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Tag: Earnings

Exhausting Our Air: Environmental and Human Costs of Diesel Trucks

September 28, 2023 / By Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns / Sierra Club

California’s mandates to replace diesel trucks with zero-emission electric trucks will bring cleaner air and better jobs – if they stay on track. Slow action by electric utilities and fierce opposition by trucking companies are real threats. Displacement of brick-and-mortar retail stores by online retailing and sprawling warehouses has come at the cost of climate change, bad air, low wages.

Demolishing Homes for Air Cargo: San Bernardino Airport Gateway Plan

June 19, 2023 / By Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns / Sierra Club

The Inland Valley Development Agency plans to convert a 678-acre residential and mixed-use area north of San Bernardino International Airport into 9.2 million-square feet of warehouse and industrial space to create “a thriving jobs center.” This gesture at economic development has already been shown to create poverty-level jobs, economic hardship, and precariously housed workers.

Locked Out: Unemployment and Homelessness in the Covid Economy

January 11, 2021 / By Daniel Flaming, Anthony W. Orlando, Patrick Burns and Seth Pickens / Economic Roundtable

COVID-driven loss of jobs and employment income will cause the number of homeless workers to increase each year through 2023. Without large-scale, government employment programs the Pandemic Recession is projected to cause twice as much homelessness as the 2008 Great Recession. The Economic Roundtable used data from the 2008 Great Recession to estimate the linkage between job loss and homelessness and forecast the amount and type of pandemic-driven homelessness in Los Angeles, California and the United States. 

Too Big to Govern: Public Balance Sheet for the World’s Largest Store

November 26, 2019 / By Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns / Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

Households in the Los Angeles metro region paid $7.2 billion for packages from Amazon.com in 2018. Less publicly visible was more than $790 million paid out in public subsidies and uncompensated public costs that supported Amazon’s profitability. It is time for Amazon to come of age and pay its own way. This means paying its full costs to the communities that host it and the workers who create its profits.

Working for the Mouse: A Survey of Disneyland Resort Employees

February 27, 2018 / By Peter Dreier, Daniel Flaming, Lucero Herrera, Martha Matsuoka, Jane Carlen and Patrick Burns / The Coalition of Resort Labor Unions

Disneyland Resort is the most iconic theme park in the world. Disney’s best-known characters are present in the park and woven into America’s national culture, recognized and celebrated around the world. People share more photographs from their visits to Disneyland than from any other place in the world, making it the most Instagrammed location on earth. However, employees report high instances of homelessness, food insecurity, ever-shifting work schedules, extra-long commutes, and low wages.

Flying Right: Giving U.S. Airport Workers a Lift

June 21, 2017 / By Patrick Burns, Halil Toros and Daniel Flaming / Service Employees International Union

Creating a $15 minimum wage at U.S. airports will provide transformative economic benefits for low-paid air transportation employees who work 24-7 in a fast-paced, noisy environment, providing essential services for airlines and the traveling public. The $15 wage will also generate job growth in businesses where airport workers spend their wages, lift many out of poverty, reduce dependence on public assistance, and boost tax revenues that pay for crucial government services. 

Long Beach Rising: A City that Works for Everyone

October 13, 2015 / By Daniel Flaming, Halil Toros and Patrick Burns / AFL-CIO, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

Over 54,000 workers employed in Long Beach’s formal economy will be affected by increasing the minimum wage to $15. The annual earnings of workers will increase by about $405 million. The largest share of increased wages—almost $130 million—will go to workers who also live in the City of Long Beach The greatest number of affected workers and the largest payroll increases will be in restaurants, retail trade, education, transportation and warehousing, and health care. The economic stimulus from increased consumption by workers' households will create an estimated 3,186 new jobs and generate $442 million in increased sales in the region.

All Alone: Antecedents of Chronic Homelessness

August 25, 2015 / By Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns / the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Public assistance programs are Los Angeles’s primary interface with individuals experiencing homelessness and can be a catalyst for connecting at-risk and homeless recipients with crucial services and reducing the massive public costs associated with chronic homelessness. The vital role is to identify tripwire events among all recipients, particularly children and transition-age youth, and quickly connect at-risk individuals with needed employment, behavioral health and housing services.

Impacts of Living Wages in the Airport Hospitality Enhancement Zone

December 8, 2010 / By Daniel Flaming and Patrick Burns / City of Los Angeles Administrative Officer

This study of the Airport Hospitality Enhancement Zone examines the economic impacts of minimum compensation requirements, outcomes from the non-tiered living wage requirement for both tipped and non-tipped hotel workers, and the costs and possible benefits of training for hotel workers. Hotels in the Airport Hospitality Zone are called upon by the City to pay workers a minimum of $10.30 an hour and $1.25 per hour in health benefits, or $11.55 an hour if health benefits are not provided. 

Ebbing Tides in the Golden State: Impacts of the 2008 Recession on California and Los Angeles County

June 8, 2009 / By Daniel Flaming, Patrick Burns and Michael Matsunaga / Economic Roundtable, the California Endowment

The most concrete characteristic of a recession is that demand disappears for some of the commodities produced by workers and unwanted unemployment is imposed on a large segment of the labor force. With growing job losses in the current recession it is important to know, whose boat falls when the economic tide recedes? 

From the Pockets of Strangers: Economic Impacts of Tourism in Los Angeles and Five Competing Metropolitan Destinations

January 1, 2006 / By Daniel Flaming, Patrick Burns and Brent Haydamack / LA INC, The Convention and Visitors Bureau

  While the visitor industry is a key economic engine for LA, it’s Lodging industry shows signs of structural weakness. Compared to the size of its visitor economy, LA’s Lodging inventory is only 62 percent of the national average. Compared to other cities with which it competes for tourism spending, LA’s Lodging industry serves a relatively small number of visitors given the size our economy. 

Prisoners of Hope: Welfare to Work in Los Angeles

July 1, 2003 / By Daniel Flaming, Mark Drayse and Brent Haydamack / Economic Roundtable

Why aren’t more welfare parents becoming economically self-sufficient after participating in the LA County Welfare to Work Program, GAIN (Greater Avenue for Independence)? What has happened to these parents since entering the labor market after GAIN? The answers to these and other questions are presented in “Prisoners of Hope,” a report originally requested by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on December 19, 2000. 

Running Out of Time: Voices of Parents Struggling to Move from Welfare to Work

July 1, 2002 / By Daniel Flaming, Patricia Kwon and Patrick Burns / Economic Roundtable

How do people change their lives? What kinds of help do working poor parents need to lift their families out of poverty? What obstacles do they face in trying to get a sustaining job? More than eight thousand people answered these questions through a survey undertaken to learn directly from working welfare parents and other poor families about the problems they face and the kinds of help they need to become self-sufficient. 

South Los Angeles Rising: Opportunities for Economic Self-Sufficiency Ten Years After the 1992 Civil Unrest

May 6, 2002 / By Daniel Flaming and Mark Drayse / Economic Roundtable

This briefing paper reports on business recovery in buildings damaged during the 1992 civil unrest, the availability of jobs in different areas of Los Angeles, and changes in South Los Angeles’ industry base since 1992. Where were buildings damaged during the civil unrest located? Most buildings damaged during the civil unrest were located on commercial streets in high poverty neighborhoods in South Los Angeles. 

Workers Without Rights

May 6, 2002 / By Pascale Joassart and Daniel Flaming / Economic Roundtable

The informal economy produces legal goods and services that are not effectively regulated. Such activities can give rise to abuses by employers who fail to respect basic labor, safety, immigration, and tax laws, leaving workers without rights. By definition the informal economy is hidden "under the table" and "off the books." However, by comparing different sources of employment data we can identify industries where a significant share of jobs appear to be unreported. Industry characteristics such as worker demographics can also be used as an additional indicator of informal employment.

The Cage of Poverty

September 1, 2000 / By Daniel Flaming, Mark Drayse and Peter Force / Economic Roundtable

In his 1963 letter from the Birmingham jail Martin Luther King, Jr. described the despair of people “smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.” It is important to understand the extent to which this image of entrapment still describes the wage-earning lives of the working poor as they try to support their families. 

On the Edge: A Progress Report on Welfare to Work in Los Angeles

January 1, 1999 / By Daniel Flaming, Mark Drayse and Peter Force / Economic Roundtable

The loss of a welfare safety net for most adults for most of their lives makes the quality of jobs available to the working poor and their success in finding and keeping jobs increasingly important. The economic and civic life of the Los Angeles region will be shaped by connections that are made, or fail to be made, between the growing ranks of working poor and opportunities for steady, sustaining, productive employment. 

South Bay Economic Adjustment Strategy

November 1, 1998 / By Daniel Flaming, Mark Drayse, Michael Beltramo-Beltramo and Associates, Tom Jirovsky-Kosmont and Associates Inc, Frank Taplin-Kosmont and Associates, David Rigby-UCLA Department of Geography and John Wilson-USC Department of Geography / the County of Los Angeles South Bay Communities and Community Development Commission

The South Bay Economic Adjustment Strategy has been prepared to help elected officials, public sector staff, business leaders, and citizens take coordinated, effective action to recover jobs lost because of defense cutbacks. The strategy has been prepared under a grant from the Office of Economic Adjustment in the Department of Defense that was administered by Los Angeles County’s Community Development Commission. 

By the Sweat of Their Brow: Welfare to Work in Los Angeles

January 1, 1998 / By Daniel Flaming, Peter Force, Julie Henly-UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research and Mark Drayse / Economic Roundtable

Welfare reform raises the prickly question of what mix of understanding, support and pragmatic pressure is needed to move welfare recipients into employment. Many workers are scrambling to keep the wolf from their own doors in the face of industry restructuring, rapid technological change, and intense pressures to increase corporate profits. 

Survival Skills: Welfare to Work in Los Angeles

January 1, 1998 / By Mark Drayse, Cher-Amie Inocentes, Daniel Flaming and Peter Force / Economic Roundtable

Recent welfare reform legislation mandates that aid recipients become employed and economically self-sufficient. The allowable interval of continuous assistance is limited to 24 months for current recipients and 18 months for new recipients, with a lifetime limit of five years on welfare. At least 150,000 current welfare recipients in Los Angeles County must move into the workforce, securing at least partial employment by December 1999. 

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