Keyword: workers
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Remember that time, roughly two months ago, when President Trump promised not to roll back an order protecting the rights of LGBTQ workers? Yeah, well, he lied. Surprise! On Monday, Trump signed an executive order revoking key parts of previous orders by President Obama, which had effectively banned federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Under Executive Order 13673, which Obama issued in 2014, companies receiving federal contracts in excess of half a million dollars were required to demonstrate they had complied with a set of 15 federal or state labor laws over the...
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As union honchos for government workers describe it, the paycheck protection legislation that passed the state Senate last month amounts to a political gag order on workers. But if there's any actual “gagging” going on, it's in attempting to swallow this union shibboleth. The Senate bill bars state, local government and school district employers from deducting any portion of union dues from workers' paychecks that fund political activity. Deductions for contract negotiations and other costs remain unchanged.
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Pope warns of 'very grave sin' when jobs are cut unjustly
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It was 1967. The local music store had an ink-blue Mosrite Ventures solid body electric guitar, and I wanted it badly. Cost: $500. My family was not poor, but neither could they drop five bills on one of four children. My first guitar was a $29.99 Stella acoustic from Sears. There was only one way to get the guitar of my dreams: a summer job. Complication: I had long hair, and even in the psychedelic sixties, few legitimate employers wanted that at their front counters or even their back rooms. All the head shop jobs were taken. We lived in...
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JoAnn Wise thinks she wasn’t treated well. In an op-ed published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Wise writes, “I already know what Trump/Puzder economics look like because I’m living it every day. Despite giving everything I had to [labor secretary pick Andy] Puzder’s company for 21 years, I left without a penny of savings, with no health care and no pension.” Wise worked for 21 years at Hardee’s, which is one of the chains Puzder leads as head of CKE. “In 1984, I was hired as a cashier at Hardee’s in Columbia, S.C., making $4.25 an hour. By 2005, 21...
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Now here's a man-bites-dog story: Labor strife at Berkeley. Janitorial, custodial and cafeteria workers at Berkeley are fighting to maintain their raise from $9 to $17 an hour with benefits at a university that prides itself on its progressive outlook. Three points need to be made about this: 1. That may still put them on the low end of the pay scale on campus; 2. Whether you want to make a value judgement on their work vis a vis that of administrators, you have to at least admit that their labors are tangible as opposed to the more metaphoric ones...
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Making good on a promise to slash government, President-elect Trump has asked his incoming team to pursue spending and staffing cuts. Insiders said that the spending reductions in some departments could go as high as 10 percent and staff cuts to 20 percent, numbers that would rock Washington if he follows through. At least two so-called "landing teams" in Cabinet agencies have relayed the call for cuts as part of their marching orders to shrink the flab in government. The cuts would target discretionary spending, not mandated programs such as Medicare or Social Security, the sources said. The spending reductions...
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A group of information technology workers laid off by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts claims they were victims of discrimination. The say they were forced to train their replacements from India before they were fired. On Monday, the 30 former IT workers filed a suit against the company in an Orlando federal court. They’re seeking punitive damages. The lawsuit contends that 250 IT workers in Florida were told they would need to train their replacements before they were fired at the end of 2014. Each replacement worker was of Indian origin, and was either brought from overseas or working outside...
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n June, President Obama participated in a PBS townhall and was asked about Trump's promise to keep Carrier's Indiana plant in the U.S. The townhall participant -- Eric Cottonham, a member of the Steelworkers Union employed by Carrier -- asked Obama if anything could be done to stem the tide of jobs flowing out of the country, as Trump had recently promised to do. "I see here you’re doing a lot of things, but in Indianapolis, there’s nothing there for us," he asked. "I mean, what’s next? I mean, what can we look forward to in the future as far...
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The first thing to understand about the minimum wage is that it is a classic case of understandable emotionalism and frustration versus concrete data and economic reality. So the clearest explanation is a pros-and-cons listing. On the pros side of increasing the minimum wage, people who are making it and who keep their jobs will make more money. Their increased earnings improve their purchasing power. The cons side is a little lengthier. Sharp increases in the minimum wage reduces the number of entry-level jobs This, in turn, reduces the opportunity for unskilled workers to start getting experience. This is common...
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We’ve all had that co-worker at some point: superficially charming, supremely self-confident, but they’ll walk over anyone to get ahead and not feel a second’s remorse. Perhaps, after you were burned yet again, you half-joked that they must have a personality disorder. Today, experts believe it’s very possible that your colleague is a psychopath. Groundbreaking research presented at the Australian Psychology Society Congress in Melbourne this week reveals that one in five corporate workers may have the disorder — as many as in the prison population.
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Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone magazine that the Democrats’ embrace of globalist neoliberal policies – in particular Bill Clinton’s signing of NAFTA – have provided an opening for Republican nominee Donald Trump to refashion the GOP as the party fighting for the “rational self-interest” of American workers whose wages have stagnated from decades of globalist trade policies.
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Governing Magazine recently used data from the Census Bureau to show that Michigan has the lowest per-capita public employment. MIRS News spoke with some public unions that said this is a travesty. But it is not an indicator of much — neither cost, or quality, or even the government's importance to residents. Consider the largest service provided by state and local government — elementary and secondary schooling. There are 168 school employees for every 10,000 Michigan residents, putting the state at the low end of public employment for this function. The national average was 208 employees per 10,000 residents. Michigan...
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Ross Douthat says that the true divide in Western politics is now between globalists and nationalists — and this divide is tribal. He explains the identifying markers of the Cosmopolitan tribe, i.e., what makes them different from the nationalist tribe (among them: their “out group” is Evangelical Christians). Douthat says there’s not necessarily anything wrong with this. A propensity for tribalism is part of human nature. More: But it’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine...
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BEIJING — Police in northern China say an argument between construction workers escalated into a demolition derby-style clash of heavy machinery that left at least two bulldozers flipped over in a street. In online video taken Saturday, several bulldozers are seen ramming each other while passenger cars scurry away from the cloud of dust. The video shows one driver running unhurt out of his toppled bulldozer, a fast-moving type also known as a wheel loader, while a friendly bulldozer tries to lift it back up. Video at link
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"The robots weren't able to carry soup," one of their former colleagues said.After piloting early AI server programs, three Guangzhou restaurants have engaged in mass robot firings, Shanghaiist reports. Two of the formerly robot-employing restaurants have closed down entirely, and the remaining one has fired all but one of their nonhuman staff members. "The boss has decided never to use them again," a human waiter said of his former colleagues. Said boss and his compatriots originally hired the droids to save money—after an up-front investment, robot workers are much less expensive than humans, because you don't actually have to pay...
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MADISON, Wis. - Billed as "A Day Without Latinos," Thursday's demonstrations at the Capitol were marked by passionate speeches, plenty of hyperbole, and a lot of fractured facts to count. The rally against legislation that Latinos believe to be anti-immigrant drew some 20,000 demonstrators in and around the Capitol grounds, according to Madison police. Many of the protesters were bused in by rally organizers, principally the left-wing Voces de la Frontera. State Rep. Melissa Sargent, D-Madison, called the demonstrations a "beautiful celebration of who we are as a state," and that Wisconsin must "value and celebrate the diversity of the...
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In 2014, the Northeast Utilities Company in Connecticut -- now known as Eversource Energy -- allegedly laid off around 200 of its American tech workers and replaced them with low-wage foreigners admitted on H-1B guest worker visas. Now a photo has emerged depicted the workers' final, silent patriotic protest -- silent because the workers reportedly were forced to sign non-disparagement agreements to shield their employer. The image depicts the display of American flags around cubicles of the company's IT department -- circulated by trade magazine ComputerWorld -- before the Americans were replaced with foreign labor. The powerful image seems to...
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The Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris has forced France to examine its security policies, including at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, where it was recently discovered that 57 employees who had access to airplanes and runways were on a terror watch list. Now, the security passes of 86,000 workers at the Paris airport will be reviewed, according to a report by the Sunday Times of London. **SNIP** The recent finding of Arabic graffiti on four planes at two French airports, including one that had "Allahu Akbar" written on a fuel tank hatch, has only increased security concerns. While the...
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Employment rates among prime-age workers, especially men, have declined sharply over the last few decades. The Great Recession made matters worse. Recent declines in the unemployment rate have enticed some back into the active labor force but the long-term picture is still discouraging. When we compare the U.S. to other advanced countries, working-age adults are simply not working as much as adults in most European nations. What's going on here? As my colleague Gary Burtless notes, three developments have probably played a role. First, real wages have fallen by 28 percent for high-school educated men since 1980, making work much...
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