• print
  • decrease text sizeincrease text size
    text

Tag: Wall Street

Here Are the 10 Worst Attacks on Workers From Trump’s First Year

Posted on by Economic Policy Institute
Share this post

January 20th marks the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Since taking office, President Trump has overseen a string of policies that will harm working people and benefit corporations and the rich. Here we present a list of the 10 worst things Congress and Trump have done to undermine pay growth and erode working conditions for the nation’s workers.

1) Enacting tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy over the average worker

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) signed into law at the end of 2017 provides a permanent cut in the corporate income tax rate that will overwhelmingly benefit capital owners and the top 1%. President Trump’s boast to wealthy diners at his $200,000-initiation-fee Mar-a-Lago Club on Dec. 22, 2017, says it best: “You all just got a lot richer.”

2) Taking billions out of workers’ pockets by weakening or abandoning regulations that protect their pay

In 2017, the Trump administration hurt workers’ pay in a number of ways, including acts to dismantle two key regulations that protect the pay of low- to middle-income workers. The Trump administration failed to defend a 2016 rule strengthening overtime protections for these workers, and took steps to gut regulations that protect servers from having their tips taken by their employers.

3) Blocking workers from access to the courts by allowing mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts

The Trump administration is fighting on the side of corporate interests who want to continue to require employees to sign arbitration agreements with class action waivers. This forces workers to give up their right to file class action lawsuits, and takes them out of the courtrooms and into individual private arbitration when their rights on the job are violated.

4) Pushing immigration policies that hurt all workers

The Trump administration has taken a number of extreme actions that will hurt all workers, including detaining unauthorized immigrants who were victims of employer abuse and human trafficking, and ending Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, many of whom have resided in the United States for decades. But perhaps the most striking example has been the administration’s termination of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals program.

5) Rolling back regulations that protect worker pay and safety

President Trump and congressional Republicans have blocked regulations that protect workers’ pay and safety. By blocking these rules, the president and Congress are raising the risks for workers while rewarding companies that put their employees at risk.

6) Stacking the Federal Reserve Board with candidates friendlier to Wall Street than to working families

President Trump’s actions so far—including his choice not to reappoint Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and his nomination of Randal Quarles to fill one of the vacancies—suggest that he plans to tilt the board toward the interests of Wall Street rather than those of working families.

7) Ensuring Wall Street can pocket more of workers’ retirement savings

Since Trump took office, the Department of Labor has actively worked to weaken or rescind the “fiduciary” rule, which requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients when giving retirement investment advice. The Trump administration’s repeated delays in enforcing this rule will cost retirement savers an estimated $18.5 billion over the next 30 years in hidden fees and lost earning potential.

8) Stacking the Supreme Court against workers by appointing Neil Gorsuch

Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, has a record of ruling against workers and siding with corporate interests. Cases involving collective bargaining, forced arbitration and class action waivers in employment disputes are already on the court’s docket this term or are likely to be considered by the court in coming years. Gorsuch may cast the deciding vote in significant cases challenging workers’ rights.

9) Trying to take affordable health care away from millions of working people

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans spent much of 2017 attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They finally succeeded in repealing a well-known provision of the ACA—the penalty for not buying health insurance—in the tax bill signed into law at the end of 2017. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2027, the repeal of this provision will raise the number of uninsured Americans by 13 million.

10) Undercutting key worker protection agencies by nominating anti-worker leaders

Trump has appointed—or tried to appoint—individuals with records of exploiting workers to key posts in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Nominees to critical roles at DOL and the NLRB have—in word and deed—expressed hostility to the worker rights laws they are in charge of upholding.

This list is based on a new report out from the Economic Policy Institute.

This article was originally published at In These Times on January 19, 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.


Share this post

Don’t Pass Huge Tax Cuts for the Wealthy on the Backs of Working People

Posted on by Kelly Ross
Share this post

Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate have proposed a job-killing tax plan that favors the super-rich and wealthy corporations over working people. We cannot afford to let this bill become law.

Here’s why this plan is a bad idea:

  • Millions of working people would pay more. People making under $40,000 would be worse off, on average, in 2021; and people making under $75,000 would be worse off, on average, in 2027.
  • The super-rich and Wall Street would make out like bandits. The richest 0.1% would get an average tax cut of more than $208,000, and 62% of the benefits of the Senate bill would go to the richest 1%. Big banks, hedge funds and other Wall Street firms would be the biggest beneficiaries of key provisions of the bill.
  • Job-killing tax breaks for outsourcing. The Republican tax plan would lower the U.S. tax rate on offshore profits to zero, giving corporations more incentive to move American jobs offshore. 
  • Working people would lose health care. Thirteen million people would lose health insurance, and health care premiums would rise 10% in the non-group market. Meanwhile, Republicans want to cut Medicaid and Medicare by $1.5 trillion—the same price tag as their tax bill.
  • Job-killing cuts to infrastructure and education. Eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes would drastically reduce state and local investment in infrastructure and lead to $350 billion in education cuts, jeopardizing the jobs of 350,000 educators.

Republican tax and budget plans would make working people pay the price for wasteful tax giveaways by sending our jobs overseas; killing jobs in infrastructure and education; raising our taxes; increasing the number of uninsured; and cutting the essential public services we depend on.

Call your senator today at 844-899-9913.

This blog was originally published at AFL-CIO on November 27, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kelly Ross is the deputy policy director at AFL–CIO. 


Share this post

GOP Smash-And-Burn Tax Plan Does Nothing for Workers

Posted on by Leo Gerard
Share this post

Congressional Republicans are selling a trickle-down tax scam times two. It’s the same old snake oil, with double hype and no cure.

A single statistic explains it all: one percent of Americans – that is the tiny, exclusive club of billionaires and millionaires – get 80 percent of the gain from this tax con. Eighty percent!

But that’s not all! To pay for that unneeded and unwarranted red-ribbon wrapped gift to the uber wealthy, Republicans are slashing and burning $5 trillion in programs cherished by workers, including Medicare and Medicaid.

Look at the statistic in reverse, and it seems worse: 99 percent of Americans will get only 20 percent of the benefit from this GOP tax scam. That’s not tax reform. That’s tax defraud.

Republican tax hucksters claim the uber rich will share. It’s the trickle down effect, they say, the 99 percent will get some trickle down.

It’s a trick. Zilch ever comes down. It’s nothing more than fake tax reform first deployed by voodoo-economics Reagan. There’s a basic question about this flim-flammery: Why do workers always get stuck depending on second-hand benefits? Real tax reform would put the rich in that position for once. Workers would get the big tax breaks and the fat cats could wait to see if any coins trickled up to jingle in their pockets.

House Speaker Paul Ryan claimed Republicans’ primary objective in messing with the tax code is to help the middle class, not the wealthy. Well, there’s a simple way to do that:  Give 99 percent of the tax breaks directly to the 99 percent.

The Republican charlatans hawking this new tax scam are asserting the pure malarkey that it provides two, count them TWO, trickle-down benefits. In addition to the tried-and-false fairytale that the rich will share with the rest after collecting their tax bounty, there’s the additional myth that corporations will redistribute downward some of their big fat tax scam bonuses.

A corporate tax break isn’t some sort of Wall Street baptism that will convert CEOs into believers in the concept of paying workers a fair share of the profit their labor creates.

Corporations have gotten tax breaks before and haven’t done that. And they’ve got plenty of cash to share with workers right now and don’t do it. Instead, they spend corporate money to push up CEO pay. Over the past nine years, corporations have shelled out nearly $4 trillion to buy back their own stock, a ploy that raises stock prices and, right along with them, CEO compensation. Worker pay, meanwhile, flat-lined.

In addition to all of that cash, U.S. corporations are currently sitting on another nearly $2 trillion. But CEOs and corporate boards aren’t sharing any of that with their beleaguered workers, who have struggled with stagnant wages for nearly three decades.

Still, last week, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, insisted that the massive corporate tax cut, from 35 percent down to 20 percent, will not trickle, but instead will shower down on workers in the form of pay raises ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 a year.

Booyah! Happy days are here again! With the median wage at $849 per week or $44,148 a year, that would be pay hikes ranging from 9 percent to 20 percent! Unprecedented!

Or, more likely, unrealistic.

“Dishonest, incompetent, and absurd” is what Larry Summers called it. Summers was Treasury Secretary for President Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama.

Jason Furman, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who once held Hassett’s title at the  Council of Economic Advisers, called Hassett’s findings “implausible,”  “outside the mainstream” and “far-fetched.”

Frank Lysy, retired from a career at the World Bank, including as its chief economist, agreed that Hassett’s projection was absurd.

Hassett based his findings on unpublished studies by authors who neglected to suffer peer review and projected results with all the clueless positivity of Pollyanna. Meanwhile, Lysy noted, Hassett failed to account for actual experience. That would be the huge corporate tax cuts provided in Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Between 1986 and 1988, the top corporate tax rate dropped from 46 percent to 34 percent, but real wages fell by close to 6 percent between 1986 and 1990.

Thus many economists’ dim assessment of Hassett’s promises.

The other gob-smacking bunkum claim about the Republican tax scam is that it will gin up the economy, and, as a result, the federal government will receive even more tax money. So, in their alternative facts world, cutting taxes on the rich and corporations will not cause deficits. It will result in the government rolling in coin, like a pirate in a treasure trove. That’s the claim, and they’re sticking to it. Like their hero Karl Rove said, “We create our own reality.”

Here’s Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, for example: “This tax plan will be deficit reducing.”

If the Pennsylvania politician truly believes that’s the case, it’s not clear why he voted for a budget that would cut $473 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid. If reducing the tax rate for the rich and corporations really would shrink the deficit, Republicans should be adding money to fund Medicare and Medicaid.

While cutting taxes on the rich won’t really boost the economy, it will increase income inequality. Makes sense, right? Give the richest 1 percenters 80 percent of the gains and the remaining 99 percent only 20 percent and the rich are going to get richer faster.

Economist Thomas Piketty, whose work focuses on wealth and income inequality and who wrote the best seller “Capital in the Twenty First Century,” found in his research no correlation between tax cuts for the rich and economic growth in industrialized countries since the 1970s. He did find, however, that the rich got much richer in countries like the United States that slashed tax rates for the 1 percent than in countries like France and Germany that did not.

This Republican tax scam is a case of the adage that former President George W. Bush once famously bungled: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

This blog was originally published at OurFuture.org on October 27, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), took office in 2001 after the retirement of former president George Becker.


Share this post

On the CFPB’s Birthday, Stand Against Sharks

Posted on by Richard Eskow
Share this post

July 21 marks the six-year anniversary of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in the wake of the Wall Street crime wave that led to the financial crisis of 2008.

The CFPB was first conceived by law professor Elizabeth Warren, now Senator Warren from Massachusetts, as an agency that could protect the American people from being mistreated, defrauded, and otherwise ripped off by powerful bankers who ran institutions that engaged in massive criminal behavior and yet never spent a day in jail.

It is a day to celebrate, and a day to fight.

Why Celebrate?

Why celebrate? Because, despite a number of attempts to tie its hands, the CFPB has been enormously successful. It has provided almost $12 billion in relief to 29 million victims of bank malfeasance.

It has provided nearly 50 million borrowers with new protections from dirty mortgage tricks – including surprise fees and mistreatment for those who fall behind in their payments.

The CFPB has rewritten credit card rules, saving customers more than $16 billion in hidden fees. It has helped stay-at-home spouses and Americans serving in the armed forces.

Why fight? Because Republicans – helped at times by some venal Democrats – are doing their best to gut the CFPB and leave consumers defenseless against the predators on Wall Street.

Inside the Shark Tank

Does the word “predator” seem too harsh a word for bankers? William Dudley, then President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in 2013 that Wall Street’s big banks suffered from “deep-seated cultural and ethical failures” and “the apparent lack of respect for law, regulation and the public trust.”

A 2015 survey of banker ethics found an extraordinary tolerance for corrupt behavior and “a marked decline in ethics” since the study was first conducted in 2012. More than one-third of bankers earning $500,000 or more per year said they “have witnessed or have first hand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace.”

One in four said they would break the law themselves if they could make $10 million or more by doing it.

Wall Street’s offenses include “price fixing, bid rigging, market manipulation, money laundering, document forgery, lying to investors, sanctions-evading, and tax dodging.”

At last count, banks had paid more than $200 billion in fines and settlements to settle fraud charges. Bank of America had paid more than $77 billion.

Checkered Citi and Chase

Citigroup, the megabank created with bipartisan cooperation from Republican Senator Phil Gramm and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (who later became the bank’s chief executive), had paid nearly $20 billion.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon considers himself a worthy commentator on economic issues. But, under his leadership, his bank paid nearly $30 billion for crimes over a four-year period.

These include, according to an investors report, violations of the Bank Secrecy Act; money laundering for drug cartels; violations of sanction orders against Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Liberia; violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act; the fraudulent sale of unregistered securities and derivatives; bribery of state officials; and, obstruction of justice, including refusal to release documents in the Bernie Madoff case.

Voters Aren’t Fooled

A new poll finds that “More than nine in ten Americans (91%) believe it is important to regulate financial services, including 71% who believe it is very important. Strong bipartisan majorities say financial regulation is very important.” That includes Democrats (81%), independent voters (75%), and Republicans (58%).

They’re right. When Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney boasts that the fiction he calls “MAGAnomics” will lead to economic growth of more than 3 percent per year, he doesn’t explain that we routinely had that level of growth until unregulated bank fraud led to the financial crisis of 2008.

If we let the Republicans deregulate Wall Street again, it will set the stage for another crisis.

Republicans Are a Shark’s Best Friend

These bankers may break the law – and be unpopular with voters – but they’ve still got friends on Capitol Hill. Right now Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotten are working to undermine the CFPB’s new arbitration rule, which is set to take effect in September.

This rule ends banks’ ability to force customers into arbitration, a process that’s skewed in Wall Street’s favor. The CFPB rule would make it possible for customers to once again file class-action suits. Given Wall Street’s deep pockets for attorney’s fees, class-action suits are one of the few tools customers have for defending themselves in court.

House Republicans also passed the so-called “Financial Choice Act” – “Financial Carnage Act” might be a better name – a bill that would gut the CFPB and strip away other consumer protections.

When the Republicans fight the CFPB, they’re standing with the student loan predators at Navient. That’s the loan servicing company the CFPB sued earlier this year for cheating borrowers of their rights. That means they’re standing against the 44 million Americans who owe more than $1.4 trillion in student debt.

When the Republicans fight the CFPB, they’re standing with the bankers who defrauded mortgage holders and fraudulently foreclosed on American families. That means they’re standing against the millions of Americans who currently hold more than $14 trillion in mortgage debt.

When the Republicans fight the CFPB, they’re standing with the payday lenders who have trapped hundreds of thousands of lower-income Americans into a debt trap that can lead to annualized interest rates of 300 percent. That means they’re standing against the estimated 12 million Americans who pay an average of $520 per year in interest on eight $375 loans. These borrowers would be protected by the CFPB’s proposed payday lending rules.

People’s Action is repeating its annual “shark week” tradition, which draws attention to  this year, with anti-payday lender actions timed to coincide with the Discovery Channel’s “shark week” programming.

The CFPB has provided an extraordinary amount of help to millions of Americans in just six years. Now it needs our help.

This blog was originally published at OurFuture.org on July 21, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Richard (RJ) Eskow is a writer and radio journalist who has worked in health insurance and economics, occupational health, risk management, finance, and IT. He is also a former musician.


Share this post

A Winning Week for Corporations and Wall Street—Paid for by Your Health and Retirement

Posted on by Shaun O'Brien
Share this post

Corporations and Wall Street won big last week, and working people will pay a high price for it. Here are three things Congress did for Big Business that will harm working people’s health care and retirement:

1. 7 million fewer people will get workplace health benefits. Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called American Health Care Act by a vote of 217-213. This is the bill that President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are using to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act and that will cut health coverage for some 24 million people. The U.S. Senate now has to vote.

Professional lobbying groups that represent employers, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are behind this bill because it guts the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that large and mid-size employers offer their full-time employees adequate, affordable health benefits or risk paying a penalty. According to Congress’s budget experts, within 10 years, this bill will result in 7 million fewer Americans getting employer-provided health insurance. Corporate interests also like the huge tax cuts in the House bill, especially the $28 billion for prescription drug corporations and $145 billion for insurance companies.

Big company CEOs—the people who now earn 347 times more what front-line workers earn—are probably salivating over the huge personal tax cuts they will get from the Republican bill. One estimate is that those with million-dollar incomes will receive an average yearly tax cut of more than $50,000. The 400 highest-income households in the United States get an average tax cut of $7 million.

2. As many as 38 million workers will be blocked from saving for retirement at work. The Senate voted 50-49 last Wednesday to stop states from creating retirement savings programs for the 38 million working people whose employers do not offer any kind of retirement plan. The House already had voted to do this, and Trump is expected to sign off on it.

In the absence of meaningful action by the federal government, states have stepped in to address the growing retirement security crisis. But groups that carry water for Wall Street companies, like the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, have been actively lobbying Congress and Trump to stop states from helping these workers.

3. More than 100 million retirement investors may lose protections against conflicted investment advice. The House Financial Services Committee approved the so-called Financial CHOICE Act on a party-line vote last Thursday. It now goes to the full House of Representatives, and then to the Senate. In addition to gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects working people from abusive banking practices and ripping out many of the other financial reforms adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, this bill overturns key investor protections for people who have IRAs and 401(k)s. A massive coalition of Wall Street firms and their lobbying groups has been fighting to undo these retirement protections by any means possible.

This blog originally appeared at AFL-CIO on May 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Shaun O’Brien is the Assistant Director for Health and Retirement in the AFL-CIO’s Policy Department, where he oversees development of the Federation’s policies related to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and work-based health and retirement plans. Immediately prior to joining the AFL- CIO, he held several positions at AARP, including the Vice President for the My Money Portfolio and Senior Vice President for Economic Security. O’Brien holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from American University and a law degree from Cornell Law School.


Share this post

The Trump Administration is About to Put Nursing Home Profits Ahead of Nursing Home Patients

Posted on by Paul Bland
Share this post

Some of the most heart-wrenching stories of abuse, mistreatment and neglect you’re likely to hear involve nursing homes. As America’s baby boomers age, and nursing home populations continue to grow, big corporations have, not surprisingly, started to take note. In fact, the vast majority of nursing homes in the United States – 70%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – are run by for-profit corporations, and an increasing number of homes are being snapped up by Wall Street investment firms.

And that, in turn, can often mean that high quality care takes a backseat to high profits.

Increasingly, these giant corporations are using forced arbitration clauses — contract terms that say that people cannot sue them, no matter what laws they break, and instead people harmed by illegal acts can only bring cases before private arbitrators who are generally beholden to the corporations. These clauses make it far harder for the victims of mistreatment to hold a facility accountable where there’s abuse or serious negligence, and they minimize the incentive to provide the highest quality of care.  The secretive arbitration system also effectively lets homes sweep the facts about problems under the rug, so that the public and regulators never learn about widespread or egregious abuses.

That’s why, in 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said nursing homes should no longer receive federal funding if they use arbitration clauses in their contracts. It was a commonsense proposal that would ensure families can hold nursing homes accountable for abuse and neglect. The government essentially said – and rightly so – that protecting desperately vulnerable people is more important than squeezing out an extra percentage of profit for hedge fund owners.

But that was 2016. Now, the Trump Administration appears to be gearing up to kill the proposal.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN), a fierce opponent of arbitration who has fought corporate lobbyists to protect Americans’ right to their day in court, said on Tuesday that “the Trump Administration is planning to lift the ban on nursing home arbitration clauses.”

So the White House, it appears, is ready to deliver another gift to hedge funds and banks – the corporate entities that increasingly control the nursing home industry – at the expense of the sick and elderly and their families.

It’s no wonder why corporate lobbyists working for the nursing home industry have made killing the CMS proposal a top priority: unlike the public court system (where trials are open to the public, press and regulators), nursing homes benefit enormously from the secretive system of arbitration, where the facts about abuses can be (and often are) buried. “Confidentiality” provisions – which really translate into gag orders – and non-transparent, non-public handling make it easier for systemic problems to stay hidden, and to continue.

If nursing homes are permitted to continue opting out of the civil justice system, we can expect to see lower levels of care, and higher numbers of preventable injuries and deaths. If they succeed in keeping families out of court, the potential savings to their bottom line are enormous when you consider that abuse is very widespread (according to the government’s own study).  Public Justice, our national public interest law firm and advocacy organization, set forth an extensive factual and legal case in support of the CMS proposal, where a great deal more background is available.

Consider just a handful of the plaintiffs who were able to successfully challenge nursing homes in court:

  • A 90-year-old woman allowed to languish with a festering pressure sore, acute appendicitis, and a urinary tract infection so severe it has entered her blood.
  • A diabetic patient injected with the incorrect dose of insulin, sending them into hypoglycemic shock and causing brain damage.
  • An 81-year-old man who was viciously beaten by a roommate who’d been involved in 30 assaults prior to moving in with the victim.
  • An 87-year-old woman whose calls for help were ignored after she fell and broke her hip.

Had any of those patients been subject to an arbitration clause – as no doubt many future cases would be if the Administration folds to pressure from for-profit homes – they likely would have never had a chance to have their case heard by a jury.

Nursing homes have complete control over some of the most vulnerable and fragile people in the entire country: people who are gravely ill, who are often cognitively impaired in ways that make it hard for them to protect themselves, are completely at the mercy of these institutions.

Now, rather than working to give those patients some small measure of protection and security, the Trump Administration is poised to give them the shaft. It’s unconscionable back-pedaling that would leave millions with little recourse when they, or their loved ones, are mistreated or abused.

This blog originally appeared at DailyKos.com on May 3, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Paul Bland, Jr., Executive Director, has been a senior attorney at Public Justice since 1997. As Executive Director, Paul manages and leads a staff of nearly 30 attorneys and other staff, guiding the organization’s litigation docket and other advocacy. Follow him on Twitter: .

 


Share this post

Investment Bank Allegedly Retaliated Against Employee After She Announced Her Pregnancy

Posted on by Bryce Covert
Share this post

Bryce CovertAfter working at the investment bank Jefferies Group for nearly 12 years, Shabari Nayak thought she was on track to become a managing director — especially after bringing her firm $3.75 million in revenue.

But then last year she got pregnant. In a lawsuit filed against the bank on Wednesday, she says everything changed after she announced that she would be having a baby.

Nayak “delayed announcing her pregnancy as late as possible because she feared her career would be derailed,” according to her lawyer Scott Grubin.

Her fears were quickly realized, she alleges. She claims that when she told her direct supervisor of the pregnancy in August of last year, he told her that her “priorities would be changing” after she had her child and offered to help her find a job that was “less demanding,” potentially in the human resources department. She declined, preferring to stay on track for a managing director position.

She got a nearly identical response, she says, when she told the global head of her division. “These two utterly insensitive and demeaning conversations made clear that in the minds of management, Ms. Nayak’s pregnancy had irreversibly changed — if not ended — her investment banking career at the bank,” according to the complaint.

Months later, her supervisors told her she had “taken her foot off the gas pedal,” she claims. Then she says she was denied her year-end bonus, which reduced her overall compensation by nearly 60 percent. Yet she had gotten the bonus the year before when she brought in nearly $1 million less in revenue, while a similar male coworker in her group who hadn’t generated any deal revenue got a “substantial” bonus, according to the complaint.

“What should have been a most joyous time in her life, as Ms. Nayak welcomed her first child into her family, has been transformed into a demeaning and anxious ordeal by the bank’s discriminatory and retaliatory actions against her that has effectively derailed her personal and professional aspirations,” the complaint says.

Nayak no longer works at the bank, claiming that she was forced to resign while on maternity leave after experiencing the discrimination and watching her complaints go unaddressed.

“No reasonable person should be or could be expected to work in the environment created and fostered at Jefferies,” she said.

Now that she’s gone, she says her group at the investment bank has 32 men and no women in senior vice president or managing director positions.

A Jefferies spokesman said the lawsuit is “entirely without merit,” saying she “voluntarily resigned,” and that it will defend against it.

Pregnancy discrimination is already prohibited by federal law, but it’s still incredibly common. Complaints of pregnancy discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose 65 percent between 1992 and 2007, outpacing the increase of women in the labor force, and there were more than 3,500 filed just last year.

A number of investment banks have been hit with discrimination lawsuits that depict a male-dominated and testosterone-fueled culture, and pregnancy discrimination comes up a lot. The finance industry was hit with 97 complaints of pregnancy discrimination in 2013. A lawsuit last year filed by Cynthia Terrana against investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald alleged that she was fired just 11 days after she told her manager she was pregnant.

Other lawsuits against Wall Street firms have alleged a “boys club” atmosphere of trips to strip clubs and sexual assaults against female employees that went ignored, the systemic undermining of women’s careers by denying them the most lucrative clients, and repeated sexual harassment that included female employees being pressured to sleep with executives.

This article was originally posted at Thinkprogress.org on August 19, 2016. Reprinted with permission.

Bryce Covert  is the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New York Daily News, New York Magazine, Slate, The New Republic, and others. She has appeared on ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and other outlets.


Share this post

Financial Transactions/Wall Street Speculation Tax Picks Up Steam

Posted on by Dave Johnson
Share this post

Dave JohnsonThe idea of putting a small “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions has been kicking around for a while, but in the last month the idea has picked up some real steam.

The Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), also called a “Wall Street Speculation Tax,” proposal asks for a small tax on financial transactions. Such a tax would slow down extreme speculation while raising money to pay for essential public services. The idea has been called a “Robin Hood Tax” because it takes from the rich. The FTT is a very tiny tax. Some proposals have suggested a tax of just three hundredths of a percent – a mere 30 cents on a $1,000 stock transaction.

This small tax would raise a lot of money, largely from automated “high-frequency trading.” This is an extreme practice of using computers to place extremely high volumes of stock orders at extremely high speeds, buying and selling the same shares sometimes in a fraction of a second. As much as half or more of all stock trading volume now comes from this high-speed trading. This practice makes extreme profits from a few traders but increases “volatility” (risk) in the market while doing nothing that benefits the economy.

A small FTT would make high-speed trading more costly, slowing it down while raising money for public services. For stocks, bonds and other financial transactions, the tax would be so small as to be practically unnoticed, while still raising significant sums because of the volume of trading.

An FTT has been endorsed by the 2016 Democratic Party Platform draft, which says:

“We support a financial transactions tax on Wall Street to curb excessive speculation and high-frequency trading, which has threatened financial markets. We acknowledge that there is room within our party for a diversity of views on a broader financial transactions tax.”

Hillary Clinton’s financial services reform proposal include a piece of the idea, applying it only to high-frequency trading:

Impose a tax on high-frequency trading. The growth of high-frequency trading has unnecessarily placed stress on our markets, created instability, and enabled unfair and abusive trading strategies. Hillary would impose a tax on harmful high-frequency trading and reform rules to make our stock markets fairer, more open, and transparent.

Bernie Sanders proposed an FTT on “high-speed trading and other forms of Wall Street speculation; proceeds would be used to provide debt-free public college education.” He hadalso supported previous FTT proposals, the 2011 and 2013 Harkin-DeFazio bills calling for a 0.03 percent tax on the sales of stocks and bonds.

A year ago Jared Bernstein explained the benefits in a New York Times op-ed, “The Case for a Tax on Financial Transactions,” writing:

An itty-bitty, one-basis-point transaction tax (a basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point, or 0.01 percent) would raise $185 billion over 10 years… That would be enough to finance an ambitious expansion of prekindergarten programs for 3- and 4-year-olds and restore funding of college assistance for low-income students.

What’s more, a financial transaction tax could significantly reduce the amount of high-frequency trading.

… A one-basis-point tax on $1,000 worth of stock would cost the stock trader a dime. A $100,000 trade would generate a tax of only $10.

[. . .] 75 percent of the liability from the tax would fall on the top fifth of taxpayers, and 40 percent on the top 1 percent. The tax would also fall more on high-volume traders than on long-term investors, of course.

New DeFazio FTT Bill Introduced

This week Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced a FTT bill. His bill would raise $417 billion over 10 years, which could be used to fund national priorities like free higher education or job-creating infrastructure repair. At a news conference DeFazio said:

“Thanks to the reckless greed of Wall Street over the past few decades, the American economy is a grossly unbalanced playing field,” said Rep. DeFazio. “The only way we can level it is if we rein in reckless speculative financial trading and curb near-instantaneous high-volume trades that create instability in the stock market and our national economy. These financial practices have no intrinsic value, and exist to make a quick buck for already-wealthy speculators. If we want to give middle-class families a fair shot at a strong economy that works for all Americans, we need to put Main Street first.”

The legislation is supported by the Take On Wall Street Coalition. Learn more about the FTT/Wall Street Speculation Tax at the Take On Wall Street website.

This post originally appeared on ourfuture.org on July 14, 2016. Reprinted with Permission.

Dave Johnson has more than 20 years of technology industry experience. His earlier career included technical positions, including video game design at Atari and Imagic. He was a pioneer in design and development of productivity and educational applications of personal computers. More recently he helped co-found a company developing desktop systems to validate carbon trading in the US.


Share this post

The New Agenda For Taking On Wall Street

Posted on by Isaiah J. Poole
Share this post

poole-60x60More than 20 progressive organizations representing millions of voters are putting their weight behind a five-point agenda for the next stage of Wall Street reform. What these groups will formally announce Tuesday, in an event featuring Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, sets a high but practical standard for what a candidate would have to embrace to be considered a progressive on reining in the financial sector.

The Take On Wall Street campaign says it intends to ensure that the voices of working people and consumers are heard above the power and influence of Wall Street. The Washington Post reports that Take On Wall Street will combine the efforts of “some of the Democratic parties biggest traditional backers, from the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO to the Communications Workers of America.”

The campaign is pressing five changes that the coalition says would lead to a fair financial system that works for Main Street and working families, not just Wall Street billionaires. Most are embodied in legislation that is currently pending in Congress:

? Close the carried interest loophole. That’s the tax code provision that allows hedge fund and private equity managers to pay a lower tax rate on their earnings than what ordinary workers pay on what they earn. The Carried Interest Fairness Act (H.R. 2889) would end this inequity.

? End the CEO bonus loophole. That loophole allows corporations to write off a large share of CEO pay as a tax deduction – by calling it “performance-based” pay. The result is that taxpayers are subsidizing CEO pay to the tune of $5 billion a year. That amount of money would cover Head Start for more than 590,000 children, or pay the health care costs of more than 480,000 military veterans, or fund full scholarships for more than 600,000 college students. The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (H.R.2103) would end taxpayers subsidizing CEOs and allow those dollars to be used for such priorities as education and health care.

? End “too big to fail.” Both Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, say they agree with the principle that banks that are “too big to fail are too big to exist,” but Clinton is adamantly opposed to the one thing many economists and banking experts believe would help avert the need to bail out a “too big to fail” bank: a legal wall separating consumer banking from high-risk investment and trading activity. The Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2015 (H.R.381) and 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act (H.R. 3054) would bring back a version of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was repealed in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton.

? Enact a Wall Street speculation tax. It’s not right that consumers pay a sales tax on most things they buy, but traders don’t pay a sales tax on the stocks they buy. A tiny tax on the sale of Wall Street financial products – like the one envisioned in the Inclusive Prosperity Act of 2015 (H.R.1464) would raise billions of dollars for critical public needs, and could serve as a brake on high-speed computerized speculation that risks destabilizing markets. This tax would go farther than a narrowly targeted tax that Clinton has proposed.

? End predatory lending and offer alternatives for the “unbanked.” The coalition is throwing its support behind efforts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to enact tough new regulations against payday and title lenders, which frequently entrap low-income borrowers in a quicksand of debt through sky-high, often three-digit interest rates and exorbitant fees. It also champions such “public option” alternatives as allowing the U.S. Postal Service to offer basic banking services.

All of these ideas have been proffered by progressive financial reformers even as the Dodd-Frank financial reform law squeaked through Congress in 2010. But this promises to be the broadest effort yet to combine these proposals into a singular reform push, and it comes as jockeying begins to shape the Democratic Party platform. As The Post notes, “Unlike previous anti-Wall Street campaigns such as Occupy Wall Street this group hopes to organize a campaign that will span state houses and as well as the halls of Congress, potentially forecasting a big fight on financial reform in 2017.”

It also comes as many in the Wall Street financial community turn to Clinton as the sane alternative to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the general election campaign. These money interests will want Clinton to assure them that her get-tough rhetoric is nothing more than political red meat to assuage an angry populist electorate; their hope is that if the pivot to a centrist posture doesn’t happen in the general election, it will surely happen once she secures the presidency. But broad support for the Take On Wall Street agenda will limit Clinton’s ability to pivot, especially if this agenda helps elect new Senate and House members committed to not allowing Wall Street to keep rigging the economy against the rest of us.

This blog originally appeared at ourfuture.org on May 23, 2016, Reprinted with permission.

Isaiah Poole Worked at Campaign for America’s Future, attended Pennsylvania State University, and lives in Washington, DC.

Share this post

Subscribe For Updates

Sign Up:

* indicates required

Recent Posts

Forbes Best of the Web, Summer 2004
A Forbes "Best of the Web" Blog

Archives

  • Tracking image for JustAnswer widget

  • Find an Employment Lawyer

  • Support Workplace Fairness

 
 

Find an Employment Attorney

The Workplace Fairness Attorney Directory features lawyers from across the United States who primarily represent workers in employment cases. Please note that Workplace Fairness does not operate a lawyer referral service and does not provide legal advice, and that Workplace Fairness is not responsible for any advice that you receive from anyone, attorney or non-attorney, you may contact from this site.

Find an Employment Attorney