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Tag: Risk

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. 

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. 
The USS Arizona Memorial glows in the night in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 6, 2006. DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class James E. Foehl, U.S Navy.

Technology and Jobs: Defense Conversion in the Los Angeles Region

February 8, 1994 / By Daniel Flaming and Mark Drayse / Economic Roundtable

SYNOPSIS This survey of industry perceptions of defense conversion in the Los Angeles region followed two years after the bench mark survey of aerospace firms conducted to prepare the “Economic Adjustment Strategy for Defense Reductions.” The purpose was to explore such questions as: Are aerospace firms in the greater Los Angeles region becoming less dependent on defense contracts? 

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