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This briefing will focused on both the achievements and challenges in advancing the War on Poverty’s goals and discuss strategies for eliminating economic and racial injustices.

 

 

By Nat Baldino

Public comments submitted by CLASP in response to U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy’s July 30, 2024 hearing entitled “Banning Noncompete Agreements: Benefits for Workers, Businesses, and the Economy.”

On behalf of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), I submit these comments in support of upholding the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) noncompete ban. We applaud the Subcommittee on Economic Policy’s decision to hold a hearing investigating how the FTC’s noncompete ban will benefit workers, businesses, and the economy. CLASP is a national, nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing anti-poverty policy solutions that disrupt structural and systemic racism and sexism and remove barriers blocking people from economic security and opportunity. With deep expertise in a wide range of programs and policy ideas and over 50 years of history, CLASP works to amplify the voices of directly-impacted workers and families and help public officials design and implement effective programs.

CLASP seeks to improve the quality of jobs for low-income workers, especially workers of color, women, immigrants, and youth. We work with policymakers to raise wages, increase access to benefits, implement and enforce new and existing labor standards and ensure workers can strengthen their voice through collective bargaining. Quality jobs enable workers to balance their work, school, and family responsibilities – promoting economic stability and security.

The FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements is a crucial part of a suite of policies needed to improve job quality and level the playing field for workers. Noncompete agreements are widely used clauses in employment contracts that limit workers’ ability to work for “competitor” companies, including starting their own business, for a specific amount of time or within a specific geography. In our current labor market, noncompete agreements are frequently used to essentially trap workers in their current employment, limiting economic mobility by preventing workers from seeking competitive employment opportunities. Noncompetes drive down wages, stifle competition, and allow employers to keep job quality low. The FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements combats this common practice by barring employers from creating new noncompete agreements and rendering the vast majority of noncompetes null and void and is therefore essential to improving job quality.

Noncompetes are pervasive in low-quality jobs

There is a common misconception that noncompete agreements are reserved for executive-level employees to protect “trade secrets.” In reality, noncompetes are pervasive, spanning every conceivable industry and job level. In fact, one in five workers – an estimated 30 million workers – are subject to noncompete agreements. Among these, the modal worker is an hourly worker earning a median wage of $14.2 Few if any of these workers have access to information that is not widely known. In many cases, signing a noncompete comes as a condition of employment. Less than 10 percent of workers negotiate their noncompete agreements, and a whopping 93 percent of workers sign them anyway in order to secure their jobs. Many workers are only given this agreement after they’ve already accepted employment; others are asked to sign non-competes during their onboarding process, often within a mountain of paperwork and rushed through signing so that they’re not even aware of the way in which they are binding themselves to their employer.

Noncompetes disproportionately keep job quality low for women and workers of color

Workers most likely to sign a noncompete agreement are those already in low-quality, low-wage jobs. Due to occupational segregation, women, workers of color, immigrant workers, and LGBT workers are overrepresented in such positions. This means that workers already impacted by systems of power are further marginalized by being coerced into signing agreements that limit their bargaining power. Marginalized workers are overrepresented in low-paying industries like customer service, hospitality, and retail – industries that are also the least likely to be unionized and therefore have the power to bargain for better working conditions. Being already at a disadvantage from low pay, around 17 percent of workers in these industries are then subject to non-compete agreements.

Non-competes are a further barrier to racial and gender equity for workers because of the way in which they promote low job quality and prevent competition. When a worker is bound to a noncompete agreement, they cannot leave their job for one with better pay or working conditions. This allows employers to keep job quality and pay low without fear of competition. The prevalence of noncompetes doesn’t just depress wages for workers with noncompetes – they instead have a chilling effect that depress all wages. Noncompetes lead to a stagnant economy for both workers and businesses: with workers unable to move freely in the labor market and smaller and newer companies unable to compete against larger corporations and noncompetes, economic dynamism is stifled, and wages stagnate.

In a job market that already lacks strong worker protections against retaliation, workplace danger, and discrimination, the inability to move to a better-quality workplace dramatically increases the likelihood that women and workers of color will be forced to remain in dangerous or abusive workplaces with poor pay and poor working conditions, perpetuating the cycle of occupational segregation. Noncompete clauses are also detrimental to worker power. When workers know that they cannot find work within their industry outside of their employer, they are less likely to negotiate better wages or working conditions either individually or within a collective bargaining effort. Women in states with strict enforcement of noncompetes are less likely than men to leave their jobs, and women and women of color are less likely to negotiate their non-compete clauses.

Banning noncompetes has already been successful, but state policy is not enough

Researchers have estimated that banning noncompetes nationwide would close racial and gender wage gaps by 3.69 percent. Evidence from state-implemented noncompete bans bears this out. A study of Oregon’s noncompete ban found that hourly wages increased by 2 to 3 percent on average. Several states have implemented either bans or limits on noncompetes. States such as Illinois, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine all prohibit noncompetes for workers paid “low wages,” with different definitions of what counts as a low wage for each state. Other states have attempted to put guardrails on noncompetes by industry, such as New Mexico within their healthcare industry, or Hawaii’s tech industry. Massachusetts has limited noncompetes to a duration of one year. All of these state policies have shown to benefit workers not only in those states, but in border states as well.

Yet, state programs are not enough. Even within states with broad noncompete bans, like the newly enacted Minnesota noncompete ban, not all workers are covered. In Minnesota, the law only prohibits the enforcement of noncompetes entered into after July 2023, leaving nearly 300,000 Minnesota workers trapped in their noncompetes. Relying on a patchwork of state programs creates incomplete protections for workers. Workers should not merely hope to have a fair employer or live in a state with a noncompete policy that can apply to them. All workers should have the ability to move freely within their industry, seeking jobs with better pay, better working conditions, and more dignity and respect at work.

The FTC’s ban on noncompetes is a much-needed rule to increase worker mobility, economic dynamism, and to decrease the gender and racial wealth gap. We thank you for this opportunity to submit this written statement for the record. If you have any questions regarding this topic, please feel free to contact Nat Baldino, Policy Analyst with the Education, Labor and Worker Justice Team at CLASP.

>>Read full comments and references.

 

 

Washington, D.C., June 13, 2024—The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) today announced that Indivar (Indi) Dutta-Gupta, who has led the antipoverty nonprofit organization as president and executive director since 2022, will step down on June 14th for personal reasons.

“Serving as CLASP’s president and executive director over the last two years has given me an incredible opportunity to continue to advocate for and deepen my lifelong commitment to ending poverty and advancing racial and gender justice,” said Dutta-Gupta. “I know that the world will always be better because of CLASP’s work, talented staff, and committed Board.”

“The Board of Trustees and I respect Indi’s decision to step down and appreciate his dedication to the organization,” said CLASP Board Chair David Hansell. “Indi has represented CLASP exceedingly well by helping shape the public narrative on poverty and social justice before Congress, in the media, with funders, among our allies, and in many other ways.”

Under Dutta-Gupta’s leadership, CLASP raised the visibility of critical antipoverty policy solutions and enhanced the organization’s profile and commitment to ending poverty and advancing racial, economic, and social justice. Through multiple Congressional testimonies and national media appearances, Dutta-Gupta deepened lawmakers’ and the public’s understanding of key policy strategies to reduce poverty and advance racial and economic justice, including a fully refundable and inclusive child tax credit.

Over the past two years, CLASP exercised its influence with the Biden Administration to take executive actions on key policy priorities, including child care affordability and immigration policy that prioritizes family unity. Dutta-Gupta also helped to establish new partnerships with peers and allies and engage in new coalitions—including to extend CLASP’s tax policy and gender justice work—and led work to diversify CLASP’s Board of Trustees.

The CLASP Board of Trustees has named Olivia Golden as interim executive director. She will return to CLASP on July 15th and has agreed to step into the interim role until at least the end of the year.

Golden served as CLASP’s executive director for nearly a decade before Dutta-Gupta joined the organization. She is a former assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and brings over four decades of experience developing policies to improve the lives of families with low incomes.

During the four-week transition between Indi’s departure and Olivia’s arrival, CLASP Chief of Staff Patrick Corvington will serve as acting interim executive director.

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, an ambitious package of social welfare legislation introduced under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Today, as we continue the fight to end poverty, we face both long-standing and more recent structural, systemic, political, and economic challenges that impede this urgent goal.

Our nation has made meaningful gains in the last few decades to bring economic security and opportunity to millions. However, the reality is clear—we remain far from achieving the equitable, inclusionary, and transformative changes needed to end poverty and advance a multiracial democracy. In 2023, CLASP redoubled our strategic advocacy, implementation and technical assistance, research and analysis, and narrative change work at the national, state, and local levels.

Our 2023 Impact Report highlights just some of the ways CLASP has worked to limit the harm of poverty in America through a multitude of strategies and collaborations. The COVID public health emergency may be behind us, but the profound economic insecurity experienced every day by millions of children, working people, families, and communities of color is an epidemic that requires immediate attention with substantial public investments.

I often say that poverty is a choice—one made by policymakers, not by people who experience it. CLASP offers policymakers the information, ideas, insights, and inspiration to shrink poverty and help move our country toward equity, justice, and inclusive democracy.

Thank you for being a partner in our mission and vision for a world where children, families, youth and young adults, immigrants, and individuals across all lived experiences and identities can live a healthy, economically secure, and civically engaged life now and for generations to come.

Indi Dutta-Gupta

President and Executive Director

>> Download the full report

The federal budget plays a critical role in our government. It determines how much money the government can spend and where resources are allocated. Watch SEAP, CLASP, CPCC, and ProsperUS host a webinar discussing appropriations, federal-state-local budget connections, and the impact on essential programs, featuring Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, Rricha deCant of CLASP, Catherine Rowland of CPCC.

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By the CLASP Income & Work Supports Team

5 min read.

The Income & Work Supports team at CLASP works to advance public benefits justice, and Black History Month has us thinking about the history of economic injustice in this country. The economic injustices caused by slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and continued racism profoundly affect Black families today. Reminder: the time in America’s history without slavery or legalized segregation is relatively short.

Every time I see this “timeline” I want to fight. On sight. Several things are terribly wrong. And then someone tweets that it still makes great points. #StudyingSegregation pic.twitter.com/5qkSKEAZ1d

— Blair LM Kelley, PhD (@profblmkelley) May 2, 2021

To truly achieve racial economic justice, we need to be honest about the root causes and do the work: first, a comprehensive reparations strategy that accounts for the economic potential that has been stolen from Black Americans. We also need an anti-racist system of public benefits that truly cares for all people when they experience financial emergencies and supports long-lasting economic security. Just as anti-poverty efforts aim to end or remake structures, systems, and institutions that help create and sustain poverty, anti-poverty efforts that are also anti-racist aim to remake those structures, systems, and institutions that contribute to poverty and racial injustices alike. Read on to better understand how programs have racist foundations and inequitable impact, and what can be done to reverse that legacy.

Stereotypes and false narratives, in particular about Black women, have been used to justify forced labor, bolster white supremacy, and encourage public support of substantial cuts to public benefits programs. Similar false narratives have been wrongly used to justify the exclusion of other populations, including formerly incarcerated people, immigrants, and students. We need to see policy decisions on a federal level that remove exclusions and diversionary methods which discourage people from applying to public benefits.

For immigrants, accessing public benefits can be particularly fraught. Federal restrictions and fear of immigration complications mean that Black immigrants face additional hurdles despite their high rates of participation in the labor force. Historical context shows that anti-poverty policy in America is intertwined with anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and other forms of racism.

Housing

The United States’s first housing programs excluded most Black people from federally-backed loans that made homeownership more affordable, which is a key reason why the racial wealth and homeownership gaps are so wide today. These programs also created segregated public housing. Black people are 30 percent less likely to be able to afford a home than white people, relegating over half of Black people to the rental market. One-third of Black renters spend more than 50 percent of their incomes on rent.

Racial disparities in homeownership rates and housing insecurity are born from decades of the federal and local governments failing to invest in Black homes and neighborhoods, or, in the worst cases, actively sabotaging or demolishing them. As the Black Panthers wrote: “[…] if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing & the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.”

We can’t keep depending on the private rental market to supply enough affordable housing. In fiscal year 2025 appropriations, Congress must prioritize a reinvestment in public housing and begin to build a federal infrastructure to support social housing.

Cash Assistance and Tax Credits

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) provides monthly cash assistance to families with very low incomes. TANF can help parents afford essentials like food and diapers. But many of the program’s eligibility requirements are rooted in racist stereotypes. TANF work requirements are rooted in paternalistic, anti-Black stereotypes about people living in poverty needing to be forced to work. State and federal lawmakers should remove the program’s work requirements to better promote access and equity. The origins of work requirements hark back to slavery and the white backlash to Reconstruction. It is thus unsurprising that research shows that Black TANF participants are more likely to be sanctioned than white participants. The size of TANF monthly benefits vary on a state-by-state basis, and Black children are more likely to live in the states that provide the lowest benefits. In all states, TANF benefits are not enough to meet a family’s monthly expenses.

Nineteen million kids don’t get the full Child Tax Credit (CTC) because their parents earn too little. Due to factors like the wage gap and job discrimination, Black children are more likely to be among those 19 million children. Congress must fix this inequity by making the CTC fully refundable. A fully inclusive and equitable CTCt that is available to families with little to no earnings would reduce child poverty and promote race equity. CLASP will continue advocating for expansions to the CTC to make it more inclusive.

Health Care

Medicaid is a vital program for more than 80 million people. This is especially true for the 60% of Black children insured by Medicaid. Without Medicaid, millions of children – disproportionately children of color – wouldn’t have access to affordable health care, well-child visits, routine immunizations, and other wellness needs. Medicaid is absolutely essential to children’s well-being in America. But it’s also a program often fraught with administrative burdens, cumbersome paperwork, and judgment. Many of these obstacles to enrollment are rooted in systemic racism that has been embedded in Medicaid throughout the program’s history.

Progress is being made, but there’s still work to do. Ultimately, achieving health equity depends in large part on equitable access to health insurance. We must work toward everyone having access to health care without unnecessary administrative burdens and stigma attached.

Food

Public benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provide critical resources and support for families with low incomes. Yet even as public benefit programs mitigate the hardships caused by economic and social exclusion, they also reinforce the underlying structures of oppression. Adequate access to food is economic and racial justice. People of color often live in neighborhoods impacted by food apartheid, where access to healthy and affordable food is limited. Grocery store chains are less likely to invest in Black communities.

The Way Forward

Our team is ready to return to the bold approach that civil rights leaders called for. We are working to make public benefits more equitable and effective, but we are also calling for policies like guaranteed income and the Child Tax Credit, which had an enormous impact on poverty in recent years. We’re also fighting to make programs like SNAP and Medicaid anti-racist. We envision a future with true economic justice for all–where everyone’s basic needs are abundantly met and everyone has the opportunities and resources to flourish. We envision a system of public benefits that is accessible, equitable, reparative, responsive, easy-to-navigate, and co-created with directly impacted people.

As we reimagine public benefits, we must center restitution, repair, trust, dignity, and equity. We will continue this work at CLASP to make public benefit programs anti-racist, while also pushing forward the larger goal of economic justice, which includes meaningful reparations for past and ongoing racial injustice.

By Priya Pandey

3 min read.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin and is particularly dangerous for the brain development of infants and young children. Health experts agree that any amount of lead exposure is unsafe for human health. Yet more than nine million homes in the United States still receive their water through lead service lines. In November 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new rule that mandates that every lead pipe in America be replaced. This new proposal represents the culmination of a tireless half-century of advocacy to get the EPA to meaningfully address the crisis of lead-contaminated drinking water. The Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) was first introduced in 1991 in response to an amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974. The LCR was created to reduce lead levels in tap water caused by corrosion and to prohibit new installations and sales of lead pipes for drinking water use, but it didn’t  require pipes to be replaced. It is abundantly clear that the public has not been adequately served and protected by these regulations,  from Flint, Michigan, to Newark, New Jersey. 

Replacing lead pipes is an equity issue, as lead exposure does not impact all households evenly. In 2021 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study indicating that non-Hispanic Black children were at particular risk, as well as children living in areas with higher-than-average poverty rates. But lead pipes remain disproportionately concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color, in part due to decades of federal home ownership policies that have concentrated families of color in low-income communities. People in these communities are more likely to live in older housing where lead pipelines can still be found. For example, a 2020 Illinois study found that 65 percent of Black residents lived in areas that contained 94 percent of the state’s lead service lines, while only 30 percent of white residents lived in those communities. Unlike their higher-income counterparts, residents in these communities cannot afford to replace the lines themselves; and in most places, landlords are not required to replace lead service lines or even notify renters about them. These factors have combined to create lasting disproportionate exposures to environmental health hazards for families with low incomes and people of color.  

The federal government has attempted to improve the country’s clean drinking water infrastructure by providing funds directly to state governments through programs such as the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. However, the program has fallen short. Systemic racism and disinvestment haves worsened environmental crises in certain communities, and many communities have had to rely on local sources of revenue to fund improvements in infrastructure. Federal programs and state governments have also failed to distribute funds equitably, with studies showing that white communities are more likely to receive federal funding than communities of color. In Jackson, Mississippi, a majority Black city, the water system collapsed as a result of freezing temperatures, leaving more than 150,000 residents without access to clean water. The state, which had received more than $75 million in federal funds for water projects, did not disburse those funds to localities like Jackson.    

The proposed upgrades to the LCR represent a major advancement in ensuring that households across the country have access to safe and clean drinking water and are protected from lead contamination by requiring water systems to replace all lead service pipes within the next 10 years. The proposal will also ban partial replacements of lead service lines, improve lead contamination testing methods, mandate reporting on the inventory of lead pipelines from water management systems, and include requirements for water utility companies to reach out to customers to inform them of potential contamination and provide them with a filter. This work will be primarily funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $50 billion to support upgrades to the nation’s drinking water and wastewater  infrastructure, including $15 billion dedicated to lead service line replacement.  

Unfortunately, the proposed rule will allow cities with more than 100,000 lead service lines to complete the replacements over a longer period of time. In a city like Chicago, it could potentially take up to 50 years to complete all of the replacements. This means that the problems associated with lead pipes will  persist across generations in communities that have already been dealing with the consequences of lead contamination in their water. In addition, the rule doesn’t require that water management systems cover the cost of the lead pipe replacement. This is particularly concerning considering that many low- and middle-income households are unable to afford the full cost, and water systems are not held responsible for replacing pipes if the homeowner is unable or unwilling to pay.  As a result, this new rule may only benefit wealthier households.   

It is clear that there is much room for improvement to ensure that the rule is enforced in an equitable and timely manner. Therefore, CLASP will be submitting comments on the rule, asking the EPA to mandate that water systems pay for the pipe replacement so communities that have long been  affected by this environmental racism can finally see some relief. We urge others who care about racial and economic justice to join us in commenting by February 5.   

This statement can be attributed to Indivar Dutta-Gupta, president and executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy.

Washington DC, January 16, 2024—Given the unconscionable spike in child poverty rates after the end of the powerful enhanced Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021, CLASP supports the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024. This bipartisan tax proposal makes a meaningful step toward a fully refundable and inclusive CTC.

While the bill’s version of the CTC falls short of what children deserve, and what Congress correctly enacted for 2021, it will significantly reduce poverty and racial inequality compared to current law. About 19 million children don’t currently receive the credit’s maximum benefit because their parents’ earnings are too low. Our partners at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimate that the bill would help 80 percent—or roughly 16 million—of those children. The changes would also promote racial equity, given that the children who don’t receive the full credit are disproportionately Black and brown. Racial inequities like those related to basic living standards for children continue to undermine our nation’s potential, costing many communities of color and our nation dearly.

CBPP estimates that in the policy’s first year, 400,000 children would escape poverty and an additional 3 million in poor households would have their families’ incomes raised.

CLASP continues to urge Congress to enact a fully equitable CTC that is even stronger than the 2021 credit, with improvements such as including children with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, as I testified in July. This compromise is a down payment toward a fully refundable and inclusive CTC, one that our nation urgently needs. We’ve turned our back on millions of children who are again experiencing poverty. Passing this bill will position advocates for children and families well to fight for a truly just and evidence-based credit in 2025 when many of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act expire.

 

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

With Indi Dutta-Gupta,

CLASP Executive Director, Indi Dutta-Gupta, will speak at the Society for Social Work and Research to discuss current events as they relate to social work research.

>>Find out more

By Alisha Saxena

A recent survey conducted by Data for Progress and CLASP paints a dire picture of the affordable child care landscape. This crisis has been years in the making; while the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is the primary source of federal funding for child care in the United States, CCDF doesn’t have enough funding to reach all families with low incomes that could benefit from assistance. In fact, when all sources of funding, including CCDF, are considered, only 1 in 6 potentially eligible children receive assistance due to inadequate resources. This lack of financial support is coupled with a child care workforce crisis as providers leave the field for better-paying and less-stressful work. CCDF program data show a 5 percent decrease in the number of providers who participated in the child care assistance program between Fiscal Year (FY)19 and FY20. This comes on top of years of prior decline in participating providers, making finding affordable care even more challenging.

New results from the survey conducted by Data for Progress in collaboration with CLASP demonstrate the employment and financial challenges that parents face due to inaccessible child care.

Specific to the impact of child care on parents’ ability to work, CLASP and DFP found that:

These challenges further exacerbate longstanding and systemic racial inequities in accessing care, along with income inequality and child development outcomes. Black and Hispanic families were most likely to report inadequate access to child care during the pandemic, but these inequities existed long before then due to a combination of policies and systems designed to exclude certain populations from accessing care, including white supremacist views of who “deserved” care.

Today, Hispanic and American Indian Alaska Native communities disproportionately live in areas with a low supply of licensed child care. Child care instability is most common among families with low incomes. Given that cost is the primary barrier to families accessing child care, rising costs disproportionately limit access and deepen income inequality for communities of color. A lack of access to child care, along with changes in child care arrangements, can negatively impact child development. Thus, child care affordability and accessibility are crucial for ensuring equity in participation and outcomes.

The need for additional investment is urgent. The federal government must respond to the White House’s request and invest at least $16 billion to maintain the progress made with relief funding and to allow states to better support children and families. This investment will avoid disruptions in care and prevent further inequities for many communities. Existing funding is not enough to sustain the progress made with child care relief investments over the last three years, and congressional inaction will only worsen both the rising costs and shrinking supply of child care.