pessimism.

• Financial mismanagement is par for the charter school course, unfortunately:
  

  New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

  The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

• A Capital Bikeshare worker was fired for union organizing. The company claims the man was a supervisor not legally allowed to unionize; he obviously disagrees.
• Kentucky to teacher: No, you can't find out what's going on with your retirement funds.
• Whatevs, it's just people's paychecks.
• Kevin Drum argues Black Friday now just another opportunity to mock the poor. I'm pretty sure it's not just that, but that's an uncomfortable component of the criticism of Black Friday, I agree.

Fast food workers are prepared to launch their latest one-day strike this Thursday in more than 150 cities across the country. The workers' fight for $15 an hour pay and the right to join a union went public just over two years ago, on November 29, 2012, in New York City, and has grown to involve thousands of workers and spur the momentum for state and local minimum wage increases. The campaign for $15 and a union has also spread beyond the fast food industry:

Latonya Allen, a home health care worker from Atlanta, Georgia, and Abera Siyoum, a worker at Minnesota’s Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, also spoke on the call. Home health care workers and airport service workers are also engaged in campaigns for higher wages and improved working conditions. And workers from both industries will be rallying in support of the fast food workers on Dec. 4.

“In Minneapolis and across America, we are fighting for $15 because we want to change our lives for the better,” said Siyoum. “This is why I’m proud to stand together with fast food workers and home care workers. This is why I’m in this movement.”

The fast food strikes and other actions by low-wage workers have been a major source of momentum behind increasing the minimum wage. No one was talking about $15 an hour until fast food workers started fighting for it in late 2012. The Democratic proposal of a $10.10 federal minimum was generally portrayed in the media as a reach, the grounds for a compromise to something lower. $15 sounded impossible, yet now two major American cities—Seattle and San Francisco—are on their way there, while Chicago is about to pass a $13 an hour minimum wage, Oakland has approved a $12.25 wage, Washington, DC, and neighboring counties in Maryland are on their way to $11.50, and Massachusetts is going to $11. Doubtless some or all of these cities and states would have done something about the minimum wage without this level of worker organizing, but there's no way we'd be seeing so many places going above $10.10.

Chicago is likely to be the next city to raise its minimum wage, with its city council voting Tuesday on an increase supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

The mayor’s revised minimum wage ordinance would raise the hourly minimum wage in Chicago each year in July, starting with an increase to $10 next year. It would then go up to $10.50 in 2016, $11 in 2017, $12 in 2018, and $13 in 2019.

After 2019, the city’s minimum wage would go up each year at a rate equal to the rise in the Consumer Price Index. [...]

Workers who backed the mayor’s plan said it’s too expensive to live in Chicago earning the current minimum wage. Some said the mayor’s plan isn’t good enough, noting it would only raise the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers – like bartenders and restaurant wait staff – from $4.95 to $5.95.

Chicago's planned $13 an hour is below the standard set by Seattle and San Francisco, which are on their way to $15, but would still be among the nation's highest minimum wages. Of course, we are talking about a nearly five-year phase-in period, during which time the value of $13 will likely decrease. Still, this is fantastic news for Chicago's minimum wage workers—and another sign of the momentum behind minimum wage increases.

Would you pay a penny more for a pound of tomatoes if it meant the worker who picked those tomatoes was lifted from grinding poverty to ... maybe a little above poverty? It's a question that speaks to basic humanity, but it's not a question that most of us get to answer. We don't buy our tomatoes a pound at a time, negotiating the terms of the labor with each transaction. Rather, big corporations buy the tomatoes from the farmers who grow them, and it's those corporations, including grocery chains like Walmart and Publix and fast food chains like Taco Bell and Chipotle, that set the prices, telling farmers how much they will pay per pound (not just of tomatoes but of other fruits and vegetables as well) and exerting downward pressure on wages and working conditions for those at the bottom, the mostly immigrant workers in the fields.

And those corporations aren't going to pay a penny more unless they face a lot of pressure. The conditions farmworkers face when they can't create that pressure, and their fight to improve their wages and working conditions, are the two stories told in the new documentary Food Chains.

Follow below the fold for more.

Reposted from Daily Kos by Laura Clawson San Francisco has passed a Retail Workers Bill of Rights that will bring much-needed changes to retail labor practices:

The new rules will require retail chains that have 11 or more locations across the country and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco to provide advance notice of schedules, improve the treatment of part-time employees, and give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before hiring new people. Employers will have to give their workers at least two weeks’ advance notice of their schedules, and if they fail to do so they will have to give those workers additional “predictability pay.” Workers also get paid if they’re required to be on call but their shifts are canceled. Employers will have to give part-time employees the same starting wage as those working full time in the same position and access to the same benefits.

Currently, workers may not find out what their schedules will be until the last minute, and contend with schedules that shift so much from week to week that they can't rely on a steady paycheck. Employers frequently hire more part-time workers even though their current workers are eager for more hours. Prohibiting such practices, especially combined with the minimum wage increase voters approved earlier this month, is a big step toward cleaning up labor practices in the retail industry. More cities and states should follow, and be a model for a federal law when Congress becomes a little more reasonable.

Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.

Walmart workers in several states started their Black Friday actions ahead of time, but Friday itself is shaping up much, much bigger. Striking workers often face serious (and illegal) retaliation from Walmart, but they are motivated:

"I have to depend on the government mostly," says Fatmata Jabbie, a 21-year-old single mother of two who earns $8.40 an hour working at a Walmart in Alexandria, Virginia. She makes ends meet with food stamps, subsidized housing, and Medicaid. "Walmart should pay us $15 an hour and let us work full-time hours," she says. "That would change our lives. That would change our whole path. I wouldn't be dependent on government too much. I could buy clothes for my kids to wear."

You can follow the day's action at @ChangeWalmart and @ForRespect.