Economy
August 2, 2019 -
Responding to the Fight for $15 movement, the U.S. House recently voted to raise the federal minimum wage, and a number of states have also raised minimum wages. But progress at the local level has been blocked in some places by state laws preempting such wage hikes — and now labor advocates are taking aim at those laws.
July 19, 2019 -
This week the Democratic-controlled U.S. House passed the Raise the Wage Act to gradually increase the hourly minimum wage to $15. The proposal now awaits action in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the bill sits in a committee chaired by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, who thinks there should be no minimum wage laws at all.
July 3, 2019 -
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been researching how the climate crisis will affect farming, but it's withheld the findings from the public. That's just one example of how the Trump administration is making it harder for farmers across the South — a region especially vulnerable to climate change — to prepare for a warming world.
May 24, 2019 -
Just days after McDonald's workers filed over two dozen sexual harassment charges and lawsuits against the fast-food giant, they went on strike in cities across the the South and nation to demand a redress of their grievances.
May 9, 2019 -
Across the region and the country, the Poor People's Campaign's Truth & Poverty Bus Tours have been gathering information on how public policy exacerbates poverty. It will be shared with the public next month at the Poor People's Moral Action Congress in Washington, D.C.
May 3, 2019 -
This week Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee led an anti-union meeting at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant, where last month workers petitioned for an election to join the United Auto Workers. The public and journalists were shut out of the event, which showed how government officials and corporations in the South work together to bust unions.
April 12, 2019 -
North Carolina is now the third state in the South to order utilities to excavate all of their coal ash pits and move the toxic material to lined landfills. Duke Energy wants to charge its customers for the work, but some state lawmakers are trying to prevent that from happening. Meanwhile, the company is challenging the order.
