Restaurant Workers, a Lost Decade, and a Regulation of the Day

Restaurant Workers

The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC) is a non-profit organization whose purported mission is to improve working condition for restaurant workers.

Labor Policy Counsel Vincent Vernuccio criticizes ROC’s methods.

“Instead of organizing workers, ROC seeks to intimidate restaurant owners into settlement agreements. According to Crain’s New York, ROC-NY has obtained $5 million in settlements from nine separate campaigns. As Crain’s describes it, a ROC campaign ‘often includes noisy and prolonged protests outside the eatery. Settling is often the less expensive option for restaurateurs mindful of their brand’s image and the cost of a long court fight.'”

Lost Decade

If President Obama is going to win the 2012 Presidential Election, he’ll have to show that he can prevent further economic decline.

Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray and Research Associate David Bier talks about how to avoid an American “lost decade.”

“Throughout the 1990s, Japan tried at least 10 fiscal stimulus programs and left interest rates below zero, while economic growth kept marching southward. None of this did anything other than ruin Japan’s fiscal health, taking the country from the best fiscal position in 1990 to annual deficits of 7 percent of gross domestic product and a national debt of 227 percent of GDP. Sound familiar? The president has vowed that his new pile of programs will be different. He has called for new publicly funded infrastructure projects, and yet that’s exactly what Japan tried in the 1990s, repeatedly on a massive scale ($1.4 trillion in 2011 dollars).”

Regulation of the Day

Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young presents “Regulation of the Day: Singing the National Anthem.”

Read here.