WikiLeaks and the $15 minimum wage

With help from Marianne LeVine, Cogan Schneier, and Timothy Noah

WIKILEAKS ROUNDUP: WikiLeaks released a second batch of emails Monday that, though unconfirmed, appear to be from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Here’s what we found:


ON THAT $15 MINIMUM WAGE: Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, told Podesta in an April 2015 email that “substantively, we have not supported $15 — you will get a fair number of liberal economists who will say it will lose jobs.” (For some background, Clinton supports a $12 hourly federal minimum wage, but has said she’d sign a $15 minimum into law if such a bill came to her desk.) Tanden’s remarks came after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio sent the campaign an email about his “Progressive Agenda,” which included a call to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and subsequently index it. In that same email chain, Jake Sullivan, the Clinton campaign’s top foreign policy advisor, joked: “John Podesta (and the Red Army) want to support $15!”

Clinton’s reluctance to support a $15 federal minimum worried labor leaders. In a Nov. 2015 e-mail, Nikki Budzinski, Clinton’s labor outreach director, wrote that executive board members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the nation’s largest healthcare union, “voiced concern around where the Secretary is on the minimum wage increase to $15 rather then [sic] $12.” Budzinski added that she spoke to Peter Colavito, chief of staff at SEIU, who “reiterated that HRC’s position on the minimum wage was not a part of their test for endorsement.” Colavito, she said, informed her that “in the worst case scenario, their whip count for endorsement does not include 1199 votes.” The email came four days before SEIU endorsed Clinton.

The documents suggest that the campaign remained sensitive to Clinton’s position on the wage minimum earlier this year. In March 2016, Clinton chief strategist Joel Benenson expressed worry that a speech in which Clinton planned to voice support for the Fight for $15 movement sounded like she supported a $15 minimum wage. “I think we have to choose our language more carefully,” he said. “Reporters will not cut us any slack on this.” (And indeed, POLITICO did not the following month when Clinton altered her rationale for opposing a $15 minimum to neutralize Bernie Sanders.)

GOOD MORNING. It's Tuesday, Oct. 11 and this is Morning Shift, POLITICO's daily tipsheet on labor and employment policy. Send tips, exclusives, and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @marianne_levine, @CoganSchneier, @tedhesson and @TimothyNoah1.

MORE WIKILEAKS:

— ON THOSE LABOR UNION ENDORSEMENTS: In July 2015, Budzinski told Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that there was “lots of AFL-CIO internal drama around the [American Federation of Teachers] endorsement.” (AFT was the first national union to endorse Clinton.) “The contingent of unions upset with AFT include: [the Amalgamated Transit Union], [the American Postal Workers Union], [Communications Workers of America] and Nurses.” Budzinski described these unions as “on [her] Sanders watch list.” (Budzinski’s hunch wasn’t wrong — all endorsed Sanders during the primaries.)

Another e-mail from Budzinski from June 2015 said that Mook had secured an endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters. In that instance there was a proverbial slip ‘twixt cup and lip — the union decided not to endorse any candidate. Budzinski also mentioned talks with the National Education Association about an October endorsement (that did go according to plan). Budzinski warned of a “Northeastern Sanders contingent,” and when Clinton’s national political director Amanda Renteria asked which key issue Sanders was better on with the NEA, Budzinski replied: “I don’t think it’s one key issue. The guy is a socialist that’s able to say things unaccountable to reality. It plays to the activists which I believe leadership is trying to manage.”

— ON THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE: Clinton aides worried that her opposition to the Keystone Pipeline would anger North America’s Building Trades Unions. In an Aug. 2015 e-mail, Budzinski warned that if Clinton put out a statement saying that she encouraged Obama to oppose the Keystone Pipeline, “politically, with the building trades, this would be a very dangerous posture.” Podesta answered: “your [sic] in trouble girl.” Renteria requested that Budzinski see a copy of the statement before the campaign sent it out. “Just want to make sure we don’t catch anyone by surprise,” she said. “We are so close to getting bldg trades and if we do this right, it will be ok even though they won’t like it.”

HILLARY’S BROTHER LOSES EB-5 CENTER: An EB-5 regional center run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s youngest brother, was shut down Sept. 29 by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to a Monday blog post by the Center for Immigration Studies (a group backing lower immigration levels). The closing was confirmed in a posting on the USCIS website. Rodham could not be reached for comment.

The EB-5 program allows immigrants to apply for legal permanent residence if they create 10 American jobs or invest $500,000 in a U.S. commercial project. For applicants choosing the investment route, USCIS offers 863 approved “regional centers” to funnel the capital into business projects. The centers can be terminated if they fail to submit required information to USCIS or are deemed no longer to serve the purpose of promoting economic growth. A 2015 Department of Homeland Security watchdog report chastised DHS Deputy Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas for creating an appearance of favoritism toward the Virginia Center and Gulf Coast Funds Management, also run by Rodham.

TRUMP SAYS HE’S “BLUE COLLAR:” Never mind the private Boeing 757, the Fifth Avenue penthouse designed to look like Versailles, and the mansions in Palm Beach, Beverly Hills, Charlottesville, Va., and Bedford, N.Y. Donald Trump sees himself as a typical working American. Speaking at an event in Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, Trump said: "I love blue collar workers, and I consider myself in a certain way to be a blue collar worker.” Trump began his real estate career with what he’s called a "small loan of a million dollars" from his father, Fred Trump, and, the Wall Street Journal reported in September, he had access to tens of millions more. More from the Daily News here.

TALES FROM THE APPRENTICE: The Associated Press reported last week that when Trump was a reality TV boss on “The Apprentice” he “repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language.” (The Trump campaign denied it.) The AP story reportedly prompted “Access Hollywood” to forage for its now-famous Trump hot-mic audio, and rumors continue to swirl that the “Apprentice” archives contain similarly lewd or otherwise inappropriate Trump outtakes. Producer Mark Burnett, a Trump friend, has threatened to sue anyone who leaks them, but David Brock, who runs a network of pro-Clinton Democratic groups, has volunteered to pay the legal fees of anyone who does.

Now one such outtake has leaked — or rather, the transcript of an outtake. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and Dana Liebelson report that during taping of a 2010 episode about the marketing of two country music singers, Trump objected to one, Emily West, because, well … let’s let the Donald tell it. ““I assume you’re gonna leave this off,” Trump says, according to the transcript obtained by the HuffPo. “Don’t put this shit on the show, you know. But her skin, her skin sucks, okay? I mean her skin, she needs some serious fuckin’ dermatology.”

Stein and Liebelson confirmed the gist of the conversation with Cindi Lauper, who appeared on the episode and was present. “Yes, of course,” Lauper told them. “Of all people to talk about people’s skin! What the hell is going on with his?”

NORTHWESTERN AVOIDS ROUND 2 AT THE NLRB: Last year the National Labor Relations Board declined to rule in a union representation case about whether football players who received grant-in-aid scholarships were employees. Shortly before that decision, an unfair labor charge was filed with the NLRB and the National Collegiate Athletic Association alleging that a prohibition in the school’s football handbook barring players from posting potentially “embarrassing” content on social media violated the National Labor Relations Act. That charge was recently dismissed by the NLRB’s general counsel.

A memo on the handbook case shows that immediately after the charge was filed Northwestern changed the language in the handbook. The memo, from the NLRB’s Division of Advice, advised Region 13 Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr not to issue a complaint because the school had brought the handbook into compliance with the National Labor Relations Act. Northwestern did this, the memo said, even though it maintained that the players were not employees, and therefore did not fall under the jurisdiction of the NLRA or the NLRB.

So why change the handbook? Jeffrey Hirsch, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law (and former NLRB attorney) explained to Morning Shift that if the complaint had been issued and the handbook case found its way to the NLRB, the board might not have been so accommodating as it was last year. Northwestern “was doing everything they could to make sure the board did not rule on whether [football players] were employees,” Hirsch said. Read the full memo here.

CEO FEATS DON’T INSPIRE NEW HIRES: Start a new job and you may get an earful about the founder’s journey from cashier to chief executive. But such inspirational tales aren’t particularly effective, according to a study in the October issue of the Academy of Management Journal. Employees who are fed them, it turns out, end up no more likely to embrace core company values than employees who are not fed them. What really stirs employees to be stellar team players are inspirational tales about the achievements of lowly co-workers.

NEW DADS CAN’T LEAVE THE OFFICE: More companies are offering new fathers paid paternity leave, but they don’t always take it. From Bloomberg’s Rebecca Greenfield: “Most organizations don't offer time off for new dads, and those that do give them about half of what new moms get, according to a new survey of more than 300 organizations from the Society of Human Resource Management. New moms receive an average of 41 paid days off, compared with 22 days for dads. When given the benefit, many men take some time off, but usually not more than 10 days. That's just half the time they're offered, on average, according to a survey by Boston College… The message is: Your time off is less important than time off for mothers.” More here from Bloomberg.

COFFEE BREAK

— “Group sues Feds over labor violations reporting rule,” from The Hill

— “Amid debate, all 2016 Nobel laureates are immigrants,” from The Hill

— “Lawsuit: Wisconsin strip club’s pay scheme unlawful,” from USA Today

— “$1.6 million bill tests tiny town and ‘bulletproof’ public pensions,” from the New York Times.

— “H-2A visa delays hinder Idaho ag,” from Magicvalley.com

— “San Diego Caregivers To Get Back Wages, Damages,” from KPBS

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey