Minimum wage fight: Raise it or not?, By Alicia Stice, September 23, 2016, The Coloradoan: “When an unexpected expense comes up — like the time her 9-year-old black lab, Libby, racked up a $700 vet bill — Lauren Gutierrez knows it’s time to pick up extra shifts. In Fort Collins where she grew up, Gutierrez cannot afford to live alone. This semester, she dropped two of her classes at Front Range Community College because the full course load was too much to handle along with her long shifts working as a caregiver for elderly residents. Living as a low-wage worker has inspired Gutierrez to volunteer for the campaign to raise Colorado’s minimum wage from $8.31 an hour to $12 an hour by 2020, with increases every year in between…”
Category: Employment
Youth Unemployment – Chicago, IL
Chicago tackles youth unemployment as it wrestles with its consequences, By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, September 1, 2016, Chicago Tribune: “Margo Strotter, who runs a busy sandwich shop in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, makes it a point to hire people with ‘blemishes.’ But young people? She sighs and shakes her head. They often lack ‘the fundamental stuff’ — arriving on time, ironing their shirts, communicating well, taking direction — she said. She doesn’t have time to train workers in the basics, and worries she’s not alone. ‘We are going to wind up with a whole group of people in their 40s and 50s who can’t function,’ said Strotter, owner of Ain’t She Sweet Cafe. As Chicago tackles what some have termed a crisis of youth joblessness, it must reckon with the consequences of a failure to invest in its low-income neighborhoods and the people who live there. There aren’t enough jobs, and the young people vying for them are frequently woefully unprepared because of gaps in their schooling and upbringing. The system has pushed them to the back of the hiring line…”
Career Pathways Program – Arkansas
This welfare reform program could be a model to help impoverished college students, By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, August 31, 2016, Washington Post: “When Will Bradford enrolled at Northwest Arkansas Community College in January 2015, it had been 15 years since he had stepped foot in a classroom. He had taken a few college classes after high school but dropped out in a matter of weeks. ‘I just didn’t have the motivation,’ Bradford, 35, recalls. But with two young boys to care for, getting an education took on a new importance, especially if it meant earning more money. Even with his newfound motivation, Bradford was no less intimidated. ‘I was nervous about how much work would be involved and whether I was overdoing it with a full-time job, but a lot of it was just getting back into the school system,’ he said. Enter Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative, a program funded by the federal welfare program, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF, that provides academic and social services to low-income parents attending state community colleges and technical centers…”