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☆ 'We would not stand idly by': Lagarde pledges ECB action if both profits and wages rise
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Silvia Amaro | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

At the same time, wages have also risen by more than expected," Lagarde said in an interview with French newspaper La Provence. As such, the ECB is vigilant about any risks that could reverse the trend and drive inflation up further, including profit margins. The euro zone has been battling high inflation for around a year given firstly, record-high energy costs, and more recently, soaring food prices. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Friday the bank will not "stand idly by " if there is a simultaneous increase in profits and wages given persistently high inflation in the region. "A simultaneous increase in both would fuel inflation risks, and we would not stand idly by in the face of such risks," Lagarde added.

Persons: Lagarde, Christine Lagarde Organizations: French, La Provence, ECB, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund Locations: Central

☆ UPS and its 340,000 workers are close to a new contract. Here's what they've agreed to — and which issues could still trigger a historic strike.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

UPS and the Teamsters have been negotiating a new contract for more than eight weeks. Many thorny issues have been resolved, but the Teamsters president said a strike could still happen. So far, both sides have agreed on 55 non-economic issues, Teamsters president Sean O'Brien said in a video message released July 1. Weekend warriorsThe thorny issue of how UPS will cover shifts on the weekend has been a major point of contention for some UPS drivers since a two-tiered system was instituted in the last contract in 2018. Though progress has encouraged many parties, including some drivers in contact with Insider, economic issues — especially pay — are often the most contentious in any union negotiation.

Persons: Sean O'Brien, O'Brien, " O'Brien, — Organizations: UPS, Teamsters Locations: Louisville , Kentucky, U.S, California

☆ In Philly, union members say they don't care about Biden's age: 'I never heard someone who is Catholic say the pope is too old'
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-17 | by ( Charles R. Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Union members told Insider they are not too concerned about Biden's age or electability. "I never heard someone who is Catholic say the pope is too old," one union member said. Biden's path to reelection depends in part on touting those achievements and turning out union members in November 2024. "There are a lot of politicians in this country who can't say the word 'union,'" Biden said Saturday afternoon, supporters in colorful union merchandise cheering behind him. At Saturday's rally, however, union members insisted it is not a concern — and that the discourse around it is an indictment of the times.

Persons: Joe Biden, —, Jaysin Saxton, Saxton, we've, Biden, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump, John Fetterman, Mary Samaroo, Samaroo, Trump, Nora Dumenigo, Dumenigo, Renee Dozier, Mike Brown, he's, Brown Organizations: Saturday . Union, Service, Starbucks, National Labor Relations, AFL, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania's Democratic Party, Senate, of Health, Human Services, Service Employees International Union, SEIU, Republican, Miami International Airport, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Locations: Philadelphia, Augusta , Georgia, Pennsylvania, Scranton, Queens, Afghanistan, Cuba, Boston

☆ The uber-rich are spending hundreds of thousands to hire pop stars like Flo Rida to perform at their kid's bar mitzvahs and birthdays
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Will Gendron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The wealthy are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on 30-minute performances from music artists. These private shows, like bar mitzvahs or birthdays, can draw in big names like Flo Rida and Drake. As artists make less money from their music, the idea of "selling out" is changing, New Yorker reports. To get Flo Rida at your private event however, it will run you between $150,000 and $300,000, with international shows extending that fee up to around $1 million, the New Yorker reported. A lawyer for Flo Rida confirmed to Insider that fee range was accurate and said his client "loves weddings, birthday parties and bar/bat mitzvahs."

Persons: Flo Rida, Drake, Flo Rida's, Flo, Beyonce, Rod Stewart, Steely Dan, Ryan Schinman, Ariana Grande —, Travis Scott Organizations: Morning, New Yorker, Billboard, Citigroup, McDonalds Locations: Miami, Lincolnshire, Chicago, New, Italy, Dubai, Sardinia

☆ Opinion: The surprising antidote to burnout
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Opinion Tess Taylor | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Community feels good. Activism feels good. Cultivating feels good. Sometimes we go out and work in community because we want to alter and renew our sense of what is possible. Last year, author Laura Vanderkam wrote in The New York Times that quitting is not the answer to burnout.

☆ The Woman Shaping a Generation of Black Thought
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Jenna Wortham | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

In her first book, “Monstrous Intimacies,” Sharpe writes extensively on Walker’s work to reveal how society is programmed to default to racist narratives. The work in Sharpe’s office, like many of Walker’s famous prints and sculptures, is devoid of color. The more time I spend with Sharpe’s work, the more it inflects my ways of seeing the world. According to Sharpe, Blackness is anagrammatical, meaning that the structures that order language, thought and society become disordered — if not destroyed entirely — when they encounter Blackness. “Her work has shown that we, as Black people, are the foils of humanity,” Frank B. Wilderson III, author of “Afropessimism,” told me.

☆ CNN anchor Kasie Hunt gives birth in surprise 13-minute labor
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

New York CNN —CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst Kasie Hunt and husband Matthew Mario Rivera welcomed their second child to the world last week in an unforgettable way. Their daughter, Grey Hunt Rivera, was born at home on Wednesday morning after just 13 minutes of sudden labor — before there was time to call the paramedics. CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst Kasie Hunt and newborn Grey. We were expecting her to arrive via a scheduled C section on Thursday morning,” said Hunt and Rivera of the early arrival. “It’s a day we’ll never forget!”Grey Hunt Rivera was born on Wednesday, March 1 at a healthy 8 pounds and 4 ounces.

☆ How a 34-year-old Ukrainian founder created scrappy business opportunities amid the chaos of war
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Alexandra York | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Alina Kachorovska has kept her business afloat thanks to scrappy opportunities amid the war. She's made boots for Ukrainian soldiers and focused on international expansion to sustain the brand. Kachorovska, which relied heavily on domestic direct-to-consumer sales before the war, felt a major impact from the displacement of Ukrainians. Opportunities during wartimeKachorovska employees worked from the factory to produce boots and shoes amid the war. Kachorovska first dreamed of taking her brand international six months before the war with Russia began, she said.

☆ How Putin's Russian goon squad used Mexican gig workers to troll an American election
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +25 min

Posting to social media sounded like an easy work-from-home gig, so he applied. This post from the Prigozhin-backed Social CMS network in Mexico referred to America as "we." He verified his account by providing chat transcripts, screenshots, contracts, and internal company documents. But just because Social CMS didn't yield an immediate, large-scale impact doesn't mean it should be ignored. "I didn't know who are you," wrote the person who is listed in the corporate directory as Prigozhin's media liaison.

☆ This CEO cut the working week, but not pay, at his factory – and says workers are now more productive and stick around for longer
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Stephanie Stacey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

DiamondBack Covers reduced its 40-hour week to 35 without cutting pay for workers. He thinks that blue-collar workers and their employers can both benefit from a shorter working week. The idea of cutting workers' hours without cutting pay, sometimes called the "four-day week", is gaining traction, but it's a movement that's often associated primarily with desk jobs. DiamondBack Covers, which makes heavy-duty covers for pickup trucks, employs about 115 workers at its factory in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. The shorter week also appears to help attracting new staff at a time when many factories have struggled to find workers.

☆ Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners in US, UK Paying Virtual Assistants $2.50 Per Hour
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Aimee Pearcy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Virtual assistants help small-business owners with tasks like entering data, managing email, answering calls, creating client invoices, handling live chat support, and bolstering social-media engagement. Other virtual assistants aren't as fortunate. Since Jonas launched OnlineJobs.ph in 2009, he said, it has become a leading platform for Filipino virtual assistants, with over 2 million profiles offering services. Paying virtual assistants similar rates, regardless of whether they're also in a Western country, is an obvious solution. "Virtual assistants work with a client constantly.

☆ 23 major brands suspected of illegally sourcing products made by forced labor in China
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-17 | by ( Jacob Zinkula | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

And more ...Mary Meisenzahl/InsiderThese companies have also been suspected of having direct or indirect ties to Chinese forced labor in the aforementioned reports. Bosch"Bosch is committed to ensuring that its products are not produced wholly or in part by forced labor. "Compliance with human rights, labor rights and environmental standards is a top priority at PUMA and has been specified in our Codes of Conduct for over 20 years." As stated in our Business Conduct Guidelines, we reject all forms of oppression, forced labor and participation in human rights violations. We will continue to respect human rights and take a strong stand against forced labor."

☆ Hate Elon Musk all you want, but he's got one management trick that every boss should emulate
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Managers have become alarmingly distanced from the average worker, making calls based on guesses that aren't informed by actual labor. Musk has demanded that managers are able to create "good code" yet does not appear to be much of a coder himself. Jackson Palmer, a cocreator of dogecoin, said Musk was a "grifter" who "had trouble running basic code" in their interactions. He's targeted critical teams at Twitter and pushed others to quit, which have resulted in a huge upswing in hate speech on the platform. In fact, by his own logic of how managers can contribute to the company, Musk should be summarily firing himself any day now.

☆ People are actually less worried about losing their jobs than they were before the pandemic
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Still, workers are more worried about losing their jobs than they were earlier in the year. Of course, some are more worried than others about losing their jobs. When broken down by age, workers over 59 years old were the most worried about losing their jobs, while fears among those 40 to 59 went down a bit in November. Those under 40 also got a bit more worried about losing their jobs, although all age groups were less worried than they were in November 2021. However, workers with a high school education or less are less concerned about losing their jobs than workers with some college education or a BA and higher.

☆ A 'frugal' millionaire shares the 5 money rules he teaches his kids: 'My mom clipped coupons every week'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Jonathan Sanchez | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Jonathan and Jacqueline Sanchez are real estate investors and the co-founders of Parent Portfolio. We took charge of our finances by saving more, starting side hustles and investing in real estate. When my son wanted money for his school's book fair, we gave him a budget of $40. It's easy to forget that social media is often just a highlight reel. We never take out our phones when we eat together, and we use social media disabling apps to limit our daily activity to one hour a day.

☆ Vice President Harris is wrapping up her midterm campaign push by meeting with union leaders a day before the elections
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with union leaders on Monday in California. Along the way, according to a White House official, she is prioritizing meeting with local labor leaders. In May, Harris — along with co-chair Marty Walsh, Biden's Secretary of Labor — welcomed union organizers from the likes of Starbucks and Amazon to the White House. The Biden administration has made clear its intentions to embrace organized labor. Harris "has been focused on reaching women, young people, and communities of color," a White House official said.

The White House struck a tentative deal Thursday to avoid a rail strike that risked major disruptions across the United States, with freight workers securing a key demand. Pandemic pressures, including those that scrambled supply chains, worked in freight workers’ favor, logistics experts said. A rail strike would dent many industries, as about 40% of goods that are shipped long-distance rely on the nation’s rail system. Rail workers often are on-call 24/7 year-round and are allotted time off only after being called to a number of consecutive on-call shifts. A labor union source told NBC News that getting rail carriers to negotiate on attendance policies was a major breakthrough.

☆ Warehouse giants like Amazon and others are desperate for more robots, but human workers worry they make the job more dangerous
▼ + stars: | 2021-08-31 | by ( Andrew Moseman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

As a new workday dawns in the warehouse, workers take their places around the floor to start their shifts. Amazon, the industry juggernaut, began bringing robots into its warehouses after purchasing the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012. This year, it launched a billion-dollar fund focused on logistics and supply-chain robotics companies, the biggest splash in a sea of warehouse robotics investments and acquisitions. A Harvard Business Review survey of 77 warehouse workers in 2022 found that they viewed automation in warehouses slightly more positively than negatively. While workers worried about job loss and dealing with tech malfunctions, they were optimistic that robots could make their work safer and more productive.

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