WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Friday to advance a bill that would require expanding mass detention of immigrants charged or arrested for property crimes, making it one of the first measures signed by future President-elect Donald Trump.

In 61-35 procedural votesTen Senate Democrats joined all Republicans to limit debate on the issue P. 5known as the Laken Riley Law, named after a 22-year-old nursing student murdered by a man who immigration authorities say entered the country illegally and had previously been charged with shoplifting.

If the bill – already passed by the House – becomes law, it would be an early victory for Trump, who campaigned on his plans to implement tough immigration policies, including mass deportations, and has often blamed Riley’s death on the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

A final vote in the Senate is scheduled for Monday, after which the bill will be sent back to the House for cause amendment Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, who would add assault on a law enforcement officer as requiring mandatory arrest. It was agreed that on A bipartisan 70-25 votes.

The Senate is also ready to vote on this matter another fix Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst’s proposal on Monday would also include mandatory detention requirements for “any crime resulting in death or serious bodily injury to another person.”

One fix Filed by Democrats and brought to the floor by Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, it would violate part of the bill that gives state attorneys general broad legal standing to challenge federal law as well as immigration judges’ bail decisions.

It was rejected in a party-line vote 46–49, but this is an amendment that mirrors an amendment introduced by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Schumer unhappy with lack of debate

Before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would not vote for the measure, criticizing Senate Republicans for not allowing more votes on the amendments.

“We have told Republicans that we want to have a serious, productive and fruitful debate on this legislation with a chance to vote on amendments to the bill,” the New York Democrat said. “Unfortunately, unless further changes are made to address the bill’s shortcomings, I will be voting no.”

Lawyers and immigration experts have raised grave concerns with the bill. They argue that it would not only affect undocumented people, but would ensnare some immigrants with legal status, lead to the detention of children and force the U.S. Department of State to stop issuing visas to a country that does not admit citizens eligible for deportation.

Additionally, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimated the enforcement cost to be $26.9 billion in its first year. according to NPR. ICE’s budget for fiscal year 2024 is approximately $9 billion.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said before the vote that if ICE is unable to enforce the law, “the answer is to provide those resources.”

The South Dakota Republican added that Senate Republicans did
“We are currently working on a bill that would provide ICE with additional agents and additional detention capacity.”

Last updated: 10:28, January 18, 2025

There are an estimated 155,000 illegal immigrants in Pennsylvania, according to the American Immigration Council. According to them, about 30,000 of them may work in the state agricultural sector Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture estimates.

With the state’s agriculture industry already struggling with a labor shortage, President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to begin a mass deportation program at the start of his term next week could exacerbate the problem.

Lerae Kroon, supervising attorney at the Pennsylvania Farmworker Project, said Trump’s proposed mass deportation program “will cause chaos and pain for everyone in the community.”

“Many undocumented workers live with and support extended and blended families who find themselves in economic difficulties,” Kroon said. “The labor shortage will only get worse as people are caught up in raids, and even documented workers may decide the risk is not worth it and leave agricultural work.”

According to Kroon, there is already a sense of increased hostility toward immigration in Pennsylvania.

“We have heard from customers and community partners who are afraid,” Kroon said. “Anti-immigrant rhetoric is already pushing people into the shadows, and we expect that to continue.”

Elected officials in Pennsylvania are urging the up-to-date Trump administration to exercise caution and ensure that any changes to the immigration system ensure that seasonal workers can legally enter the country.

“We will see what the president-elect actually decides.”

Last week, in an address to the audience at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, Gov. Josh Shapiro called filling labor shortages in the state’s agriculture sector “vitally important.”

Shapiro said his administration has made investments in agricultural education and apprenticeship programs to get teenage people into the workforce. He also said it was significant to ensure that immigrant and seasonal workers, who make up a immense part of the agricultural workforce, can work legally in the country.

Although Shapiro did not mention Trump by name, the president-elect has repeatedly promised to implement “the largest mass deportation program in American history,” which he said would begin on his first day in office in less than a week. Trump has also proposed ending birthright citizenship and potentially deportations of entire families with mixed immigration status.

“We also need thoughtful and responsible immigration reform at the federal level that prioritizes the needs of our agricultural industry,” Shapiro said. “I hope our federal partners can come together to make this happen.”

Asked at a news conference after the speech how he would support farm workers and business owners if Trump took a more extreme approach to his deportation plans, Shapiro responded noncommittally.

“Let’s see what the president-elect actually decides to do here — he’s said a lot of different things,” Shapiro said. “Our administration will be prepared.”

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture estimated that nearly half of Pennsylvania’s farm workers, or about 30,000 people, may be undocumented immigrants according to the 2017 census. American Immigration Council, an immigration advocacy group, estimates that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, make up approximately 9.7% of the state’s total labor forceaccording to data for 2022 and that, overall, a immense proportion of people work in the agricultural sector.

According to Bailey Fisher, federal affairs specialist at the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, some industries in Pennsylvania that rely heavily on labor include dairy farms, mushroom, fruit and Christmas tree farms.

“The jobs that foreign-born farm workers have are specialized, technical and grueling,” Kroon said, discussing why migrant workers are so significant to the agricultural sector. “They are also historically low paid. As agricultural labor shortages continue to grow, work still needs to be done, and some undocumented workers are willing to do it.”

Trump has at times said he would focus his efforts on early deportations criminals. After winning the election, he also told NBC’s Meet The Press that he would is open to deporting all illegal immigrants in the country during his next term.

“Destructive Impact”

Shapiro’s response to Trump’s statements is similar other comments he made since Trump’s election in November. Other Democratic governors do took a more decisive stancesaying they would try to block deportation efforts or instruct law enforcement in their states not to cooperate with federal agents.

As governor, Shapiro could play a leading role in shaping the state’s response to any deportation plans introduced by Trump. He also has a long history of opposing Trump’s immigration policies. When he was attorney general of Pennsylvania, Shapiro joined the multi-state lawsuit to stop Trump family separation policy in which tiny children were taken away from their parents. He also rejected Trump’s attempts ban Muslims travel to the United States and his first administration’s policies that made it tough for immigrants living in the U.S. to change their immigration status.

Pennsylvania House of Representatives Rep. Jose Giral (Philadelphia), vice chairman of the Pennsylvania Latino Legislative Caucus and member of the House Labor and Industry Committee, called for more balanced immigration reform.

“President-elect Trump’s mass deportation plan would have a devastating impact on our agricultural industry – our largest industry generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue and economic activity every year – and the loss of these workers would cause everyone’s grocery bills to skyrocket,” Giral said. Capital-Star in a statement. “The federal government should focus on immigration reform instead of focusing on hard-working and essential farm workers.”

But some Democrats, like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, have shown a greater willingness to work with Republicans on immigration reform. Fetterman recently joined the group of co-sponsors of the GOP-led party Laken Riley Actnamed after a teenage Georgia woman whose murder by an undocumented immigrant previously arrested for shoplifting and child endangerment became a rallying cry to support the Trump campaign’s immigration proposals. The vote in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives delegation was bipartisan. Democratic Reps. Brendan Boyle and Chris Deluzio voted for the bill along with all state Republicans. The Senate has not yet taken a final vote on the bill.

The bill would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft-related crimes, such as burglary and shoplifting, regardless of whether they have been convicted. It would also give state attorneys general greater authority to sue the federal government for harm caused to citizens by illegal immigrants.

Latest polls shows that support for the deportation of illegal immigrants has increased among the American public.

Recently elected Senator Dave McCormick (R-PA) also addressed immigration during Saturday’s Farm Show, stating that immigration reform should come from efforts to raise border security and ponderous immigration.

“The first order of business has to be closing the border, but I hope that as we get further into the president’s term, we can get back to legal immigration reform,” McCormick said.

Specifically addressing the needs of Pennsylvania farmers, McCormick said: “Especially in this community, there is a need for H-2A and other reforms that will enable us to employ legal farm workers,” McCormick told the Capital-Star. “And these are jobs that are not replacing American workers. These are positions that will remain unfilled unless we enact immigration reform

“We are already having trouble finding enough workers.”

In the current situation H-2A visa programthat allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for short-lived agricultural employment may not be able to hire enough people to offset the loss of undocumented workers if Trump implements a sweeping deportation program.

“I don’t know if the H-2A program in its current scope would be able to handle that,” said Fisher, a federal affairs specialist at the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. “We are already struggling to get enough staff to participate in the program.”

Fisher said the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau does not take a position on immigration debates, but is talking to the up-to-date Trump administration to convey the seriousness of the labor shortage and the role of seasonal migrant workers in filling it.

The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau recommends that visa holders be allowed to work year-round, rather than just six months, and to make it easier for farmers to apply for the program.

Fisher also said getting enough workers isn’t the program’s only problem. Employers using this technology must complete a huge amount of paperwork, which sometimes requires them to hire specialized consultants. And with stringent housing standards and transportation requirements, hiring seasonal workers can become steep.

“We obviously want to make sure that employees feel safe and healthy,” Fisher said. “But we want to add some practicality to it.”

But ultimately, Fisher said, reform may be tough.

“The H-2A program is a real beast,” Fisher said.

And there is one more thing. “We understand that immigration is related to agricultural work under the H-2A visa program, but whenever you bring up the topic of immigration, it becomes a politicized topic and you can never do anything.”

Fisher said she began to hear concerns from Pennsylvania agricultural business owners about the potential impacts of the deportation program. But like Shapiro, he tells them, “just wait and see what happens. At this point, much of this information may just be rumors.

Capital-Star reporter John Cole contributed.

Before the elections, several headlines suggested that union voters abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of Donald Trump. And although Trump did win the November 5 presidential election with the support of many rank-and-file union members, he he didn’t win all trade union voters. What’s more, Steve Rosenthal, who has worked as an electoral strategist in the labor movement for over 40 years, believes the political coin could flip again as early as 2026.

Former political director of the AFL-CIO, which he helped lead revive political influence of the Labor Party, Rosenthal focuses on engaging trade union members and working-class voters. He is currently the president of Organizing Group, a political consulting firm that works with unions to lend a hand them gain votes and win campaigns. The company is operational In the Unionvoter mobilization program that this year reached 1.5 million mostly white, working-class voters in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in Ohio.

Rosenthal believes that with the loss of Kamala Harris, the labor movement needs to start preparing now for the anti-worker changes that could come from a second Trump administration, as well as the next election.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Capital & Main: I might as well ask the question everyone is asking about the election: What happened?

Steve Rosenthal: For me, the most telling numbers came from Voting for AP vote. Voters who rated the economy as excellent or good – 36% of the electorate – voted for Harris by a vote of 82 to 17. Those who said the economy was neither very good nor needy – 63% of the electorate – voted for Trump by a vote of 69 to 29. If you go back to 2020, [the poll results were] almost exactly the opposite – 43% said the economy was excellent or good [and they] voted for Trump by a vote of 81 to 18. The 57% of the electorate who said the economy was not that good or bad voted for Biden by a vote of 77 to 21.

As many people noticed, the economy was definitely the most essential thing for voters. If they thought things were going well, they voted for the incumbent [party in] Kamala Harris, and if they thought the economy was not doing well, they voted for the change candidate, which was Trump. For many voters, economic issues – pardon the expression – trump fascism, democracy and choice – the cornerstone of Harris’ campaign.

I think for some voters [arguments on] these issues were less credible because they had survived four years of Trump. For me this is the best summary. I don’t think there will be any major reshuffles [or evidence of] long-term conservative change.

When I was political director of the AFL-CIO from 1996 to 2002, part of my rap was that the only white working-class voters who voted Democratic were in unions. This was true then and is largely true today. And union voting has actually gotten a little worse. For years, not enough attention was paid to the decline in union membership and, therefore, union voters and what that meant for Democrats. I’m glad people are talking about Democrats needing to become the party of working people again.

During the union vote, there was a lot of discussion in the media about union members migrating to Trump, even though the Biden administration is doing so much for unions.

First, union members voted for Harris in quite gigantic numbers. Through the three states of the blue wall, [there was a] significant achievements of union members.

In Pennsylvania, unionists made up 18% of the electorate. So almost one in five votes cast came from union households, which voted 52 to 47 for Harris, better than Biden’s vote in 2020, [when] Biden lost union households to Trump 49 to 50 in Pennsylvania. So she actually did better.

In Wisconsin, Kamala Harris won union voters 53 to 46 — better than Clinton in 2016 and not as well as Biden in 2020, but still has a nine-point lead among union voters in the state. In Michigan, Harris won [union voters] 55 to 44 – not as good as Biden in 2020, but much better than Clinton in 2016.

During his first visit to Pittsburgh in 2024, Biden focused on unions and steel

Trump has diluted union votes somewhat, but not by significant numbers. The media rushing to judgment before the election based on some polls suggesting that labor has abandoned the Democrats is simply wrong.

What do you think about unions like the Teamsters not supporting Harris?

As has been well reported, the Teamsters remained neutral. Likewise firefighters. But there were 50 unions that supported Kamala Harris.

Drivers released survey that found this out [nearly] 60% of their members supported Trump and [indicated] that’s why they decided stay neutral. In over 40 years of my work, I have seen many surveys conducted among trade union members. Unions may start with their members losing 10, 15 or 20 points.

But then you launch your program and communicate with your members – in this case, for example, point out that Trump supports right-to-work and that Trump led one of the most rabidly anti-union administrations in the country’s history. And then compare that to Harris’ record and the fact that Harris cast casting vote on legislation this saved the pensions of hundreds of thousands of union members, including vehicle drivers.

Teamsters won’t support either candidate in the presidential race, but some Pennsylvanians support Harris

It was inexcusable that the union did not take the opportunity to communicate with its members and explain to them what was at stake in this election. Because if they did, they would move those numbers. No labor leader could look at these two candidates and with any degree of honesty suggest that either of them would not be better for working people.

Do you have any thoughts on how to reconcile the state of the economy with how people perceive the state of the economy? It seems that people’s personal experiences do not necessarily match what the headlines say about the economy.

I think that’s part of why the Harris campaign recklessly promoted some of the data on falling inflation, because people didn’t feel it.

There is an element about the message and the messenger. It is not that the party no longer stands for workers; the point is that the party leadership no longer engages in trenches with workers. Their achievements are being paid off in part in brief order because there is a huge degree of cynicism towards both parties and politics in general. Putting out a billion dollars in TV ads targeting working people and trying to tell them “We stand with you” – after 30 years of NAFTA and other trade agreements and situations [with] corporations and not get into the trenches with employees?

There is a difference between what the party does and fights for and what people feel, see and understand.

By any measure, Biden was the most pro-union president in our lifetime. This must be extremely offensive to President Biden and Vice President Harris [and others in the administration]who have done so much for trade unions and workers over the last few years, we heard that the party had abandoned them.

You said Democrats need to be in the trenches with workers. What does it look like?

I think these are walking picket lines. I think you can see that in union halls. I think it’s about gathering groups of working people and sitting with them and listening to them – holding town hall meetings across the county or state and hearing what people have to say. This means uniting with working people and allowing them to see who is really on their side.

Over the next few years, it intends to stand firm against the fierce attack on a range of workers’ rights. There will be attacks on [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration]overtime pay, the National Labor Relations Board, which funds the Fair Labor Standards Act, and federal employee unions.

What was your approach to mobilizing union and working class voters?

With our In Union voter engagement program, we keep voters informed throughout the year – we don’t just start talking to them around the election. We give them tips on how their families save money, we give them information about unions on the front lines, we give them ways to hold politicians accountable and fight back. And then we gradually start communicating about the elections themselves. We never make recommendations, but we provide people with good, reliable information and well-documented quotes.

How do you see this work developing over the next few years?

As crazy as it sounds, it’s not too early to start [work for] 2026 in the Blue Wall states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There will be open gubernatorial races in two states, a [Gov. Josh] Shapiro will run for re-election in Pennsylvania. And then – it sounds silly to me to talk about 2028, but every four years the labor movement has the potential to play a significant role in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

We must therefore not wait until October 2026 or September 2028 and start communicating with union members. [about] protection of employees’ rights. People want to get involved. Union members will be elated to call. They will talk to their elected officials. They will go to town hall meetings. They are more democratic than most voters because they have experience [democracy] in their relationships [when] they elect local union officials and vote on contracts.

We have to start now. The stakes are too high for those working in the modern administration not to start engaging people in January.

Robert McVay became a teacher in Franklin primarily because he loved the job.

He remembers his third-grade teacher repeatedly telling him that he was intelligent and what that meant for him as a needy kid with eight siblings. He hoped he could make the same difference for someone else.

But he also believed that being a public school teacher meant being guaranteed certain protections.

“I believed and then I felt like I could retire with a pension that would provide real retirement security,” McVay said. “But everything stopped when I retired in 1998.”

McVay was unlucky to retire before 2001. That’s when the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a bill increasing pensions for public school teachers, but only for those who retire after the law goes into effect. Since then, for retired teachers like McVay, who stopped working before 2001, the cost of living has not increased – a fairly common occurrence – in more than 20 years.

That’s why McVay joined members of the Pennsylvania State Educators Association and other advocacy groups on Wednesday in asking the Senate to pass a bill that would provide a cost-of-living raise to teachers who retired before 2001.

All you need is a bill like this House Bill 1416it passed the House last November with 38 Republicans joining every Democrat, but it has since sat in the Republican-controlled Senate.

According to the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees, the average pension for a public school employee who retired before the raises took effect is $18,400. Most of these retirees will also qualify for Social Security. For McVay, that meant moving to a trailer park in Florida and struggling to afford necessities like groceries.

“These individuals are the backbone of our community because they have dedicated their lives to educating our children,” said Rep. Steven Malagari (D-Montgomery), sponsor of this HB 1416. “For too long, they have been asked to retire and were promised a retirement without a safety net.”

Malagari said the issue is personal for him. His mother was an elementary school teacher.

However, with the legislative session ending in six weeks and only eight “days of session” scheduled before that, it seems unlikely that his bill will pass.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (D-Indiana) said in a statement to the Capital-Star: “I have real empathy for those who retired before 2001. Of course, we must be careful about the fragile nature of our pension funds. The question for advocates remains how do we pay for it without increasing the burden on property taxpayers across the commonwealth.”

The the same concerns were expressed by House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) when the bill passed the House. Some analysis by the Independent Tax Office found that the unfunded liabilities of both the State Employees Retirement System and the Public School Employees Retirement System would collectively escalate by more than $1 billion.

A spokesman for Sen. Cris Dush (R-Jefferson), chairman of the Senate government committee to which the bill was referred, did not respond to questions about whether he would hold a vote before the end of the session.

Other lawmakers spoke alongside McVay and Malagari.

Sen. Katie Muth (D-Montgomery) noted that legislators automatically receive cost-of-living increases on top of their salaries every year. The legislature voted to suspend them in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but voted to resume them shortly thereafter.

Muth introduced her own bills in the Senate that would escalate pensions for retirees who left public school jobs before 2001, but they did not transfer.

“My dream of being a teacher turned into a nightmare of poverty because of the Legislature’s inaction,” McVay said. “It’s a shame. Just to be clear, I’m not looking for a handout. I am simply asking the Legislature to recognize what we are going through, take responsibility, and pass a long overdue cost of living correction.

Forty House members joined or showed up for a rally in the Capitol rotunda on Wednesday. Seven senators also showed up, including two Republicans, Sens. Camera Bartolotta (R-Washington) and Senator Frank Farry (R-Bucks).

The International Brotherhood of Commercial Truck Drivers declined to endorse a presidential candidate on Wednesday, even though both parties had sought the support of the nation’s largest union.

The group’s board voted Wednesday to abstain from endorsing, citing division among members and a lack of firm commitments from either major party candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, or former President Donald Trump, on labor issues.

The denial of the endorsement could be seen as a loss for Harris, a Democrat. The union has endorsed a Democrat in every presidential election since 2000, including Trump opponents Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Each campaign sought the support of the 1.3 million-member union, hoping it would aid candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — closely contested industrial states seen as crucial to winning the Electoral College in November.

And union leaders held personal meetings with each candidate, trying to extract policy commitments. But those commitments never came, according to a union statement explaining its decision not to endorse.

“Unfortunately, neither major candidate has been able to make a serious commitment to our union to ensure that the interests of working people will always be put above Big Business,” Teamsters CEO Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.

“We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris that they would not interfere with key union campaigns or the Teamsters’ core industries — and that they would respect our members’ right to strike — but we were unable to obtain those commitments.”

O’Brien encouraged the union’s politically diverse members to remain energetic during the election period.

“Democrats, Republicans and Independents proudly call our union home, and it is our duty to represent and honor each of them,” O’Brien added. “We strongly encourage all of our members to vote in the upcoming election and to remain engaged in the political process. However, no presidential candidate was endorsed by Teamsters’ International Union this year.”

But on Wednesday night, residents of key swing states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan announced they would support Harris, as did other residents who had previously expressed support. “In addition to these residents, the Vice President has received overwhelming support from labor unions because while she has spent her entire career defending unions, Donald Trump has celebrated firing striking workers and his Project 2025 agenda will fundamentally undermine the right to organize,” the campaign said in a statement.

The 32-member Teamsters Joint Council, representing members from Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, also endorsed Harris. Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia and Joint Council of Drivers 40representing residents of western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, also endorsed Harris.

“Trump and his billionaire allies pose a grave threat to the union movement. In their vision of America, jobs are worse, the economy is more unequal, and unions are a thing of the past.” — Richard Hooker, Chief Officer and Treasurer-Secretary of Local 623 he wrote in his support“Harris and Walz offer a better way forward. Harris and Walz support good-paying blue-collar jobs, better public schools, and increased investment in child care, health care, and neighborhood safety.”

Trump Preferred in Member Poll

An electronic poll released Wednesday by the union showed rank-and-file Teamsters members preferred Republican Party candidate Trump over Harris by a margin of 59.6% to 34%.

In a statement, Trump’s campaign boasted about the poll results.

“While the Teamsters board has not formally endorsed the union, the overwhelming majority of the rank-and-file men and women who work in this important organization want President Donald Trump to return to the White House,” the unsigned statement said.

The electronic poll results were the reverse of a previous poll that showed Labor Party members supporting President Joe Biden at 44.3% to 36.3% for Trump. Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris in July.

The very question of who the Teamsters would support marks a significant swing toward Republicans. Unions, including the Teamsters, have historically supported Democrats.

Trump’s populist views appear to have disrupted this tradition.

O’Brien was a prime-time speaker at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, although he did not endorse Trump. It was the first time a Teamsters president had spoken at a Republican National Convention in the group’s 121-year history.

Harris’ vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was a member of the teachers union before entering politics.

The Capital-Star team took part in the project.

Update: This article was updated at 8:07 p.m. on September 18, 2024, with additional information regarding local recommendations.

About five years ago, most Subway, Little Caesars and McDonald’s franchises in Minneapolis were not in compliance with city wage standards. Now, workers at each location that violated the law are paid the required minimum wage and time off when they are unwell.

It’s all thanks to the city’s co-enforcement program, in which the city’s labor enforcement agency partners with community organizations to provide workers with awareness of their rights and the tools to advocate for themselves. Last year, the program reached more than 12,000 workers and provided labor rights training to more than 400. Since the program began in 2018, more than $3 million in unpaid wages have been recovered.

“Since we started, we’ve pretty consistently received a disproportionate number of complaints or reports of violations from restaurant workers,” said Brian Walsh, director of labor standards and contract compliance for the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, pointing out that in the restaurant industry, historically, most workers have made at or just above minimum wage. “… That’s the front line where some of these city labor standards are, if you will, the rubber on the road.”

Wage theft, which can include failing to pay employees the minimum wage, misclassifying employees as independent contractors or managers to avoid paying overtime, and taking tips intended for employees, is A $50 Billion Problem for US workers. This is a commitment by immense corporations, compact businesses and even state governmentsand disproportionately affects low-income workers, including women and workers of color.

Funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government’s response to the economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have allowed more states and cities to experiment with using community groups to connect with workers, as Minneapolis has done, according to report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. When labor enforcement agencies that the average worker may not know about work more closely with community organizations that connect with those workers, workers perform better, experts say.

Now that most of the ARPA funds were misappropriatedSome policy advocates are pushing for states to continue this work, with employers rather than the public bearing the costs of enforcing the law, and for the U.S. Department of Labor to support the process through grants and other funding options.

Pregnant Worker Fairness Act: What’s in It and What Does It Mean for Pennsylvanians?

“If you have workers in the workplace that the employer knows are … aware of their rights and willing to stand up for themselves, the employer is less likely to intentionally take action to commit wage theft, which becomes a form of prevention,” said Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), a worker-led organization in Minneapolis focused on racial, gender and economic justice. “We’ve seen that in many cases, when workers stand up for one thing, the employer avoids another.”

Walsh meets regularly with Mendez Moore’s group, as well as with New Justice Project MN, a black organizing center focused on economic issues, and ROC Minnesota, a nonprofit working on workers’ rights, to discuss emerging phenomena, such as the wage theft trends they are seeing.

He added that closer relationships with these groups have helped strengthen law enforcement.

“[There are] about 300,000 employees throughout the city and three investigators,” he said. “It’s a really difficult, almost impossible task, to be everywhere, all the time.”

Walsh said ARPA’s total funding for the program is $750,000.

ARPA Funds to the Rescue

“The American Rescue Plan [Act] funds have provided a little more opportunity for experimentation,” said Rachel Deutsch, campaign director at the California Coalition for Worker Power and one of the co-authors of the EPI/Harvard report. “The question now is, ‘Do we just abandon this infrastructure because we’re acting like COVID is over, or do we build on it to create the mechanisms that are really needed, whether we’re in a moment of emergency response, to inform low-wage workers of their rights and inform employers of their responsibilities?’”

The report highlights efforts in several cities and states.

In 2021, Maine launched a program with $1 million in ARPA funds for job training, assistance with accessing unemployment benefits and advocacy for workers with support from community organizations, the AFL-CIO and a legal aid group, according to the EPI report. In Seattle, city Bureau of Labor Standards staff hold monthly and quarterly meetings with community organizations. Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco also work closely with community organizations, as do San Diego and Santa Clara counties in California.

In Iowa, the cities of Coralville, North Liberty, Iowa City and Johnson County have committed $322,000 in ARPA funds over five years to the Eastern Iowa Worker Justice Center, which investigates wage theft cases and helps build community pressure on employers to pay their workers. It has also helped workers recover lost wages.

The assist is needed because Iowa Workforce Development doesn’t have enough staff. Jesse Dougherty, the agency’s director of marketing and communications, told States Newsroom in an email that the Workforce Development Division has four positions to investigate unpaid wages. Two of those positions have been vacant for part of the past year, Dougherty said. In all, about 15 to 20 people regularly work on wage or misclassification issues.

Pennsylvania’s Fetterman and U.S. senators seek answers from USDA on SNAP changes

Mazahir Salih, who until recently was executive director of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, told States Newsroom that workers don’t always know how to file a complaint or that there’s a labor law enforcement agency they can file one with. They come to CWJ through word of mouth, she said. On this particular day, she was coordinating with organizers of a protest to collect the wages of a former employee at a local Mexican restaurant. He learned his employer couldn’t cover his paycheck until he tried to deposit it into his bank.

Sometimes CWJ is able to resolve the issue with the employer over the phone, but if that fails, the group sends a letter and then may escalate community pressure, including protests and sending a delegation of elected officials.

“If it’s really a misunderstanding, we can clear it up during this phone call,” Salih said. “But some of them either don’t want to talk to us on the phone or don’t want to give us any information.”

Deutsch said she would like to see more states in the South and Southwest adopt these approaches to enforce labor protections and prevent labor law violations. She said that historically, these programs have started in cities with their own wage standards. One barrier may be priority rights that have been used by state governments to prevent cities from increasing worker wages and protections beyond the state minimum wage. Many of law on the payment of minimum wages are concentrated in the Southern states.

Community-based organizations also need adequate financial support to devote time and resources to working with labor enforcement agencies. Funding problems can be addressed by allocating revenue streams to labor enforcement and having employers pay for the costs through fines they pay for labor violations, according to the report. Deutsch said that if philanthropic funding supports the pilot program and it is successful, it could also justify more public funding for these partnerships. She added that she hopes the Department of Labor will also employ its grant authority to support these models.

“As a society, we really systematically underfund agencies that are supposed to enforce our labor laws,” Deutsch said. “You hear about the latest concerns about shoplifting or whatever, and wage theft has always dwarfed retail burglary and all of those things. It’s a crisis and we’re just not funding it as such.”

Scope of the problem

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that workers be paid at least the federal minimum wage and overtime for any hours worked over 40, but it is a law that is often broken. Last year, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division recovered back wages from workers in 13 122 cases of violations of labor law in industries with high levels of violations and low wages. The industries in which the largest number of workers were affected were catering, construction and retail.

Low-wage workers in the 10 most populous U.S. states said they were paid less than the minimum wage, meaning they were losing $8 billion a year, According to 2017 study. While National Labor Law Project In 2019, it was found that $9.27 billion was stolen from workers earning less than $13 an hour.

The January report was recently published National Bureau of Economic Research found that companies routinely deny overtime pay to employees, referring to them as managers, even though most of the work they do is not managerial work. The companies they singled out included restaurant chains Bojangles’, Sonic, Arby’s, and Domino’s, as well as companies like H&R Block, Spirit Halloween, and 84Lumber.

The report prompted Democratic U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to send a letter to the companies identified in the report, asking them to respond to questions about their overtime practices, according to a report Washington Post.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK — For years, Charlene Redrick worked double shifts to make sure she paid her rent each month. The 64-year-old nursing home caregiver has always paid her rent on time — even during the height of the pandemic.

But in 2022, Redrick’s landlord decided to evict her from the three-bedroom apartment she shared with her granddaughter and infant great-grandson. The landlord wanted to sell the building, Redrick said, and thought it would look better if it was empty.

Redrick initially planned to fight the eviction, knowing she wouldn’t be able to find another three-bedroom apartment she could afford.

“But I just gave up,” she said. “I didn’t want to fight anymore.”

Redrick has since moved into a smaller apartment—and started fighting for something different. This year, housing advocates in New York state launched a fierce campaign for a once-obscure policy called “just cause eviction,” which requires landlords to show a compelling reason—a just cause—such as unpaid rent or property damage to remove tenants. Such policies are intended to boost housing stability and prevent arbitrary, retaliatory or discriminatory evictions.

As of 2019, California, Oregon and Washington had adopted “just” or “good” cause policies, while Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York were considering them. More than 20 cities — including Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington — have also adopted some form of just cause protections, often over the objections of property owners.

Landlords and real estate groups say the policy will make it harder to remove problem tenants and adapt to changing business conditions, and could worsen the housing shortage by forcing some to stop offering rental units altogether.

Just cause protections are likely to be tested as renters lose pandemic-era benefits and housing costs continue to rise. While evictions fell sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have since returned to or exceeded normal levels in many places, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks filings in 10 states and more than 30 cities.

Scientists in the lab estimate that landlords filed an average of 3.6 million eviction lawsuits per year between 2000 and 2018.

“That’s a huge number of households that are at risk of losing their homes and all the inconveniences and risks that come with that,” said Peter Hepburn, deputy director of the Eviction Lab and an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University-Newark. “The fact that we’ve … returned to the status quo on evictions is deeply disappointing and very concerning.”

Long-term protection

Just cause policies have been around since at least 1974, when New Jersey enacted recent eviction rules as part of its response to a statewide housing shortage. Several states also follow long-standing just-cause eviction laws that apply only to tenants of mobile home parks.

But just cause policies became more common after 2007 and the Great Recession, when recent construction collapsed nationwide and rents soared in many urban centers. The tenants’ rights movement also grew rapidly in the 2010s, fueled in part by concerns about gentrification and displacement.

Against this backdrop, New Hampshire adopted a just cause policy in 2015, followed by Alameda and San Jose, Calif., Boston, and Washington. The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred another wave of legislation: At least 19 cities or states have proposed just cause legislation since 2020, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition and local media reports.

“During the pandemic, we have seen how important permanent housing is to the health and safety of our residents,” said state Del. Jheanelle Wilkins, a Democrat who has repeatedly sponsored legislation on the issue.

While state-level legislation has stalled, Baltimore passed a just cause policy in 2021. Similar measures have also been passed in Washington state and several cities in New York and California during the pandemic.

Just cause policies vary widely by jurisdiction, but they typically allow landlords to evict tenants or refuse to renew leases for a list of predetermined reasons. These include failure to pay rent, property damage, disorderly conduct, criminal activity and lease violations, as well as the landlord’s desire to occupy the unit or take it off the market.

Some just cause laws also include rent stabilization measures, which regulate how much landlords can raise rents each year. Supporters say such rules, which have been passed in California and Oregon and proposed in New York, effectively prevent tenants from being evicted if their rents are suddenly raised to unaffordable levels.

Assessing the effectiveness of these policies is challenging, in part because they vary so much across jurisdictions. Different places also experience different trends and types of evictions, depending on the local political landscape and housing market, said Tim Thomas, research director at the Urban Displacement Project at the University of California, Berkeley. That can make it challenging to isolate the effects of specific factors contributing to evictions.

Importantly, because non-payment of rent is always considered “just cause,” “just cause” rules are designed to protect only a minority of tenants.

“It’s a bit of a complicated mess — I liken it to the gun debate,” Thomas said. “There are people on both sides who feel very strongly, and there’s not a lot of research to back up that intensity.”

Preliminary research suggests that forms of just cause legislation reduce evictions, Thomas said — albeit by tiny amounts. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Public & International Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal for graduate students, found that four California cities with just cause protections experienced slightly fewer evictions than similar cities without them.

More recently, a 2022 research report by the Urban Displacement Project found that reasonable protections appear to aid one in 100 extremely low-income households remain in gentrifying neighborhoods when they would otherwise be pushed out.

Housing rights advocates say these effects, while tiny, are significant when combined with other tenant protections, such as the right to legal counsel, legal defense funds and prohibitions on income discrimination.

They also add up to a population of thousands or millions of renters. Violet Lavatai, executive director of the Tenants Union of Washington State, said she believes just cause has kept “hundreds” of Washington tenants in their homes since the law passed two years ago.

The law isn’t perfect, Lavatai acknowledged. Some landlords, she said, have come up with “new, creative ways” to get rid of unwanted people — such as moving tenants to month-to-month leases, which aren’t as tightly regulated.

But Lavatai said she has educated “countless” tenants on the protections provided by the law through the union’s tenants’ rights hotline, which tenants can call with questions about housing and evictions.

“We’ve heard it all: ‘I don’t like the way your voice sounds, you’ve upset me, you haven’t watered the plants properly — now you need to go,’” she said. “We have a lot of landlords who don’t do that. But then there are the bad guys who don’t really care about their tenants.”

Property owners ‘strongly’ oppose regulations

But as just-cause eviction policies have proliferated, they have also faced what Maryland Del. Wilkins calls “strong, well-funded opposition.” Major landlord and real estate industry groups say eviction protections make removing problem tenants more pricey and time-consuming.

Critics also say rent stabilization measures like those in California and Oregon make it harder for landlords to respond to changing business conditions and could prompt some to exit the market altogether.

In 2022, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, vetoed Burlington’s just cause measure over concerns it would worsen the state’s housing shortage. Later that year, council members in St. Paul, Minnesota, also weakened a 5-month rent stabilization measure after the city saw a acute decline in recent construction.

For Chris Athineos, who owns six tiny apartment buildings in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is an outspoken critic of rent control, such harms are a growing concern. New York City has long required “just cause” for evictions from rent-controlled apartments, but statewide legislation first proposed in 2019 would extend that protection to all tenants and impose a cap on annual rent increases.

Athineos and his parents, who bought their first building in the 1960s, have maintained extremely close relationships with their tenants, attending weddings and funerals and celebrating holidays together.

But as just-cause legislation gained momentum in New York, Athineos sold two of its properties and planned to raise rents on the rest of its portfolio. His business had already been squeezed, he said, by rising insurance rates and a series of recent, costly housing regulations in the city.

Record rent increases and low wages are fueling an eviction crisis, a U.S. Senate committee said.

“It’s a use-it-or-lose-it situation—if I don’t take the rent increase now, I won’t be able to make it up in the future if I have to,” he said. “They want to cap rent, but nobody’s capping our expenses.”

New York did not pass a just-cause eviction law this session, much to the relief of Athineos and disappointment of Charlene Redrick.

While legislative leaders fought to include the measure in state budget negotiations and later to pass it as part of a last-minute housing reform package, they ultimately failed to reach an agreement with Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who favors other ways to address the housing crisis.

Similar “own-cause” bills stalled in Colorado and Connecticut last session.

State lawmakers and housing advocates have promised to redouble their efforts next year. But in Buffalo, Redrick said she worries about tenants facing eviction in the meantime: She sees many homeless people sleeping in laundry rooms or hanging out on the streets near her recent apartment.

“Seeing people being evicted and homeless, I still have hope that we can do something to affect what’s happening,” Redrick said. “I’m afraid that other people are going to go through what I went through. That’s my main goal.”

The one issue that Republicans in Nevada and across the country came out with one voice, like the Borg, more than any other in 2022 was the economy.

Adam Laxalt, Joe Lombardo, Jim Marchant, Michele Fiore and Republican congressional candidates in Nevada and from coast to coast all thought that people whose votes had not yet been determined by Hunter’s laptop might at least vote Republican because of “Bidenflation.”

Meanwhile…

The overall inflation rate over the past 12 months was 3%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday.

Latest Government Reports (Does Elon Musk Believe Them) or not) also show that employment growth remains mighty and the unemployment rate remains close to historically low.

On a month-on-month basis, from May to June, overall inflation increased by 0.2%, according to BLSIt has increased by 0.1% in three of the last six months.

As it turned out, hourly wages rose by exactly the same rate as inflation from May to June, or 0.2%, the BLS said in a report released a day earlier.

However, year-on-year wages were only 1.2% higher, which was not enough to keep up with the aforementioned inflation of 3% over the same period.

There is nothing up-to-date about wages failing to keep up with inflation. It has been happening for decades.

Despite pandemic-induced wage increases, low-wage workers still can’t afford basic needs

Well, the economy is structurally designed to rob working people and redistribute wealth upward. This is the result of over 40 years of policy choices propagated by the wealthy, corporations, and Republicans, and all too often supported or at least acquiesced in by Democrats.

But given what public and political opinion has accepted as the standard for economic performance over recent decades, the current economy is far from the chaos that Republicans would have you believe it is.

Sadly, as satisfying as it may be, Republicans are now going all-in:oh well, never mind“when it comes to inflation in particular and the economy in general, schadenfreude doesn’t pay the rent or put food on the table any better than republican trickle-down economics.

Which brings us back to jobs and wages. And the state of the country.

Old and up-to-date workers’ movements and rights

The 21st century economy is not the tech bros (sorry Elon) or venture capitalists. It’s not even a professional sport, as Nevada elected officials of both parties would have you believe. It’s not even Biden’s beloved lithium.

The basis of the 21st century economy, like the basis of the economy of every century, is work.

Last week, employees at a third Starbucks store in southern Nevada voted for the trade unionjust like the workers at Trader Joe’s, Amazon and many other chains across the country do, and it’s all part of “new” workers’ movement.

But while workers have voted to unionize at more than 300 Starbucks stores nationwide, none have yet negotiated or signed a contract. And while workers at Starbucks, Amazon, and others have succeeded in proving improper and illegal union-busting tactics in National Labor Relations Board proceedings, the penalties meted out to the companies are little more than a slap on the wrist. Modern U.S. labor laws are deliberately designed to allow companies to delay and thwart unionization efforts.

As Walmart employees scholar a quarter of a century ago.

US economy adds jobs in June, even as employment falls

Some advocates for higher wages and better working conditions in the service sector and other traditionally low-wage employment sectors suggest that the organized labor model of the 20th century is out of date, at least as a way to reverse the decline in union membership and provide better pay, protections, and benefits for groups of workers who have not traditionally been unionized.

The conclusion of this argument is that the key to decent pay and benefits and decent treatment of workers lies not in the negotiation of collective agreements between one group of workers and one company or industry, but in the law.

But even a up-to-date law that would make collective bargaining easier cannot be passed in Washington.

The labor movement (aged and up-to-date) and sympathetic elected officials, including Democrats in Nevada’s congressional delegation, have endorsed the federal PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, which would reform the nation’s overly pro-business labor laws and make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively.

Of course, the bill has no chance in the Republican-controlled House. And in the last Congress, when Democrats controlled the House and passed the bill, it couldn’t pass in the then-Democratic Senate, thanks not to serial suspect Joe Manchin, but to other Democratic (or near-Democratic) senators—Mark Warner of Virginia, and Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

If a bill that is supposed to make it easier to organize and negotiate contracts cannot be passed, legislation directly mandating improved working conditions may be even more complex to pass. For example, you may remember the aforementioned Senator Sinema bow and thumbs down to raise the federal minimum wage.

All aboard

The best outcome of next year’s election results could be the status quo. A lesser best-case scenario would be for the Democrats to keep the White House, but for the Republicans to keep the House and win the Senate. Of course, the worst-case scenario is the socio-political equivalent of hell breaking loose and swallowing up all of civilization.

After the pandemic brutally alleviated so much economic inequality, Washington, and Biden and congressional Democrats in particular, have done much to literally save the people of Nevada – a particularly needed relief for a place where the priorities of politicians of both parties rarely stray from serving the most politically powerful industries in the country.

Nevadans cannot count on the federal government to bail them out again.

States and cities turn to community organizations to combat wage theft

Nevada Democrats recently won the uncommon opportunity to control the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature for four years. demonstrated they have no desire to save anything except the political prospects of their party.

The latest Gallup poll showed that public support for trade unions is 71%, which is an approval rating has been growing steadily for over a dozen years. Hopefully, the up-to-date labor movement will grow, and with it, nationwide support for unions—not just the labor unions full of white guys with lunch pails and demanding hats that politicians like to identify with when they say the word “work,” but real work for the 21st century.

Growing public support could make a difference.

Politicians, it seems, love to say they are “fighting” some “fight” or something. Well, not necessarily. They are almost always following a path set by others, often by some wealthy special interest.

But sometimes when public opinion forces Overton’s window to open up a little more, elected officials will follow someone else entirely, like perhaps the 24 workers who recently voted to unionize at a North Las Vegas Starbucks. These workers and their colleagues, not just in Nevada but everywhere, deserve to be treated not with the way so much of the 21st century economy has treated work — as a disposable commodity — but with dignity.

It promises to be a long, demanding slog against a powerful and stubborn opposition. But the options are few. And the alternative—growing economic inequality—is unacceptable. Or should be.

As artificial intelligence begins to seep into aspects of everyday life and becomes more advanced, some state lawmakers feel a fresh urgency to create regulations governing its use in the hiring process.

According to a 2022 report, artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, has been implemented by one-quarter of U.S. businesses IBM Global AI adoption rate up over 13% year-on-year, with many starting use this in the recruitment process.

State laws haven’t kept up. Only Illinois, Maryland, and New York require employers to ask for consent first if they use AI in some parts of the hiring process. Several states are considering similar laws.

“Legislators are critical, and as always, legislators are always late to the party,” said state Del. Mark Fisher, a Republican. Fisher sponsored the state lawwhich came into effect in 2020, regulating the use of facial recognition programs in recruitment. It prohibits an employer from using certain facial recognition services — such as those that can verify candidates’ faces against external databases — during a job interview with a candidate unless the candidate consents.

“Technology innovates and then it always seems like a good idea until it isn’t,” Fisher said. “That’s when legislators step in and try to regulate things as best they can.”

AI developers want to innovate as quickly as possible, whether they have regulations to do so or not, says Hayley Tsukayama, senior policy fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet civil rights group. Both developers and policymakers need to consider the consequences of their decisions.

For policymakers to create effective regulations, Tsukayama said, developers need to be lucid about what systems are being used and be open about potential issues.

“It’s probably not exciting for people who want to move faster or for people who want to get these systems into their workplace now or already have them in their workplace,” she said. “But I think it’s really important for policymakers to talk to a lot of different people, especially the people who will be affected by this.”

Artificial Intelligence in Hiring

According to AI, it can support in the recruitment process by conducting CV assessments, scheduling interviews with candidates and obtaining data analysis by Skillroads, a company offering professional CV writing services using artificial intelligence.

Some members of Congress are also trying to act. proposed The American Data Privacy and Protection Act aims to set rules for artificial intelligence, including assessing the risks of AI and its general use, and would cover data collected during the hiring process. Introduced last year by U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who currently sits on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Biden administration last year released the Artificial Intelligence Rights Act, a set of rules to guide organizations and individuals in the design, use, and deployment of automated systems, according to document.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in some states and localities have been working to create appropriate policies.

Maryland, Illinois and New York are the only places with laws explicitly targeting job seekers dealing with AI in the hiring process, requiring companies to inform them about its use at certain points and ask for consent before taking further steps, the data shows. data from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, a global law firm providing clients with legal advice on commercial litigation, finance, real estate and other matters.

According to The New York Times, California, New Jersey, New York and Vermont are also considering bills that would regulate the use of artificial intelligence in hiring systems.

Facial recognition technology It is used by many federal agencies, including cybersecurity and law enforcement, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Some industries also use it.

Fisher said artificial intelligence could connect facial recognition programs to candidate databases in seconds, which was the reasoning behind his bill.

His goal, he said, was to create a narrow measure that could open the door to potential future AI-related legislation. The law, which took effect in 2020 without being signed by then-Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, covers only the private sector, but Fisher said he would like to see it expanded to include public employers.

One way to avoid AI problems in the recruiting process is to ensure human involvement, from product design to regular monitoring of automated decisions.

Samantha Gordon, director of programs at TechEquity Collaborative, an advocacy organization for tech workers, said that in situations where machine learning or data collection is done without human involvement, there is a risk that the machine will be biased against certain groups.

For example, HireVue, a platform that helps employers collect video recordings of job applicant interviews and assessments, announced in 2021 that it was removing its facial analysis component after an internal review determined that the system was less related to job performance than other elements of its algorithmic assessments, according to a release from the organization.

“I think this is something you don’t have to be a computer scientist to understand,” Gordon said. Speeding up the hiring process, she said, leaves room for error. That’s where Gordon said lawmakers will have to step in.

And on both sides of the fence, Fisher said, lawmakers believe companies should disclose the results of their work.

“I would like to think that, in general, people would like to see much more transparency and disclosure in the use of this technology,” Fisher said. “Who is using this technology? And why?”

Legislative challenges

Policymakers have little understanding of AI, especially as it affects civil rights, says Clarence Okoh, senior policy adviser at the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and a Social Science Research Council Just Tech Fellow.

As a result, he added, companies using AI often find themselves subject to regulation.

“Unfortunately, I think what’s happened is that a lot of AI developers and vendors have very effectively crowded out conversations with policymakers about how to govern AI and mitigate its social impacts,” Okoh said. “And so unfortunately there’s a lot of interest in developing self-regulatory schemes.”

Okoh said some self-regulatory practices include audits and compliance with regulations that are based on general guidelines such as the Draft Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights.

The results have sometimes raised concerns. Some organizations operating under their own guidelines used AI recruiting tools that showed bias.

In 2014, a group of developers at Amazon began building an experimental, automated program designed to sift through job applicants’ resumes to find the best talent, according to Reuters Agency investigation, but by 2015, the company found that its system had effectively learned that male candidates were preferred.

People close to the project told Reuters that the experimental system was trained to filter candidates by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period — most of them from men. Amazon told Reuters that the tool “was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.”

Some companies, however, argue that AI is helpful and that it has strict ethical rules.

Helena Almeida, vice president of legal counsel at ADP, a human resources software company, says the company’s approach to using AI in its products is guided by the same ethical guidelines it had before the technology emerged. Regardless of legal requirements, Almeida said, ADP sees it as its responsibility to go beyond the basics to ensure its products don’t discriminate.

AI and machine learning are used in several of ADP’s recruiting support services. And many of the current regulations apply to the AI ​​world, she said. ADP also offers its clients some services that use facial recognition technology, according to its website. As technology advances, ADP has adopted a set of rules to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies.

“You can’t discriminate against a certain demographic without AI, and you can’t discriminate against them with AI,” Almeida said. “So that’s a critical part of our framework and how we look at bias in these tools.”

Three Philadelphia state lawmakers said they plan to introduce legislation to require a state agency to conduct a study and report on the effectiveness of universal basic income program in Pennsylvania.

Democratic state Reps. Ben Waxman, Morgan Cephas and Chris Rabb signed on co-sponsorship note seeking legislative support for a bill that would require the Department of Human Services to conduct a study that would also lend a hand state officials determine which municipalities will be best prepared to implement a UBI program.

The idea of ​​a universal basic income is not modernbut in recent years it has continued to attract interest worldwide, with countries such as Finlandand United Kingdomconducting tests.

In 2020, Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler of Philadelphia and U.S. Rep. Summer Lee of the 12th District, then a member of the state House of Representatives from Allegheny County, also sought support for a similar proposal.

UBI was also a topic of the presidential campaign, in which the then-Democrat candidate for president Andrew Yang endorsing the concept during his 2020 campaign for the Oval Office.

The concept of UBI has gained increased attention amid uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, which proponents cite as an example of the need to explore UBI further.

In 2021, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, the mayor’s guaranteed income initiative, tested the effects of UBI by providing 125 participants with an income of $500 per month for two years.

This The SEED study showed that recipients were healthier, more financially stable and more willing to set goals and take risks as a result of the UBI program, but noted that the “exorbitant” costs of necessities such as childcare, medical care and housing continued to be a source of hardship and stress for many.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for a comprehensive reform of the social safety net,” the study concluded.

To date, many cities and municipalities across the country have continued to launch, test and implement UBI programs, Chicago, Atlanta, Oakland, Phoenix, Denver AND Baltimore among them.

As lawmakers wrote, the study will be a “crucial first step” in understanding how a universal basic income pilot program could be implemented in Pennsylvania.”