Tag Archives: household budgets

France dangles wealth tax review as ‘yellow vest’ anger persists

A protester wearing a yellow vest, the symbol of a French drivers' protest against higher diesel fuel prices, holds a flag near burning debris at the approach to the A2 Paris-Brussels Motorway, in Fontaine-Notre-Dame, France, December 4, 2018. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

By Sudip Kar-Gupta and Richard Lough

PARIS (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron could amend a wealth tax that critics say goes too easy on the rich, his government indicated on Wednesday, a day after suspending further fuel-tax hikes in the face of protests across France over living costs.

The Macron administration is struggling to defuse the anger driving the “yellow vest” protests, as it reels from the worst riots seen in central Paris in five decades last Saturday.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said all tax-related policies needed to be periodically evaluated and, if deemed not to be working, should be changed. He said the wealth tax could be reassessed in the autumn of 2019.

“If a measure that we have taken, which is costing the public money, turns out not to be working, if it’s not going well, we’re not stupid – we would change it,” Griveaux told RTL radio.

The unrest over the squeeze on household budgets comes as OECD data showed that France has become the most highly taxed country in the developed world, surpassing even high-tax Denmark.

Griveaux later told a weekly news conference that Macron had called on all political parties, trade unions and business leaders to press the need for calm.

Student protests and planned trade union strikes in the energy and port sectors next week underscored the risk of contagion.

A Macron aide denied that any eventual revision of the wealth tax would represent a major climb-down by Macron, a pro-business former investment banker, adding that the president remained committed to his reform drive.

Griveaux defended Macron’s decision last year to narrow the wealth tax – known in France as “ISF” – to a tax on real estate assets, rather than all of an individual’s worldwide assets, from jewelry to yachts to investments, over the value of 1.3 million euros ($1.5 million).

Those changes earned Macron the label “president of the rich” among the hard-pressed middle-class voters and blue-collar workers who criticize the president for pursuing policies that favor the wealthy and do nothing to help the poor.

Griveaux said the wealth tax reform had not been “a gift to the rich” and was aimed at encouraging wealthy individuals to invest more in France.

“This money was to be invested in our SMEs for them to develop, innovate and hire. If that is not the case … then we can reopen it for discussion.”

U-TURN

The “yellow vest” movement – so-called because of the high-vis jackets worn by protesters – began with the aim of highlighting the squeeze on household budgets caused by fuel taxes but morphed into a broader, sometimes-violent rebellion against 40-year-old Macron.

His administration’s shift on fuel tax came after rioters ran amok in central Paris, torching cars, looting boutiques vandalizing cafes and private residences and cafes in affluent neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the six-month suspension to the carbon tax would be used to examine other measures to bolster household spending power.

It marked the first major U-turn by Macron in his 18-months in office, at a time polls show that barely one in five French people think he is doing a good job.

U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to mock Macron over the policy shift, which could make it harder for France to meet its CO2 emissions reduction target, a core element of the Paris climate agreement of 2015.

“I am glad that my friend @EmmanuelMacron and the protestors in Paris have agreed with the conclusion I reached two years ago,” Trump tweeted late on Tuesday, as U.N. climate talks take place in Poland.

“The Paris Agreement is fatally flawed because it raises the price of energy for responsible countries while whitewashing some of the worst polluters.”

Adding to Macron’s difficulties, college students are agitating and the hardline CGT trade union on Wednesday called for strikes in the energy industry and at ports on Dec. 13.

“We too want a freeze on the planned closures of coal plants,” the CGT union said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Total said a rising number of its filling stations were running dry as a result of “yellow vest” roadblocks.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Richard Lough and Sophie Louet; Writing by Luke Baker and Richard Lough; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alison Williams)

Not so fast: U.S. restaurant workers seek ban on surprise scheduling

McDonald's employee Ashley Bruce poses in front of the restaurant where she works in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The text message came as Flavia Cabral walked to a McDonald’s restaurant in Manhattan for her 6 p.m. shift on a May evening. It was from her manager. Business was slow and she was not needed.

Cabral said she was not too surprised. Her work hours fluctuate almost weekly, though losing an entire shift at the last minute happens only once every few months. This time the canceled shift took a $63 bite out of her average $350 gross weekly earnings from two part-time jobs.

“Every week you’re guessing how much money you’re going to get and how many days you’re going to work,” said Cabral, 53, who has been employed at McDonald’s for four years.But a measure of relief is coming for Cabral and 65,000 other New York City fast-food workers whose schedules and incomes often change with little or no notice.

New York recently became the largest U.S. city to require fast-food restaurants to schedule workers at least two weeks in advance, or pay them extra for changes.

The law, which the restaurant industry vigorously opposed, also requires employers to allow 11-hour breaks between shifts, offer part-time staff additional work before hiring new employees, and pay retail workers to be “on call.” It takes effect late this year.

McDonald’s Corp did not respond to a request for comment.

Nationwide, the issue of scheduling is becoming a new battleground in the fight to boost living standards for low-paid workers, waged largely by the “Fight for $15” movement. The five-year-old, union-backed initiative has already helped convince many jurisdictions, including New York state, to raise minimum wages.

In Oregon, a bill that would set regular scheduling for workers at large food service, hospitality and retail companies is awaiting the governor’s signature. Similar bills are pending in five other states.

Not only do fluctuating schedules wreak havoc with tight household budgets, they make it difficult to make appointments, arrange child care and plan family time, workers point out.

The restaurant industry vigorously opposed the New York City law. Combined with higher minimum wages, scheduling requirements will eventually cripple some fast-food outlets, which mostly operate on thin profit margins of 1.5 to 3 percent, it says.

With a business model based on offering workers entry-level opportunities, not living wages, fast-food restaurants need flexible scheduling to survive, said industry advocate Louis Meyer, who runs fast-food operations at New Jersey-based Briad Group.

“There’s no way you can stay in business,” said Meyer, whose company employs 1,000 workers at about two dozen franchised Wendy’s and TGI Friday’s in New York. “It’s like having a disease. It’s going to get you sooner or later.”

Workers at McDonald’s, whose restaurants are mostly franchised, said weekly schedules are usually posted a day or two before they take effect. Still, they say they are often told at the last minute not to come to work or to punch out early.

“You could only have been on the clock for two hours and they’ll tell you to go home,” said Ashley Bruce, 22, who has worked for four years at a McDonald’s on Chicago’s South Side. The Chicago City Council is considering a scheduling bill that would cover 450,000 hourly workers.

Variable scheduling began cropping up in the 1970s as companies sought to maximize profits to better attract investors, according to University of Chicago Associate Professor Susan Lambert, who studies scheduling practices.

“They’re really looking at those labor budgets,” she said. “So, that puts enormous pressure on managers to really keep close track of how many hours you’re using and how sales are going.”

Some use sophisticated “workforce optimization systems” to analyze sales, weather and other factors to determine how few workers they need to remain profitable at a given moment, Lambert said.

Although fluctuating schedules affect mostly lower paid workers, it is a management strategy that is starting to affect higher paid jobs as well, as companies seek to transfer the risk of unsteady revenue to their employees.

The New York City scheduling law was passed with strong support from unions, including Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, even though almost all fast-food workers are not unionized.

But Local 32BJ President Hector Figueroa said winning scheduling rights for fast-food workers also helps his union’s 90,000 building service workers.

“Our members enjoy these rights under the contract,” he said. “But if other workers don’t enjoy them, it’s just a matter of time for an employer in a building or in a cleaning company to say, ‘Wait a minute, why do you guys need advance notice of scheduling?'”

 

 

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)