Labor

As written by Jack Salmon and first appearing on The Hill

With 19 states raising the minimum wage at the beginning of 2017, it seems that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) "Fight for 15" campaign is becoming a reality.

While Democrats have been wholeheartedly behind the movement to increase the minimum wage, now Republican lawmakers are increasingly leaving the door open to minimum wage increases. The prevailing argument in favor of raising the minimum wage is that a higher minimum wage would reduce poverty and alleviate income inequality.

It seems that a group of 79 recently fired IT workers at the University of California San Francisco, whose jobs have been replaced by H-1B visa holders from India, may have finally found an issue on which they can agree with Trump.  According to the University Professional and Technical Employees CWA Local 9119 this mass firing is the first time a public university has offshored American IT jobs. Per ARS Technica:

We spend a lot of time talking about the various pension ponzi schemes that will inevitably wreak havoc on the global financial system at some point in the not so distant future.  That said, you should also be keeping an eye on so-called long-term-care (LTC) health insurance providers who, as Penn Treaty Network of America Insurance teaches us this morning, have been perpetuating a ponzi scheme of their own.

Last October we wrote about the unfortunate situation in Loyalton, California whereby CalPERS was threatening to slash pension payments to a group of retired city workers after their City Council members failed to understand basic pension accounting and the unintended consequences of terminating their plan (see "Pension Benefits In Tiny California Town To Be Slashed As "Ponzi Scheme" Is Exposed").  Now it seems as though retirees of the East San Gabriel Valley Human Services Consortium may be facing a similar fate after their former municipal employer failed to pay their pension due

In the first bit of good news to surface for the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) in quite some time, the Dallas News is reporting the pension board has "won" a $2 million settlement against their former real estate fund advisor, CDK Realty Advisors.  Of course, the settlement falls slightly short of the $320mm in losses allegedly caused by CDK, but a win's a win, right?

Meanwhile, city officials who complain they had little control over the fund’s activities but are now being forced to find a way to bail it out, had mixed reactions to the settlement.