Category: Economic Security

Posted inPolicy Topics

69% of likely 2024 Washington voters support the Oil Industry Accountability Act

by Andrew Villeneuve

More than two-thirds of a sam­ple of like­ly vot­ers sur­veyed from Novem­ber 14th-15th, 2023 by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI backed the idea of reg­u­lat­ing unfair oil com­pa­ny busi­ness prac­tices with pric­ing trans­paren­cy leg­is­la­tion, which is what Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyen’s recent­ly intro­duced Oil Indus­try Account­abil­i­ty Act (Sen­ate Bill 6052) pro­pos­es to do.

Posted inPolicy Topics

2023 was a bad year for banking and 2024 could be worse

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

After the Great Reces­sion, law­mak­ers promised that the reforms they insti­tut­ed secured America’s bank­ing sec­tor. How­ev­er, as long as the Unit­ed States sticks to a pre­dom­i­nate­ly pri­vate bank­ing sec­tor — one that can­not oper­ate counter-cycli­cal­ly nor ded­i­cate financ­ing to social needs — that promise of long-term secu­ri­ty is elusive.

Posted inPolicy Topics

Teamsters secure big, historic wins in tentative contract agreement with UPS

by Andrew Villeneuve

“Rank-and-file UPS Team­sters sac­ri­ficed every­thing to get this coun­try through a pan­dem­ic and enabled UPS to reap record-set­ting prof­its. Team­ster labor moves Amer­i­ca. The union went into this fight com­mit­ted to win­ning for our mem­bers. We demand­ed the best con­tract in the his­to­ry of UPS, and we got it,” said Team­sters Gen­er­al Pres­i­dent Sean M. O’Brien in a statement.

Posted inPolicy Topics

Two-thirds of Washington voters support barring gender-based price discrimination

by Andrew Villeneuve

67% of 874 like­ly vot­ers inter­viewed in March of 2023 by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling voiced sup­port for pro­hibit­ing peo­ple or busi­ness­es “from charg­ing dif­fer­ent prices for two sub­stan­tial­ly sim­i­lar goods based on the gen­der of the per­sons to whom the goods are mar­ket­ed,” which is what Sen­ate Bill 5171 would do if enact­ed. 59% were strong­ly sup­port­ive and anoth­er 8% were some­what supportive. 

Posted inCivil Liberties

Manka Dhingra’s youth-inspired bill to ban gender-based price discrimination advances

by Andrew Villeneuve

SB 5171 is youth-inspired leg­is­la­tion that Dhin­gra, a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber, intro­duced in part­ner­ship with civi­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed stu­dents from Lake Wash­ing­ton High School in Kirk­land. If passed, it will stop retail­ers from charg­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans (espe­cial­ly those who iden­ti­fy as female) extra for prod­ucts mere­ly because they are mar­ket­ed to a par­tic­u­lar gender.

Posted inPolicy Topics

U.S. Senate Republicans use chamber’s undemocratic sixty-vote threshold to deny railroad workers sick leave they need

by Andrew Villeneuve

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans used the cham­ber’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic six­ty vote thresh­old to nix a con­cur­rent res­o­lu­tion in Con­gress to require paid sick leave for rail­road work­ers. Demo­c­ra­t­ic and inde­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed for it, but most Repub­li­cans with­held their votes.

Posted inPolicy Topics

U.S. House votes to adopt railroad labor agreement plus provide workers sick leave

by Andrew Villeneuve

If the Sen­ate signs off on the pro­posed mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the labor agree­ment, Pres­i­dent Biden could sign the new terms into law and oblig­ate rail­roads to pro­vide sick leave to their work­ers, which they should have sim­ply agreed to do in the first place in nego­ti­a­tions, obvi­at­ing the need for con­gres­sion­al intervention.