Business
How Not to Pay Your Bills

In this Thursday, Nov. 27, 2014, photo, a woman pays for merchandise at a Kohl’s department store in Sherwood, Ark. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
(CBS News) – Americans increasingly are falling behind on their auto and student loans, new figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York show (see chart at bottom). If you’re struggling to pay your bills, here’s how you can contain the potential damage to your finances.
Contact your lenders. You may qualify for a loan modification or a temporary reduction in your payments. Federal student loan debt is particularly flexible, offering a number of repayment options. Those include a “Pay as You Earn” plan that can reduce your required payment to zero if your income is low. Auto lenders may let you skip a payment or even refinance your debt, depending on your credit scores and the lenders’ policies. People resist calling their lenders, “but that’s the wrong response,” said Phil Reed, senior consumer advice editor for car site Edmunds.com. “They really don’t want you to default… they really are trying to keep you in the game.”
Understand the consequences. Even one skipped loan or credit card payment can devastate your credit scores, but how lenders report and react to delinquencies varies considerably. With an auto loan, for example, the lender can repossess your car if you’re a single day late with a payment, although most wait until you’re 30 days or more to start the collections process. Delinquencies on federal student loans, by contrast, typically aren’t reported to the credit bureaus until you’re 90 days overdue, and you’re not considered in default until you’re 270 days late. Even then, you have options to “rehabilitate” your loans and erase some of the credit history damage. Private student lenders aren’t as forgiving — many report delinquencies after 30 days and start collections soon after. Credit card issuers differ in how they react to delinquent debt, but after six months most send the debt to collectors.
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Oakland Post: Week of May 7 – 13, 2025
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Oakland Post: Week of April 30 – May 6, 2025
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 30 – May 6, 2025

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California Rideshare Drivers and Supporters Step Up Push to Unionize
Today in California, over 600,000 rideshare drivers want the ability to form or join unions for the sole purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection. It’s a right, and recently at the State Capitol, a large number of people, including some rideshare drivers and others working in the gig economy, reaffirmed that they want to exercise it.

By Antonio Ray Harvey
California Black Media
On July 5, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into federal law the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Also known as the “Wagner Act,” the law paved the way for employees to have “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations,” and “to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, according to the legislation’s language.
Today in California, over 600,000 rideshare drivers want the ability to form or join unions for the sole purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection. It’s a right, and recently at the State Capitol, a large number of people, including some rideshare drivers and others working in the gig economy, reaffirmed that they want to exercise it.
On April 8, the rideshare drivers held a rally with lawmakers to garner support for Assembly Bill (AB) 1340, the “Transportation Network Company Drivers (TNC) Labor Relations Act.”
Authored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), AB 1340 would allow drivers to create a union and negotiate contracts with industry leaders like Uber and Lyft.
“All work has dignity, and every worker deserves a voice — especially in these uncertain times,” Wicks said at the rally. “AB 1340 empowers drivers with the choice to join a union and negotiate for better wages, benefits, and protections. When workers stand together, they are one of the most powerful forces for justice in California.”
Wicks and Berman were joined by three members of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC): Assemblymembers Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), Sade Elhawary (D-Los Angeles), and Isaac Bryan (D-Ladera Heights).
Yvonne Wheeler, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor; April Verrett, President of Service Employees International Union (SEIU); Tia Orr, Executive Director of SEIU; and a host of others participated in the demonstration on the grounds of the state capitol.
“This is not a gig. This is your life. This is your job,” Bryan said at the rally. “When we organize and fight for our collective needs, it pulls from the people who have so much that they don’t know what to do with it and puts it in the hands of people who are struggling every single day.”
Existing law, the “Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act,” created by Proposition (Prop) 22, a ballot initiative, categorizes app-based drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft as independent contractors.
Prop 22 was approved by voters in the November 2020 statewide general election. Since then, Prop 22 has been in court facing challenges from groups trying to overturn it.
However, last July, Prop 22 was upheld by the California Supreme Court last July.
In a 2024, statement after the ruling, Lyft stated that 80% of the rideshare drivers they surveyed acknowledged that Prop 22 “was good for them” and “median hourly earnings of drivers on the Lyft platform in California were 22% higher in 2023 than in 2019.”
Wicks and Berman crafted AB 1340 to circumvent Prop 22.
“With AB 1340, we are putting power in the hands of hundreds of thousands of workers to raise the bar in their industry and create a model for an equitable and innovative partnership in the tech sector,” Berman said.
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