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☆ Some schools are switching to the 4-day workweek to bring in and keep teachers, but education officials say it's not a 'magic pill' to fix the educator shortage
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Korie Wilkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

"Right now, the climate across the country with educators is that they are exhausted and they are tired," Gabe Dannenbring, a middle-school-science teacher and popular TikToker, told Insider. His studies include deep dives on how the four-day schedule impacts student success, and he is considering future studies on how this schedule change can help curb educator burnout. As of 2020, about 550 districts nationwide have adopted a four-day schedule, according to the National Conference of State Legislature. Heather Luke Drozlek teaches in a small private school in Indiana, which is on a four-day school week. "I can see the benefits, but I can also see that it could cause systemic issues," Tell Williams, a preschool teacher and social-media influencer, told Insider.

☆ Starbuck's interim CEO Howard Schultz said he doesn't believe unions have a place at the coffee giant as unionization efforts spread
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Starbucks' interim CEO Howard Schultz said unions have no place at the company in a CNN interview. He said that unionization efforts reflect a "much bigger problem" beyond individual companies. Schultz, who stepped in as interim CEO of Starbucks in April 2022, told Harlow: "I don't think a union has a place in Starbucks." Schultz argued that Starbucks worker unionization efforts in America are reflective of a much bigger macro problem beyond the company itself. Unionization efforts from Starbucks workers began in Buffalo, New York in 2021 as workers grew tired of stores being consistently understaffed, poor working conditions during the pandemic, as well a demand for higher wages.

☆ A typical home in Vail, Colorado, is over $1 million, leaving workers with few living options. 4 people take us inside their housing crisis as home prices in tourist towns across the country spike.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Vail is among the most expensive Colorado housing markets, with a median home price over $1 million. Weibel's struggle to find affordable housing in Vail speaks to similar issues playing out in other ski towns like Jackson, Wyoming, and Park City, Utah. In her spare time, Weibel works part time as a babysitter, a summer-school tutor, and a ski instructor at Vail Resorts. Getty ImagesSam Stevens, 25, has seen firsthand how Vail's expensive housing market is straining the town's budget for important infrastructure projects. He eventually moved in with one of his friends in Eagle-Vail, about 8 miles west of the Vail Ski Resort.

☆ The US Navy's struggle to keep ships in fighting shape is leading sailors to 'cannibalize' more parts from other ships
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Michael Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Shortages of spare parts is driving US sailors to take more and more parts from other ships. The spare parts shortage only exacerbates an already dismal Navy maintenance situation, with overburdened and understaffed shipyards unable to perform necessary overhauls on schedule. The study listed a cascade of causes for the shortage of spare parts: "Parts obsolescence, diminishing manufacturing sources, and material shortages are common issues." Likewise, militaries have long cannibalized equipment during operations when spare parts may not be available. Steaming hours have also declined for Navy ships, though by how much isn't clear, as the Department of Defense has classified the data.

☆ Biden pushed a billionaire minimum tax – here's what Elon Musk would pay
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Robert Frank | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

"Pass my proposal for a billionaire minimum tax," Biden told Congress. Biden's billionaire tax, however, also hits top millionaires. Under the plan, households would calculate their effective tax rate for the minimum tax. The Biden administration says that aside from restoring "fairness" to the tax code, the billionaire minimum tax would raise $360 billion in added revenue over 10 years. Opponents say that aside from potentially being unconstitutional, the billionaire minimum tax would be difficult to administer – especially for an IRS already understaffed.

The sharp contrast with Bolsonaro, who criticized environmental agents, was a relief to some scientists concerned that the retreating Amazon rainforest may be near a point of no return. Ibama's staffing and resources expanded in Lula's 2003-2010 presidency, when he managed to reduce Amazon deforestation by 72%. Rodrigo Agostinho, whom Lula tapped to run Ibama, told Reuters in an interview that the agency now has about 350 active field agents for all of Brazil. That is less than half what it had at the start of Bolsonaro's term and well below the 2,000 field agents at the peak of its powers, he added. Sidelining Ibama, Bolsonaro deployed the military to protect the Amazon, but their inexperience in conservation failed to lower deforestation while running up a massive bill.

☆ Wagner Group Designated by U.S. as Transnational Criminal Group
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Mengqi Sun | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

The U.S. took action Thursday against Russian private military group Wagner Group, designating it as a significant transnational criminal organization over its actions in combat operations in Ukraine on behalf of President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. Treasury Department said Wagner Group personnel also are involved in alleged ongoing criminal activity, including mass executions, rape and physical abuse in the Central African Republic and Mali. Thursday’s sanctions come after the White House said last Friday it would designate the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization. The Wagner Group has already been sanctioned by Canada, Australia, Japan, the U.K. and the European Union. Representatives for Wagner Group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

☆ Chewy's push into pet telehealth runs into regulatory hurdles, skeptical veterinarians
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Gabrielle Fonrouge | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Longtime veterinarians told CNBC the service can have some benefit for minor situations, or for people who don't have easy access to vet care. Because when you research pet health, you'll find that there's a specific term called VCPR," Singh said. Banfield Pet Hospital is owned by Mars Veterinary Health, a subsidiary of pet food and candy conglomerate Mars. "If you notice, there has been little to no innovation in pet health over the last decade, and yet in the last three years, there's been more innovation in pet health than in the last decade or 20 years," Singh said. Michael Nagle | Getty ImagesChewy said the program was created to make vet care more affordable and accessible to everyone.

☆ Starbucks cup lids are falling off — it's not your imagination. Workers say it's a problem.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Mary Meisenzahl | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Insider spoke to five Starbucks workers around the US who reported faulty lids. The workers said lids don't fit cups and regularly spill on customers. Starbucks didn't comment on the lids, but the company has dealt with supply chain problems in the past. The situation was so dire in December that he estimates he was throwing about 50% of lids away as they were unusable, he told Insider. "Cup and lid issues were way less common before the pandemic" a worker in Pennsylvania who has been at Starbucks since 2018 told Insider.

☆ Amazon is breaking the law by putting warehouse workers at risk for back and joint injuries, federal regulators say in new citations
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Katherine Long | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Federal safety regulators fined Amazon $60,269 for putting workers at risk for back, joint injuries. Injuries linked to the "high frequency" of "repetitive tasks" at Amazon warehouses, regulators said. The citations are the latest in a series of regulatory actions targeting Amazon's warehouse injuries. Workers at Amazon warehouses are four times as likely to suffer such injuries as workers in non-Amazon warehouses, a review of Washington state workers' compensation data showed. Federal safety inspectors with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited three Amazon warehouses, in Florida, Illinois and New York.

TORONTO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Canada's most populous province, Ontario, plans to significantly expand its use of private providers to perform public health services, the premier said on Monday, in a bid to deal with backlogs and delays in a healthcare system strained by the coronavirus pandemic. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston told Global News on Sunday that Canada’s healthcare system is "on the ropes." Canada's publicly-funded healthcare system has in the past been seen by some as a model system. But critics and public health advocates have argued expanding the use of private providers is a step towards privatizing the public health system and risks cannibalizing a healthcare workforce already facing a shortage. The Ford government has said it has no plans to privatize the healthcare system.

☆ Burger King franchise owner ordered to pay $2.2 million to 230 workers for unpaid overtime, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Burger King franchise owner was ordered to $2.2 million to workers, per the San Francisco Chronicle. Workers from six Burger King stores say they worked overtime without pay and were denied breaks. An investigation was opened into Golden Gate's Burger King franchises in 2019 and a decision reached the following year that was appealed. A group of workers at a Burger King restaurant in Nebraska resigned in July 2021 over working conditions. Calvert and Burger King did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.

“Mission Hospital used to be where everyone would go if they wanted good care,” Jaquins said, reflecting on her previous experiences with the health care system. Sue Fischer is a longtime HCA employee who’s concerned about patient care in her facility. “We were a great system as Mission Health and we’re an even better system as HCA Mission Health,” she said. “Delays in care is the biggest patient care issue I see because of staffing,” Hernandez said. According to the CMS ranking system, Mission Hospital currently holds an above-average overall quality rating — four stars out of a possible five.

☆ What to expect at work this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Jeanne Sahadi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

New York CNN —The pandemic has transformed work over the past three years in ways few expected. Work flexibility is here to stay, and may improve for front-line workersWhile there is still tension between executives and employees about how many days people should be physically present at work, hybrid work and work flexibility isn’t going away. “The big shift is in recognizing our work force is in trouble,” McRae said. Roughly 70% of workers say they’re already doing work outside of their job, according to Deloitte. One recent example, cited in Deloitte’s latest work report, comes from M&T Bank, a leading Small Business Administration lender.

☆ Health care is in crisis. New York’s nurses strike is just the latest sign
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Chris Isidore | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

It is just the latest in a series of job actions across the nation by nurses’ unions and other health care workers who say they had to strike in order to provide patients with quality health care. Of the 20 major strikes tracked by the Labor Department over the first 11 months of 2022, seven of them, or 35%, were in health care. The surge in health care related strikes comes despite the fact that only 3% of union members nationwide work at private sector health care jobs. “Labor is the main expense in health care, so how do you make money? If someone is tired, overworked, sleep deprived, they’re going to make more mistakes.”A nurse’s strike won’t help patients in the short term, he said.

☆ Nurses strike: Mount Sinai NICU mom stays by her son's side in hospital after his primary nurses leave to strike
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Celina Tebor | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Her one-year-old baby, Logan, has been in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) since he was born. For the past three and a half months, he’s been under the care of Mount Sinai Hospital where thousands of nurses are currently striking. But since Mount Sinai’s nurses began picketing Monday, new travel nurses have replaced Logan’s primary care nurses – nurses who don’t fully understand her son’s needs, she said. Lora Ribas' son Logan, seen at Mount Sinai with Shernette, a primary care nurse caring for the one-year-old neonatal intensive care unit patient. Transporting infantsIn preparation for the strike, Mount Sinai announced Friday it would transport newborns in its intensive care unit to other area hospitals.

☆ Zimbabwe health workers could face jail for striking under new law
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

HARARE, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe on Tuesday signed a bill into law that outlawed organised protests by healthcare workers who could now face a fine or an imprisonment of up to six months. The signing by President Emmerson Mnangagwa comes after health workers were locked in a protracted fight with the government over poor salaries last year. An exodus of doctors and nurses has left Zimbabwean hospitals understaffed, with over 4,000 health workers leaving the country since 2021, the country's Health Services Board said in November. Many nurses in Zimbabwe earn less than $100 a month. Reporting by Nyasha Chingono; Writing by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Alexander Winning and Conor HumphriesOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Amid negotiation gridlock between Mount Sinai Hospital and the nurse's union, newborns in intensive care are caught in the middle
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-08 | by ( Celina Tebor | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

A NICU nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital told CNN that families of patients in the unit have been deeply concerned about moving their sick infants from one hospital to another. As of Saturday, negotiations across New York’s hospitals were continuing at Montefiore Bronx and the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses, according to the nurse’s union. But the president of the nurse’s union told reporters Saturday the main Mount Sinai Hospital complex left the bargaining table late Thursday and no further bargaining sessions have been scheduled since. A Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN that hospital management is “waiting for the union to come back to us” to resume negotiations. Tentative agreements have also been reached with union nurses at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

☆ First woman and LGBTQ person elected Massachusetts governor sworn in
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Maura Healey, the first woman and first open member of the LGBTQ community to be elected governor of Massachusetts, was sworn into office at the Statehouse Thursday, pledging to lead “with empathy and with equity.”Healey’s elevation to governor signals a political shift in the state’s top elected office from GOP to Democratic hands. Kim Driscoll, who served as mayor of Salem, was elected lieutenant governor with Healey and was also sworn in on Thursday. She acknowledged the soaring cost of housing in Massachusetts and vowed in her first 100 days to create a new secretary of housing. She’s only the second Democrat in the past three decades to be elected governor in Massachusetts. Nancy Lane / The Boston Herald via APThe new governor is also part of a record number of women occupying top state elected offices in Massachusetts.

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Thursday filed a lawsuit accusing AmerisourceBergen Corp (ABC.N), one of the nation's largest drug distributors, of helping ignite the nation's deadly opioid epidemic by failing to report hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders of prescription painkillers. The government said AmerisourceBergen had since 2014 systematically refused or negligently failed to flag suspicious orders by pharmacy customers when it had reason to know that opioids were being diverted to illegal channels. "For years, AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans' well-being," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta told reporters. In a statement, AmerisourceBergen called the lawsuit an improper attempt to "shift blame" and the burdens of law enforcement from the Justice Department and DEA to the companies they regulate. The Justice Department said AmerisourceBergen for years understaffed and unfunded programs designed to ensure compliance with the Controlled Substances Act.

☆ Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, and more are locking away more products to deter theft — and it's driving some customers away
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ben Tobin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Retail theft led to roughly $94.5 billion in losses for retailers in 2021, per a recent NRF survey. Retailers have been locking away more items to protect them from potential theft. But that has led to customers abandoning certain stores, shoppers nationwide told Insider. Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid are among the retailers that lock up products as a security measure. And earlier this month, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon sounded the alarm on theft, saying "stores will close" unless it is abated.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried could be bailed and placed under house arrest after he's extradited to the US, reports say
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Sam Bankman-Fried could be bailed and placed under house arrest after extradition to the US. One option being explored, alongside house arrest, is electronically monitoring Bankman-Fried. Two people familiar with the matter told the Times that the deal could see Bankman-Fried placed under house arrest. Since then, Bankman-Fried has spent just over a week in the notoriously-harsh Fox Hill prison, which reports say is overcrowded and understaffed. One official at the prison told The Washington Post that the FTX founder appeared "awfully scared," but seemed like a "nice guy."

While travel demand is roaring back, many hotels, airlines, cruise operators and airports are still racing to hire and train workers. That means the level of customer service will likely take a hit, industry experts say. One potential bright spot can be found at sea: During the summer, several cruise lines had to cancel voyages due to staffing shortages, but major disruptions have been largely resolved. “It’s highly unlikely your holiday cruise will be canceled due to lack of staffing,” said Colleen McDaniel, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic, a Tripadvisor-run travel site. “This year, I moved my annual holiday travel to earlier in December,” said Abby Rhinehart, an educational researcher in Tucson, Arizona.

☆ The supply chain crisis is coming to an end — but 2 looming threats could reignite the chaos
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Holiday shopping went well, so you might assume supply chains are fixed. At a quick glance, supply chains have healed and shopping seems back to normal. Supply chains are running much more smoothly than they have in more than two years right now. A major indicator that supply chains have been off balance is the inventory-to-sales ratio, which is tracked by the US Census Bureau. A return to seasonal rushes and lulls, without massive, global disruptions, will be the sign that supply chains are "back to normal."

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried appeared 'a little arrogant' and 'awfully scared' when he arrived at Bahamas prison but is now in 'good spirits,' official says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is being held at the Fox Hill prison in the Bahamas. The facility is known for harsh conditions, including being overcrowded and understaffed,An unnamed official at the prison told The Washington Post Bankman-Fried seemed like a "nice guy." Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday by authorities in the Bahamas after US officials charged him with multiple counts, including fraud and money laundering. An unnamed official at the prison told The Post Bankman-Fried came off as "a little arrogant" and "awfully scared" after arriving at the facility, but that he seemed like a "nice guy." The official also said Bankman-Fried still believes a judge may grant him bail, but if not he would be prepared for extradition and to "face the music" in the US.

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