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    Pork Industry Grapples With Whiplash of Shifting Regulations

    Retailers in California, and pig farmers and processors thousands of miles away, are bracing for the impact of a state ban on some sources of the meat.These were supposed to be boom times for Pederson’s Natural Farms.In the days this spring after the Supreme Court upheld a California law banning the sale of certain pork products made from pigs raised in small gestation pens, the phones were ringing off the hook at Pederson’s headquarters in Hamilton, Texas.California grocery stores and restaurants were desperate to line up supplies of bacon and pork chops that met the new state standards by a July 1 deadline. Pederson’s products filled the bill, and the company was happy to help send them to California, which consumes about 15 percent of the nation’s pork.“We were going to have a good year,” said Neil Dudley, the vice president at Pederson’s. “We were putting it in the budget. We were going to put pressure on us to grow, but the extra income would help fund that growth.”But a couple of weeks later, some of those new orders were canceled as California regulators pushed back the full force of the law, known as Proposition 12, to early next year, allowing grocery stores and restaurants to use up pork they had already boughtBrined pork bellies ready for removal from a vacuum tumbler and then hanging in a smoker at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times“We were going to have a good year,” said Neil Dudley, a Pederson’s executive. Then California pushed back its timeline, and some orders were canceled.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe normally orderly pork industry has been thrown into upheaval as pig farmers in the Midwest, major pork processors and California businesses have reacted to the changing legal and regulatory landscape in recent months. Further confusion could come if Congress passes pending legislation that would effectively nullify the California act.“There is so much murky water here,” said Todd Davis, the meat and seafood coordinator for Oliver’s Markets, which operates four grocery stores in Sonoma County, Calif., and has lined up pork products that meet the new state requirements.“You are supposed to be compliant as of July 1, but I don’t think the state has any teeth on the enforcement side of things,” Mr. Davis continued. “Companies aren’t taking it as seriously as they should, and at some point the state will make an example out of one of them,” which he said could include costly fines.Already, farmers are facing hog prices that have been depressed since fall while feed costs have remained high, leading to average losses of $30 to $50 a hog for much of this year in Iowa, according to estimated livestock returns from Iowa State University. A pound of bacon costs an average of $6.20 at grocery stores across the country, down from $7.60 last fall, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank at St. Louis.Nationally, pork prices are influenced by everything from feed cost to demand from China to the shifting mood in commodities markets, but some retailers are already raising prices in California, to pass on the higher cost to hog farmers of meeting the state’s more stringent standards. With other farmers opting not sell in the state, short supply could also push the prices of bacon and pork chops higher.Piglets are kept with their sows at A-Frame Acres in Elliott, Iowa, which is part of the Niman Ranch network.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFeeding time at A-Frame Acres, which is run by Ron Mardesen, above.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesPig farmers say making changes for California is costly. Along with his partners, Dwight Mogler, a fourth-generation farmer in Iowa who sells about 200,000 hogs each year, spent $8.7 million in 2022 building a new facility and modifying an existing one to meet the new standards. A packing company pays him a small premium over market price for his pigs — he declined to provide details of the deal — but Mr. Mogler estimates that it will take 10 years to recoup his outlay.Other farmers say they’re simply not going to modify how they raise pigs.“We’re losing money in the pig industry,” said Trish Cook, the president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, who, along with her family, raises pigs near Winthrop in eastern Iowa. “The idea of having a large capital expenditure with no clear payback on it doesn’t make business sense to us. We don’t know what sort of premium those pigs will get.”For California, questions about whether consumers will have enough bacon and pork chops and how much they will cost also remain unclear.Ronald Fong, the chief executive of the California Grocers Association, which pushed for an extension of the deadline, said stores were able to make it through Labor Day with the product that they had already bought. However, Mr. Fong said that soon “we’ll be faced with some shortages and price hikes.”Mr. Davis of Oliver’s Markets said he already bought pork from Niman Ranch, a producer that exceeds the California criteria, but had also always offered customers less-expensive pork options. Now, the cheaper pork that meets the new state criteria, from Open Prairie Natural Meats, a brand owned by Tyson, costs Oliver’s $1 to $1.50 a pound more, which Mr. Davis is passing along to customers, he said.“Chicken and pork are still very affordable options, especially when compared to beef prices,” Mr. Davis said. “So we’ve seen very little pushback from consumers.”Loading brined pork bellies into the smokehouse at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhen voters passed Proposition 12 five years ago, it was a blow to the industrial meat producers, requiring that any veal calves, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens sold in California be housed in systems that allow freedom of movement. Under the rule, pigs must be born to sows housed in spaces that provide at least 24 square feet per sow. California produces very few of its own pigs, but the new rule also applies to pigs raised in other states.The law was supposed to go into effect in 2022, but the new pork standards were put on pause after the National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation filed a lawsuit challenging California’s ability to dictate pig operations in other states. They argued that if other states adopted different restrictions, the result would be a patchwork of rules and regulations. Massachusetts, for instance, passed its own gestation pen rule, called Question 3, in 2016, but it has been on hold, awaiting various court proceedings.In May, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Proposition 12 was legal. It said the pork industry had not proved that the law imposed a substantial burden on interstate commerce. California officials began working through how to regulate and enforce the rule, but a state court delayed enforcement until the end of the year.And the pork industry isn’t done fighting. In June, senators from largely agricultural Midwestern states introduced the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, which would limit the ability of states to regulate agriculture in other states.In early August, attorneys general from several states, including Texas, New Hampshire and Utah, signed a letter urging Congress to pass the EATS Act.“The industry lost in the court of public opinion in terms of California voters adopting this law, they lost in the courts, and now they’re trying to get something through with this legislative act,” said Chris Oliviero, the general manager of Niman Ranch, which pays its network of 600 farmers in 20 states premium prices to raise the beef, pork and lamb used in its products in conditions that exceed the California standards.“The ultimate goal is to prevent Prop. 12 from going into effect,” Mr. Oliviero added.Bacon slabs cooling after being smoked at Pederson’s.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesAs for Pederson’s, much of the pork it produces is already committed to a handful of longtime customers, including Whole Foods. The company did, however, have excess bacon that met the new standards.That is, until one of the farmers who supplied half of the pigs used by Pederson’s received a better offer from a larger company. Suddenly, Pederson’s pig supply was at risk.“Farmers, who are struggling to make money, are getting calls from the big guys, saying they want to contract with them,” Mr. Dudley said. “The big players can’t lose market share, not in a market as big as California. Instead of a boom year, we’re now looking at diminishing sales.” More

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    ‘Very stupid’: Italy’s bank tax remains controversial as government scrambles to update it

    “It’s a very stupid law,” Carlo Calenda, national secretary of the political party Azione, told CNBC over the weekend.
    The market reaction and wide-spread backlash pushed Rome to tone down the plans within 24 hours.
    Antonio Tajani, the country’s foreign minister and leader of the centre-right Forza Italia party, said the government is stable and the bank tax is not creating fissures within it.

    European bank shares dropped significantly in August after a surprise announcement from the Italian government for a new tax.
    Stefano Montesi – Corbis | Corbis News | Getty Images

    Italy’s shock tax on banks continues to prove controversial, even as the government insists it can improve it.
    Europe’s main bank stock index fell almost 3% on Aug. 8, after the Italian government announced plans to impose a 40% windfall tax on banks’ profits. The move caught traders off guard and sent shockwaves throughout the continent.

    The market reaction and wide-spread backlash pushed Rome to tone down the plans within 24 hours.
    Nearly a month later, the government is still studying how to make the measure work — but analysts and policymakers remain criticial.

    “It’s a very stupid law,” Carlo Calenda, national secretary of the Azione political party, told CNBC over the weekend.
    Calenda, Italy’s former deputy minister of economic development, warned the policy could put off international investors.
    “It’s something that all the international investors will look at saying: ‘Wow, this is very dangerous. I don’t want to make an investment here in Italy, long-term investments, knowing that the government can jump in and say okay, I’m gonna take part of your profit’,” he told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the European House Ambrosetti Forum.

    Brothers of Italy, the leading party in the ruling coalition government, however, is of the opinion that lenders have not passed through higher rates to savers.
    The latest set of bank results in Europe show that lenders across the region are enjoying higher levels of profitability as interest rates keep rising.
    Italy’s Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said at Ambrosetti that the bank tax “can certainly be improved upon…but I do not accept that it is considered an unfair tax,” according to Reuters.
    Antonio Tajani, the country’s foreign minister and leader of the centre-right Forza Italia party, said the government is stable and the bank tax is not creating tensions.
    He insisted it is “correct to ask banks for help” but stressed that it is important to make a distinction between large and small lenders. “We need to talk with the banks to see if it is possible to write better the text [of the law],” he told CNBC’s Sedgwick.

    One of Italy’s biggest banks is not impressed, however.
    “This is not the good time to subtract lending capacity,” Intesa Sanpaolo Chairman Gian Maria Gros-Pietro told CNBC. “We think the communication has not been good,” he added, saying the measure should be a one off. More

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    Auto Strike Looms, Threatening to Shut Detroit’s Big 3

    With their contract expiring Sept. 14, the United Auto Workers and the companies are far apart in talks. A walkout could take a big economic toll.The United Auto Workers union and the three Detroit automakers have less than two weeks to negotiate a new labor contract, and a strike of some sort seems increasingly likely.The union’s president, Shawn Fain, has primed rank-and-file members to be prepared to walk off the job if the union’s long list of demands for improved wages and benefits are not met.A strike against one of the companies, especially a prolonged stoppage, could send an economic jolt through several Midwestern states and crimp the profits of General Motors, Ford Motor or Stellantis. G.M. workers walked out for 40 days in 2019 before reaching an agreement.A strike against all three — a step the union has never taken but one Mr. Fain has said he is willing to call for this year — could have a noticeable impact on the broader U.S. economy.“If that happens, even a short strike would impact economies throughout Michigan and across the nation,” said Patrick Anderson, the chief executive of the Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, Mich.The talks are playing out as automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles, which require fewer workers to assemble than traditional gasoline-powered cars and trucks. The terms of the new contract will determine how both autoworkers and the companies fare in an E.V.-centric industry.At the same time, significant wage and benefit gains could provide a tailwind for a union movement that has been gaining strength across several industries.There are political stakes as well. President Biden has declared that “the U.A.W. deserves a contract that sustains the middle class” and has named a White House liaison to the union and the automakers. But the U.A.W. has withheld an endorsement of his re-election bid so far, partly because of concern over the union’s share of E.V.-related jobs created with federal subsidies.An agreement before the contracts expire on Sept. 14 is still possible, and talks could continue beyond that date without a walkout. But Mr. Fain has repeatedly said he views Sept. 14 as a deadline — the day a strike could begin. He was elected to the U.A.W. presidency last year as an insurgent, ousting the incumbent on a vow to take a more combative and confrontational approach in the talks than his recent predecessors.“President Fain has declared war, and that usually means there’s going to be a battle, and that battle would be a strike,” said Sam Fiorani, the vice president of global vehicle forecasting at Auto Forecast Solutions, a market researcher. “The U.A.W. leadership is in a position now where they have to prove to the members that they are fighting for them, so it’s pretty unlikely there won’t be a strike.”The auto industry as a whole, including foreign-owned companies with operations in the United States, makes up about 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. A 10-day strike against the three Detroit automakers would result in total wage losses of $859 million and manufacturers’ losses of $989 million, according to estimates by Mr. Anderson’s firm.In August, Mr. Fain sent each company a list of demands, including higher wages, improved benefits, a resumption of regular cost-of-living wage bumps to ward off the impact of inflation and an end to a wage structure that leaves newer hires making a third less than veteran workers. Mr. Fain suggested as much as a 40 percent wage increase, noting that the chief executives of each of the companies had their compensation packages rise substantially in the last four years.He also called for contract provisions that would require the automakers to pay workers to do community service if their plant closes, describing it as a way to deter the companies from shuttering factories and to protect towns and local economies from being ravaged by the loss of a major employer.“The manufacturers can absolutely afford some of those demands, but the more they get, the less competitive the companies are going to be,” Mr. Fiorani said.In a video message streamed on Facebook on Thursday, however, Mr. Fain said the union and the automakers remained far apart. Ford, he said, offered wage increases and other provisions that were “insulting” to the U.A.W.In a statement, Ford said it had offered a 9 percent wage increase and one-time lump-sum payments that, combined, would increase a worker’s income by 15 percent over the four-year contract. Mr. Fain said lump-sum payments helped but did not improve a worker’s income over a long period.The U.A.W. and Ford are also at odds over profit-sharing bonuses, the use of temporary workers, cost-of-living wage increases, retiree health care and several other matters.Mr. Fain said that G.M. and Stellantis had not provided counteroffers to the union’s proposals, and that the U.A.W. had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board contending that the two companies were not negotiating in good faith.An assembly line for the Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck. Automakers are spending billions in the transition to electric vehicles, which require fewer workers to make than gasoline-powered cars and trucks.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“I know this update is infuriating, and believe me when I say I’m fed up,” he said. “Our goal is not to strike. Our goal is to bargain a fair contract, but if we have to strike to win economic and social justice, we will.”G.M. said it was “surprised by and strongly refutes” the charges in the N.L.R.B. complaint. “We have been hyper-focused on negotiating directly and in good faith with the U.A.W. and are making progress,” Gerald Johnson, G.M.’s vice president of global manufacturing, said in a statement.Stellantis was “disappointed to learn that Mr. Fain is more focused on filing frivolous legal charges than on actual bargaining,” the company said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend this charge when the time comes, but right now, we are more focused on continuing to bargain in good faith for a new agreement.”In recent weeks, workers have organized several dozen rallies and other gatherings to prepare for picketing. “I think the membership is energized,” said Christine Bostic, a battery tester at a G.M. electric vehicle plant in Detroit. “The facts are on our side. If it comes to a strike, I’m ready for that.”To soften the impact of a stoppage, the union has amassed a strike fund of $825 million. It plans to pay striking workers $500 a week and cover their health insurance premiums while they are out of work.In recent days, Mr. Fain has joined the union’s negotiating teams in their talks with each of the automakers, an unusual step. Normally, the U.A.W. president does not take a direct role until the final days or hours of negotiations.On Wednesday, he took part in discussions with Stellantis, where tensions between the two sides have been high. When Stellantis responded to Mr. Fain’s demands with a list of cost concessions it wanted from the union, Mr. Fain took to Facebook to denounce them, dropping the document into a wastebasket.Decades ago, when the U.A.W. had more than a million members and the Big Three — G.M., Ford and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis — had almost no foreign competition, a strike by the union could shut down a significant portion of the United States economy.Today, the union is much smaller. G.M., Ford and Stellantis employ about 150,000 U.A.W. workers, and those companies make only a little more than 40 percent of the cars and trucks sold in the U.S. market.But the union entered this year’s talks in a much stronger negotiating position than it had in years. In the past, the Detroit companies were struggling badly against foreign rivals that operate nonunion plants in the South, like Toyota and Honda, and had a significant cost advantage. In most of the last several contracts, G.M., Ford and Stellantis had to get concessions on wages and benefits to survive.Over the last 10 years, however, all three companies have rung up record profits, thanks in part to the concessions they won from the union as well as the shift in consumer preferences to high-margin trucks and large sport utility vehicles.In the first half of this year, Ford made $3.7 billion and G.M. made $5 billion. Stellantis reported profits of 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion).In the past, the U.A.W. has chosen one company — it was G.M. four years ago — as the “target” to focus on in the talks. Mr. Fain has said the union could target all three companies this time around, but many analysts think the union will eventually choose Stellantis. In addition to the strains between the company and the union, their talks involve a plant in Belvidere, Ill., that Stellantis has idled and that the union wants the company to reopen.Getting Stellantis to reopen the plant is a critical task for Mr. Fain. Four years ago, G.M. closed a plant in Ohio and the U.A.W. failed in its efforts to push the company to reopen it. In his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Fain promised members that his tougher approach would prove successful this time.The union could get a hand in this battle from the federal government. On Thursday, the Energy Department said it had made $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in loans available to auto companies to convert existing factories that build gasoline-powered cars and trucks into plants that produce hybrid and electric vehicles.Stellantis, like G.M. and Ford, aims to introduce several more electric models over the next few years and will probably have to retool some plants to make them. It is already building a battery plant in Indiana for its E.V. push.Mr. Fiorani suggested that Stellantis could decide to overhaul the Belvidere plant to make electric models. “Stellantis could find a product to go in there,” he said. “For the U.A.W. to truly win something, though, it has to be electric vehicles that Stellantis would plan on making for several years.” More

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    Starting with Hollywood, It’s Been a Summer of Labor Strikes

    By The New York Times This year, workers across industries in the United States have increasingly walked off the job or threatened to do so. In July, tens of thousands of actors joined screenwriters on the picket line, bringing Hollywood to a halt. Meanwhile, a summertime strike of more than 300,000 United Parcel Service workers […] More

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    On the Economy, Biden Struggles to Convince Voters of His Success

    Wages are up, inflation has slowed and the White House has a new slogan. Still, President Biden’s poor marks on the economy are making Democrats worried.When a chant slamming President Biden spread from a NASCAR race to T-shirts and bumper stickers across red America two years ago, the White House pulled off perhaps its savviest messaging feat to date. Biden aides and allies repackaged the “Let’s Go Brandon” insult and morphed it into “Dark Brandon,” a celebratory meme casting Mr. Biden as some sort of omnipotent mastermind.Now, the White House and the Biden campaign is several weeks into another appropriation play — but it isn’t going nearly as well. Aides in July announced that the president would run for re-election on the virtues of “Bidenomics,” proudly reclaiming the right’s derisive term for Mr. Biden’s economic policies.The gambit does not appear to be working yet. Even as Mr. Biden presides over what is by all indicators a strong economy — one on track to dodge the recession many had feared — he is still struggling to convince most of the country of the strength of his economic stewardship. Wages are up, inflation has slowed, but credit to the president remains in short supply.Polling last month from the Democratic organization Navigator found that 25 percent of Americans support Mr. Biden’s major actions, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, but still think the president is doing a poor job handling the economy. It’s a group that tends to be disproportionately younger than 40 and is more likely to be Black or Latino — voters critical to Democratic victories.“This is the thing that’s vexing all Democrats,” said Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress.Democratic economists, pollsters and officials have a variety of explanations for why voters don’t credit Mr. Biden for the economy. Inflation remains elevated, and interest rates have made home buying difficult. There is also evidence that voters’ views on the economy are shaped as much by their political views as by personal experiences.And then there is the regular refrain that people don’t know about Mr. Biden’s successes. Even Mr. Biden’s supporters say that he and his administration have been too reluctant to promote their record and ineffective when they do.“I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.Mr. Biden on Friday attempted another victory lap in a White House speech celebrating the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work. He credited the heart of his economic plan, including investment in infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and climate-related industries along with caps on the price of insulin medication.Bidenomics, Mr. Biden said, “is about investing in America and investing in Americans.”Mr. Biden said his economic plan was to credit for the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesThe term Bidenomics emerged as a pejorative in conservative media and has been widely adopted by Mr. Biden’s rivals. “One of the most important issues of the campaign will be who can rescue our country from the burning wreckage of Bidenomics,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a recent video, “which shall henceforth be defined as inflation, taxation submission and failure.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida offered his definition at a recent campaign stop in Rock Rapids, Iowa. “Bidenomics is basically: You have a lower standard of living so he can pursue the left’s ideological agenda,” he said.Behind the rhetoric, there is some debate over whether the economy will be the driving force it has been in past presidential elections. Some Democrats argue that their party’s resilience in last year’s midterm elections showed that the fight over abortion rights and Mr. Trump’s influence over Republicans can trounce more kitchen-table concerns.The White House argues that Democrats’ strong showing last year is a sign the Mr. Biden’s electoral performance isn’t strictly tied to the economy.“By all metrics, his economic record has improved since then,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.Still, nearly all of Mr. Biden’s campaign advertising this year sells his economic record. The ads — which don’t use the term Bidenomics — cast the president’s policies as a work in progress. “All of the things that Biden fought to get passed helped the middle class,” a cement mason from Milwaukee says in an ad the campaign released last week.“It’s no secret that a lot of Americans are struggling with the cost of living, and that’s a reality that shapes their views about the economy more broadly,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who conducts surveys for the Democratic National Committee.Explaining why Mr. Biden’s policies will help, Mr. Garin said, “is what campaigns are for.”This summer Mr. Biden has promoted “Bidenomics” at events around the country, often speaking in factories or with labor groups. Even some in friendly audiences of local Democratic leaders and supporters questioned whether his emphasis would resonate with the coalition that elected him in 2020.“Is Bidenomics the right thing to sell?” Mayor Katie Rosenberg of Wausau, Wis., said after seeing Mr. Biden speak in Milwaukee last month. “I just keep thinking, why aren’t they just doing Build Back Better still? That was a really good slogan. Bidenomics is just an effort to capitalize on the negativity around him.”Build Back Better, the mix of economic, climate and social policy that Mr. Biden ran on in 2020, was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s ambitions as president. Significant elements became law, but the branding exercise failed, doomed in part by rising inflation.Mr. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of his ambitions as president.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDemocrats rebranded their climate legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act, even though the bill had little to do with inflation. Even Mr. Biden recently said that he regretted the name, suggesting that it promised something the bill was not devised to deliver.Though the rate of inflation has slowed, it remains the chief drag on Mr. Biden’s economic approval ratings, said Joanne Hsu, the director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan.“We track people who have heard negative news about inflation,” Dr. Hsu said. “Over the past year, that number has been much higher than in the 1970s and ’80s, when inflation was so much worse.”One theme of Mr. Biden’s aides, advisers and allies is to plead for time. The economy will get better, more people will hear and understand what Bidenomics means and credit will accrue to the president, they say.“The public more and more is going to be seeing low unemployment and will continue to get more bullish on the economy,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “But I also understand it’s very hard for people now. We just can’t expect overnight for people to feel better about the economy.”For most Americans, their views on the economy are directly tied to their partisan leanings — a phenomenon that is particularly acute for Republicans. In 2016, before Mr. Trump took office, just 18 percent of Republicans rated the economy excellent or good, according to a Pew Research survey. By February 2020, just before the pandemic shut down public life in America, 81 percent of Republicans said the economy was excellent or good.An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found just 8 percent of Republicans, along with 65 percent of Democrats, approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy.Mr. Biden’s sympathizers say part of his problem on the economy is an unwillingness to promote its bright spots out of fear of seeming insensitive to Americans struggling with higher prices. Mr. Trump had no such restraint, describing the economy as the best in history and the envy of the world. Using “Bidenomics” as a framework lets the president take ownership of the economy, but it doesn’t exactly tell voters that the economy is great.“Trump chose people who were probably less experienced in terms of making policy, but some of them are quite good about talking up the president,” said Ben Harris, a former top Treasury official in the Biden administration who played a leading role in outlining the Build Back Better agenda during the 2020 campaign. “Biden’s taken a more modest and humble approach, and there’s a chance that’s come back to haunt him.”Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said there was a regular debate in that White House about how much to sell the public on the idea that the economy was improving even if people didn’t feel in their own lives.Now he said it was difficult for the Biden administration to take victory laps over slowing inflation because wages haven’t kept pace, leaving a typical worker about $2,000 behind compared with before the pandemic.“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Mr. Furman said. “The fact that you protected people in the bad times means the good times don’t feel as good.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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    Impact of Hollywood Strikes on Jobs Goes Beyond the Strikers

    Walkouts by screenwriters and actors have meant less work in fields that cater to the TV and film industry.One reason the August employment report wasn’t stronger: Television and movie production has largely halted since a deadlock in contract negotiations between major studios and unions that represent screenwriters and actors.The motion picture and sound recording industry subtracted 16,800 jobs in August. That’s not a huge share of its approximately 438,000-person work force, but it underestimates the total impact of the labor stoppages, given how much spending power the film industry creates in Los Angeles specifically.The shutdown started when 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May. In the second quarter alone, according to Los Angeles’s film office, activity was down 28.8 percent from a year earlier.The stoppages spread when SAG-AFTRA, which represents more than 160,000 actors and broadcasters, struck in July after its contract with the largest film and television studios expired.Striking actors and writers, however, don’t translate one for one into payrolls. For one thing, many of SAG-AFTRA’s members work for television news stations and aren’t on strike. Those who do act in movies and TV shows usually sign contracts, sometimes for a day or a week, rather than entering into a continuing employment relationship.Between intermittent gigs, they’re used to taking second jobs, like waiting on tables or designing websites. During the strike, they’re also allowed to work in theater and commercials, as well as on a handful of independent projects that have agreed to abide by the union’s demands.Even with no work, most earn at least some money through residuals — although that revenue has shrunk with the rise of streaming, and will fade as the months drag on.“We’re used to being freelancers, and just being able to go along,” said Jodi Long, president of SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles local. “For now, what’s really going to affect the job market is the people on set — the hair and makeup people, the gaffers and the grips and the people in production.”Ms. Long is right: The support services required to make movies and shows have largely shut down. Some serve other industries as well, but many have grown up around the needs of film production. Even if the industry becomes very busy when the strike ends as studios restock their pipelines, months of income will be hard to replace.Take Limelight Catering. Its owner, Steve Michelson, mostly mothballed the business in May when the writers’ strike started, laying off 50 staff members, nearly all of them represented by the Teamsters. Since then, he has been repairing trucks and doing other maintenance at his facility in the northern reaches of the Los Angeles area.“We’re kind of the side effect,” Mr. Michelson said. “We depend on the film industry, but we get nothing out of this. The actors and the writers, hopefully they’ll get a nice raise, but we get nothing out of it.”Unlike striking workers in California, those who lose their jobs as collateral damage of labor disputes are eligible for unemployment insurance. (New York State does allow workers on strike to collect unemployment checks.)That’s what most of Mr. Michelson’s workers are doing. Many of those who were in more physical jobs, like carrying heavy cameras and lights around, are using the time to take care of occupational injuries by claiming disability benefits.Bill Bridges, a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has worked as a grip for 25 years. Getting through the Covid-19 shutdown was hard enough, he said, and then he needed a year off for a total knee replacement. During that time, Mr. Bridges became licensed to drive a truck, and applied for jobs with the long-haul freight lines — but he said they paid only $650 a week for someone with no experience.After recovering from surgery, he was able to drive film trucks, and sometimes earned $1,600 a day. That stopped when the talent went on strike. This time, he’s back on disability to get bunion surgery.Mr. Bridges supports the strikers, but said he was way behind on bills, barely sustaining his wife and 11-year-old son. The union has started a mutual aid food pantry and a GoFundMe appeal for its members.“This is probably financially the lowest point in my life,” he said. He worries about his own union’s contract negotiations, coming up next year: “If there’s another strike, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” More

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    in Economy

    West Coast Dockworkers Ratify Contract

    The six-year agreement is expected to increase traffic at Pacific ports, which had sagged because of the prospect of a walkout.Dockworkers at ports along the West Coast have ratified a new contract, securing a sweeping agreement set to last six years and expected to ease tensions after cargo shipments were diverted to other regions.The contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, which operates the terminals, covers 22,000 dockworkers at 29 ports from Los Angeles to Seattle.The contract was approved by 75 percent of members who voted, the union said late Thursday. Details of the agreement were not released publicly, and the union declined to comment. Unionized workers at the ports have average salaries in the low six figures.The maritime association did not respond to a request for comment.The two sides announced in June that they had reached a tentative agreement after a year of negotiations that prompted intervention from the Biden administration and coincided with a decline in the volume of cargo at several major ports along the West Coast.During the negotiation period, as workers staged a series of slowdowns, including at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, some shipping companies diverted freight to ports along the Gulf and East Coasts and then never returned to their old routes.And the movement of goods continued to lag into the summer.At the Port of Los Angeles, the amount of cargo imported in July was down 25 percent from a year earlier. But at Port Houston, where some companies rerouted cargo, officials reported its best July on record in processing cargo.Geraldine Knatz, a former head of the Port of Los Angeles and now professor of the practice of policy and engineering at the University of Southern California, said she expected the contract’s ratification to give some shippers the level of comfort they needed to return to their old routes.“Everyone is expecting we will see an increase in volume,” she said of cargo handled on the West Coast.Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, said the West Coast ports played a critical role in the vitality of the business community nationwide.“Now that an agreement has been ratified by all parties, the millions of businesses and employees who rely on their operations can be assured that long-term stability will remain at the West Coast ports,” Mr. Shay said.Santul Nerkar More