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U.S. Must Step Up and Provide Family Leave, Heymann Says

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Professor Jody Heymann joined PBS’ “News Hour” and NPR’s “On Point” to discuss the debate over national paid family leave in the United States. Democrats continue to haggle over a social spending bill, and a proposal to include paid leave remains in limbo. “Nearly the entire world offers paid leave,” with 181 out of 192 countries offering paid sick leave and 185 offering paid maternity leave, said Heymann, distinguished professor of public health, public policy and medicine. “We know that we can afford it,” she said. “It saves money because it makes people healthier,” lowering health care costs. For small businesses unable to bear the full burden of providing paid family leave for all their employees, “that’s what the social insurance system is for, and that’s how most of the world does it,” she said. As for the political forces at play, Heymann added, “Hearing from all Americans about what a difference this would make would be a good place to start.”

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Unionization Is Essential for Recovery, Diaz Says

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, co-authored a commentary in Latino Rebels about the need for union organization among Latino workers. Unions help alleviate the racial and ethnic pay gap by helping workers access non-discriminatory, collectively bargained contracts for the essential work that they do, Diaz wrote. “The benefits of unionization make it clear that economic recovery is not complete if workers aren’t given the opportunity to organize and demand better conditions, particularly given how essential many low-income service workers are to the economy,” she argued. A recent report found that Black and Latino workers in union jobs earned better wages and were less likely to lose their jobs and income during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to non-union workers. “Unionized jobs must pave the path forward to ensure that workers have the stability and economic resilience needed to withstand future crises,” she concluded.

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Tilly Analyzes Restructuring of Best Buy

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Urban Planning Chair Chris Tilly spoke to Retail Dive about the internal reorganization of Best Buy following a recent large wave of layoffs. The company has been struggling to compete against generalist stores, such as Walmart and Target, as well as Amazon. Over the last decade, Best Buy said it prized a “human-centric approach” focusing on the company’s front-line workers, but it recently cut many full-time employees in favor of part-time staff who are expected to be knowledgeable about all areas of the store. “It’s clear that the entire store-based consumer electronics industry has faced incredible pressure from online sales,” Tilly said. “The fact that Best Buy survived and bounced back is miraculous, when a lot of other companies were going down.” The pandemic made competition even tougher by shifting more things online. “If you’re just competing with online sales, what is the difference between Best Buy and Amazon?” Tilly asked.

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Tilly Examines Impact of Inflation

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Urban Planning Chair Chris Tilly was featured in a Sacramento Bee article discussing the impact of inflation on the 2022 midterm elections. Prices have increased 5.4% in the last year, one of the steepest rises since 2008, and California now has the highest per-gallon gas price in the country. According to Tilly, higher prices at the pump hurt agriculture-heavy regions like the San Joaquin Valley more than any other areas of the state. “A lot of the agricultural valley workforces are relatively low-income, which means that they’re ill-equipped to deal with higher prices,” Tilly explained. Businesses struggling to handle the costs of inflation are more likely to raise the costs of their goods and less likely to increase the wages of their workers. “If I’m an agricultural worker, and possibly even an agricultural worker who’s dealing with supply chain problems in their own industry, then I’ve got a problem,” he said.

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Tilly on Newfound American Labor Power

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Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly joined NewsNation Now to discuss the labor strikes going on across the country. “We’ve seen growing inequality in this country since the 1970s, so it makes sense for workers to point that out at a time when they have some leverage to do so,” Tilly said. The gap between the CEO and the worker has consistently grown in recent decades. Tilly explained that the power of unions depends on labor shortages and the supply chain, and workers now have more power than they have had in years. “That power is real, but we don’t know how long it will last,” he said. “If workers get [paid] more, that will contribute to inflation, but if what that means is that workers are getting a bigger piece of the pie, I would agree that that’s a good thing,” Tilly concluded.

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A Closer Look at Pandemic’s Impact on Asian American Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to NBC News about the findings of a recent survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian-owned businesses. The survey of 400 Asian-owned businesses in Southern California found that a disproportionate number were forced to close their doors and fire staff during the pandemic. Ong explained that Asian-owned businesses tend to be in sectors that were the most impacted — such as food service, hospitality and retail — and that many of them didn’t have the money to keep their businesses open when profits took a nosedive. “The racism throughout the pandemic also led people to avoid businesses in Asian neighborhoods altogether,” Ong added. Many small businesses were unable to benefit from federal assistance programs due to language barriers and lack of outreach in Asian communities about the existence of such programs and their application processes.

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Gilens, Ong on Forces Undermining a Just Economic Recovery

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UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens and Paul Ong shared insights on economic and political inequality and opportunity as part of a panel organized by the UCLA Anderson Forecast, a quarterly report that frames the economic outlook for California and the nation. Released Sept. 29, the latest report identified a shift from earlier forecasts, which had raised hopes for a blockbuster recovery as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. Heading into the final quarter of 2021, these hopes have been tempered by the spread of the Delta variant and stagnating vaccination rates, which in turn have led to consumer caution. A panel of experts hosted by the Anderson Forecast brought context to these findings, with a focus on how income is distributed unevenly across the United States. Gilens, chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, said political and economic inequality are intertwined, resulting in policies that cater to moneyed interests. “Taming the role of money in American politics won’t be easy, especially with an unsympathetic Supreme Court, and … won’t by itself fix everything that ails our democracy,” Gilens said. “But it’s hard to see how we can fix American democracy without reducing the dominance of money in our politics.” Ong, director of UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, focused on race and ethnicity as factors in the job, food, housing and educational insecurity that persists across generations. “I would encourage my colleagues to think much more explicitly about the fundamentals of why race and racism exist within an economy,” he said. “Simply saying that everybody should have equal opportunity doesn’t make it so.” 

View the Anderson Forecast presentation, including a keynote address by Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

 

Ong on COVID-19’s Impact on Asian Businesses

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UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong spoke to KPCC and LAist about findings from a survey of members of the Asian Business Association of Los Angeles. More than 400 association members described how their businesses were faring, confirming Ong’s fears that Asian-owned businesses have disproportionately suffered during the pandemic, a trend that has been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian incidents. More than half of the survey respondents said they had to close at some point during the pandemic, and nearly a third said their operating capacity had dropped by more than 50%. “I actually believe this is a conservative estimate,” said Ong, pointing out that the negative impact might be even worse than the English-only survey was able to capture. “So many of the hardest-hit businesses are run by immigrants who don’t speak English as their first language,” he said. Ong recommended that policymakers prioritize targeted outreach offered in many languages to support Asian-owned businesses.

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Shah, Bau Investigate Lockdown Impact on Female Mental Health

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Professor of Public Policy Manisha Shah and Assistant Professor of Public Policy Natalie Bau co-authored an article in Ideas for India about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in India. Researchers conducted a large-scale phone survey across six states in rural north India to better understand how lockdown measures contributed to economic instability, food insecurity, and declines in female mental health and well-being. Bau, Shah and their co-authors found that strict lockdown measures, while necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19 infection, contributed to economic and mental distress, especially in low-income settings with limited safety nets. Gender norms and low availability of mental health services made females especially vulnerable. For example, roughly 30% of the female respondents reported that their feelings of depression, exhaustion, anxiety and perception of safety worsened over the course of the pandemic. The authors recommended that policymakers target aid, particularly access to food, to vulnerable households and women.

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Tilly Explains Labor Shortage Patterns

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Urban Planning Chair Chris Tilly was featured in a Vox article discussing labor shortages as many low-wage workers demand better working conditions. Nearly 16 million Americans quit their jobs between April and July, highlighting the mental and physical fatigue experienced by many, as well as the desire to improve work environments. “For a lot of people, it’s been traumatizing,” Tilly said. Essential workers in California experienced a 30% increase in deaths in the first 10 months of the pandemic, according to an analysis of public data. Many low-wage jobs lack benefits such as health insurance and sick leave, and the work itself can be physically and emotionally taxing. “People settled for that, but they weren’t necessarily thrilled with those jobs,” Tilly explained. He also pointed out that any increases in hourly wages are often countered by inflation. “The labor shortage giveth, and the end of the labor shortage taketh away,” Tilly said.

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