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Defend the Post Office, Defend Black Workers

Paul Prescod Jacobin
The United States Postal Service is a crucial institution for black workers in America. That's why Bernie Sanders's strong support for defending and expanding the USPS is a key racial justice issue.

In Praise of a Higher Minimum Wage

Richard Florida City Lab
Raising the minimum wage helps low-paid workers without damaging the broader economy, the authors of two new research papers find.

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OECD Employment Outlook 2018

AFSCME AFSCME Information Highway
In particular, the report shows the United States’s unemployed and at-risk workers are getting very little support from the government, and their employed peers are set back by a particularly weak collective-bargaining system.

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China-Like Wages Now Part Of U.S. Employment Boom

Kenneth Rapoza Forbes
The China-esqsue income for the general labor pool might not spark a backlash against the Chinese, Washington's favorite punching bag. Instead, it will favor future political backlashes against globalization and the corporations seen driving up inequality -- and driving down mobility -- because of it.

State Unemployment Rates by Race and Ethnicity Show Recovery Expanding but Still Leaving Stubborn Pockets of High Unemployment

Janelle Jones Economic Policy Institute
The African American unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 11 states: Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina. However, a return to pre-recession levels in these states is barely a recovery: in all of these states, black unemployment rates were above 8.0 percent before the recession.

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Still Getting 'It' Wrong

William Spriggs AFL-CIO Now
Thoughts that huge tax cuts to high-income households will offset a downturn in automobile sales, cuts in public spending, rising college tuition or a dismantling of the health sector are irrational. If theFed raises interests rates, it will threaten a more fragile economy than appears at the moment. The drive to be “normal” in a world that is clearly not normal, may put us in danger of a downturn that will be difficult to recover from.

The Price We Pay

Cherrie Bucknor and Alan Barber Center for Economic and Policy Research
While there has recently been a push from advocates and policy -- makers alike to reexamine sentencing policy and practice, the negative impacts on former prisoners and people with felony convictions themselves and the economy as a whole will grow in scale unless the burgeoning reform trend continues and accelerates.

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The Fissured (Working-Class) Workplace

Tim Strangleman Working-Class Perspectives
We should not to romanticise the work of the past, indulge in ‘smokestack nostalgia’, but equally we need to acknowledge a world we may be losing. While the ‘job for life’ may have been a fleeting experience for a few, the social patterns that that stability engendered were profound for generations of workers and can still be seen working their way through the contemporary workplace

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The Worst Paying Fastest-Growing Job in America

Claire Zillman Fortune
Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.
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