Nearly 100 days into 2014, women finally earn what men earned in 2013 – National Consumers League

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By Michell K. McIntyre, Outreach Director, Labor and Worker Rights

“Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. … It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‘Mad Men’ episode.”

Today is the day we can start to put these words from President Obama during his State of the Union address into action. In a matter of hours, the U.S. Senate will vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act — a bill that would deter wage discrimination. Today, 98 days into 2014, is Equal Pay Day. This day symbolizes the extra time needed for women to earn the same salary as their male counterparts in 2013. The Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by updating the nearly 50-year-old Equal Pay Act, in part by barring retaliation against workers who disclose their own wages to coworkers.

It’s ridiculous, but right now, no federal law broadly prohibits employers from penalizing and even firing employees just for talking about their salaries. The wage gap does not only affect women, it affects whole families. At a time when women increasingly are the breadwinners, 71 percent of mothers are part of the labor force, a pay gap unfairly targets children in households with single mothers or where both parents work. The pay gap, when calculated over the course of a year, means women receive on average $10,784 less than males performing similar work.

The pay disparity is increased among African American women and Hispanic women, who make $19,575 and $23,873 less respectively than a white non-Hispanic male performing the same job. Using these figures, the Department of Labor estimates that women make on average $380,000 less over the course of their careers.

That is a huge sum of money when trying to put a child through college, buying healthy groceries for the dinner table, or paying the rent. Despite the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill signed into law by President Obama in 2009, more work needs to be done to ensure women have the resources and tools they need to confront discrimination and challenge unfair practices in the courts.

Current law forces women to jump through too many hoops in order to make claims of gender discrimination. For Lilly Ledbetter, she was told on her first day of work at Goodyear never to discuss her salary with anyone. It wasn’t until she found an anonymous note in her locker years later that Lilly realized she was being paid as much as 40 percent less than her male colleagues in the same position. This is exactly why these pay-secrecy policies that punish employees and hide discrimination must go! It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act!  

FTC crackdown on telemarketing scams is a reminder that the phone is a potent weapon for fraudsters – National Consumers League

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By Evelyn Wong, NCL Public Policy Intern

The Federal Trade Commission this week announced that it has pulled the plug on a multi-million dollar cross-border telemarketing scam operation that can be traced back to 2009. The FTC’s complaint against First Consumers, LLC, Standard American Marketing, Inc., and PowerPlay Industries LLC alleges that the companies used telemarketing boiler rooms in Canada to “cold call” tens and thousands of consumers claiming to sell fraud protection, legal protection, and pharmaceutical benefits services.

These unsolicited services would often charge anywhere between $187 to $397. Between May 2011 and December 2013 the scheme brought in $20 million.

The defendants are said to have targeted senior citizens who were given false information and were compelled to reveal their bank account information. The scammers used scare tactics and sometimes even went so far as to impersonate bankers and government officials. The account information would then be used to create “remote checks” drawn on the consumers’ bank accounts. These remotely created checks were then deposited into a network of corporate accounts established in the United States. The U.S. based defendants then transferred money to the Canadian accounts.

The Internet has certainly become a haven for scam artists, but this case is a reminder that consumers need to be on guard for scammers contacting them via the “old-fashioned” telephone. In fact, according to Fraud.org’s 2013 Top Ten Scams report, the telephone was the most-frequent way that consumers reported being contacted by scammers in 2013.

Tips to avoid being a victim of telemarketing scams include:

  1. Never give out sensitive personal information such as Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers or credit/debit account numbers in response to an unsolicited telephone call.
  2. Telemarketing scammers will often try to pressure the person on the other end into making a quick decision. Remember, if it sounds like a good deal today, then you should be able to take the time to research it thoroughly.
  3. Be wary of any telemarketer who requests payment via wire transfer, cash or prepaid card.
  4. Information on spotting telemarketing scams targeting seniors is available at “They Can’t Hang Up,” a joint educational initiative between NCL and AARP.
  5. For more tips from Fraud.org on spotting telemarketing scams, click here.

Last day! Visit healthcare.gov to sign up for health insurance before it’s too late. – National Consumers League

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The last day to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is here! Monday, March 31 is the last day that eligible adults can enroll in health insurance without being penalized.

For those who miss the deadline, most won’t be able to sign up for Marketplace health insurance again until the next open enrollment period, which starts on November 15, 2014. Important things to know:

  • The penalty for those who don’t sign up for health insurance this year is $95 for each adult for the year ($47.50 per child) or 1% of your annual household income (whichever number is higher). This penalty is only for those who can afford health insurance. For more information on, who is exempt from this penalty, visit HealthCare.gov.
  • More than 6 million people have signed up for private health insurance coverage since ACA’s care’s open enrollment began in October 2013. More are expected to sign up before the March 31 deadline. It’s expected that federal and state health exchange will be swamped over the next week as procrastinators try to make the deadline. If you need extra help signing up and access the federal or state hotlines, you may experience longer wait times as the deadline approaches.
  • If you have had a “qualifying life event” such as losing your employee health insurance, having a baby, or getting married, you will be able to sign up for health insurance after the March 31 deadline.
  • The March 31 deadline does not apply to those eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. These programs are open year-round to those who are eligible.

One important note, there has been media buzz over the last few days about an ACA extension. Basically, if you are not signed up by March 31 because of website glitches and delays, or if you have started the process on the Marketplace website but have not finished, you will be allowed to enroll after the March 31 deadline. You can do this by asking for an extension on the HealthCare.gov website, which will give you until mid-April to finish your enrollment. For more information on the March 31 deadline, the next enrollment period, qualifying life events, and any other questions you may have about the ACA and signing up for health insurance, visit HealthCare.gov for more information.

Amidst a flurry of economic theories about the minimum wage, personal struggles tell the story – National Consumers League

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By Michell K. McIntyre, Outreach Director, Labor and Worker Rights

These days, issues of economic security are finally getting their due. Cities and states – and in some cases counties – have decided to strike it out on their own and take matters into their own hands. Thirteen states and a few cities and counties have increased their minimum wages in the past year. Still, the federal government lags behind.

A few weeks ago, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee held its first hearing on the Senate Fair Minimum Wage Act (S.460 & H.R. 1010) that would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, increase the tipped minimum wage from a paltry $2.13 an hour to 70% of the ‘regular’ minimum wage ($7.07), and index both to the rate of inflation – thus stopping this vital wage from being used as a political football.

The hearing witness list included the usual heavyweights: the U.S. Department of Labor‘s (DOL) Secretary Tom Perez and the Director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Elmendorf as well as Dr. Heather Boushey, the Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of the NETWORK, but most importantly, Alicia McCrary – a mother of four trying to make ends meet as a fast food worker on a minimum wage salary.

Alicia McCrary’s voice brought the discussion out of the battling economic studies, partisan posturing, and election year sound bites and back to reality. McCrary simply told her truth and the truth of many families. She spoke of how she moved her four boys out of Chicago after leaving an abusive relationship and shared with the Committee the routine of deciding each month which of her four sons would be the lucky one to get a haircut because she can’t afford for them all to have haircuts in the same month.

Alicia is a good example of what life is like for millions of American families struggling on the minimum wage. Besides demands from work, these working parents face many hurdles at home from finding affordable housing and childcare to feeding their growing children and providing them with health care. With the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour, a single mother that works full time and has one child, lives in poverty at $15,080 (before taxes) a year. This qualifies them for food stamps because without it, they would have little left after paying rent, utilities, transportation, and health care.

The New York Times and the Economic Policy Institute have both released minimum wage calculators/budgets that demonstrate just how far a minimum wage paycheck goes. They highlight the many costs faced by families and just how unlivable the current minimum wage is. Not surprisingly, the numbers show the writing on the wall that families across the country already know. With the recent cuts to the federal food stamp program, low-wage workers are seeing their budgets get stretched even farther. In many metropolitan areas affordable housing is a myth – in a recently published report Out of Reach

from the National Low Income Housing Coalition – in no state can a full-time minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent. In Washington D.C., where a District minimum wage earner makes $8.50 an hour – more than the federal minimum wage, it would take that same worker 137 hours per week to afford rent. How many hours would a minimum wage earner need to work in your state to afford rent?

If raised to $10.10 an hour, as those in both houses of Congress and worker advocates are calling for, then 30.3 million workers would get a raise. American families need a break – we need to raise the minimum wage!

Recent high profile stories about GM and Toyota reveal the flaws of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – National Consumers League

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In the shadow of the General Motors and Toyota stories about widespread safety issues that went largely ignored, is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s lax performance. This agency is the consumer’s guardian to ensure that industry designs and manufactures cars and trucks safely. The federal agency failed at this assignment. As a New York Times editorial noted, recent events “show[s] glaring deficiencies in enforcement of auto safety regulations.”

Consumers reported from 2009-2010 sudden acceleration problems with their cars.   When Toyota denied it had problems with the phenomenon of sudden unexpected acceleration (SUA), NHTSA agreed, issuing a report in 2011 essentially denying consumers’ experience with this very dangerous defect: it sends a car hurtling down the road, unable to stop. An off duty policeman and three members of his family were killed when his brakes failed to override the throttle mechanism. NHTSA’s report claimed “driver error”.  The agency was wrong, and a recent $1.2 billion settlement reached between Toyota and the Department of Justice shows: Toyota admitted it failed to report defects and worse, denied there was ever a problem.

General Motors recalled 1.6 million cars after admitting it had failed to report faulty ignition switches it knew were defective.  But NHTSA had reports from consumers for years that it failed to act on. The ignition key would slip out of place and freeze up the steering wheel. A dozen innocent people were killed in accidents related to this defect.

The New York Times notes that NHTSA’s $10 million budget for investigations has barely increased over the past decade and the agency lacks criminal power to levy criminal sanctions. There are many good people who work at NHTSA that are dedicated to protecting consumers and improving car safety, but that’s no excuse for NHTSA’s lapses.

I spent a decade working on auto safety for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. We couldn’t get NHTSA to act on some glaring safety problems – like SUVs and pickup trucks rolling over at much higher numbers than cars. We had to go to Congress – Senator Ed Markey led the charge when he was in the House of Representatives, getting legislation passed mandating that NHTSA develop a test for vehicle stability.

I’m sorry to say the GM and Toyota examples tell me that not much has changed. Federal safety agencies should never forget they hold the lives of consumers in their hands The agency needs to be far more responsive to reports from consumers of vehicle defects. Consumers’ lives depend on it. If that takes a changes of leadership and culture, so be it.

“There is no question that in these cases, the automakers failed the public,” the Times rightly concluded, “federal regulators – and the Congress that has denied them the weapons they need – are complicit in that failure.”

A step in the right direction with new nutrition facts labels – National Consumers League

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kelsey

You may have heard about the Food and Drug Administration’s recently released proposed revisions to the Nutrition Facts label. The results were resoundingly positive, with only a couple points of contention. Nutrition Facts labels first came about thanks to the passage of a 1990 law requiring them. Since, they have only been significantly updated once, to include trans fat in the list of required nutrients. Needless to say, they were due for an update.

One of the most notable changes is the emphasis on calories.  The increased font size and bolding of the calories amount play an important role in consumer decision making and contribute to addressing the obesity epidemic in America.  FDA also proposed to add a line to the required nutrients for “added sugars”.  Added sugars are a good means of determining which food options are healthiest.  While added sugars do not affect the body any differently than those that occur naturally, they indicate that a food is likely more processed and most likely contains unnecessarily large amounts of sweetener.

The FDA would also like to see that all fiber listed on the Nutrition Facts label exclude purified processed fibers like maltodextrin and inulin.  Processed fibers are not as beneficial as those that are unprocessed and frequently found in whole foods.  A few other high points to the proposed changes are removing the “calories from fat” section and getting rid of the table that lists nutrient labels for 2,000-2,500 calorie diets and replacing the required amounts of vitamins A and C listed with potassium and vitamin D.

The largest concession was that the Daily Value of sodium was only lowered from 2,400mg to 2,300mg.  Ideally it would have been lowered to 1,500mg as is recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for people that are over 50, have hypertension, or are African American.   Daily Values are typically based on the most vulnerable populations.  It would be ideal if that applied to this proposed change.

If you are as excited as I am about seeing these new Nutrition Facts labels hit the shelves, you might want to check your enthusiasm.  We shouldn’t expect to see them until 2018 as it may take a while to finalize the rule and industry has two years for implementation.

The ticket marketplace: A scalper’s paradise – National Consumers League

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This week I braved the ticket buying process for Roland Garros, otherwise known as the French Open. I wasn’t sure what I was in for, but I had heard from those who had attended in the past that you have to buy as soon as the tickets become available, as they sell out immediately. I hadn’t realized that tennis was so popular and that so many people would get online to buy those tickets up.

So at 2 am EST, 7 am French time, I logged on to the French Open website and was put in queue for 80 minutes. I sat with a book on my lap reading and whiling away the time in the middle of the night. About an hour later, the purchase page popped up, I put in my info and got my 3 tickets. I was delighted that the French seemed to be effective at preventing scalping and appeared to be doing their best to make tickets available to as many people as possible at a reasonable price.

How foolish I was to believe these modest measures would prevent scalping. Two days after I bought my face value tickets, I saw seats in the same section as ours going for four times what we paid. I can’t help feeling angry about scalping. My son, who helped orchestrate the buying process, thinks I’m hopelessly naïve. He claims that when a hot Nike shoe goes up on a website, it’s gone in 10 minutes, only to quickly show up online for $5,000.

The National Consumers League has been working to prevent bots, illegal ticket buying software, from being used to scoop up in-demand tickets that then get sold at far higher prices. We’ve looked at many creative ways to prevent scalping, but it’s a difficult problem to solve when there’s more demand than supply. We can make it illegal to sell a ticket for more than face value, but then the worry is that the secondary market goes underground. At least with some of the official secondary market services, you have some consumer protections built in to guarantee that you’ll get the ticket you paid for.

My experience this week reinforces my frustration with scalping. Many people are making a lot of money by buying up face value tickets, then charging triple or quadruple the price. I think that’s unfair. What we need are creative solutions that ensure fair access to tickets, as opposed to the exorbitant markups that the scalpers too often charge. Yes, I’m hopeless naïve, but I can’t help but want average people to get a fair shake in the ticket market.

While Congress stagnates, your tax dollars are hard at work – National Consumers League

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Here’s a thought. When you’re feeling disheartened about partisan bickering in Congress, think about this: your tax dollars are supporting the work of outstanding, hard-working, and knowledgeable public servants who’ve got your back. Last week, my colleague Kelsey Albright and I met with an EPA staffer who gave us a crash course on food waste. Nearly 30% of the food US agriculture produces is wasted!

Not only is she knowledgeable about the subject, she also helped us understand the part played by each sector in the food-supply chain, including us consumers. NCL is considering what we can do to help address this important problem.

Later that day, Rebecca Burkholder, Ayanna Johnson, and I met with a cheerful and equally hard-working team at FDA to talk about NCL’s Script Your Future medication adherence campaign. FDA supports the campaign, which is complementing its mission of ensuring that the prescription and OTC drugs that Americans take are safe and effective and that consumers understand how to take them properly. They are doing a lot at FDA with very limited staff and resources,

On March 11-12, Rebecca will participate in a two-day meeting convened by CERTs, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research’s Centers for Drug Education and Research in Therapeutics. The meeting will focus on what’s working to boost adherence. The AHRQ staffer who organized the meeting, herself a physician, has generously invested time and energy in the issue and in Script Your Future.

We could all list many more federal government employees who exhibit the same traits: strong commitment to public service, deep substantive knowledge coupled with a sophisticated understanding of their issue’s political implications, an enthusiastic willingness to engage with consumers and with stakeholder groups like NCL.

March is National Nutrition Month and it’s time to get informed. Do you know where your calories come from? – National Consumers League

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March kicks off National Nutrition Month – a good time for us to reflect on our diets and physical activity.  We all know the importance –and the challenges — of maintaining a healthy weight.  A third of Americans are obese and another third are overweight.  That means that two thirds of Americans are at increased risk for certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and other life threatening illnesses that accompany excessive poundage.

There are a few promising signs that the nation’s health is improving, however. Just this week, a major federal health survey reported that the obesity rate among two-year-old to five-year-old children has dropped 43 percent. Children who are overweight or obese are five times more likely to be overweight or obese as an adult. There is a strong focus nationwide on improving eating habits and being more conscious about what we put into our bodies.

In pursuit of sound eating practices, we recommend watching portion sizes, looking at nutritional labels and moderation above all else.   It is easy to overeat when we are surrounded by high calorie, high fat foods, many with surprisingly little nutritional value.  Americans’ top sources of calories, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), are cakes, cookies, and sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.  These foods are laden with fat and/or sweeteners and easy to consume in large quantities.  Surprisingly, some foods like candy contribute only 2.2% of calories to the American diet.    First Lady Michelle Obama says it well – it’s not that we can NEVER have certain foods like candy or ice cream, but that we should enjoy them in moderation.

We believe strongly in studying Nutrition Facts labels!  They are also being updated for the first time in 20 years.  Almost every packaged food item includes them: they provide calories per serving and help consumers monitor and control caloric intake for the recommended 2,000 calorie a day diet.  The updated labels will now reflect more accurate caloric information, provide larger font and a listing for added sugars, which is useful to know. Focusing on eating more foods that are nutrient dense and low in fat and calories is a critical step in the right direction if you’re looking to shed a few pounds.  As “My Plate” suggests, making half of your meal fruits and vegetables is an easy way to do this.  A few other tips to get on track are:

  1. Increase intake of whole grains, making half of all grains consumed whole grains.
  2. Reduce consumption of high fructose corn syrup-sweetened beverages like soda.
  3. Monitor and minimize calorie intake from alcoholic beverages.
  4. Be aware of how large portion sizes are, especially when dining out.
  5. Prepare more meals at home where you have control over the amount of added salt, sugar and fat.

A balanced diet is just that, balanced.  Eat a variety of foods:  it keeps your food choices interesting and satisfying.  And of course, partake in the occasional indulgence. A very restrictive diet can backfire.  A candy bar, piece of chocolate, or some other reasonably small treat can be helpful in curbing cravings.

Finally, physical activity can play a critical role in maintaining a healthy weight.  The Dietary Guidelines recommend that adults do at least 150 minutes, or two and a half hours of moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking at a brisk clip or riding a bike, each week.  The idea of fitting this in can be daunting for many of us, but it helps to know that walking to work or taking a quick stroll on your lunch break counts.  Any amount of physical activity – however brief – yields rewards and is better than none at all.  Taking these steps to better your health may be difficult at first, but with time and practice, they become habit and will surely enhance your quality of life.

FTC report shines light on continuing problem of ID theft – National Consumers League

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In the world of fraud fighting, the release of the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Data Book is something of a wonky holiday. Yesterday was no exception, with the agency publishing the annual report, which examines trends in the 2 million-plus complaints the FTC receives annually. The headline of the report was depressingly familiar: identity theft continued to be the biggest driver of complaints to the FTC for the 14th straight year.

This trend is one of the reasons NCL produced our State of Identity Theft in 2013 report last year, which examined the continuing threat of ID theft and why we are making the issue of data insecurity a top priority in 2014.

Looking deeper into the Sentinel data, some additional interesting trends and questions come to light, including:

  • Does youth correlate with risk of identity theft? The FTC noted that 20% of ID theft complaints came from consumers aged 20-29, who comprise only 13.8% of the population. There is also a steady reduction in ID theft complaint rates as consumers get older. For example, 8% of ID theft complaints come from consumers aged 70-plus, which is consistent with their overall 9% distribution in the population. An open question is whether identity theft risk decreases as consumers age or whether the correlation is due to an increased likelihood that younger consumers will report identity theft.
  • The telephone is scammers’ contact method of choice. While recent news has been dominated stories about high-tech data breaches, it appears that scammers are returning to a somewhat old-fashioned tool: the telephone. Last month’s Fraud.org Top Ten Scams report noted that telemarketing fraud was making a major comeback, with 36% of complaints mentioning the telephone as the method of contact. The FTC’s new data confirmed this, finding that 40% of complaints cited the telephone as the method of contact. The telephone is now the preferred method of contact by scammers, overtaking email for the first time since 2011. Congress is taking notice as well. In December, a bipartisan group of legislators introduced the Anti-Spoofing Act, which would crack down on scammers disguising their calls by altering Caller ID information.
  • Scammers shifting technique in “grandparent’s scams.” Con artists have long used the story of a loved one in distress to defraud consumers, particularly older adults. Also known as the imposter scam, this fraud starts with the fraudster calling a victim with an urgent appeal for funds to help a friend or family member in need. For example, the scammer might claim that a beloved grandson was in a car accident overseas and needs money to pay a hospital bill or to get bailed out of jail. More than 121,000 consumers reported an imposter scam to the FTC in 2013, an increase of more than 36,000 complaints since 2012. The scam is evolving as well. Whereas fraudsters used to impersonate a friend or family member, they are increasingly claiming to represent a business or government official.
  • Encouraging signs in the fight against lottery scams. For the second year in in a row, complaints about this type of fraud have decreased (down by almost more than 10,000 complaints since 2011). Thanks in part to consumer education campaigns like DeliveringTrust.com growing awareness of these scams seems to be having an impact.

More than 2.1 million complaints were filed with the FTC in 2013, with reported losses of more than $1.6 billion. Given that fraud is a chronically underreported crime, we should assume that many millions more consumers were harmed. As we prepare to mark National Consumer Protection Week, this new data should serve as a reminder of the immense toll that fraud takes on U.S. consumers.

This data should push all of us — anti-fraud advocates, law enforcement, policymakers and everyday consumers — to redouble our vigilance in the fight against scammers.