Free Republic

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee is expected to try again on Thursday to pass his S.386 bill, which helps India’s graduates grab hundreds of thousands of college level jobs from American graduates. All GOP Senators are expected to stay silent while Lee pushes his bill that rewards roughly 300,000 of India’s contract workers in the United States with a fast track to citizenship. Silicon Valley investors back his bill, which also allows companies to annually pay 60,000 of India’s contract workers — plus 60,000 family members — with government-provided green cards after they take jobs from American graduates. Existing “country...

Young people are spearheading mental health awareness at the workplace. About half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Zers have quit their jobs for mental health reasons, according to a new study conducted by Mind Shares Partners, SAP and Quatrics. It was published in Harvard Business Review.

Coworking startup WeWork plans to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce following the ouster of CEO Adam Neumann, according to a new report. WeWork plans layoffs 'in the thousands', though less than the 3,000 to 5,000 number that had been previously reported, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider. The company has 12,500 employees, so a cut of 1,000 to 3,000 people would be about 10% to 25% of its staff. Following backlash from investors over a dubious business model, Neumann stepped down last month, and new CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham put plans...

Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) now supports Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) green card giveaway bill, which will allow investors to reward many more Indian graduates for taking middle-class jobs from American college graduates. Perdue’s decision to end his opposition to the bill clears the way for Lee to rush his bill through the Senate on Thursday. If no other senators object, Lee’s bill will move through the Senate, putting it much closer to becoming law.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has gone after Utah Sen. Mike Lee for supporting a bill that would lift per-country gaps on permanent residency. The bill was ultimately blocked in the Senate. Dobbs described the bill as an “absolute dream” for outsourcers on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” The bill's called the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. “It would remove green card limits on workers from other countries,” said Dobbs, “but what that means is big countries like India and China principally would overwhelm the H1B visa list, and guess what? They would be taking American jobs at lower pay, historically...

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee will try again to pass his S.386 bill, which grants green cards to India’s college graduates if they take jobs from American graduates. “I believe it’s ready for prime time,” Mike Lee said in a June 19 statement on the Senate floor, adding: It is ready to become law … I intend to be back next week making yet another attempt to pass this bill into law. And I hope and expect that we will be able to do so. Leon Fresco, a Democrat lawyer working with Lee to pass the bill, also declared the...

On Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden said his childcare tax credit would put "720 million" women into the workforce. The problem? There were only 327.1 million people in America in 2018, according to the Census Bureau. The bureau's "population clock" estimated the current population at 329.7 million as of Tuesday evening. "If you get a tax break for a racehorse, why in god’s name couldn’t we provide an $8,000 tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? It would put 720 million women back in the workforce," Biden said at a "Workers 2020" summit put on by the Philadelphia...

Amazon-owned Whole Foods will be withdrawing medical benefits for hundreds of its part-time workers starting Jan. 1, 2020, the company said Thursday. In the past, employees needed to work at least 20 hours a week to buy into the health-care plan. Now they will need to work at least 30 hours. Less than 2% of its workforce, or 1,900 employees, will no longer be eligible for medical coverage, under the new policy, the company said.

The House of Representatives approved the Raise the Wage Act Thursday, which would boost the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. In a 231-199 vote along party lines, the House passed the legislation that would increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the current rate of $7.25. In an even more drastic increase, the bill calls for having the same minimum wage for tipped workers, raising it from $2.13 an hour.

Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications. Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.

Some food for thought on Equal Pay Day, April 2. White men who ask for a raise are 25% more likely to get one than people of color, a recent study concludes. And yet white men believe they face an uphill battle in corporate America in 2018. An engineer who was fired by Google GOOG-0.64% for circulating an anti-diversity memo sued the company in January, alleging that the tech giant discriminates against white, conservative men. He’s likely not alone in that belief. There are other white men working in tech who believe their gender and race are making it difficult...

“With Gen Z … we have to show them rather than just talking about it,” said Michelle Jordan, an assistant vice president of HR development and college recruiting. Move over, millennials. The next generation is just starting to make its way into the workforce, and employers are taking note. The first wave of Generation Z, those born after 1996 and more than 60 million strong, will start moving from college to career this year. These newest workers come from the first post-Sept. 11 generation, one that’s grown up with social media and smartphones, watched their parents go through the housing...

You have to work hard to get your dream job. But your dream job title might just be a pay cut away. According to one hiring expert, more and more job applicants initiate conversations about lowering their starting salaries in favor of getting the job title they want, with no change to their job description and responsibilities.

In December 2018, the New York law firm Paul, Weiss announced its latest class of partners. A scandal erupted: all 12 of the newly promoted lawyers were white, the photo accompanying the announcement revealed. The New York Times published a front-page hit job on the firm headlined: 12 WHITE FACES REFLECT BLIND SPOT IN BIG LAW. ... So why are there not more black partners? The same reasons that there are not more black computer engineers or physicians: the academic skills gap and counterproductive racial preferences. Blacks are hired as summer law interns and first-year associates at rates well above...

The recent news on jobs has been great. But the White House seems determined to torpedo it.The official unemployment rate is the lowest since 1969 and the number of job openings remains high, indicating continued high demand for workers, and wages are increasing. As a restaurant industry lobbyist told the Indianapolis Star recently, “It’s an employee market today. It’s not an employer market. And that’s not going to change for the foreseeable future.� This is the precondition for drawing more people into the labor market who are currently neither working nor looking for work. And it is sorely needed; the...

Next week is National Small Business Week, but owners aren’t likely to spend it celebrating — they’ll be too busy trying to hire workers or keep the ones they have from defecting to bigger firms. With a 3.6 percent unemployment rate, the lowest since December 1969, the labor market continues to thrive. “This is a worker’s job market,” said Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. But Zandi adds that this is less-than-good news for the small companies that comprise the vast majority of U.S. businesses. “The risk or the concern would be at some point that businesses start to come...

When older workers participate in the job market, it not only lowers unemployment rates but, in an economy like today’s, it fills a vital skills gap in the labor force. A recent article from Reuters suggests that the economic boom of the past few years has been buoyed by Baby Boomers who have found their way back to the workforce. The report cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that says 3 million Americans over the age of 55 joined (or rejoined) the workforce over the past three years. For perspective, that makes up approximately 60% of the total...

A few years ago, Marriott debuted a new app at hotels in five cities that was supposed to save housekeepers time by telling them which rooms to clean. It was a disaster. Housekeepers ended up yo-yoing between rooms on different floors, ignoring messy rooms just down the hall. If anything, the cleaners felt that the app made them less efficient, and they worried about being disciplined by their bosses for failing to finish their work on time. “A wild-goose chase” is how Rachel Gumpert, a spokeswoman for Unite Here, the labor union that represents Marriott’s housekeepers, describes the episode. Several...

New York State (New York City in particular) can be a really expensive place to live. That’s why it’s particularly tough for many people to make ends meet if they’re earning minimum wage… or even less. That generally only applies to tipped employees like restaurant wait staff and bartenders. But never fear, ladies and gentlemen. There are powerful politicians and famous Hollywood stars out there fighting on your behalf. One of them from the latter category is actress and comedian Amy Schumer. She has connections to powerful politicians (like her Uncle Chuck) and the media alike, and she’s been...

Americans don't usually think of technical professionals as "guest workers," yet at any one time, there are more than a half-million foreigners holding tech jobs in the U.S. They are here thanks to the H-1B visa program. H-1B, so the official spiel goes, addresses an alleged shortage of "highly skilled" Americans to fill jobs "requiring specialized knowledge." Growing evidence, however, points to companies' using the program to replace perfectly qualified American workers with cheaper ones from elsewhere. A new report published by the Atlantic Council documents the abuses. The authors are Ron Hira, a political scientist at Howard University, and...