CHICAGO - Fast-food workers in Chicago and around the nation are leading into Labor Day with another round of one-day strikes Thursday.

Steven Ashby, a University of Illinois professor who specializes in labor and employment relations, said these strikes have picked up momentum this year, partly because of their new approach. Instead of targeting one company, in Chicago, they target low-wage industries - fast food and retail - and strike for one day.

Another difference, Ashby said, is that religious leaders go back to their jobs with them the next day to make sure there's no retaliation. He said that empowers the workers.

"Scores of clergy just stand with the workers, to the bosses," he said, "and basically say to them, 'Look, it was legal for them to walk off the job. If you punish them, we're going to be back in much larger numbers.' "

In St. Louis, 40 people who had hours cut or lost jobs after a one-day strike all got them back after community leaders walked in and talked with their managers.

Ashby said he believes weak labor laws have caused the labor movement to change its approach.

"So, they're turning to these innovative tactics of labor-community coalitions, one-day strike, hitting an entire industry, organizing for the long run," he said. "And it does seem to be working. The morale of the workers is extremely high."

Ashby said today's fast-food workers are not teenagers living at home. The average employee in that industry is 28 years old, and many are working there after losing higher-paying jobs.

"We have the worst income gap we've had in 80-plus years," he said. "So, the wealthy are doing extremely well, whereas the wages of half of the workforce have been stagnant or declining."

The minimum wage in Illinois is $8.25 an hour, which for a full-time worker amounts to slightly more than $17,000 a year before taxes. President Obama has proposed increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2015. If the minimum wage in 1968 had been adjusted for inflation, analysts say, it would already be up to $10.56 an hour.

More information is online at canmybossdothat.com.


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May is Community Action Month, and Community Action Agencies in Massachusetts are raising awareness about the wraparound services they provide to low-income residents.

Community Action was started in 1964 by the Johnson administration to fight poverty, and agencies have been working ever since to help folks - both in crisis situations and with economic empowerment.

Sharon Scott-Chandler, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), said many still are struggling to meet basic needs in the economic fallout from the pandemic.

"Community action is here, meeting as many of those needs as we can," she said. "Obviously, the demand is outsized to what the resources we have, but we continue to advocate for more funding and continue to really come up with flexible, innovative programs that can meet the evolving needs of folks."

Scott-Chandler noted that most funding for Community Action Agencies comes from the federal government; the U.S. House recently approved a 10-year reauthorization of the Community Services Block Grant, and it's now on to the U.S. Senate. The Massachusetts House also included $7.5 million in the state budget for Community Action Agencies. The state Senate's version does not, but the agencies hope it will be retained in conference committee.

In a crisis, Community Action Agencies provide services such as rent relief, fuel assistance, child care and food security.

"We are serving more people today than we ever have, and it's just, instead of getting better - I had hoped by the time I retired, that we wouldn't need food banks," said Emma Melo, who runs the food program at People Acting in Community Endeavors (PACE) in New Bedford. The PACE Food Bank serves more than 6,000 people every year.

"With COVID, with everything else, it just doesn't work," she said.

Jenniffer Gonzalez, assistant director at Springfield Partners for Community Action's Early Learning Center, also has been a client of the agency. She said agencies don't just help clients with one need - they work to assist them in gaining longer-term economic stability.

"They had helped me to pay my bill, like fuel assistance, helped me through the COVID times. And it's not just as a professional working here - but as personal, a mother," she said. "And I have a house because of Springfield Partners, so I think it's just amazing to have an agency that helps a community like that."

Massachusetts residents who think they may be eligible for some of these programs can look online at masscap.org to find their local agency and make an appointment.

From January 2020 to December 2021, utility companies shut off power to Hoosier homes more than 260,000 times.

According to a new report from BailoutWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity, Indiana had the third-highest amount of energy shut-offs in the nation during the two-year time period.

Christopher Kuveke, data analyst at BailoutWatch, noted Indiana's shut-off rate jumped from 2020 to 2021, as moratoriums on such practices expired.

"A big problem we saw with these moratoria nationally is they did help keep people connected throughout the duration," Kuveke acknowledged. "But there weren't necessarily adequate payment programs to help the people protect themselves from racked up debt and outstanding bills that were accumulated during the moratorium."

Indiana adopted a utility shut-off moratorium early in the pandemic, which ended in August 2020. A program compelling utilities to offer extended utility payment plans expired in October 2020, but some companies continued offering long-term repayment plans and other resources to help customers meet their utility costs.

Utility companies argued the report is incomplete and fails to take into account those initiatives.

The report included data from 33 states and the District of Columbia, as not all states had shut-off numbers available.

Kuveke pointed out the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does not require companies to collect and disclose such data.

"The authors and myself believe FERC needs to come up with a policy to mandate a uniform reporting system for utilities in every state," Kuveke asserted.

Jean Su, energy justice program director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said communities of color are disproportionately impacted by cutoffs, as they carry a higher "energy burden," or how much of their income goes toward utility bills.

"Black families in particular have three to four times the energy burden of white families," Su outlined. "Latinx families also have that same ratio."

Su explained it is an issue with two root causes. She said Black and brown communities have generally lower incomes than white ones, but their neighborhoods also tend to be hotter because of long-standing racist housing practices.

"So we have areas where public housing has far less insulation and far less energy-efficient buildings, so that raises the need for greater heating and cooling," Su emphasized. "We also see that those communities have been built with far less tree cover."

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported from 2005 to 2015, emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses increased by 67% for Black residents and 63% for Hispanic residents, compared with a 27% increase for white people.

For Minnesota to make big gains in reducing poverty, its safety net needs to be more robust, according to a new report highlighting disparities residents around the state are experiencing while elevating themselves from hardship.

Minnesota's official poverty rate is 8.7 %, which is below the national average.

Angie Fertig, social policy research scientist at the University of Minnesota, said when you dig deeper, there are broad levels of unevenness. The state is known for its racial disparities, and Fertig confirmed BIPOC residents have much higher poverty rates than white residents, and existing support systems only help meet basic needs.

"A lot of people believe that Minnesota is a very generous state in terms of its safety net," Fertig acknowledged. "And that's generally true. However, there are lots of things that we could do better."

The report calls for state action, such as expanding eligibility for SNAP benefits, to help all families prosper. Despite a large budget surplus, it is unclear if boosting various forms of assistance will happen under a divided Legislature. The poverty rate for Black residents is 21%, while 29% of Native Americans fall into the same category.

Fertig pointed out there is also variation when looking at poverty through a geographic lens, with higher rates in certain urban centers, including Duluth and the Twin Cities, and some rural regions as well. Her report calculated separate poverty rates when factoring in federal benefit programs and found it was not much better than the official rate.

"What the report reveals is that current policies and programs just aren't enough to eliminate poverty," Fertig asserted. "They exactly balance out with the higher costs that living (and) covering your basic needs entail."

Bill Grant, executive director of the Minnesota Community Action Partnership, which supported the report, said it is good to have a more accurate measure so organizations such as his know where to ask for legislative support to make them stronger.

"While a number of people have benefited from these programs, they aren't accomplishing the primary objective, which is to lift people out of poverty," Grant stressed.

The new report looked at 2019 data and called for a statewide Commission to End Poverty. Those involved hoped to issue annual findings to track how marginalized residents are faring, especially in light of the pandemic.