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ABC7 has confirmed the region’s two military hospitals are furloughing more than 3,500 civilian employees who care for the nation’s wounded warriors, nearly their entire civilian staffs. The impacted employees are from departments across the board at both hospitals, including members of the trauma team, physical therapists and nurses. They will be forced to take 11 unpaid furlough days starting in July. Hospital officials say the furloughs affect 2,392 caregivers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. That’s 94% of the civilian staff there. Officials say 1,163 caregivers at Fort Belvoir’s hospital in Virginia are being furloughed, affecting...

German software development giant SAP plans to hire hundreds of people with autism by 2020. The company hopes to benefit from their unusual skillset and says it's ready for any practical challenges. Advocates hope the program could set an example for others. The Berlin IT firm Auticon contracts people with autism to work as consultants, mainly in the software industry. Autism impairs social and emotional communication, but can also be associated with extraordinary talent for analysis. Quincke facilitates a way to both utilize these strengths and integrate the workers into a professional setting. Now, German software development giant SAP has...

A senior Republican launched a preemptive political strike Saturday against the budget plan that Senate Democrats will offer next week, alleging it won’t address the national debt or help workers. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, used the GOP’s weekly address to make his party’s case against the 10-year plan that Democrats hope to steer through the committee. He said that debt is slowing the economy and depressing wages, and that balancing the budget and ending the deficit – which Sessions calls “the great challenge of our time” – can be achieved by holding...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of federal workers and retirees who owed delinquent income taxes jumped by nearly 12 percent in 2011, the Internal Revenue Service said Friday. Nearly 312,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.5 billion in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2011, the agency said. The year before, about 279,000 workers and retirees owed $3.4 billion. Overall, the 9.8 million workers included in the data had a delinquency rate of 3.2 percent. That's better than the general public. The IRS says the delinquency rate for the general public was 8.2 percent.

Workers who blow the whistle on violations of the healthcare law will be protected from retaliation by the federal government, according to new rules issued on Wednesday. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is encouraging people to turn in employers who fail to abide by the rules set in the Affordable Care Act. Specifically, the rules would shield whistleblowers who report employers who are blocking access to healthcare tax credits or denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. In the 58-page interim rule, OSHA notes that the healthcare law could “create an incentive for an employer to retaliate against...

No fewer than 572 San Francisco city workers and executives made more than Gov. Jerry Brown last year. More than 1,500 city workers made more than state Attorney General Kamala Harris. And that's without overtime. "That's pretty staggering," said Tom Dalzell, head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for state lawmakers. --SNIP-- The days when the headline-grabbing "$100,000 club" was made up of a handful of top managers and overtime earners are long gone. Last year, city controller's records show, roughly a quarter of the city's 36,000 full- and part-time workers made more than $100,000 - without...

The head of a Utah forensics company says it's only fair that two liberal employees were let go because liberal policies are costing his business. A Utah business owner says he fired two employees in large part because they supported President Barack Obama. “They were Obama supporters. We just knew they were," Terry Lee, owner of Terry Lee Forensics, a Cedar City, Utah, digital forensics company, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday. **SNIP** Contacted by the Tribune Thursday, Lee said he picked the two employees in large part on the basis of their politics, according to the newspaper. But...

Two years ago Fox 2 Problem Solver Rob Wolchek got a tip from someone inside Chrysler's Jefferson North Assembly plant about what some workers were doing at the park on their lunch break.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A group of Walmart workers spent Black Friday protesting at several Central Florida Walmart stores. They were demonstrating against what they call unfair working conditions. Alex Rivera, a former Walmart employee, said he lost his job a couple months ago after trying to get some of his workers to join in a walk-out on Black Friday. "Only because I was speaking out about their wages and the way they were treating their employees, they were retaliating against me and after that they fired me," said Rivera.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - A group of Wal-Mart workers are planning to stage a walkout next week on Black Friday, arguably the biggest holiday shopping day for the world's largest retail store. The walkout builds on an October strike that started at a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles and spread to stores in 12 other cities. More than 100 workers joined in the October actions. One of the workers who plans to join next week's walkout is William Fletcher, who works at a Wal-Mart in Duarte, Calif.

Title only as per FR rules. Link to article in thread below.

Link only - Taxes go up in 2013 for 163 million workers

DNC creating madness for commuters to CharlotteMichael Barrett September 03, 2012 10:36 AM The prohibitive cost of driving to work and paying for parking in uptown Charlotte every day forces Kathy Beck to take public transportation. But the Democratic National Convention will throw ripples and kinks into her schedule, as well as cutting into her bottom line. The single mother from Bessemer City will have to drive her own car and fork over parking fees all week, while arriving for work much earlier each morning. Oh, and she’ll also have to work next Saturday to make up time that’s missed...

House to vote on bill terminating federal workers who don't pay their taxesBy Pete Kasperowicz and Bernie Becker - 07/30/12 09:27 AM ET The House will vote on legislation as early as Tuesday that would require the federal government to terminate workers with "seriously delinquent" tax debts. The bill, which also would prohibit the government from hiring people who are late on their tax payments, tries to deal with the roughly 100,000 federal workers who are usually behind on their taxes each year. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the bill’s sponsor, has cited IRS data indicating that these workers owed a...

Today’s weak jobs report is devastating news for American workers and American families. This week has seen a cascade of one bad piece of economic news after another. Slowing GDP growth, plunging consumer confidence, an increase in unemployment claims, and now another dismal jobs report all stand as a harsh indictment of the President’s handling of the economy. It is now clear to everyone that President Obama’s policies have failed to achieve their goals and that the Obama economy is crushing America’s middle class. The President's re-election slogan may be ‘forward,’ but it seems like we've been moving backward. We...

Last week, while addressing an AFL-CIO crowd, President Obama extolled the virtues of empowering union bosses as employees' exclusive representatives. But here is something he failed to mention while praising union monopoly bargaining: It often hurts America's most productive workers. Union bosses almost always resist pay plans that take into account individual effort or ability. Consequently, union contracts routinely lower the earnings of the most productive front-line workers. And employees who work especially hard or are especially talented are not the only victims. When businesses are unable to offer their front-line employees incentives for good performance, they often find fewer...

And in the same week Obama vows buy one, Christmas comes early this year. (DFP) — General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.

Dems vow: No more cuts for federal workersBy Mike Lillis - 02/29/12 07:21 PM ET Leading Democrats charged Republicans this week with "discrimination" against federal workers amid Congress's struggle to cut deficit spending. The Democrats said a series of federal pay cuts – most recently as part of the payroll-tax package – pile the deficit-reduction burden on one group of Americans while the rest of the country gets a free pass. The lawmakers – all of whom represent districts laden with federal workers – are vowing to oppose any future legislation that includes cuts in federal compensation. "'Bureaucrats' is used...

Less is more, according to New Hampshire lawmakers debating whether to ban the use of scented or fragrant soaps by state employees. Under House Bill 1444, state workers who interact with the public would be prohibited from wearing fragrances or scented products while on the job, MyFoxBoston reported. The reason for the proposed ban -- exposure to scented products can irritate or worsen symptoms for people with asthma or allergies. "The chemicals in some of these products can trigger the nasal congestion, sneezing and the runny nose," Dr. Stanley Fineman, an allergist with Emory University and the Atlanta Allergy and...

For the past two weeks, Big Labor bosses around the country have had their eyes on the Indiana capitol — watching in horror as the General Assembly passed a right-to-work bill with commanding majorities. The passage of Indiana's right-to-work law is an extraordinarily bitter defeat for the union brass. Less than a year ago, despite the fact that Hoosiers had elected substantial pro-right-to-work majorities to both chambers in 2010, union strategists remained confident they could preserve the forced-unionism status quo.