Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME in favor of the plaintiff, a local government worker who asserted that being required to pay fees to the union at his workplace violated his first amendment rights. This ruling has been anticipated for years (a similar case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was deadlocked after Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death).
Author: sh
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Update: California Expansion, Federal Inaction
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is now the primary anti-poverty program in the U.S., but it has not kept up with wage stagnation. Berkeley faculty recently proposed an increase in the federal EITC, California has adopted an expansion of its own state EITC, and Congress passed a tax bill that fails to help EITC…
Book review: DIY Detroit
Detroit is the urban question America has been asking itself for decades. Over the past century, the city has symbolized American prosperity and the power of unions; the stark gap between Black and white urban experience; the fiscal and economic failure of the postindustrial city; and now the dystopia of large-scale urban abandonment. The Detroit…
State Policy Strategies for Narrowing the Gender Wage Gap
#MeToo and #TimesUp protests about the treatment of women in the workplace have brought renewed attention to gender pay equity. This brief looks at three legislative solutions that aim to close the gap by increasing pay transparency and pushing employers to set salaries to the position, not the history of the person doing the job….
Austerity as the New Normal: The Fiscal Politics of Retrenchment in San Jose, California
Across the world’s most industrialized economies, the financial crisis of 2007 caused a contraction of state budgets and stimulated attempts to reform debt-burdened governments. In the United States, a system of fiscal federalism meant this turn towards austerity took a uniquely fragmented and geographically diverse form. Drawing on case studies of recent urban restructuring, Cities under…