Economic Opportunity Institute

In The News | 2007 and prior

NJ family-leave bill: Compassion vs. cost

12.31.2007 | Philadelphia Inquirer | Advocates of New Jersey legislation that would provide paid family leave in such situations say there should be no regrets: Serrano should have had that time. Nice sentiment, say opponents, but not so fast. | Read

Minimum wage: Washington's $8.07/hour will be highest in U.S.

12.29.2007 | Associated Press | Jessica Barragan recently took a minimum wage job at Wendy's to help make ends meet. The single mother already works one job at the Burger Ranch in Yakima, but needed more money to provide for her three young sons. "It's hard to support them on minimum wage," she said. "It would be nice just to have help with the extras." | Read

Lawmaker says tax needed to fund family leave act

12.26.2007 | Tri-City Herald | However the state chooses to pay for its new paid family leave benefit, it ought to be from a dedicated fund and possibly approved by voters, state Sen. Karen Keiser told the Herald editorial board last week. | Read

Voters may settle family leave

12.26.2007 | The Olympian | A state lawmaker says she is open to sending a tax package to voters that would create a long-term means to pay for the state's new paid-family leave program. | Read

WSU program gets nearly $1 million from Gates Foundation

12.19.2007 | Tri-City Herald | The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $967,000 grant to expand a project teaching basic skills to Spanish-speaking child care providers. The idea is to give Spanish-speaking child care providers solid foundations in reading, writing and comprehension in their native language, then move on to teaching them English as a second language. The result is providers who are better able to teach children the skills they'll need when they start school. | Read

WVU professor: U.S. behind in protecting work-life balance

12.11.2007 | West Virginia University | The United States lags behind other developed countries in protecting workers in areas such as family leave, and the situation will only become more acute as workers care for their aging baby boomer parents and their own children, says a West Virginia University professor in a recently published book. | Read

Time to Care Major Factor in Gaps at School

12.09.2007 | New York Times | A new study by the Educational Testing Service - which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT, concludes that an awful lot of low test scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools...like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave. | Read

Is Family Leave Act Too Soft or Too Tough? Workers, Employers Face Off Over How to Handle FMLA

11.27.2007 | Wall Street Journal | There's a domestic squabble brewing over the Family and Medical Leave Act. Considered by its advocates to be an important protection for those trying to balance family and work, the act allows workers to take as many as 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or a sick child, spouse or parent, or to recuperate from their own serious medical condition -- without fear of losing their job. Many say it helps avoid costly nursing-home or other institutional stays and lowers turnover costs by helping to retain workers. As many as 13 million workers took FMLA leave in 2005, according to the Department of Labor, the latest data available. | Read

Lawmaker says tax needed to fund family leave act

Early Learning Center Gives Kids, Parents a Calm Start

11.18.2007 | Everett Herald | One single mother hurries from the bus stop pushing a stroller in the rain. Other parents run in from distant parking lots around Everett Community College, lugging heavy car seats to be picked up by relatives later in the day. Many are tired, schlepping backpacks and rushing to get to class. Sometimes their kids are crying. But in the lobby of the Everett Community College Early Learning Center, there is a warm greeting from staff and morning rituals that offer parents and children a calm second start to the day. | Read

Day care can mean a degree

11.16.2007 | Tacoma News Tribune | More local colleges are building or expanding facilities to meet demand for on-campus child care. For many students, it makes getting an education possible. | Read

WSU study shows minimum wage hike does little to harm economy

11.15.2007 | Associated Press | The state's controversial law calling for an automatic review of the minimum wage each year does little to harm business and benefits the vast majority of low-paid workers, a new study by Washington State University says. | Read

Task Force Recommends General Fund for Family Leave Insurance Start-Up

11.15.2007 | The Olympian | Money to pay for Washington's fledgling paid family leave program will have to come from the state's general fund, a task force decided Wednesday. | Read

Dramatic Savings When Parents Care for Kids' Illnesses

11.07.2007 | UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Health Care Institute | New research proves that a "dose" of hands-on health care training can transform parents' abilities to care for common childhood ailments at home -- and save Medicaid millions of dollars annually. | Read

The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It

03.23.2006 | New York Times Review of Books | Medical costs are once again rising rapidly, forcing health care back into political prominence. Indeed, the problem of medical costs is so pervasive that it underlies three quite different policy crises. First is the increasingly rapid unraveling of employer- based health insurance. Second is the plight of Medicaid, an increasingly crucial program that is under both fiscal and political attack. Third is the long-term problem of the federal government's solvency, which is, as we'll explain, largely a problem of health care costs. | Read

More companies ending promises for retirement

01.09.2006 | New York Times | The death knell for the traditional company pension has been tolling for some time now. Companies in ailing industries like steel, airlines and auto parts have thrown themselves into bankruptcy and turned over their ruined pension plans to the federal government. Now, with the recent announcements of pension freezes by some of the cream of corporate America - Verizon, Lockheed Martin, Motorola and, just last week, I.B.M. - the bell is tolling even louder. | Read

Moms push for family leave bill but businesses oppose it

03.28.2005 | Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Advocates of a proposal went before state lawmakers to testify in favor of providing five weeks of paid time off for Washington workers caring for new babies or sick relatives. But business owners say the family leave bill would jeopardize their survival -- and that's left the measure in political jeopardy. | Read

Democrats press for 5 weeks of family leave with pay

02.02.2005 | Seattle Times | Democrats in the state Legislature say they have their best chance in years to give Washington employees up to five weeks of paid family medical leave — and a guarantee that they would still have a job when they return. | Read

Real Work, a Paycheck, and Education Lead to Success for Welfare Parents

04.16.2002 | EOI | Washington's Community Jobs program to be showcased in Washington D.C., as Congress takes up welfare reform legislation. | Read

The Raging Wage Debate

04.15.2002 | Tacoma News Tribune | After working her entire career in the grocery industry, Linda Murdock suffered a triple whammy that would derail most people. She became pregnant, and during her seventh month of the pregnancy, she had a heart attack. | Read

Labor Day is a good time to celebrate statewide success of welfare reform

08.01.2000 | Tacoma News Tribune | As Americans, we share bedrock values of work and family. And the new welfare enables us to honor those values, by creating pathways to jobs and wage ladders, while ensuring some amount of family security. The Community Jobs program is one of the shining new examples of welfare reform. | Read

Welfare-to-work program called resounding success

09.27.2000 | Seattle Times | They are among the hardest to employ, single parents without a high-school diploma, unable to leave welfare because of drug abuse, domestic violence or physical disabilities. But under Community Jobs, a special welfare-to-work program, they are earning far more money than the thousands of welfare recipients being nudged off public assistance, according to a report released yesterday by the Economic Opportunity Institute, a nonpartisan public-policy institute. | Read

State Releases Community Jobs Evaluation

09.26.2000 | EOI | Successful program moves hard to employ people from welfare to work. | Read

Community Jobs and Welfare-to-Work Participants Move into Private Sector

05.04.2000 | EOI | Pierce County honors dozens of CJ and welfare-to-work participants. | Read

Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes

04.01.1999 | University of Chicago Chronicle | Cass Sunstein, known for his research on constitutional law, recently took a step in a new direction. His newest book, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, co-written with Princeton’s Stephen Holmes, explores their theory that all legally enforceable rights cost money. In an interview, Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, explains why this is so. | Read