It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, August 25, 2022
Here’s how to get the hard-core homeless into homes
In the New York Times today, Maia Szalavitz writes about how Seattle finally tackled chronic homelessness. A few years ago Lisa Daugaard, a lawyer, developed a program called LEAD:
Instead of re-incarcerating homeless people who typically already have long histories of minor arrests, police departments that participate in LEAD refer them to case management services. The program has an overall philosophy of harm reduction, which, in addition to securing shelter, focuses on improving health, rather than mandating abstinence from drugs and other risky behaviors. LEAD originated as a collaboration of public defenders, the police and prosecutors, who put aside differences to work on solutions.
LEAD worked, but during the pandemic shelters were closed and police stopped arresting people for minor crimes. So Daugaard decided to try something new:
With federal pandemic funds becoming available and desperate hotel owners newly open to being paid to house nontraditional guests, she said she saw “our chance to show that there is another way.”
Ms. Daugaard and her colleagues created a program now known as JustCare. JustCare staff members, rather than police officers, would respond to urgent calls about encampments. After building trust with local homeless people, the workers would move them into housing without strict abstinence requirements and then help clean up the site. The police would be contacted only as a last resort.
The common element of both programs is an emphasis on getting people into shelter, not obsessing over behavioral rules or addictions to drugs or alcohol. Addicts would rather have drugs than housing, so insisting that they get clean in return for housing accomplishes nothing except to keep them on the streets.
There's a lesson here for homeless initiatives everywhere. Obviously, one thing you need is actual shelter, and public resistance makes that hard to build. But if you overcome that obstacle, you also need to get people off the street and into your shiny new shelters. The way to do that is to build trust and to let people live the way they want. That doesn't sound attractive to a lot of people, but it works.
Investors are bearish on China, but have more to fear in the US
China’s zero-Covid policy and property crackdown have undermined attempts to boost growth and dashed investor confidence – but at least expectations are in line with reality
In the US, markets are still in denial about the Fed’s determination to bring down inflation with aggressive policy tightening
Nicholas Spiro 25 Aug, 2022 People walk in front of a screen showing the latest stock exchange data in Shanghai on August 22. Photo: EPA-EFE
Among the world’s leading economies, which one unsettles financial markets the most? The answer is by no means clear, partly because the global economy as a whole is in such a precarious state, but also because investors struggle to price risks accurately.
A cursory glance at the performance of stock markets since the start of the third quarter suggests China is a bigger source of concern. The CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed shares is down 9 per cent, snuffing out a tentative recovery in May and June.
The benchmark S&P 500 index, by contrast, is up 9 per cent, outpacing the rise in the FTSE All-World Index, a leading gauge of stocks in developed and developing economies. Indeed, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite index has gained 12.7 per cent since June 16, showing the extent to which US equity markets continue to outperform their global peers.
At the beginning of this year, many Wall Street firms had high hopes for China. The optimism stemmed partly from the attractive valuations of the country’s beaten-up stocks. It was also fuelled by expectations that the sharp slowdown in the economy would force Beijing to pivot towards looser monetary and fiscal policy.
These hopes were dashed spectacularly. While expectations were too high to begin with, and markets the world over suffered heavy losses in the first half of this year, investors have been let down by ineffective measures to stabilise markets and shore up growth.
Beijing’s pursuit of three incompatible goals – a zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 that involves the imposition of draconian lockdowns, reducing moral hazard in the all-important property sector, and introducing measures to stimulate growth – has led to policy incoherence on a grand scale.
Successive pledges of support have been met with increasing scepticism. Tellingly, only four out of 25 policy initiatives in the past five months coincided with a gain in Chinese equities of at least 2 per cent, data from Bloomberg shows.
Disappointment at Beijing’s failure to do more to restore confidence, and to redress the balance between fighting the virus and inflicting harm on the economy, has caused a mood of despondency to set in.
In the United States, by contrast, the Federal Reserve risks doing too much. Having allowed inflation to get out of hand, it is now hiking interest rates at the fastest pace since 1994, exacerbating a downturn that could lead to a full-blown recession.
An empty store advertises retail space in New York City
– where unemployment is double the national average – on July 11.
Photo: Bloomberg
While the underlying problem in China’s markets is a loss of confidence, US asset prices are threatened by a dangerous mismatch between investors’ expectations and the Fed’s new-found determination to stamp out inflation. Bond markets are pricing in rate cuts next year even though the Fed has said it will continue to tighten policy in the face of higher unemployment and weaker growth.
The US central bank has sowed doubt about its inflation-fighting resolve by refusing to acknowledge that a recession is the price that almost certainly needs to be paid to bring prices back into normal bounds.
Fed chair Jerome Powell has a chance to convince markets of the central bank’s commitment when he delivers a speech at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming on Friday. Yet, the real showdown between markets and the Fed will begin when America’s labour market – which is still extremely hot – starts to cool sharply. Only then will it become clear if the Fed is serious about crushing inflation come what may.
The US Federal Reserve building in Washington, on August 23.
Photo: Bloomberg
In China, the bad news has been baked into asset prices for some time. The key question is whether there will be a meaningful positive catalyst to turn sentiment around. In the US, on the other hand, investors have yet to come to terms with a resolutely hawkish Fed, either because they are overly optimistic about inflation or because they believe the Fed will get cold feet when growth collapses.
The risk of a negative policy-induced surprise is much greater in the US, for the simple reason that markets and the Fed are far apart. While investors are accustomed to China’s opaque governance, and have had to contend with Beijing’s conflicting priorities for much of this year, US monetary policy is confusing and misleading.
While this is partly due to the extraordinary level of uncertainty in the global economy, the Fed’s move to scrap its forward guidance – its decisions will now be made meeting to meeting – adds insult to injury. In a note published on Tuesday, UBS said the change “removed a stabilising force at a time of increasing instability”.
This is bad news for China’s markets. The yuan is already at its weakest level against the US dollar in two years. If bond investors sense they jumped the gun in pricing in Fed rate cuts next year, the greenback will strengthen further, putting the yuan under more strain and spurring capital outflows.
Still, from a sentiment standpoint, China poses less of a risk. Market expectations need to adjust much more sharply in America. Chinese assets could even provide some upside if Covid-19 cases fall sharply. That is a big if, but then things cannot get much worse in China.
Nicholas Spiro is a partner at Lauressa Advisory, a specialist London-based real estate and macroeconomic advisory firm. He is an expert on advanced and emerging economies and a regular commentator on financial and macro-political developments.
SCMP
ETHIOPIA'S WAR OF AGRESSION
US urges permanent end to conflict in Ethiopia amid renewed violence
Ethiopian government and Tigray rebels confirmed a humanitarian truce had been broken following military escalation
Vakkas Dogantekin |25.08.2022
ANKARA
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the opposing sides involved in the conflict in Ethiopia late Wednesday to work towards a permanent cease-fire amid renewed clashes in the East African country.
"Five months ago, a truce was declared in northern Ethiopia, which reduced violence and saved lives. We are concerned that renewed fighting puts that at risk. We call on the Ethiopian Government and TPLF to redouble efforts for peace to bring a permanent end to the conflict," Blinken said on Twitter, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the party that controls Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Earlier in the day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" over the resumption of hostilities in Ethiopia.
His remarks came hours after both the Ethiopian government and Tigray rebels confirmed that a humanitarian truce had been broken following a military escalation.
The Ethiopian army and the forces of the TPLF traded blame as to which side violated the cease-fire that was reached in March in areas along the administrative border between Amhara and Tigray states.
The government has expressed readiness to engage in talks with the rebels in the past several months without any preconditions as long as they are held under the sole mediation of the African Union.
But the Tigray rebels rejected the African Union as a mediator, recommending that talks be held with Kenya’s outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta in that role.
Thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict began in November 2020.
The UN has warned that Tigray “stands on the edge of a humanitarian disaster,” with more than 40% of the region’s estimated 6 million people in need of emergency assistance.
It also said that more than 5 million people were internally displaced in Afar and Amhara regional states where Tigrayan forces made military incursions a year ago, inflicting huge humanitarian and property damage.
*Addis Getachew in Ethiopia contributed to this story
ACLU, 10 Media Organizations Sue Arizona Over Law on Filming Police
The Arizona law against filming police officers within eight feet is being challenged in court. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and almost a dozen media organizations are suing Arizona officials, saying the law is unconstitutional. Retired Police Sergeant Jim Fuda gives his take.
WAIT, WHAT?!
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle hit with antisemitism after Gab founder targets paper
Jewish newspaper becomes subject of hate remarks after Andrew Torba slams one of its articles critical of the hate speech on far-right platform
A screenshot shows a reply left on Gab founder Andrew Torba's page after he posted a link to a Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle story. (Screenshot by David Rullo via JTA)
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA — Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, a social media platform widely known as an online home for extremist, antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories, reposted an article by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle about a Jewish Pennsylvania state representative who was hit with antisemitic threats on the platform.
In response, several of Torba’s followers aimed antisemitism towards the Chronicle.
After Pennsylvania state Rep. Dan Miller retweeted the Chronicle’s article from Friday, “State Rep. Dan Frankel targeted by antisemitic posts on Gab,” Torba reposted the article on Gab.
“People are done caring about your eternal victimhood complex,” Torba wrote. “Free speech means the right to offend..Stop conflating offensive memes with ‘threats’…Gab is what free speech looks like, the good, the bad, and the ugly are all included.”
Within 21 hours of publication, Torba’s post had more than 560 comments and 821 reposts. Many of the replies voiced agreement with Torba, and a large number included antisemitic comments, tropes and memes.
Two replies read, “Exile the jews from the USA and they’ll take that hatred for God with them,” and “it’s anudda SHOAH.”
Torba is a supporter of Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate and Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano. After paying the social media platform $5,000 in consulting fees, all new Gab users automatically followed Mastriano before he closed his account in the wake of widespread criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Frankel, who has been in office since 1998, had criticized Mastriano for his ties to Gab.
State Rep. Dan Frankel speaks before a joint session of Pennsylvania lawmakers who came together to commemorate the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack that killed 11 people, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP/Matt Rourke)
Torba has embraced Christian nationalist and antisemitic ideologies. In July, he said on Gab TV: “This is a Christian nation. Christians outnumber you, by a lot. A lot. And we’re not gonna listen to 2%. You represent 2% of the country, ok? We’re not bending the knee to the 2% anymore.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Torba once reposted a comment from a Gab user which reads, in part: “So, should we subject our children to Jewish propaganda on television, music, or movies? Uh, no. Should we act like the nation of Israel is not in rebellion against God? Uh, no. Should we ignore that Talmudic zionists want to crush the Gentiles? Uh, no.”
As of Wednesday, Torba’s repost of the Chronicle’s story and the subsequent replies to that post were unavailable and no longer visible on his page.
The man accused of killing 11 Jews in the Tree of Life building posted antisemitic messages on Gab before the October 27, 2018, massacre. In his Gab bio, he described Jews as the “children of satan.”
A version of this piece originally ran in Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and is reprinted with permission.
It was way back in 1970 that Chet Huntley, a Montana native and famous anchor for the national Huntley-Brinkley Report, went all in on the development of a high-end resort on Lone Mountain, located in the headwaters of the West Fork of the Gallatin River. Huntley was the trusted “voice of America,” but had retired from the stress of the nightly newscast saying he wanted to “get these damn deadlines off my neck.”
Old Chet told us Montanans who were present at the pre-construction public meetings that Big Sky was going to be a “place for regular Montanans to go skiing.” But Chet was lying through his teeth. That was evident to anyone looking at who was putting up the money for the venture. That would be the Chrysler Realty Corp., General Electric Pension Fund, Burlington Northern, and the Montana Power Co. to name a few. And not only did they get everything they wanted, Chet even “cajoled two Montana governors, obtaining permission for the resort to make use of the state’s nickname, Big Sky.”
At that time, there was virtually no development except for a couple of dude ranches between Four Corners and West Yellowstone. From its headwaters in Yellowstone National Park the Gallatin ran so clean and pure you could drink a handful of cold and delicious water right out of the stream while flyfishing without a worry that it might be polluted.
Many Montanans voiced very real concerns at the beginning of the Big Sky venture about just how many roads, homes, hotels, golf courses, shops, and ski areas you could cram into a narrow, rock-lined canyon without doing serious damage to the area’s lands, waters, and wildlife. In those days, as Montanans with good memories will recall, wildlife in the canyon was abundant, with herds of big horn sheep and moose often wandering down to the river.
Turns out Montanans were fully justified in their concerns for the river and lands they loved. We were, of course, told that our regulatory agencies wouldn’t allow damaging development…and like Chet Huntley, they, too, lied through their teeth. There was no zoning, there were no regulations on how many septic systems could be installed and the regulations that did exist were routinely weakened by developers seeking the enormous profits such a high-end development on Lone Mountain — situated in pristine wilderness — would generate.
Fifty years later we get today’s tragic situation of a neon green Gallatin River directly downstream from the Big Sky, Yellowstone Club, Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks developments. Thirty years ago the famous flyfishing footage used in “A River Runs Through It” was filmed on the Gallatin — but nowadays it’s more like “a river of sewage runs through it.”
Nations of the world are only too aware that fossil fuels need to be phased out for two reasons. First, oil is a finite commodity. It’ll run out in time. Secondly, fossil fuel emissions such as CO2 are destroying the planet’s climate system.
However, a recent study puts a damper on the prospects of phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewables. More to the point, a phase out of fossil fuels by mid century looks to be a nearly impossible Sisyphean task. It’s all about quantities of minerals/metals contained in Mother Earth. There aren’t enough.
Simon Michaux, PhD, Geological Survey Finland has done a detailed study of what’s required to phase out fossil fuels in favor of renewables, to wit:
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.” (Source: Simon P. Michaux, Associate Research Professor of Geometallurgy Unit Minerals Processing and Materials Research, Geological Survey of Finland, August 18, 2022 – Seminar: What Would It Take To Replace The Existing Fossil Fuel System?)
Metals/minerals required to source gigafactories producing renewables to power the world’s economies when fossil fuels phase out looks to be one of the biggest quandaries of all time. There’s not enough metal.
Michaux researched and analyzed the current status of the internal combustion engine fleet of cars, trucks, rail, maritime shipping, and aviation for the US, Europe, and China, accessing databases to gather information as a starting point for the study.
Michaux’s calculations for what’s required to phase out fossil fuels uses a starting point of 2018 with 84.5% of primary energy still fossil fuel-based and less than 1% of the world’s vehicle fleet electric. Therefore, the first generation of renewable energy is only now coming on stream, meaning there will be no recycling availability of production materials for some time. Production will have to be sourced from mining.
When Michaux presented basic information to EU analysts, it was a shock to them. To his dismay, they had not put together the various mineral/metal data requirements to phase out fossil fuels and replaced by renewables. They assumed, using guesstimates, the metals would be available.
A key issue for the accomplishment of renewables is power storage because of the impact of wind and solar intermittency, both of which are highly intermittent. Most studies assume gas will be the buffer for intermittency. Other than using fossil fuel such as gas as a buffer, an adequate power storage system to handle intermittency will require 30 times more material than what electric vehicles require with current plans, meaning the scope is much larger than the current paradigm allows.
One factor that will influence what materials and systems are used to build out renewables is the fact that EVs require a battery that is 3.2 times the mass of the equivalent of a hydrogen fuel tank. Therefore, an analysis of EVs versus hydrogen fuel cells indicates it’ll be necessary to build out the global fleet with EVs for city traffic and hydrogen fuel cells for all long-range vehicles like semi-trailers, rails, and maritime shipping.
The entire renewable build-out requires 36,000 terawatt hours to operate, meaning 586,000 new non-fossil fuel power stations of average size. The current fleet of power stations is only 46,000, meaning it’ll take 10 times the current number of power stations, yet to be built.
The new annual energy capacity of 36,007.9 terrawatt hours will supply (1) 29 million EV Buses (2) 601.3 million Commercial EV Vans (3) 695.2 million EV Passenger Cars (4) 28.9 million H2-Cell Trucks (5) 62 million EV Motorcycles (6). Hydro will also need to be expanded by 115% by 2050 and nuclear will need to double. Biomass will stay the same. It’s already at limitations. Geothermal triples.
Additionally, buffer systems are crucial to handle intermittency. For example, Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, which is an Elon Musk project with a 100-megawatt capacity. The EU is using Hornsdale as the standard buffer system. Globally, 15,635,478 Hornsdale-type stations will need to be built across the planet and connected to the power grid system just to meet a 4-week buffer system. This is 30 times the capacity compared to the entire global vehicle fleet. Therefore the market for batteries is substantially larger than currently understood and accounted for in planning for a renewable economy.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report on how much metal is required per unit to build out a renewable economy. As well as a study of what 2040 market share would look like for batteries for light duty vehicles and heavy duty vehicles and power storage at the level of the global fleet for solar panels in 2040 and hydrogen fuel cells, trucks, freight locomotives, maritime shipping, wind turbines and power storage buffer.
The total metals required for one generation of technology to phase out fossil fuels is listed by Required Production followed by Known Reserves for all metals based upon tonnes, as follows:
Copper 4,575,523,674 vs. 880,000,000 – a serious shortfall -reserves only cover 20% of requirements.
Zinc 35,704,918 vs. 250,000,000 – adequate reserves.
Manganese 227,889,504 vs 1,500,000,000 – adequate reserves
Nickel 940,578,114 vs. 95,000,000 – huge shortfall – reserves 10% of requirements.
Lithium 944,150,293 vs. 95,000,000 = huge shortfall – reserves 10% of requirements.
Cobalt 218,396,990 vs. 7,600,000 – huge shortfall – reserves 3.48% of requirements.
Graphite 8,973,640,257 vs. 320,000,000 = huge shortfall – 3.57% reserves of requirements.
Prior to 2020- the global system mined 700 million tons of copper throughout all history. Looking forward, the same 700 million tons will need to be mined over the next 22 years, which is based upon current economic growth rates without giving consideration to what’s needed for one generation of renewables.
Current reserves of copper are 880 million tons. But 4.5 billion tons of copper are required just to manufacture one generation of renewable technology. Hmm.
Moreover, each renewable technology has a life cycle of 8 to 25 years. Thereafter, they need to be decommissioned and replaced. Also, whether renewables are strong enough, and sustainably enough to power the next industrial era is a question that hangs in the air.
THE PAST – “An industrial ecosystem of unprecedented size and complexity, that took more than a century to build with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of cheap energy the world has ever known (oil) in abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources.” (Michaux)
THE PRESENT – “We now seek to build an even more complex system with very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, with an unprecedented number of the human population, embedded in a deteriorating environment.” (Michaux)
Current mineral reserves are not adequate to resource metal production to manufacture the generation of renewable energy technology, as current mining is not even close to meeting the expected demand for one generation of renewable technology.
Between ludicrously long backlogs and outdated policy, the current state of the American immigration system is a lose-lose. But, if Congress acts quickly, they might be able to change that.
The U.S. currently has a processing backlog of about 1.4 million employment-based green card applications, which — barring extensive reform of immigration policy — is on pace to take almost two centuries to complete. This year’s annual defense bill will likely be Congress’ only chance to resolve this issue for several years to come.
The green card pileup mainly affects skilled workers from countries with the largest populations. At the current rates, about 200,000 skilled Indian immigrants are likely to die before they receive a green card, a process that is expected to take until the year 2216, a whopping 194 years from now. In addition, hundreds of thousands of foreign-born children of H1-B visas will have to switch over to international student visas or self-deport, despite having lived in the country legally for nearly their entire lives. The only way to resolve this issue is to include the original versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness Act (USICA) in this year’s defense bill.
The U.S. economy depends on skilled immigrant labor, now more than ever. In 1990, Congress set an annual limit on employment-based green cards at 140,000 and temporary H1-B visas at 65,000. This limit has failed to keep pace with rapid technological advances which have dramatically accelerated the demand for high-skilled workers. The centuries-long current backlog for green card holders is not only unnecessary — it’s actively harmful.
A report from the National Association of Manufacturing and Deloitte found that the United States will have 2 million unfilled STEM jobs by 2025 due to a lack of qualified candidates. These jobs can’t be filled domestically, and the shortage is crippling the United States’ ability to compete on the world stage. China now produces over twice as many engineers per capita as the U.S., as domestic enrollment in programs such as electrical engineering continues to decline.
The original USICA included exemptions for STEM advanced-degree holders from annual limits on green cards, helping high-skilled immigrants from countries like India and China to avoid protracted visa backlogs, and attracting more international students. The Senate version of the bill guts these provisions, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has declared that he will not bring any immigration bills to the floor should Republicans take the majority in the upcoming midterms. The only way to resolve the backlog and put the United States on a trajectory to alleviate the dire STEM worker shortage is to pass the original USICA in this year’s defense bill.
In addition to green card backlogs, there are about 200,000 foreign-born children of H1-B workers facing deportation when they turn 21, colloquially referred to as “documented dreamers.” Dr. Dinsha Mistree, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains, “We’ve got a lot of people who have come here as children of H-1Bs at the age of six months. Because of the current process, their parents won’t be eligible for green cards until those kids are twenty or thirty. When you’re 21, you are no longer eligible to be sponsored by your parents. So we’re going to have a number of kids here legally who are going to come of age, and then at 21, they’re going to have to get a university or employer to sponsor them, or they’re going to have to go to their home countries, which they haven’t lived in their entire lives.” The documented dreamer problem, in addition to creating chaos and uncertainty for so many children, has severe negative ramifications for the country at large.
Aside from the humanitarian challenges posed by the mass deportation of children who have been legally raised in America, the situation also raises economic concerns. Taxpayers invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate each child. Deporting them would render that investment wasted. The NDAA includes a bipartisan provision to protect the children of green card applicants who face deportation when they age out of eligibility to remain on their parents’ visas. Failure to pass this act as part of this year’s defense bill could have catastrophic impacts.
All in all, U.S. immigration policy has failed to keep pace with the changing economic landscape, creating chaos in the lives of millions of immigrants, worsening the STEM worker shortage, and threatening future economic prosperity. Given the likely Republican midterm victory, and the subsequent moratorium on immigration bills being brought to the floor as a result, this year’s defense bill marks the last opportunity to resolve these issues for the foreseeable future.
Policymakers need to act now.
Aadi Golchha is a Young Voices contributor, economic commentator, and writer, proudly advocating for the principles of free enterprise. He is also the host of The Economics Review podcast.
$71,610.03: the back wages, interest, and civil penalties paid to a live-in domestic worker by their negligent employer in Seattle. In July, King5 News reported, the city’s Office of Labor Standards orchestrated the employer’s settlement – redress for their failure to pay minimum wage, provide overtime pay, and track payment.
“I would encourage other domestic workers to come forward and not to be afraid if they believe that the contracts and the form of payment are not being fulfilled according to the work that is done,” the anonymous domestic worker shared in the wake of her repayment.
In 2018, exactly three years prior, Seattle was the first city in the nation to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The ordinance instated a host of protections for domestic workers (defined as both employees and independent contractors, “who provide paid services to an individual or household in a private home as a nanny, house cleaner, home care worker, gardener, cook, and/or household manager”): entitlement to Seattle’s minimum wage, fair breaks during the workday, and written agreements outlining their employment.
Seattle also created a Domestic Workers Standards Board – composed of employees, employers, and community representatives – with investigatory and recommendation power through the city’s Office of Labor Standards. Because of the bill, that $71,610.03 ended up in the right hands.
Throughout the last decade, Domestic Bill of Rights legislation has proliferated in capitals and city halls – 10 states (mostly governed by Democrats) and 2 municipalities (Seattle and Philadelphia) boast these more robust worker protections. And they’ve paid off: a 2021 National Domestic Workers Alliance survey revealed that workers in states with Bill of Rights protections “report overall working conditions that are better than those reported by workers who live in states without a Bill of Rights.”
While earning far too little, unconscionable percentages of these workers reportedfeeling unsafe at work (25 percent), did not receive breaks during working hours (36 percent), did not receive sick days (82 percent), did not have written agreements from their employers (84 percent), did not receive partial pay for late cancellation (81 percent), and did not receive pay for employers’ cancellations after arriving to work (76 percent).
The numbers speak for themselves: domestic workers deserve sweeping protections beyond uneven state-level policies. As such, legislators recently revitalized their push for a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Originally introduced in 2019 by then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) along with Representative Jayapal (D-WA) in the House, Gillibrand and Jayapal reintroduced the bill with Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) in 2021 as Democrats lead across government.
On July 28th, 2022, the House Education and Labor Committee held a historic hearing on the legislation: “Essential but Undervalued: Examining Workplace Protections for Domestic Workers.”
The event, said National Domestic Workers Alliance Executive Director Jenn Stowe, was the “culmination of years of organizing and fighting for domestic workers and women of color across the country, for the last 15 years.”
The National Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights consists of three key components: including domestic workers in commonplace labor rights and protections, from which they’ve been long excluded; codifying new workplace rights and benefits, specific to domestic work; and bolstering capacity to enforce and implement the new law.
In other words, a Bill of Rights would not just rightfully classify care work as valued work, worthy of protection – it would recognize caregivers’ distinctive policy needs across state borders.
Through the legislation, domestic workers would gain access to paid overtime and sick days. They could expect a fair, safe standard of working conditions, or recourse for poor ones. They could expect written agreements and fair scheduling to guarantee and stabilize their access to work. And the Department of Labor, along with a newly commissioned national Standards Board – composed in part by domestic workers themselves – would provide oversight and avenues for public accountability.
Bill of Rights-favoring panelists at the hearing included National Domestic Workers Alliance’s president, Ai-jen Poo, along with C. Nicole Mason of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) and a member of Seattle’s Domestic Workers Standards Board, Dana Barrett.
A former employer of domestic labor, Barrett advocates for Bill of Rights legislation “to recognize the clear stake that I have in creating a fair and dignified system of care.” Fair workplace standards and wages, Barrett argued before Congress, “helped establish fair and reasonable employment relationships” by eliminating ambiguity. “Just bringing recognition to employers that home is a workplace helps create a better one.”
Panelists adamantly emphasized that racism and marginalization created domestic workers’ present precarity.
Domestic workers have borne “a long history of exclusion from foundational labor laws, rooted in the legacy of slavery in America,” testified Ai-jen Poo. “This workplace is hidden, isolated behind closed doors and in private homes.”
While hammering out the details of the New Deal’s signature inequality-alleviating legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, Southern lawmakers fought for the exclusion of workers in the domestic and agricultural sectors – overwhelmingly people of color. These labor reforms, and others throughout the mid-20th century, directly catalyzed America’s lowest rates of inequality – yet persistently left millions of working Americans out in the cold.
In a rapidly aging nation, the demand for care work is skyrocketing, and cannot be “automated or outsourced,” said Poo in Congress. Higher workplace standards and protections, she argued, will bolster quality of care and “help secure and also attract a strong workforce for the future.”
This Bill of Rights could be a similar kind of forward-looking liberty document for millions of American women of color as our first, supposedly universal version. “We see it as a statement of our collective values as Americans, a statement on how we respect all working people, regardless of whether they work in an office or in a home,” wrote Harris, Jayapal, and Poo in a 2018 op-ed for CNN.
Of course, the Bill of Rights is one way to invest in care. In the New York Times, Poo explained how workforce support is just one element of solving our caring crisis: the country should “holistically” invest in care at a scale akin to infrastructure. We need to raise workers’ wages and strengthen their protections – while also investing in Medicaid home and community-based services, child care subsidies, affordable healthcare, retirement benefits, and paid leave.
This legislative session, it’s unlikely that Bill of Rights-style protections and pursuant budget appropriations will make their way to President Biden’s desk – investments in care were all too absent from this summer’s Inflation Reduction Act, and Republican Committee members spent the hearing fear mongering about inflation, debt, religious descrimination, and how the legislation might undermine the ability to “make employees part of the family.”
But state by state, the tide is turning. Bills of Rights are up for passage in New Jersey and Washington, DC. And Seattle is going further with its commitment to domestic workers, allocating a quarter of a million dollars for outreach to inform workers of their rights – facilitating justice as delivered by the settlement this summer.
“Firstly, it was my ignorance of the laws and rights that I had,” said the domestic worker in Seattle. “But through friends who supported me to do it, I lost my fear and filed the complaint. It was worth the risk and a favorable result was given.”
Bella DeVaan is an Inequality.org Next Leader at the Institute for Policy Studies. You can follow her on Twitter at @bdevaan.
