Free Republic

A veteran flight attendant at Southwest Airlines says she was fired from her job after speaking out about her faith and criticizing her union. Charlene Carter of Aurora, Colo., filed suit against the company and union in a Texas federal court. She said her employment was terminated after she expressed her religious beliefs regarding abortion in Facebook posts and messages to union president Audrey Stone.**snip** and activity in opposition to Local 556." Carter criticized the union for using employee dues to fly two dozen officials and flight attendants to attend January's Women's March protest.

Trump and the Republicans need to tout the jobs report better. Even ABC radio, which carries Rush Limbaugh and many other top conservative hosts was complaining that weak wage growth was dragging down the economy. NPR said wages were very weak, "this late into an economic recovery." This is shockingly untrue. In the first quarter of the year, real weekly earnings grew two 1982 inflation-adjusted dollars; that's about six real dollars. That's as much as real wages grew during the entire Obama administration. Wage growth then doubled THAT in the second quarter. And while we don't yet know the July...

The "official" rate of unemployment in California is a sparkling 4.7%, and according to state labor experts, the job market is tightening. But how many more people would be employed if it weren't so darned expensive to hire and keep new people on the payroll? How expensive?  Here are the real-world consequences of government policies that make it so easy for employees to sue their companies for a variety of imaginary offenses. Coyote Blog: California is a uniquely difficult place for companies trying to actually employ people rather than robots.   Owning a business in that state, you could be forgiven...

The cannabis industry could have a notable economic impact, if the U.S. federal government stays out of the way. Investors are always on the lookout for fast-growing industries, which means there's no surprise why marijuana stocks have been such strong performers over the past year. Far more pot stocks than not with a market cap of at least $200 million have doubled or tripled in value over the past year. Optimistic growth figures for the industry are seemingly everywhere. Aside from the fact that a record number of Americans surveyed by Gallup and CBS News want to see cannabis legalized...

House Republicans greeted current and future federal employees with two controversial body blows in recent days — one amounts to a pay cut and the other would allow new feds to be fired for “no cause at all.” The House Budget Committee approved a spending plan that would save the government $163.5 billion over 10 years by taking that amount from federal employees. (snip) Republicans call their plan “Building a Better America.” But the Americans now working to build a better country through their federal jobs would be called on to sacrifice again, as they have repeatedly over the years....

Unless you live in a deep-blue state or congressional district, hypocrisy is not something you want to have to revisit during a re-election campaign. For red state Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, he should be preparing his defense because this is going to be used against him by the time his 2018 re-election campaign kicks into high gear. The senator has tried to portray himself as a hardcore fighter of this byproduct in free trade but seems to have profited from it through investments with the family arts and crafts business (via Associated Press) [emphasis mine]: An Indiana senator...

Before young American men get back to work, they should switch off the video console. Younger men’s working hours have declined more than those of older men over the last 15 years, according to a working paper by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester and distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based research group. The researchers analyzed how people spend their time when they are not working. Older men are more likely to be employed than those who are younger. Some 66 percent of men looking for jobs aged...

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 222,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Employment Situation Summary Transmission of material in this release is embargoed until USDL-17-0934 8:30 a.m. (EDT) Friday, July 7, 2017 Technical information: Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cps Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/ces Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JUNE 2017 Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 222,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care, social assistance, financial activities, and mining. Household Survey Data In June, the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and...

With President Donald Trump’s nominees on their way to the Senate, labor and employment attorneys say the National Labor Relations Board is poised to roll back regulations with its first Republican majority in nearly a decade. Management-side attorneys and anti-union advocates are hopeful Obama-era regulations will be scuttled in favor of business-friendly practices.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming employees will receive greater and more explicit protections this week as new California employment regulations take effect Saturday. But some worry the new regulations might put employers in a difficult place: wanting to do right by their employees and follow the law, but lacking the resources — and the training — to do so. That’s why state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), gutted his own higher education bill to put forth a new proposal that would institute mandatory workplace training around gender identity and expression in the same way that sexual-harassment training is required...

Yesterday, Ed Morrissey looked at the “controversial” (not really) figures coming out of Seattle showing the downward pressure on employment and wages experienced there since the minimum wage suddenly spiked upward. This is unwelcome news in the Fight For 15 community and they’re pushing back on it as hard as possible. But the figures don’t lie and this result was entirely predictable in a free market economy. Seattle, however, isn’t the only place this effect is being seen. The minimum wage has been jumping upward in New York City also and similar effects are being felt. Nowhere is this...

Amazon is looking to reduce costs at Whole Foods with a new automated checkout system that would render thousands of cashiers redundant, it has been reported. Carmen Clark, 37, an employee at the Mount Pleasant Whole Foods, said, 'Everybody's been kind of joking that it's going to be robots and drones,' after the Amazon bought the grocery chain for $13.7 billion. It turns out Clark wasn't that far off, since Amazon is trying to reduce prices by replacing cashiers with a new mobile payment system, according to a person familiar with the company's plans who spoke to Bloomberg. But Amazon...

Although last week's "infrastructure week" was overshadowed by former FBI Director James Comey's Capitol Hill testimony and the appointment of a new FBI director, the White House is pushing ahead with its strategy of weeks devoted to specific policy themes. In that vein, the White House is dubbing next week "workforce development week." The administration will announce new administrative actions focused on streamlining current federal job training programs and expanding apprenticeship programs. Ivanka Trump, assistant to the president and the president's daughter, will lead next week's events, including what a senior White House official called a "major policy speech" by...

"Too many people are going to college," writes my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray. That's not a response to the mob of students who attacked him and the liberal professor who had invited him to speak back in March at Middlebury College. It's the title of the third chapter in his 2008 book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality." Since Murray wrote those words, higher-education enrollment has in fact declined, from 20.6 million in 2011 to 19 million in 2016, according to Ohio University economists Richard Vedder and Justin Strehle, who wrote about...

So, yesterday ADP releases it's job numbers, 253,000 new jobs vs 185,000 estimated.And everybody here at FR is whooping and hollering. Then the BLS numbers are released today and their numbers are WAAAAAY down.138,000 according to BLS.Almost 50,000 BELOW what was expected.So, what is right and what is wrong?How can ADP be almost twice of BLS?The Atlanta Fed projected the Q2 GDP growth at a 4% pace.That suggests the economy is on a tear.Does anybody know the reality of the labor situation?And can you explain it for the rest of us?

As Washington debates what actions to take to rev up economic growth, the free-market private sector, which waits for no one, is witnessing the beginning of a new trend. For a decade, America has been a tale of two economies: a strong one for skilled workers and a worrisome, poor one for workers without skills. The gap, however, is now diminishing, as low unemployment, rising expectations and economic reality are causing a recruitment war to begin, a war that’s good for workers, including those with no skills. I hear it from employers across the country – if they don’t raise...

Welcome back to the status quo ante. After an unexpectedly poor March, the US economy returned to its previous pace of job creation, adding 211,000 jobs in April according to today’s jobs report. However, nearly as many people left the workforce last month as got jobs within it. In fact, March turned out to be worse than previously reported: The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised up from +219,000 to +232,000, and the change for March was revised down from +98,000 to +79,000. With these revisions, employment gains in February and March combined were 6,000 lower...

We are seeing a rise in crime and long term disability claims because our ever more complex society does not have ways to keep those with lower IQs engaged in the workforce.

Eddie Ybarra and Francisco Martinez, both in their 40s, work side by side building the walls of two of the newest condo buildings in downtown Los Angeles. They drive pickup trucks to work, park in adjacent lots and both take their lunch break around 10 a.m. That’s about all they share. Ybarra, born in Los Angeles, has built a solidly middle-class lifestyle on more than two decades in the carpenters’ union, earning $40 an hour on top of a pension, healthcare and unlimited vacation days.