November, 03 2020, 11:00pm EDT
On Defending Democracy and Advancing Workers' Rights at the Ballot Box and Beyond
Following is a statement by Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project:
"As we await the final results of the presidential election at this pivotal moment for our democracy, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) joins in solidarity with people all around the country who are coming together to defend our democracy and demand that every vote is counted. The will of the voters decides elections.
WASHINGTON
Following is a statement by Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project:
"As we await the final results of the presidential election at this pivotal moment for our democracy, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) joins in solidarity with people all around the country who are coming together to defend our democracy and demand that every vote is counted. The will of the voters decides elections.
"While the huge volume of absentee and early ballots still to be counted may be unique to the 2020 elections, counting absentee ballots after Election Day is not--it happens routinely and is a normal part of the process and must be completed.
"In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and despite deliberate voter suppression comprised of disinformation, attempts to eliminate drop-off locations, intimidation, and white supremacist violence --more than 100 million people voted early. Now, the people who are calling for our democracy to be protected and for every vote to be counted must be kept safe in the days to come, online and on the streets.
"No matter the result of these elections, NELP will contribute to strengthening our democracy by supporting Black, immigrant workers in building power and fighting for a just recovery and secure, stable, and safe jobs.
Results of Key Workers' Rights Proposals Around the Country
"Over the past four years, workers' rights have been under attack while corporations' power has been further consolidated--yet workers and advocates have fought back at the state and local levels. That trend continued this election season with key ballot box efforts in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, and Maine.
- In Florida, voters embraced Amendment 2, which will gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by the year 2026--continuing the momentum of the Fight for $15 movement and making Florida the eighth state (and the second most populous one) to get on the path to $15. Including Florida, 36 percent of the U.S. labor force will now be covered by laws gradually raising the minimum wage to $15. This is a big win for the Fight for $15 movement and shows once again that raising wages for workers in lowest-paid jobs is an issue that all voters can get behind.
- In Maine, voters in two cities--Portland and Rockland--approved measures gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2024 (and furthermore in Portland, a $22.50 "hazard pay" minimum wage during states of emergency).
- In Colorado, voters approved Proposition 118, the Paid Medical and Family Leave Initiative, which will allow for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave funded through a payroll tax paid by both employers and employees. Workers earning less than half of the state's average pay would get the highest percentage of their salaries, at 90 percent. Under this new law, workers are also protected from employer discipline or retaliation for requesting or using paid leave.
- In Arizona, voters passed Proposition 208, the Invest in Education Act, which will raise teacher salaries by increasing taxes on the state's highest earners.
- California voters, however, passed Proposition 22, the App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative. NELP is proud to be in solidarity with the courageous workers and advocates in California who led the #NoOnProp22 campaign, and with the global movement to defeat these efforts to undermine workers' rights championed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart. We will continue to fight racist anti-worker laws pushed by corporations that sell labor on apps, and together we will win the protections that Black, immigrant, and all workers need. The passing of Prop 22 means that California app-based workers--notably the Black and Latinx workers who are overrepresented in these jobs--will not be able to claim the rights to fair pay, economic stability, and safety on the job that justly belong to them as employees. The corporations behind the "Yes on Prop 22" campaign resorted to dirty and dangerous online harassment and pressured workers nonstop to vote for their racist business model. Instead of providing basic protections to their workers, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart spent close to $200 million to mislead voters. In spite of Prop 22's passage, NELP is committed to ensuring that all workers have economic security and protections against exploitation.
"As we await the final outcome of the presidential race, people of conscience around the country are rising up and speaking out against disinformation, white supremacist ideology, and voter suppression. We must continue to denounce intimidation and fight against premature cut-offs of the counting process and frivolous lawsuits seeking to invalidate people's votes. At this crucial time, all of us must join together to ensure that every vote is counted and the will of the people is honored and upheld in our democracy."
LATEST NEWS
400+ Immigrant Rights Groups Demand Biden Take Action to Preserve TPS
While "the North Star is always citizenship" for immigrant rights groups, "this program is now the relief that the president can offer," said one advocate.
Sep 11, 2023
More than 400 immigrant rights and civil society groups on Monday wrote to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to call on the Biden administration to redesignate people from six countries for Temporary Protected Status, warning that the safety of as many as 2 million people hang in the balance as the White House has said it is up to Congress to pass comprehensive reform to protect asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants.
Organizations including the ACLU, CASA, and the National Immigration Law Center noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June extended the TPS designations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal as it rescinded the Trump administration's termination of protections for people from those countries.
On Friday, under pressure from lawmakers including Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.), and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), the administration extended the TPS registration period for people from the four countries—known collectively as the Ramos countries—from 60 days to 18 months, allowing people to have until at least March 2025 to re-register for protected status, which enables them to temporarily live and work in the U.S. and protects them from deportation.
That victory was celebrated, but advocates on Monday said DHS's formal finding that the conditions in the four countries continued to meet the requirements for TPS—which is extended to people from countries facing ongoing conflict, environmental disasters, or other violence—also allows the agency, "in its discretion, to redesignate TPS for those countries."
"Doing so would provide TPS protections to individuals who have come to the U.S. and established lives here in the many intervening years since the original designations," wrote the groups. "Such a decision to redesignate will remain open to you, as DHS secretary, in your unreviewable discretion, until and unless those conditions are no longer in place. Failure to exercise that discretion would leave one to two million people from these same nations unprotected, even though they face the exact same dangers as current TPS holders if forcefully returned to their countries of origin."
The groups also urged DHS to redesignate Venezuela as a TPS country and to designate people from Guatemala as protected under the program for the first time.
Last week, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also called on the administration to redesignate the Ramos countries as qualifying for TPS.
The Biden administration has pushed Congress to pass immigration reform—while expanding the Trump-era Title 42 program by imposing requirements on certain people fleeing their home countries for the U.S. and continuing to detain families—but advocates on Monday told The Hill that redesignating TPS for people at risk of deportation is "the most powerful tool in the president's executive arsenal" regarding immigration policy, while they continue pushing for legislation that would include a path to citizenship.
"We cannot wait," Jossie Flor Sapunar, national communications director for advocacy group CASA, toldThe Hill. "The only relief that can be offered to the immigrant community now is through the administration."
While "the North Star is always citizenship," Sapunar added, "this program is now the relief that the president can offer."
Redesignating TPS "would provide enormous benefits to our nation and also fulfill the spirit of the president's campaign promise not to return TPS holders to unsafe countries," wrote the groups on Monday, in addition to being "life-changing for those who have made their lives here."
"A wealth of research demonstrates the benefits to all workers and the economy of granting legal status to persons who already live and work in the U.S. and specifically documents the huge economic contributions of persons who have or would be eligible for TPS," they said. "Redesignating TPS for these countries would grant work authorization to a meaningful proportion of all currently undocumented workers, helping to alleviate tight labor markets and reducing the need for local safety net programs. It would also increase remittances back to these countries, putting resources directly into the hands of the people who need it most, helping to bring stability to those countries, and thereby reducing migration."
The letter was sent less than a week after more than 30 mayors and county executives from across the U.S. wrote to Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling on them to redesignate TPS for Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cameroon, and Nepal and to give initial designation to Guatemala, Mali, Congo, Mauritania, and Nigeria.
"As city and county leaders, the safety and well-being of our residents is of utmost importance," wrote the local leaders, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. "We recognize that TPS is one way the Biden-Harris administration can protect many well-established residents with deep ties to our communities through their families, jobs, and homes as well as help newer arrivals establish themselves and find economic independence."
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'We Come Here Seeking Urgent Help': Vulnerable Islands Want Climate Pollution Covered by Ocean Treaty
"We are confident that international courts and tribunals will not allow this injustice to continue unchecked," the prime minister of Tuvalu said.
Sep 11, 2023
Do greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels count as ocean pollution under the Law of the Sea?
That's the question that nine small island states that are low emitting but extremely vulnerable to the climate crisis have asked the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in a landmark hearing that began Monday in Hamburg, Germany.
"We come here seeking urgent help, in the strong belief that international law is an essential mechanism for correcting the manifest injustice that our people are suffering as a result of climate change," Tuvalu's Prime Minister Kausea Natano said in a statement shared by Eureporter. "We are confident that international courts and tribunals will not allow this injustice to continue unchecked."
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea governs the shared use and protection of the ocean. A total of 168 countries—the U.S. not among them—have ratified it.
Under Article 194(1), those 168 states have agreed to "take, individually or jointly as appropriate, all measures consistent with this convention that are necessary to prevent, reduce, and control pollution of the marine environment from any source." Yet, despite the fact that 25% of carbon dioxide emissions and 90% of global heating end up in the oceans, leading to threats like marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and more extreme tropical storms, it's still not clear what duties nations have to prevent climate pollution under international maritime law.
"What's the difference between having a toxic chimney spewing across a border to carbon dioxide emissions?" Payam Akhavan, lead counsel and chair of the committee of legal experts advising the nations that brought the question, askedThe Guardian. "Some of these states will become uninhabitable in a generation and many will be submerged under the sea. This is an attempt to use all the tools available to force major polluters to change course while they still can."
"A positive advisory opinion could be essential to the global fight against climate change."
The island nations—organized as the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS)—first requested an advisory opinion from the tribunal in December 2022. COSIS formed in 2021 during the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, and its members include Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu, Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Bahamas, according to ClientEarth.
These nations say they have only contributed 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions but contend with disproportionate climate impacts, from sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion to coastal erosion, The New York Times reported.
"Despite our negligible emission of greenhouse gases, COSIS's members have suffered and continue to suffer the overwhelming burden of climate change's adverse impacts," Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Alfonso Browne said in a statement shared by Eureporter."Without rapid and ambitious action, climate change may prevent my children and grandchildren from living on the island of their ancestors, the island that we call home. We cannot remain silent in the face of such injustice."
The ITLOS hearing is scheduled to last through September 25. In addition to the members of COSIS, more than 50 nations will weigh in with written or oral arguments, according to The New York Times. Among them will be major greenhouse gas emitters like China, India, and European Union member states. A ruling is expected within months.
While COSIS is only asking for an advisory opinion for now, legal experts say the decision could have a major impact on climate litigation going forward, especially if ITLOS rules that signatories do have an obligation to protect the ocean from climate pollution.
"The islands could hold major emitters of greenhouse gases responsible for damage by their failure to implement the Paris climate accord," University of Edinburgh emeritus international law professor Alan Boyle told The New York Times.
That is the outcome that legal climate advocates like ClientEarth are hoping for.
"A positive advisory opinion could be essential to the global fight against climate change," the group wrote. "A legal interpretation by the tribunal that the Law of the Sea requires states all over the world mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions to prevent harm to the marine environment opens up the possibility that climate commitments such as those made under the Paris agreement may need to be enforced to protect the world's oceans."
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Democratic Party's Wall Street Donors Are Reportedly Pushing Biden to Fire Lina Khan
Financiers are reportedly lobbying the incumbent president to remove the Federal Trade Commission chair if he wins reelection in 2024.
Sep 11, 2023
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's efforts to challenge corporate consolidation across the U.S. economy—from
gaming to pharmaceuticals to semiconductors—have drawn vocal outrage from industry-backed Republican lawmakers and other mouthpieces for big business.
And now, according to the Financial Times, some of the Democratic Party's Wall Street donors are privately calling on President Joe Biden to fire Khan if he wins reelection in 2024.
"Anybody talking to dealmakers over the past year or so will have noticed that barely anyone has been capable of hiding their loathing for Khan," wrote FT's James Fontanella-Khan. "In private, financiers accuse her of being anti-American and against business. Several Wall Street donors to the Democratic Party are using their position of influence to quietly lobby Biden to drop Khan if he gets reelected, according to people briefed on the matter. That's how badly they want her out of the FTC."
Wall Street spent over $74 million in support of Biden in 2020 and industry executives—at the urging of the president's team—have hosted fundraisers this year for his reelection campaign.
Under Khan's leadership, the FTC has taken legal action against several prominent merger proposals—including Microsoft's $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, a case the agency paused after recent court defeats. The FTC has also helped rewrite pro-consolidation merger guidelines that were established during the Reagan era, launched a probe into Big Tech's cloud computing businesses, and proposed a ban on exploitative non-compete agreements.
Additionally, as soon as this month, the FTC is
expected to file a major antitrust lawsuit against the online retail behemoth Amazon, which Khan has long argued is a monopoly.
The Khan-led FTC's proactive approach to taking on entrenched power that has worsened inequality and harmed workers has predictably angered corporate America and its GOP allies in Congress, who used a recent hearing to attack Khan as a "bully."
Some of the Republican Party's most outspoken critics of Khan are funded by Big Tech.
The Wall Street Journal's right-wing editorial board has also taken on a major role in fueling the outrage, running dozens of pieces this year attacking Khan's work.
FT's James Fontanella-Khan argued that the widespread "animus" toward Khan in corporate America "might indicate she is having an impact despite the setbacks."
"Khan has an egalitarian vision of competition law that seeks to improve the well-being of citizens beyond their roles as consumers," he added. "The Amazon case will be a big test."
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