www.levernews.com/…
Hopefully, just the beginning…
Largest worker protection settlement in NYC
NYC’s Department of Consumer & Worker Protection has ordered Starbucks to pay roughly $35 million to 15,000 + workers for denying workers stable work schedules and arbitrarily cutting their hours.
The department began investigating the coffee chain in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints. The agency’s officials reportedly documented more than half a million violations of New York’s Fair Workweek Law, which requires fast food employers to give workers regular schedules that stay the same week to week.
(emphasis mine)
The Fair Workweek Law provides employees with $50/week for each violation from July 2021 through July 2024. Some employees are due thousands of dollars.
“These are not demands of greed — these are demands of decency,” Mamdani told a crowd in Brooklyn.
In addition, Starbucks was also fined $3.4 million in civil penalties and costs. They are also ordered to actually comply with the provisions of the Fair Workweek Law, going forward.
Minimum wage law to consider housing costs in Santa Fe, NM
Santa Fe, NM enacted an historic minimum wage law that pegs the wage to, not only the Consumer Price Index (a measure of inflation), but also the movement of fair market rental housing costs. Under the plan, the city’s minimum wage will rise from $15 to $17.50 per hour in 2027. After that, the city will use a new formula to calculate annual wage increases
If housing costs skyrocket, there is a provision that limits wage increases to 5%, BUT, the formula can’t be used to reduce wages.
The new plan is expected to impact 9,000 hourly workers (about 20% of the city’s workforce). According to the Labor Center at UC Berkeley, Santa Fe is the first city in the nation to use housing costs in setting the minimum wage.
Advocacy groups praised the initiative. “Santa Fe took a decisive step toward fairness and dignity for every working family,” immigrant rights group Somos Un Pueblo Unido told the Albuquerque Journal. “Our city has affirmed a simple but powerful truth: Every worker deserves a wage that honors their labor and reflects the increasing cost of living in Santa Fe.”
(emphasis mine)
The gauntlet is thrown, in a challenge to a 2020 turncoat
The PA Working Families Party announced that they will endorse and, if necessary, recruit and train challengers to Senator Fetterman’s reelection bid in 2026 due to his abandonment of his populist, pro worker campaign he ran on in 2020.
Early in his career, Fetterman was hailed as a Bernie Sanders progressive for his support of a single payer healthcare plan and Sanders’ own presidential run. Since then, he has drawn the ire of voters for his unquestioning support of Israel, as well as his cozying up to Trump and Trumpism, not to mention, being one of a handful of Democratic senators, voting to break with Democratic demands on healthcare subsidies and reopen the government.
“At a time when Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to make life harder for working people, we need real leaders in the Senate who are willing to fight for the working class,” said Shoshanna Israel, a political director for the Working Families Party, a progressive minor political party that recruits and trains candidates — sometimes through the Democratic Party, sometimes running candidates on their own.
(emphasis mine)
In other good news...
The Cook County Commissioners voted to continue a basic income program consisting of monthly $500 cash payments to low income residents of Cook County and the City of Chicago.
The county has allocated $7.5 million to the program for 2026, which will come from the county’s “equity fund.” The county will also be able to utilize reserve federal pandemic funds to help finance the program.
75% of the recipients reported feeling more financially secure-
- 94% experienced a financial emergency or unexpected expense and used program funds to manage it
- 73% of participants believed the payments will continue to impact them after the program ends
- 56% reported reduced stress
- 70% say the program had a positive impact on their mental health
- The top reported uses of funds were:
- Food
- Rent
- Utilities
- Transportation
"At a time when wealth inequality is increasing, and inflation is still a burden for consumers, guaranteed income has gained prominence as a policy intervention to help families struggling to make ends meet," Carmelo Barbaro, executive director of the Inclusive Economy Lab at the University of Chicago, said in a press release.
