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      in UK Politics

      ‘Economically and morally wrong’: 660,000 key workers will be hit when universal credit uplift ends, report says

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      More than 660,000 low-paid key workers, including nurses, supermarket staff and social carers, will be among millions of people affected when the universal credit uplift ends in the autumn, new figures suggest.London, the south east and the north west have the highest numbers of key workers on universal credit, according to research by the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).A union leader said 30 September was set to be a “bleak day” for workers when the temporary £20-a-week increase is stopped.The large number of key workers receiving universal credit is symptomatic of issues with in-work poverty, said the RSA.Alan Lockey, head of the organisation’s Future of Work programme, said: “The link between hard work and fair pay is broken, and this cut will only make it worse.“In the short term, the government needs to protect this vital lifeline for millions of hard-working Brits, especially our pandemic heroes working as nurses, social carers and supermarket assistants.“In the long term, the government needs to make work pay, expanding the use of the living wage, tackling insecure work, and making benefits such as sick pay more generous and universal.”Jonathan Reynolds, shadow work and pensions secretary, said the cuts were “economically and morally wrong”.“It is shameful that the very workers who got us through this crisis are in the firing line when it comes to poor pay and cuts to universal credit,” he said.“The government must see sense, back struggling families, and cancel their cut to universal credit. Labour would replace universal credit with a fairer social security system.”Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said the majority of those receiving the benefit were in work but earning too little to get by.“The determination to rob the poorest workers and families of £20 a week is heartless and economically irresponsible,” he added.“Food and living costs are rising and the chaotic bungling of the reopening of the economy means we cannot be assured of a return to any so-called normal. “That £20 is a lifeline during this continuing uncertainty and removing it will cause certain despair.“September 30 is set to be a bleak day for workers and our communities with [both] the cut and the end of furlough.“It will go down as the day that this Tory government threw hundreds of thousands of working and vulnerable people and children under the bus.”A government spokesperson said: “Universal credit has provided a vital safety net for six million people during the pandemic, and we announced the temporary uplift as part of a £400 billion package that will last well beyond the end of the roadmap.“We’re committed to putting more money in the pockets of hard-working families, which is why this year we provided a pay rise to 2 million of the UK’s lowest-paid through a higher minimum wage, while we’ll also help people earn more by levelling up opportunity.”Additional reporting by Press Association More

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      in UK Politics

      Businesses hit out at ministers’ ‘mixed Covid messages’ as major chains set their own rules on masks

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      Business groups have criticised the government over its raft of new Covid guidance, saying companies and customers have been left with “mixed messages and patchwork requirements” ahead of the planned easing of curbs on 19 July. Under plans to relax restrictions next week, ministers have said wearing a face mask in indoor settings will switch from a legal requirement to a matter of personal choice. From Monday, all legal limits on the numbers meeting indoors and outdoors will be scrapped and all businesses will reopen, including nightclubs – for the first time since March 2020.However the advice has led to confusion with some members of the government continuing to advise the public to use face coverings in certain settings, such as on public transport and in crowded spaces. Leading businesses and transport bodies have said they will continue to mandate masks despite the change in the rules.Transport for London, Heathrow Airport and several major restaurant and pub chains – including the owner of the Gaucho chain and City Pub Group – have said they will continue to ask customers to cover their nose and mouth.Bookshop chain Waterstones has also said it will request shoppers wear masks.However there is uncertainty over how the rules will be implemented in many of the UK’s supermarkets.Sainsbury’s has confirmed that many of the Covid measures customers will stay in place in their shops after 19 July.From Monday, new signs and tannoy messages in Sainsbury’s stores will encourage customers to continue to wear a face covering, and staff will be encouraged to wear a face covering, unless they are behind a screen.Barriers between self-service checkouts and dividing checkout queues will be gradually removed from its stores in England, but they will remain in place between colleagues and customers when they are being served at checkouts.Other supermarkets have said they are awaiting further guidance or are still conducting a review of their mask policy with days to go before the rules change.Roger Barker, policy director at the Institute of Directors, accused the government of announcing a “series of mixed messages and patchwork requirements” which he said had dampened enthusiasm among businesses for the unlocking.The Association of Convenience Stores warned that the “tensions in government messaging will play out not in the corridors of government departments but on trains and buses and in the aisles of shops”.Hannah Essex, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, complained companies had “just five days to make this judgment call and effectively communicate it to staff and customers”.Asked on Sky News if the government had created confusion for businesses, minister Robert Jenrick said: “I disagree with that. We’ve published guidance and the guidance reflects the huge diversity of businesses.“There might be situations where businesses might choose to pursue these policies based on their best judgement … this is the sort of discretion they want.”“You can already see TfL, that manages the Tube in London, have come to, in my opinion, a perfectly sensible judgement that in the confines of the Tube you should be using a mask.“And there are also some supermarkets coming to that conclusion as well. Waterstones, who I understand will be asking their customers to wear masks … that seems a logical decision.“We trust businesses just as we trust the public to come to sensible, reasonable positions.” More

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      in Elections

      Sears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcry

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      US Capitol attackSears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcryUS retailers apologize for shirt reading ‘Ashli Babbitt American Patriot’ for the Capitol rioter shot dead by law enforcement Priya ElanWed 7 Jul 2021 16.54 EDTLast modified on Wed 7 Jul 2021 17.42 EDTThe US retailers Sears and Kmart have apologized and pulled from sale a T-shirt featuring the words “Ashli Babbitt American Patriot” after an outcry on social media.Babbitt was shot dead by law enforcement while taking part in the attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on 6 January. She had been inside the building and was attempting to climb through a broken window when she was shot.After her death, her internet history showed she was a conspiracy theorist, including a believer in QAnon. Elements of the conservative movement have been attempting to make Babbitt a martyr for their cause.After the T-shirt’s availability was brought to attention by a Twitter post from the Vox reporter Aaron Rupar, Sears tweeted a brisk apology from its official account, writing: “Thank you for bringing this product to our attention. This item is no longer available for purchase on Sears.com or Kmart.com.”Both shops are owned by Transformco.Last year, Walmart was found to be selling an All Lives Matter T-shirt on its website.Both instances highlight concerns about third-party sellers: companies will sell items from external sources without vetting.In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Urban Outfitters and J Crew would open their digital stores up to third-party sellers, in a bid to compete with Amazon, which had been selling items by them for years.In April, in a letter to shareholders, Amazon’s then CEO, Jeff Bezos, said that third-party sellers made up 60% of Amazon’s overall sales, compared with 34% in 2010 and 3% a decade earlier.Last month, the first Capitol rioter to be sentenced, Anna Morgan Lloyd, got probation instead of a prison sentence.TopicsUS Capitol attackRetail industrynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      ‘The Great Resignation’: June’s US jobs report hides unusual trend

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      US unemployment and employment data‘The Great Resignation’: June’s US jobs report hides unusual trendJune’s numbers suggest economy is continuing to recover at steady pace – but another pattern shows people are quitting their jobs Rashida Kamal in New YorkSat 3 Jul 2021 06.00 EDTThe Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the US economy added 850,000 jobs last month. Hidden by this encouraging figure is the hint of an unusual trend: people are beginning to quit their jobs in extraordinary numbers.June’s numbers, in combination with last month’s figures, suggest that the economy is continuing to recover at a steady pace. The rate of unemployment was 5.9% and 9.5 million people remain unemployed.This latest update, along with projections of positive economic growth, was met with notable optimism from the White House and record highs on Wall Street.Joe Biden, in response to the report, was eager to point out the changing power dynamic of the labor market.“The strength of our economy is helping us flip the script. Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, employers are competing with each other to attract workers,” he said.In midst of this uneven recovery, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, others have noticed another pattern that may further elevate unemployment rates in the months to come: people are leaving their jobs.In a move that organizational psychologist Dr Anthony Klotz calls “the Great Resignation”, workers are beginning to quit jobs in the highest rates seen since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began to collect this data in 2000.Number of people quitting their jobsThis trend, according to Klotz, is not only due to pent-up “resignation demand” – fewer people quit their jobs during the early, uncertain months of the pandemic – but also because people are simply feeling burnt out.According to a recent report from Microsoft, 41% of the global workforce is considering leaving their jobs. Though the intention to quit is not quite the same as the act of quitting, the most recently available BLS data shows that while there were 9.3m job openings in April, almost 4 million people had also quit their jobs that month.“The economy is seemingly doing very well. There are lots of job openings out there. So, if you’re an employee, that’s empowering for you because you have options,” Klotz said.Like many other factors of American life, the Great Resignation will not be immune to the racial and economic disparities that exist elsewhere. Socioeconomic differences will shape who is quitting and why.Sandra Sucher, Harvard Business School professor and author of the forthcoming The Power of Trust, noted that low-wage workers will be particularly motivated to change jobs with even marginally better offers.“There’s definitely a sense of if I can make more money doing this job, I’ll go for it,” she said.While there are concrete factors such as better wage and improved savings rates driving these choices, experts like Sucher and Klotz also believe that the pandemic, by bringing us face-to-face with our own mortality, has prompted a reckoning with how we balance work and life.“There was overall sense of malaise that came from the experience of working, almost regardless of who you were working for during the pandemic,” Sucher said.“You want a place that takes care of you and recognizes you as a human being.”With labor market conditions seemingly turning in favor of workers, it is possible that there will better opportunities available, at least for some. Klotz has been careful to note that quitting a job is ultimately a deeply personal decision.“What I don’t want is for people to see all this coverage of the Great Resignation and think, oh, this is a good time to put my job.”Whether or not it is the right decision will still depend on a myriad of personal and particular considerations.Dr Valerie Wilson, the director of Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (Pree), warned against treating any one month’s report with too much importance, “The caveat is that subsequent revisions or updates to the numbers could always change what that story is. We always know more in retrospect than we do in any at any single point.”Despite the White House’s positivity, what has remained consistently evident is the disparate impact of the pandemic on different groups of people. There continues to be marked differences how long it is taking for everyone but white men to return to their pre-pandemic rates of unemployment.Race and gender groups that are recovering quicklyRace and gender groups that are recovering slowlyThese differences, of course, have been entrenched throughout US history. In particular, Wilson is concerned with “occupational segregation”, which has historically meant that Black and brown workers are disproportionately represented in some industries and not others.“For example, we know that women – women of color in particular – are more likely to be in low-wage service and those industries are hit extremely hard during a recession,” she said.Industries, such as leisure and hospitality, continue to falter in regaining their pre-pandemic rates of unemployment.Industries that are still recovering slowlyTopicsUS unemployment and employment dataEconomicsUS economyUS politicsJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      The Trump charges look small potatoes, and the Republican base will shrug | Lloyd Green

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      OpinionDonald TrumpThe Trump charges look small potatoes, and the Republican base will shrugLloyd GreenBy the metrics of scandal, the alleged crime seems decidedly underwhelming. For now at least, the former president can exhale Fri 2 Jul 2021 11.41 EDTLast modified on Fri 2 Jul 2021 12.09 EDTOn Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors charged the Trump Organization, its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and the Trump Payroll Corp with engaging in a scheme to defraud federal, state and local tax authorities. According to the indictment, Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on $1.7m in income and benefits. The scheme purportedly dated back to 2005.Trump legal troubles escalate after company charged with tax crimes – liveRead moreOn the other hand, Donald Trump, Weisselberg’s boss, appears to have skated. He is not named as a defendant even though he makes a cameo in the body of the indictment. Allegedly, “personal checks drawn on the account of and signed by Donald J Trump, and later drawn on the account of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust dated April 7, 2014” went for tuition payments of Weisselberg’s family.Other alleged undeclared benefits received by Weisselberg included lease payments on his Mercedes, housing and cash. For the moment anyway, Cyrus Vance, the district attorney for Manhattan, appears to lack the goods to nail the former president. Relatively speaking, an elephant gave birth to a mouse.Beyond that, Vance’s office did not bring racketeering charges against Trump’s eponymous company. Arguably if the district attorney had the goods he would have brought the most serious charges on the first go around. Significantly, the indictment did not trigger a default under Deutsche Bank’s loan documents. Trump and his lenders can exhale, a little. Right now, the prospects of forfeiture and foreclosure and the necessity of refinancing Trump’s loan packages are not staring back at them.By the metrics of scandal, the alleged crime is decidedly underwhelming. Wrongfully taken over tax deductions are quintessentially human, let alone Trumpian. In case anyone forgot, Trump is still undergoing a years-long IRS audit over claimed deductions. The Republican base will shrug.Likewise, giving sweetheart deals to key employees and favored others is textbook New York, a textbook that Trump himself helped write.Back in the day, the day being 2003, a younger Trump reportedly assisted Marjorie Harris – a close personal friend of the Rev Al Sharpton – to obtain a luxury sublease in a Trump building without undergoing a standard credit check. Harris’s financials were not necessarily robust, but at the time Trump was focused on keeping Sharpton happy.In a hyper-transactional world, tuition and cheap housing for the Weisselberg clan were rewards for years of service and loyalty. There’s a reason Weisselberg is known as Trump’s soldier. He is no Michael Cohen. Rather, Weisselberg is a limelight-avoiding accountant who has so far refused to cooperate with prosecutors.Yet with Weisselberg taking one for the team, the spirit of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort lives on. And we know how that worked out – both men received presidential pardons.But this time Trump is out of office and the charges stem from purported violations of New York’s penal law, not the US code. Weisselberg was released on his own recognizance. The guy is no menace to society.As for the midterms, the indictment won’t hurt the Republican party’s chances. Team Trump and his party will be able to claim “witch-hunt” with a modicum of credibility. All those subpoenas and document productions have yielded little. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, may even want to put his presidential ambitions on hold until 2028.A year ago, the US supreme court rejected Trump’s contention that he was immune from investigation simply because he lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Writing for a seven-person majority, Chief Justice John Roberts opined: “No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, put things more succinctly in a concurrence joined by Justice Gorsuch, another Trump appointee: “In our system of government, as this court has often stated, no one is above the law. That principle applies, of course, to a president.”In hindsight, it all sounds a tad overblown. The only member of the Trump Organization facing criminal charges is Weisselberg. Looking back, Weisselberg must be asking: was it worth it? After he was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, we can only guess his answer. Still, don’t bet on him flipping. And as trials go, this one is looking mesmerizingly dull.
      Lloyd Green was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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      in US Politics

      Trump Organization and financial chief charged in a tax-related investigation

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      The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have been charged in a tax-related investigation, marking the first criminal charges against the former president’s company since prosecutors began investigating it three years ago, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.Multiple news outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post reported the indictment on Wednesday evening, citing sources familiar with the matter.The move marks the latest stage of an escalating battle between New York prosecutors and the former president. The charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg remained sealed Wednesday night, but were expected to involve alleged tax violations related to benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including use of apartments, cars and school tuition, people familiar with the case said.While no charges are expected to be brought against Trump personally the charges mark an extraordinary turning point for the former president and more are likely to follow. New York prosecutors are still investigating allegations of “hush money” paid to women who say they had sexual relations with Trump, and claims of real-estate price manipulation.The charges are a severe blow to the Trump Organization, which may now find it more difficult to raise money as the case continues. They also pose a challenge to Trump’s apparent political ambitions. The former president has begun a series of campaign style rallies and is positioning himself for another run at the presidency in 2024.Prosecutors have been pressing Weisselberg, 73, to cooperate with their investigations but with little success so far.No one other than Trump has such a thorough knowledge of the Trump Organization. “They are like Batman and Robin,” Jennifer Weisselberg, ex-wife of Allen Weisselberg’s son Barry told the New York Times. Jennifer Weisselberg has aided Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance investigation into Trump’s business after a contentious divorce, supplying hundreds of pages of tax documents.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, testified before Congress in 2019 that Weisselberg helped orchestrate a cover-up to reimburse him for a $130,000 payment made to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has claimed she had sex with Trump.Cohen also testified that he and Weisselberg concocted phoney valuations of Trump’s real estate holdings to devalue assets for tax purposes while inflating them for loan agreements.Vance and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, are investigating both those allegations.A grand jury was recently empaneled to weigh evidence, and James said she was assigning two of her lawyers to work with Vance on the criminal inquiry while she continues a civil investigation of Trump.The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Trump had blasted the investigation in a statement Monday, deriding Vance’s office as “rude, nasty, and totally biased”.Trump Organization lawyers met virtually with Manhattan prosecutors last week in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade them from charging the company. Prosecutors gave the lawyers a Monday deadline to make the case that criminal charges shouldn’t be filed.Ron Fischetti, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the AP this week that there was no indication Trump himself was included in the first batch of charges.“There is no indictment coming down this week against the former president,” Fischetti said. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet completely.”Weisselberg, a loyal lieutenant to Trump and his real estate-developer father, Fred, came under scrutiny, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at little or no cost.Prosecutors investigating untaxed benefits to Trump executives have also been looking at Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security. However, a lawyer for the Calamaris said Wednesday that he didn’t expect them to be charged.“Although the DA’s investigation obviously is ongoing, I do not expect charges to be filed against either of my clients at this time,” said the lawyer, Nicholas Gravante.The company and Weisselberg were expected to make their first court appearance Thursday. More