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The House Republican budget is extremely unlikely to become law, but it’s still worth taking a look at where their priorities are—and what Republicans would be doing if they controlled all of government. The plan:

… would cut programs for low- and moderate-income people by about $3.7 trillion over the next decade. In 2026, it would cut such programs overall by 42 percent — causing tens of millions of people to lose health coverage and millions to lose basic food or other support.

In addition, the plan would secure 62 percent of its budget cuts from low-income programs even though they account for just 28 percent of total non-defense program spending (and just 24 percent of total program spending, including defense). 

While cutting supports and services severely for Americans of lesser means, the budget would secure no deficit reduction at all from the more than $1 trillion a year in tax credits, deductions, and other preferences, collectively known as “tax expenditures” — which disproportionately benefit high-income households ...

That’s $2.9 trillion in healthcare cuts by repealing Obamacare’s subsidies and Medicaid expansion, more than $150 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, cuts to Pell Grants and the Child Tax Credit … all while letting the wealthy continue to reap tax benefits.

Housing costs are rising faster than wages for lower-income families—a lot faster—and are taking up a greater share of income for these families than for others, a new analysis from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows:

Over the past two decades, spending on housing increased for Americans in all income tiers. In 2014, households in the lower third spent much less in absolute dollar terms (about $9,200) than those in the middle or upper thirds, whose median housing expenditures reached $11,500 and $18,000, respectively. However, the typical lower-income household spent far more on housing as a share of income (40 percent) than those in the middle (25 percent) or at the top (17 percent).

It’s not that low-income families have decided they need luxury apartments, cost be damned. They’re struggling to find a place in a housing market that’s become far more competitive:

Since the start of the housing crisis in 2007, homeownership rates have declined among households in the middle- and upper-income tiers. These decreases have affected the rental market, as former owners became renters, leading to rental vacancy rates at historical lows below 7 percent.4 The diminished supply of rental properties increased the cost of rental housing dramatically; in 2014, renters at each rung of the income ladder spent a higher share of their income on housing than they had in any year since 2004.

Food and transportation expenses have also risen, and with all households seeing a 25 percent growth in expenditures since 1996, lower-income households have ended up in the red, going from having $1,500 left after expenses in 2004 to having negative $2,300 left after expenses in 2014. And it’s no wonder, with a full-time minimum wage job not being enough to make rent affordable in any state in the country.

Chicago teachers went out on a one-day strike for April 1, protesting under-funding in the schools and their own lack of a contract. The teachers have been joined by fast food workers and other allies including healthcare workers, factory workers, and college students and faculty.

Special education teacher Sarah Chambers laid out the challenges Chicago teachers face in an interview with Micah Uetricht:

Just this school year, there’s been so many cuts to our schools that it’s hard to keep track of them. At the beginning of the year, there were millions of dollars in cuts to special ed. Our students with disabilities weren’t getting their services that were required by law; parents and teachers and community groups had to go fight the Board of Ed with lawyers to get services back.

Then there were more special ed cuts in the middle of the year, then more general layoffs. A month or two ago, there were even more cuts. My school lost $100,000. Our budgets were already bare bones, and the principals had to cut even more.

And then just two weeks ago, we had another round of cuts. They froze all the funds; my school lost another $80,000. For my school, they’ve cut almost all the before- and after-school programs—intervention programs for kids who were struggling, all types of clubs—plus most of our substitutes.

According to a Chicago Tribune poll, the teachers have triple the support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

The poll found that 60 percent of Chicagoans said they side with the Chicago Teachers Union over improving schools while 20 percent backed Emanuel. Another 12 percent sided with neither, while 7 percent had no opinion.

Chicago teachers have proven to be a powerful and determined force. But the opposition to funding the schools more fully by taking in more revenue—preferably by taxing the wealthy—on the part of Emanuel and Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is a huge obstacle. The city’s teachers and students alike are suffering as a result.

California's legislature passed a $15 minimum wage on Thursday—and the same day, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators made a deal to raise New York’s minimum wage to $15 … eventually, probably.

Under the terms of the deal the minimum wage would rise from its current $9 per hour to $15 over three years in New York City starting on Dec. 31, 2016. City businesses with up to 10 employees would be given four years to implement the measure.

Long Island and Westchester County around New York City would be given six years to push through the increases while the rest of the state would see the minimum wage rise to $12.50 in five years, with indexed increases to $15 possible after review.

There is also a provision to suspend the increases from 2019 if economic conditions worsen.

These are huge steps forward in both New York and California, but in New York, activists will have to keep up the pressure to see that the increase does happen statewide. Getting to $15 in three years in New York City is a big deal; getting to $12.50 in five years in most of the rest of the state is low and slow.

New York’s budget deal also includes a paid family leave program, which family leave expert Ellen Bravo said:

… will significantly improve the lives of 7.5 million New Yorkers and their families. When fully phased in, New York's plan will turn small employee contributions into 12 weeks of family leave at two-thirds pay to all workers, and include job protection so that workers won’t be dissuaded from taking this essential time to care for their loved ones.

Between New York and California, millions of workers will be getting a raise, and New York’s paid family leave program means that there will now be four states showing Congress that paid family leave can work in the United States and should be a national policy.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 215,000 jobs in March, 195,000 in the private sector, 20,000 in government jobs. This marks the 73rd consecutive month of job growth. The official unemployment rate, which the bureau labels U3, rose to 5.0 percent. 

The BLS revised the previously calculated number of jobs in February from 242,000 to 245,000, and in January from 172,000 to 168,000. Such revisions are common as better information becomes available in the months after the initial report is released.

The BLS calculated the number of unemployed in March at 8 million, up slightly from February. In addition to U3, the bureau also estimates both unemployment and underemployment in a category it calls U6. This counts people with no job, part-time workers who want a full-time job but can't find one, and a portion of the nation’s "discouraged" workers. In March, U6 rose to 9.8 percent.

The civilian workforce in March rose by 396,000, after having risen by 555,000 in February. The employment-population ratio rose to 59.9 percent, and the labor force participation rate rose slightly to 63 percent.

Wages for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose 7 cents an hour in March to $25.43. Private sector production and nonsupervisory employees got a boost of 4 cents to $21.37 an hour. Throughout the years of recovery from the Great Recession, wages have remained sluggish, averaging a nominal 2.0-2.2 percent annual rise. With the March increase, the year-over-year rise is now 2.3 percent.

The BLS "confidence level" in its estimate is plus or minus 105,000 jobs. This means the "real" number of new jobs created in March was not 215,000 but ranged between 110,000 and 320,000.

The bureau also tallies the job situation for Americans aged 25-54. People in this “prime working age” cohort are most likely of those in any age group to have a job or be looking for one. The employment-population ratio for the 25-54 age group reached its all-time high of 81.9 percent in April 2000. By December 2007, when the Great Recession begin, that ratio was 79.7 percent. It hit bottom at 74.8 percent in November 2010 and has rising slowly ever since until this year when it’s been going up faster. In March it rose to 78 percent. 

 A $15 minimum wage bill is going to California Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature:

The Senate voted 26 to 12 — with loud cheers of "Si se puede" from the gallery above — to give final approval and send the meausre to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk less than one week after the legislature compromise was reached on the matter.

"At its core this proposal is about fairness," Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León said just before the vote. "This is historic and today I am proud to be a Californian."

The plan passed the state Assembly earlier in the day 48 to 26, receiving broad support from Democratic lawmakers who called the compromise effort an important step forward for California. No Assembly Republicans voted in favor of the increase.

It’s not perfect—the bill is a deal spurred by a ballot measure that would have gotten to $15 more quickly—but it is historic and it will raise wages for millions of workers in the state. And it would not have happened without organizing by low-wage workers.

Missouri Republicans are trying to override Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of an anti-union bill aimed at making it harder for public employee unions to collect dues from members. It’s a reminder of why it’s important to elect Democrats at every level. One of the Democrats in question is a Daily Kos-endorsed Senate candidate:

Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who is running to unseat U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said that Missourians don't want "paycheck deception" or another proposal which would grant greater legal protections to wedding vendors and religious groups who oppose same-sex marriage.

"Do you know what Missourians do want?" Kander asked. "A level playing field. They want the minimum wage to be a livable wage. They want women to be paid the same amount as men for doing the same job, and they certainly don't want any part of this war on working Missourians taking place in the Capitol."

Kander, who has been endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, lists some very good reasons there to choose him over the odious Roy Blunt. But if the minimum wage, equal pay, and not wanting to make discrimination legal in the name of religion isn’t enough for you, think about the Supreme Court. Getting Kander to the Senate means one more vote for a Supreme Court majority that will move the country forward rather than dragging it backward.

Please donate $3 today to help turn the Senate blue. The future of the Supreme Court depends on it.

● These workers are fighting to keep your North Face jacket from being made for poverty wages.

● Josh Eidelson looks at how a $15 minimum wage went from fringe to mainstream:

By 2020 there will be a $15 minimum wage in effect for fast-food workers in New York City, for employees of large companies in Seattle, and for all workers in Los Angeles. On March 28, California Governor Jerry Brown announced a deal to make the $15 wage standard throughout the state by 2022. Last year, Democrats in Congress proposed making it the national starting wage, replacing the $7.25 federal minimum that prevails today.

None of that would have been possible without the union-conceived Fight for $15, a four-year-old effort that’s been organized labor’s most effective political campaign in recent memory. “On the political level, it’s definitely working,” says Vincent Vernuccio, who directs labor policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based free-market think tank. The Fight for $15 was the brainchild of the Service Employees International Union, the second-largest in the U.S., many of whose 1.9 million members work for local or state government or in taxpayer-funded health-care jobs. Since 2012, SEIU has sunk millions of dollars into the Fight for $15 to pressure fast-food corporations to allow unionization, lobby elected officials to pass higher wage laws, and support worker walkouts and mass demonstrations.

● How interesting:

Just several years after its glitzy launch, StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based education group started by former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, is merging with another education advocacy organization, 50Can.

● This story about the sock business in Fort Payne, Alabama is close to my heart, because I’ve spent a lot of time in Fort Payne, even living there for a summer, and know someone who used to own a sock mill. But it’s also a fascinating story about American manufacturing and globalization.

● One family’s epic struggle to opt their seventh-grader out of the PARCC test despite harassment from charter school administrators.

● What's going on in Chicago on April 1? Teachers are striking—find out more.

● Workers Independent News report for March 30, 2016:

 ● 

Unemployment in the construction industry was sky high in 2010. But somehow Donald Trump’s fancy Westchester County golf development needed Ecuadorean stonemasons, for whom the company tried to get permanent work certifications while admitting they’d entered the country “without inspection,” i.e. illegally. 

Trump Briarcliff Manor Development LLC was required to try to get American workers to fill the stonemason jobs. Its efforts were … underwhelming, Will Evans reports:

The golf development company’s applications from March 2010 say the jobs were advertised in the local newspaper twice in December 2009.

Stonemasonry is a specialized job. A couple of ads in the local paper are not likely to do the trick, even when there are lots of unemployed stonemasons who would love to work—although the wages the Trump company paid might not have been much of a draw. The Ecuadorean workers got less than $14 an hour:

“That’s even low for an undocumented worker,” said Michael Clifford, president of the bricklayers union local that covers Westchester County.

By contrast, a first-year apprentice on a government-funded construction project would have made around $30 per hour at the time, including benefits, and an experienced mason made double that, [International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers spokeswoman Prairie] Wells said. The Ecuadorean laborers all had several years of experience as stonemasons in South America, according to the Labor Department records.

Gosh, it sure looks like this Trump luxury golf development was using immigrant workers to get skilled work done on the cheap.

When Justice Antonin Scalia died, virtually every labor activist in the country thought one thing: “Friedrichs?” Now, the Supreme Court has announced its decision on the case in question—and all those labor activists are breathing a sigh of relief.

In January, the Supreme Court heard Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case brought by anti-union groups to explicitly weaken public sector unions by allowing non-members to refuse to pay a fee for the representation they receive from the union. Longstanding precedent said that these workers did not have to pay for union political activity but did have to pay a fee for collective bargaining and other representation … but opponents of unions calculated that the time had come when the court would overturn that. Scalia himself was seen as a critical swing vote on this issue. He had stood by the precedent requiring fair share fees in the past, but in 2014, he had voted to chip away at the workers covered by that in Harris v. Quinn. The stakes were high:

One brief in the case indicates that in states where teachers are covered by collective bargaining but aren't forced to pay agency fees, about 34 percent are "free riders." Moreover, states that have the compulsory fees for workers have much higher union membership in the public sector—an average of nearly 50 percent—compared with states where such fees are banned (17 percent). 

Again, we’re talking about workers paying for things unions do that directly benefit them: Bargaining contracts with better pay and working conditions, and representing them in grievances. And where workers don’t have to pay a fee, they still get the same level of representation as their coworkers who are union members. Antonin Scalia seemed prepared to join in Justice Samuel Alito’s anti-worker crusade and dramatically weaken unions by forcing them to represent non-members for free. And then he died, and the decision we get is:

The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.

That means the precedent stands and unions aren’t gutted. At least as long as Scalia isn’t replaced by another hardcore conservative, anti-union vote on the court. That’s our fight now.

Please donate $3 today to help turn the Senate blue. The future of the Supreme Court depends on it.

California is getting ready to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Originally, a $15 minimum wage was going to be on the ballot in November, but:

Gov. Jerry Brown and state labor unions have been negotiating over the past week to increase the current $10 minimum wage in increments over the next six years, a Capitol source close to the negotiations told this newspaper.

Brown aims to announce a proposal Monday or Tuesday, the source said, even as the governor had no comment on the matter. Also, it was not clear whether Kevin de León, president pro tem of the state Senate, or Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon were briefed on the final version. The Democratic leaders of the Legislature could not be reached Sunday for comment on the agreement, but both have been supportive of a $15 minimum wage, which would be the highest in the country.

One big reason for striking a deal rather than taking the question to voters: the deal that was negotiated takes longer to get to $15 than the measure that qualified for the ballot last week. Polls showed that voters would likely have approved the increase, and some of California’s major cities had already passed $15 minimum wage bills or set their minimum wages between $15 and California’s current rate of $10 an hour.

A wage of $15 an hour, full-time, year-round, comes out to just over $31,000 a year before taxes, which is still below a living wage for a single adult with no children in many California metro areas, according to the Economic Policy Institute's family budget calculator. While California’s $10 minimum wage is much better than the federal level of $7.25 an hour, it still leaves many workers struggling to get by. 

A measure to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour qualified for the November ballot last week … but now legislators have reached a tentative deal to take the state to $15 without a big expensive campaign.

According to a document obtained by The Times, the negotiated deal would boost California's statewide minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on Jan. 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increases through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply, delaying their workers receiving a $15 hourly wage until 2023.

Future statewide minimum wage increases would be linked to inflation, but a governor would have the power to temporarily block some of the initial increases in the event of an economic downturn.

The Los Angeles Times reports that this increase was negotiated between legislators and unions. The legislative deal as reported would take one more year to get to $15 an hour and allow small businesses that extra year, while unions would save money on a campaign to pass the ballot measure. Regardless of the details of the two plans, legislators would not be talking seriously about a $15 an hour minimum wage without pressure from worker organizing over the past few years.