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Economy
Low-Wage Workers to Democratic Leaders: Fight for Us or Face 'Consequences'
"Democrats must act now to protect workers and show that they are fighting for the people who need them most," said one economic justice leader.
Nov 19, 2024
With Democratic leaders grappling with how to move forward following this month's devastating electoral losses and governors in the party moving to resist President-elect Donald Trump's policies, low-wage workers are planning on Wednesday to send a clear message to several Democrat-led statehouses: Prioritize workers and fair wages, or "face the consequences."
The national economic justice group One Fair Wage, which works closely with restaurant industry and other service workers, is organizing direct actions in Detroit, New York, and Springfield, Illinois, demanding that Democratic leaders in blue states "act decisively" to protect working people from Trump's anti-regulation, pro-corporate agenda.
The group said tipped service workers, advocates, and labor leaders will take part in the actions, in which participants will deliver an open letter calling for the passage of legislation to raise the minimum wage and eliminate subminimum wages.
"Workers in blue states are raising their voices because they cannot afford to wait any longer," said Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of One Fair Wage. "With a cost-of-living crisis squeezing families and an anti-worker Trump administration on the horizon, Democratic leaders must act boldly to protect workers and provide economic security. If they fail to prioritize wages and worker protections, they risk losing the trust—and the votes—of the very people they need to win."
The actions come after preliminary demographic data from the election showed working-class voters from a variety of racial backgrounds swung toward Trump. Two-thirds of Trump voters said they had to cut back on groceries because of high prices, according to a New York Times/Siena College survey, compared to only a third of people who supported Vice President Kamala Harris. Latino-majority counties shifted toward the Republican former president by 13 percentage points, and Black-majority counties did the same by about three points.
"Last week's electoral results made one thing clear: Voters overwhelmingly prioritize wages and affordability."
"Last week's electoral results made one thing clear: Voters overwhelmingly prioritize wages and affordability," said Jayaraman.
The actions were planned amid reports that U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, a key adviser to former President Barack Obama, is among those considering a run for chair of the Democratic National Committee—a plan that one former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said seemed aimed at ensuring "the Democratic Party continues to lose working-class voters." Other possible contendersinclude former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and, reportedly, progressive Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler.
One Fair Wage said that following Democratic losses across the country, and with Republicans set to take control of the White House and both chambers of Congress in January, Democratic leaders at the state level must "act boldly on behalf of working families."
In Michigan, workers will call on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to uphold the state Supreme Court's decision to raise the minimum wage and eliminate subminimum wages for tipped workers.
At the Illinois state Capitol, advocates plan to push for statewide legislation to extend fair wages for all workers, building on Chicago's minimum wage reforms.
In New York, One Fair Wage will lead the call for Gov. Kathy Hochul to "safeguard tipped and immigrant workers from the looming anti-worker policies of the incoming Trump administration."
The workers and supporters will deliver their demands to state lawmakers as well as hold "solidarity turkey giveaways for struggling families let down by elected officials."
Since the election, some Democratic governors have pledged to resist Trump's far-right agenda. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session aimed at "Trump-proofing" the state by finalizing climate measures and protecting reproductive and other kinds of healthcare. Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado announced a coalition that will resist Trump's deportation plan and reinforce key state institutions.
The governors' plans have not specifically mentioned efforts to protect workers from Trump's policies. The president-elect attempted to pass regulations that would make tips the property of employers during his last term, and the National Restaurant Association has pledged to revive such efforts in the next four years.
"There's a glaring omission in these efforts: low-wage and tipped workers," Angelo Greco, a political strategist working with One Fair Wage, told Common Dreams. "When Democrats say they will fight for the most vulnerable, who exactly does that include if not the people earning the lowest wages and facing the greatest economic instability?"
"Tipped workers—many of whom are women, people of color, and immigrants—continue to be paid below the minimum wage in a system rooted in the legacy of slavery," Greco added. "They face Trump's imminent rollback of Biden-era workplace protections, and now restaurant workers are on the front lines of his anti-labor rampage. If governors truly want to protect workers, they must include tipped workers in their efforts."
Jayaraman called on Democrats to "act now to protect workers and show that they are fighting for the people who need them most. Ignoring these demands will lead to alienated voters and further political losses."
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G20 Leaders Reach 'Landmark Commitment' for Global Tax on Ultrarich
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said economist Gabriel Zucman.
Nov 19, 2024
Acknowledging that "the era of the billionaire" is still in full swing across the globe, economic justice advocates on Tuesday applauded a "landmark commitment" by G20 leaders at the group's annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, where delegates agreed to cooperate on efforts to ensure the richest households in the world are taxed fairly.
The final communiqué out of the G20 Summit includes a commitment from 19 countries, the European Union, and the African Union, to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed."
"Cooperation could involve exchanging best practices, encouraging debates around tax principles, and devising anti-avoidance mechanisms, including addressing potentially harmful tax practices," reads the communiqué. "We look forward to continuing to discuss these issues in the G20 and other relevant forums, counting on the technical inputs of relevant international organizations, academia, and experts."
The final text was brokered by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, and the E.U. Tax Observatory noted that Argentina's right-wing president, Javier Milei, "failed to convince other G20 countries to block the communiqué."
The meeting took place less than a year after economist Gabriel Zucman, director of the E.U. Tax Observatory, published a report titledA Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, which informed G20 finance discussions leading up to the summit.
"A minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth would raise $200-$250 billion per year globally from about 3,000 taxpayers; extending the tax to centimillionaires would add $100-$140 billion," said Zucman, a leading expert on tax avoidance and reducing inequality, in the report.
Billionaires' effective tax rate is currently equivalent to 0.3% of their wealth, requiring them to pay a far lower rate than middle-class taxpayers.
Zucman hailed the agreement out of the summit in Rio de Janeiro as a "historic decision" and said concrete action by the world's governments must follow.
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said Zucman.
Along with Milei, the Biden administration pushed back this year as the G20 weighed Zucman's tax proposal. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen toldThe Wall Street Journal in May that the "notion of some common global arrangement for taxing billionaires with proceeds redistributed in some way—we're not supportive of a process to try to achieve that. That's something we can't sign on to."
As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, the U.S. is one of eight countries that are contributing to an international loss of $492 billion in taxes each year as multinational corporations and ultrawealthy individuals underpay. The eight countries—which also include Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the U.K.—oppose a United Nations tax convention.
Jenny Ricks, general secretary of the Fight Inequality Alliance, said that particularly with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump set to take office in January, "we live in the era of the billionaire."
"We need to move to the era of the 99%," said Ricks. "This shift won't come easily. The U.S. elections have shown how the superrich can use their wealth and power to influence policies and shape the outcomes of elections. Leaders like Trump in the U.S. and Javier Milei in Argentina are actively working to derail international cooperation, while politicians around the world fail to oppose the vested interests that continue to benefit from such unequal societies."
"We will fight harder than ever before to transform the rhetoric on taxing the rich into a global reality," she added. "We need more equal societies in which the richest no longer hold all the power and wealth, with devastating consequences. We need to redistribute the wealth of the superrich to fund vital public services and the response to climate change. Such a transformation is essential to creating the alternative we seek to today's broken system."
Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brazil, applauded Lula's government and the G20 leaders for responding "to people's demands worldwide to tackle extreme inequality, hunger, and climate breakdown, and particularly for rallying action on taxing the superrich."
"G20 governments deserve praise for their groundbreaking commitment to cooperate on taxing the world's superrich. But we won't rest until this delivers real change for people and planet," said Santiago, adding that governments now ostensibly supporting a tax on billionaires' wealth should also "be championing a $5 trillion climate finance goal at COP29," the U.N. summit set to wrap up in Baku, Azerbaijan this week.
"How can they argue that climate justice is unaffordable with a deal to raise trillions of dollars by taxing the superrich on the table?" she asked.
Quentin Parrinello, policy director at the E.U. Tax Observatory, asserted that negotiations on the tax proposal "must now extend to a much more inclusive space than the G20."
"Such reforms don't happen overnight, but time is pressing," said Parrinello. "This agenda is even more important today, with the risk of geopolitical fragmentation and looming wealth concentration fueling inequality and undermining democracy."
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Tax Dodging by Super-Rich, Big Corporations Costs Nations Half a Trillion Per Year: Study
"The U.K. and the U.S. are both among the biggest enablers and the biggest losers of this lose-lose tax system," said the chief executive of the Tax Justice Network.
Nov 19, 2024
A study published Tuesday estimates that tax dodging enabled by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy nations is costing countries around the world nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue each year, underscoring the urgent need for global reforms to prevent rich individuals and large corporations from shirking their obligations.
The new study, conducted by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), finds that "the combined costs of cross-border tax abuse by multinational companies and by individuals with undeclared assets offshore stands at an estimated $492 billion." Of that total in lost revenue, corporate tax dodging is responsible for more than $347 billion, according to TJN's calculations.
"For people everywhere, the losses translate into foregone public services, and weakened states at greater risk of falling prey to political extremism," the study reads. "And in the same way, there is scope for all to benefit from moving tax rule-setting out of the OECD and into a globally inclusive and fully transparent process at the United Nations."
The analysis estimates that just eight countries—the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Israel, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—are enabling large-scale tax avoidance by opposing popular global reform efforts. Late last year, those same eight countries were the lonely opponents of the United Nations General Assembly's vote to set in motion the process of establishing a U.N. tax convention.
According to the new TJN study, those eight countries are responsible for roughly half of the $492 billion lost per year globally to tax avoidance by the rich and large multinational corporations, despite being home to just 8% of the world's population.
"The hurtful eight voted for a world where we all keep losing half a trillion a year to tax-cheating multinational corporations and the super-rich," Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, said in a statement Tuesday. "The U.K. and the U.S. are both among the biggest enablers and the biggest losers of this lose-lose tax system, and their people consistently demand an end to tax abuse, so it's absurd that the U.S. and U.K. are seeking to preserve it."
"It's perhaps harder to understand why the other handful of blockers, like Australia, Canada, and Japan, who don't play anything like such a damaging role, would be willing to go along with this," Cobham added.
TJN released its study as G20 nations—a group that includes most of the "hurtful eight"—issued a communiqué pledging to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed." Brazil, which hosted the G20 summit, led the push for language calling for taxation of the global super-rich.
The document drew praise from advocacy groups including the Fight Inequality Alliance, which stressed the need to "transform the rhetoric on taxing the rich into global reality."
The communiqué was released amid concerns that the election of far-right billionaire Donald Trump in the U.S. could derail progress toward a global solution to pervasive and costly tax avoidance.
The new TJN study cites Trump's pledge to cut the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and warns such a move would accelerate the global "race to the bottom" on corporate taxation.
"People in countries around the world are calling in large majorities on their governments to tax multinational corporations properly," Liz Nelson, TJN's director of advocacy and research, said Tuesday. "But governments continue to exercise a policy of appeasement on corporate tax."
"We now have data from these governments showing that when they asked multinational corporations to pay less tax, the corporations cheated even more," Nelson added. "It's time governments found the spines their people deserve from their leaders."
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Wall Street Banks Accused of Trying to Sabotage Key Consumer Protection Rule
"The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
Nov 15, 2024
Consumer advocates applauded last month as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule aimed at making it easier for people to switch financial institutions if they're unhappy with a bank's service, without the bank retaining their personal data—but on Thursday, more than a dozen groups warned the CFPB that major Wall Street firms are trying to stop Americans from benefiting from the rule.
Several advocacy groups, led by the Demand Progress Education Fund, wrote to CFPB director Rohit Chopra warning that major banks—including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, TD Bank, and Wells Fargo—sit on the board of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), which has applied to the bureau for standard-setting body (SSB) status, which would give it authority over what is commonly known as the "open banking rule."
Standard-setting authority for the banks would present a major conflict of interest, said the groups.
The banks are also on the board of the Bank Policy Institute, which promptly filed what the consumer advocates called a "frivolous lawsuit" to block the open banking rule when it was introduced last month, claiming it will keep banks from protecting customer data.
At a panel discussion this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan also said the open banking rule, by requiring financial firms to unlock a consumer's financial data and transfer it to another provider for free, would cause "chaos" and amplify concerns over fraud.
"The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom."
The groups wrote on Thursday that big banks want to continue to "maintain their dominance by making it unduly difficult for consumers to switch institutions."
"The presence of these organizations on both the FDX and BPI boards undermines the credibility of FDX and presents various concerns relating to conflict of interest, interlocking directorate, and antitrust law," they wrote.
Upon introducing the finalized rule last month, Chopra said the action would "give people more power to get better rates and service on bank accounts, credit cards, and more" and help those who are "stuck in financial products with lousy rates and service."
The coalition of consumer advocacy groups—including Public Citizen, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Americans for Financial Reform—urged Chopra to reject FDX's application for standard-setting authority so long as the banks remain on its board.
“It would be a flagrant conflict of interest for the same banks who are suing to block the open banking rule because it threatens their market dominance to also be in charge of implementing it," said Demand Progress Education Fund corporate power director Emily Peterson-Cassin. "The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom. The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
The groups called the open banking rule "a historic step forward for the cause of giving consumers true freedom intheir financial lives."
"For this reason, it is imperative that SSB status not be granted to an organization whose board members are, either directly or through a trade association they are participating in, suing the CFPB to stop the rules from taking effect, particularly when such members may be ethically conflicted from such dual participation," said the groups. "By rejecting SSB status for FDX or any other organization with similar conflicts of interest pertaining to Section 1033, the CFPB will help prevent big banks from sabotaging open banking rules."
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