Free Republic

Don’t call the federal workers waiting to buy lunch from downtown Washington’s food trucks “nonessentials.” It’s like being branded with a scarlet letter N, or ending up the punchline of a late-night comedy bit that’s actually not that funny when there are bills to pay. Essential. Nonessential. These are the terms commonly, although not officially, used for employees who find themselves in one of two controversial categories: starting players or benched, during a partial government shutdown that is being threatened. **SNIP** “It’s like a stab in the back. Like being told in high school that you’re average and not in...

Walmart gleefully reported on Friday September 6, 2013 about the low turnout for the walkout sponsored by an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial International Union (UFCW) indicating that unions no longer have any teeth.

<p>On this Labor Day, American workers face a buyers' market. Employers have the upper hand and, given today's languid pace of hiring, the advantage shows few signs of ending. What looms, at best, is a sluggish descent from high unemployment (7.4 percent in July) and a prolonged period of stagnant or slow-growing wages. Since 2007, there has been no gain in average inflation-adjusted wages and total compensation, including fringes, notes the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.</p>

FULL TITLE: Workers believe Gen Y bosses aren’t team players, act like they are entitled and are full of themselves, survey finds The workers of Generation Y are getting a name for themselves. Managers from Gen Y are widely perceived as self-entitled and don’t score particularly highly when it comes to being a team player. Generation Y is defined as people aged between 18 and 32. It finds that they’re moving into management at a rapid pace. New newly released research from EY, the global firm that includes Ernst & Young LLP suggests 87 percent of Gen Y managers have...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's decision to delay implementation of part of his healthcare reform law will cost $12 billion and leave a million fewer Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance in 2014, congressional researchers said Tuesday.

As the Department of Labor (DOL) celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act this year, the department is sponsoring a Smartphone app contest to help consumers identify businesses who treat "their workers fairly and lawfully." The DOL requests [emphasis added] that contestants: develop a smartphone application that will transform the way the public is able to use departmental enforcement data. By providing consumers with information at their fingertips about which businesses have treated their workers fairly and lawfully, the creator of this application will help empower consumers to make informed choices about where to bring their business....

(CNSNews.com) – The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012. That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of private sector workers in the U.S.

The Obama administration is moving toward final implementation of new job protections for disgruntled intelligence employees who keep their complaints about wrongdoing within government channels. Some advocates for whistleblowers have hailed the move, which comes as Edward Snowden — who has claimed to be a U.S. national security whistleblower — accelerates his search for foreign asylum from a Moscow airport waiting room. By July 8, dozens of federal agencies are required to tell the White House in detail how they plan to implement an order the president signed last October that prohibits retaliation against those who flag “waste, fraud and...

AN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Bay Area Rapid Transit workers walked off the job early Monday morning after last-minute negotiations failed to produce a new contract agreement. The strike ensured a nightmarish commute to start the week, leaving about 400,000 BART riders to find another way to get work. The unions were seeking a 5 percent annual raise over the next three years. BART spokesman Rick Rice said the transit agency had rolled out several offers over the course of negotiations, including an 8 percent salary raise over the next four years. But the unions dismissed the proposals as “surface...

In the latest installment of another long-running series, we look at the age bracket distribution of those who are lucky enough to get new jobs each month, versus those who aren't. It should come as no surprise that once more the majority of new jobs created in the month of May went to the oldest age-group cohort, those 55 and older, which saw an increase of 203,000 jobs in May, more than every other age group bracket. The result: with an all time high 31,488,000 workers aged 55-69, Americans are far more busy working in their older years than retiring...

A popular meme of the immigration debate has to do with the claim from technology companies that there's a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) worker shortage in the United States. This is frequently used to bolster the argument that the U.S. should increase the number of temporary visas issued to foreign-born workers in order to fulfill demand in the tech industry for techie talent. A new report from the esteemed Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce presents a pretty significant rebuttal to that claim. Released on Wednesday, the annual report looks at how new college graduates are faring...

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.