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☆ Over 8 million workers will get a raise on New Year's as states step in to raise their minimum wages
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

8.4 million workers will get a raise on New Year's, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 23 states are set to raise their minimum wages on January 1, due to inflation, legislation, and ballot measures. Many states have raised local minimum wages past the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. States and cities stepping in to raise their minimum wages is not a new phenomenon. A Democratic-controlled House and Senate failed to pass a $15 minimum wage in 2021, and it's been relatively silent ever since.

☆ Congress created an actual safety net for Americans during the last crisis. Don't expect that to happen again.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Congress enhanced unemployment benefits and gave parents monthly checks during the first two years of the pandemic. For Maggie Lopez, a single mother in Texas, the checks meant some breathing room for her and her newborn. The enhanced unemployment had a ripple effect, according to Evermore: People were able to stay home safely. In the case of enhanced unemployment, some states decided to end their participation in federal programs early, leaving many workers in dire straits. After Congress failed to renew a reduced version of the child tax credit at the end of 2021, child poverty once again ticked up.

Garvey had argued that the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), which protects workers who report securities violations, can apply to securities fraud that occurs overseas but affects U.S. markets. Circuit said SOX's whistleblower protections do not prohibit securities fraud, so any impact on the U.S. was irrelevant in applying the law. Nor did Morgan Stanley, which has denied retaliating against Garvey. An administrative law judge ruled that SOX did not apply to overseas workers, and a review board agreed last year. For Garvey: pro seFor DOL: Reynaldo FuentesFor Morgan Stanley: Michael Kenneally of Morgan Lewis & BockiusOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The proposal would require that workers be considered employees, entitled to more benefits and legal protections than contractors, when they are "economically dependent" on a company. Most federal and state labor laws only apply to a company's employees, who can cost employers up to 30% more than independent contractors, studies suggest. Federal law requires agencies to adequately explain their decision to withdraw and replace existing rules. The rule would treat companies as so-called "joint employers" under federal labor law when they have indirect control over working conditions such as scheduling, hiring and firing, and supervision. The 2020 rule barred NLRB staff from putting off elections while related cases alleging illegal labor practices are being litigated.

☆ Cult-favorite Crumbl Cookies franchisees slapped with nearly $60,000 in fines for violating child labor laws in 6 states
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Mary Meisenzahl | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Some Crumbl Cookies franchisees violated federal labor laws by scheduling minors outside of legal hours. Minor-aged workers at 11 Crumbl Cookie locations in six states employed minor workers who exceeded legal time limits and operated "potentially dangerous ovens and machinery," the federal agency said in a statement. Crumbl Cookies' corporate office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Fast food and quick service chains like Crumbl historically rely on teenagers to staff locations, especially amid a labor shortage. Child labor law violations spiked in 2022 with a 37% increase over the previous year, according to the Department of Labor.

☆ America needs immigrants to solve its labor shortage
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Vanessa Yurkevich | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

But If you’re wondering why America’s labor shortage persists nearly three years into the Covid pandemic, it’s in part because America doesn’t have enough immigrants. Immigrants are vital to the US economy and fill thousands of US jobs – jobs many Americas don’t want to do. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that in addition to an aging workforce there is a lack of foreign labor contributing to labor shortages. Those types of industries had higher rates of unfilled jobs last year – adding to existing labor shortages, according to UC Davis research. “The farm labor crisis is hindering production and contributing to food price inflation.

☆ Netflix is still hiring for hundreds of roles across its games studio, engineering teams, and more. Salary data shows how much the company has offered for 180 different jobs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Ashley Rodriguez | Elaine Low | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Netflix offered base salaries between $40 an hour and $800,000 a year for certain roles, data shows. The company doesn't disclose salary data, but, like other US firms, it discloses how much it plans to pay workers it hires on US visas. Many of the roles offered six-figure base salaries. Netflix may choose to pay employees more than the figures reflected in this data or compensate them in additional ways. Based on the data, Netflix offered annual base salaries ranging from $40.45 per hour to $800,000, with a median of $184,080, for various roles.

☆ The Chick-fil-A franchisee who paid workers in chicken is now being fined by the Department of Labor
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Mary Meisenzahl | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A North Carolina Chick-fil-A owner owes back pay to people who worked for food vouchers. The Department of Labor is also fining the owner more than $6,000 for child labor law violations. Chick-fil-A's corporate office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the Labor Department ruling, but the company previously said that it did not endorse the program. Having the workers do so was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor Department said. Separately, the Labor Department said the Hendersonville, North Carolina, restaurant owes $6,450 in civil penalties over child labor violations.

☆ Foreign workers killed working on U.S. bases likely didn't get compensation required by U.S., report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Andrew W. Lehren | Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Courtney-Kube-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Tens of thousands of workers from Nepal, the Philippines and other developing countries took jobs at U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. Called third-country nationals, or TCNs, because they were not from the U.S. or Afghanistan, they worked as cafeteria workers, janitors and often armed guards for the bases. When a car bomb or other Taliban attack occurred, Afghans and TCN contractors “were far more likely to be killed or injured,” said the report. During the interviews, Coburn and Gill found 12 different contract workers injured or killed who did not appear to have received proper compensation. When contractors are found to have violated insurance requirements, there is little punishment, according to the report.

☆ Getir's acquisition of Gorillas is the latest consolidation move for the rapid delivery space. Here's why analysts say ultrafast couldn't hack it in the US.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Alex Bitter | Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Fridge No More, Buyk, Jokr, and 1520 have shuttered or withdrawn from the US, while Getir, Gopuff, and Gorillas have cut staff. But analysts told Insider this may have led to blind spots when it came to the American consumer. And an insider told TechCrunch that month that Gorillas' monthly global burn rate was between $50 million and $75 million. YipitData suggests the average order for Getir, Gorillas, Gopuff, and Jokr was $21 to $32 in May. Are you a rapid delivery insider with insight to share?

☆ Top government ethics officer was late disclosing his personal finances on multiple occasions
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Kimberly Leonard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The attorney, Office of Government Ethics General Counsel David Apol, missed deadlines to report at least 12 different bond transactions since 2015. Improperly reporting purchases and sales of bonds or stocks is a violation of the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act. Officials are only required to report transactions in broad ranges. Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has been one of the lead proponents in Congress of reforming the STOCK Act. Congress this year discussed changes to the STOCK Act and the US House even held a hearing following the publication of "Conflicted Congress."

☆ Remote Workers Are Blowing the Whistle, Employees Exposing Companies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Britta Lokting | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The Securities and Exchange Commission — which implemented a whistleblower program in 2011 and where Haugen and others have sent documents — has received a historic jump in complaints over the past few years. How remote work sparked a flood of whistleblowersAs the pandemic spread and workers retreated to their makeshift home offices, employees began to reconsider their relationship with work. MacGann, the Uber whistleblower, told Politico that it wasn't until the pandemic that he "had time on his hands" to really ponder his decision to come forward about the ride-hailing company's treatment of workers. Remote work, she explained, helps to remove some of those barriers to whistleblowing. In addition to the record-breaking number of tips, the SEC whistleblowing program awarded $229 million in 103 cases this year.

☆ Nonstop partying, lavish spending, and sexual-harassment accusations: Inside the self-destruction of Pollen, the music startup once worth $800 million
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Melkorka Licea | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +41 min

About 400 Pollen employees were camped out in Mendocino County, California, for five straight days of partying. Two former Pollen employees told Insider that they recalled the assistant telling them about Callum's inappropriate comments at the time. (The Pollen representative said Callum and Bedi didn't date at Pollen or at any other company connected to Pollen. Out of 360 events Pollen announced over the past 12 months, 39 were canceled, the Pollen representative said. (The Pollen representative said that "out of hundreds of thousands of customers, fewer than 100 people were moderated" online.)

☆ Warner Bros. Discovery salaries revealed: Pay data shows how much the company recently offered for jobs at HBO and more, despite waves of layoffs and cuts
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Ashley Rodriguez | Elaine Low | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Insider analyzed new pay data from the entertainment companies, now merged as Warner Bros. Recent salaries ranged from $55 an hour to $300,000 a year for jobs at HBO and other units. The salaries ranged from $55 per hour to $300,000 per year, with a median annual salary of $143,000 to $170,000. For example, Discovery offered an ad sales account manager between $131,458 and $149,000 per year, according to the data. Associate Manager, Brand Marketing/Publishing: $92,518 to $130,011WarnerMedia DirectData Architect: $162,400 to $200,150 median; ranging from $159,800 to $205,000WarnerMedia Services

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☆ Black women are worn out from discrimination in corporate America. They're leaving to launch their own businesses, creating a hole for talent across industries.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Alexandra York | Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Black women are being pushed out of corporate America by microaggressions, belittling, and burnout. Their departures are likely to hurt innovation and profits in corporate America. For Black women facing disrespect on the job, those pledges of a more equitable workplace can seem hollow. Insider spoke with Stewart and two other Black women who've left the corporate world since 2020 to start their own businesses. They're among those making Black women the nation's fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs.

☆ How much should you tip your barista?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-17 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

There’s also often an option to leave a custom tip or no tip at all. Although consumers are accustomed to tipping waiters, bartenders and other service workers, tipping a barista or cashier may be a new phenomenon for many shoppers. Others feel guilty if they don’t tip or embarrassed if their tip is stingy. One barista in Washington State said that he understands if a customer doesn’t tip for a drip coffee order. Nearly 60% of Uber customers never tip, while only about 1% always tip, a 2019 University of Chicago study found.

☆ CEOs who resist America's growing union wave are making a 'huge mistake' in the war for talent
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-17 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

America's unionization wave doesn't show signs of dissipating, and CEOs would be better suited adjusting their leadership style to meet it, especially as the war for talent continues. "Taking it very personally, and making it very personal, has been a huge mistake that employers have made," Bronfenbrenner told Insider. It's a measure that workers want things that employers can't give them and only a union can give them." "When more workers have unions, wages rise for union and non-union workers," Janelle Jones, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, wrote on the department's website. "But there are other measures — if you have a union, you'll have lower turnover, workers will be more productive.

☆ Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +16 min

Hyundai and Kia now have dozens of suppliers in Alabama, according to the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, a business group. The agency, they said, hired underage workers while they worked there. “It was my first job in the United States and this is not what you would expect to see here.”Six other former workers told Reuters they, too, saw underage workers at Ajin’s two factories in Cusseta. Herrera said he raised concerns about the underage workers with managers at SMART, but was brushed off. The officials, wearing shirts that bore Hyundai logos, inspected the assembly line even as underage workers labored there, Herrera said.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a part of the Labor Department, said it had cited Amazon for 14 separate recordkeeping violations, and the company faces $29,000 in fines. OSHA fines generally cannot exceed about $14,500 per violation, and are often much lower for recordkeeping violations. The company's safety record came under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic and after an Illinois warehouse collapsed during a tornado last year, killing six workers. OSHA said on Friday that Amazon had failed to keep proper records at a warehouse near Albany, New York, where workers in October voted against joining a union. Washington state's labor department in March fined Amazon $60,000 for violating workplace safety laws by requiring warehouse employees to perform repetitive motions at a fast pace, increasing their risk of injury.

☆ Amazon slammed by US government for failing to record warehouse-worker injuries. The investigation is ongoing.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Katherine Long | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The US government is investigating Amazon warehouses in five states. Federal regulators slapped Amazon with 14 citations for failing to record workers' injuries. The company's self-reported data to the Department of Labor shows that Amazon warehouse employees get hurt roughly twice as often, on average, as non-Amazon workers in the same industry. One worker at an Amazon warehouse in Colorado, for instance, reported shoulder pain after repeatedly lifting packages. Following referrals from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the Department of Labor began investigating the Amazon warehouses this summer.

☆ Long Covid is distorting the labor market — and that's bad for the U.S. economy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

She eventually learned that the balance issues and ear pain resulted from a damaged vestibular nerve, a known effect of long Covid. She found that 2 million to 4 million full-time workers are out of the labor force due to long Covid. For one, many of the hundreds of potential long Covid symptoms are invisible to others, even if disabling for the afflicted. Why the long Covid labor gap mattersJerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, mentioned Sheiner and Salwati's long Covid research in a recent speech about inflation and the labor market. That burden will continue to rise if long Covid patients don't start recovering at greater rates, she said.

☆ A McDonald's franchisee is accused of asking 100 teens to work too many hours or late shifts. Restaurants are recruiting younger workers during ongoing labor shortage.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

13 McDonald's restaurants in Pennsylvania violated child labor laws, according to a federal probe. The franchisee, Santonastasso Enterprises LLC, was accused of assigning shifts to 14- and 15-year-old workers that violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. "Employers who hire young workers must understand and comply with federal child labor laws or face costly consequences." McDonald's and Burger King restaurant operators have advertised work to teens as young as 14. Teens 14 to 15 years old can work in restaurants and quick-service businesses during non-school hours, up to three hours on school days, and up to 18 hours on a school week.

☆ In the U.S., you can legally 'be fired for any reason or no reason at all'—here's why
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Gili Malinsky | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Here's how at-will employment works, why it's the de-facto system in America, and how other countries handle their workforce. 'You can be fired for any reason or no reason at all'Loosely defined, at-will employment "means that you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all," says Najah Farley, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. 'Your boss can't be flirting with you and then fire you'There are several exceptions under which employees can't be fired. Union membership: Many workers who are part of a union are also an exception to the at-will employment system. At-will employment is uncommon around the worldMost countries in the world do not have an at-will employment system.

☆ The company accused of employing dozens of minors in slaughterhouses on the graveyard shift reaches agreement with the feds
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Laura Strickler | Julianne Mcshane | Laura Strickler Is A Washington-Based Investigative Reporter With The Nbc News Investigative Unit. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

An industrial cleaning company accused by federal investigators of hiring dozens of children to clean slaughterhouses during the graveyard shift has resolved the allegations with the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a federal court filing filed Tuesday morning. The company will also provide a new child labor provision in its contracts with clients and will notify the Labor Department as to how many employees it terminated as a result of its compliance with child labor laws. Allegations of child labor at a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, date back to 2016, according to a previously unreported local police report obtained by NBC News. At least three chiildren suffered chemical burns as a result of working in the slaughterhouses, according to that complaint. The Department of Labor’s Child Labor Regulations designates many roles in slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities as hazardous for minors.

☆ Operators of 13 Pittsburgh-area McDonald's locations accused of child labor violations
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Julianne Mcshane | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

Thirteen McDonald's franchise locations in the Pittsburgh area are accused of violating child labor laws by allegedly employing 101 14- and 15-year olds outside of permissible work hours, the Department of Labor announced Monday. The spokesperson added that, in addition to paying the fine, Santonastasso Enterprises LLC had to agree to full future compliance with department regulations. The spokesperson added that the department does not disclose if they plan to investigate other McDonald’s locations across the country. The violations follow more than 4,000 child labor violations the Department of Labor has identified affecting more than 13,000 minor workers from 2017 to 2021. A spokesperson for the company said in a statement that PSSI has "zero tolerance" for such violations.

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