Category: employment

This is a Big F%$#ing Deal

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Exempt workers are those who are paid by salary, rather than time, and are not paid anything for overtime.

Basically, they have to have “management” duties, and they have to be paid more than, $23,660.00 a year.

That number has been unchanged since 2004, until today:

Barack Obama has launched a push for salaried workers earning nearly US$1,000 a week to receive overtime pay, with the president declaring that too many Americans are working long hours for less than they deserve.

The long-awaited overtime rule from the US labor department would more than double the threshold at which employers can avoid paying overtime, from $455 a week to $970 a week by 2016. That would mean salaried employees earning less than $50,440 a year would be assured overtime if they worked more than 40 hours per week, up from the current $23,660 a year.

“We’ve got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded,” Obama wrote in an article for the Huffington Post. “That’s how America should do business. In this country a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.”

To keep up with future inflation and wage growth the proposal would peg the salary threshold at the 40th percentile of income, individuals familiar with the plan said. They requested anonymity in return for discussing the proposal ahead of the official announcement. The president has been scheduled to promote the proposal during a visit on Thursday to La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Obama’s proposal aims to narrow a loophole that the president has long said some employers exploit to avoid paying overtime.

Employees who make above the salary threshold can be denied overtime if they are deemed managers. Some work gruelling schedules at fast food chains and retail stores, but with no overtime eligibility their pay may be lower per hour than many workers they supervise.

………

Under the current threshold only about 8% of salaried workers are eligible for 150% of their pay rate when they work overtime. The EPI estimates that doubling the salary level would make up to 40% of salaried workers eligible.

It should be noted that the requirement for a pay level in order to be exempt was established under the Ford Administration, when it was set at 1.57 times the median wage ($250 a week) which, if updated for today, turns out to be about $51K/year.

It’s not as revolutionary as the US Chamber of Commerce says that it is. It’s just basically undoing the damage done by not adjusting this number for inflation.

Also note that Obama chose not to increase the percent of time spent on management duties for exempt status.

It’s a good news for at least 5 million workers who are currently paid slave wages, and are ordered to put in free overtime.

Regulatory Sanity on the “Sharing Economy”

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Uber has been operating illegally in France for some time, and following protests from cab drivers, French authorities took Uber executives into custody:

On Monday, French authorities took two Uber executives into custody for questioning as part of an investigation into UberPop, the startup’s lower cost alternative.

Local media have named the men as Thibaut Simphal, the CEO for France, and Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the CEO for Western Europe. Under French law, both men can be held for up to 48 hours without being charged.

“Our general managers for France and Western Europe today attended a hearing with the French police,” Gareth Mead, an Uber spokesman, told Ars in a statement. “We are always happy to answer questions the authorities have about our service—and look forward to resolving these issues. Those discussions are ongoing. In the meantime, we’re continuing to ensure the safety of our riders and drivers in France given last week’s disturbances.”

………

The primary regulatory issue in France is that UberPop’s drivers operate under a VTC license (véhicules de tourisme avec chauffeur, or tourism vehicles with a driver). Created in 2009, this license was designed for pre-booked travel, not on-the-street hails. UberPop’s drivers are like their UberX counterparts in the United States: normal people with regular cars who do not have an expensive French taxi license. As such, traditional taxi drivers in France have been upset that Uber seems to be flouting the law. Uber maintains that it is a technology company and not a traditional taxi company, and therefore the company believes it’s not bound by taxi law.

It’s nice to find authorities who doesn’t ignore the law, “Because ……… Internet.”

Uber has been operating an illegal taxi service, and been abusing its drivers, and the public, with its business model, and it’s good that someone is acting on this, albeit with some prodding by protesters.

If He Doesn’t Get Impeached, Paul LePage Should Be Horsewhipped in the Public Square

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In the Maine State House, Speaker Speaker Mark Eves has been a consistent thorn in the side in the side of Governor, and Teabagger Supremo, Paul LePage.

Because of this, LePage threatened to pull funding a the school that had recently hired him:

The board of Good Will-Hinckley School withdrew its job offer to House Speaker Mark Eves just days before he was to become the school’s new president, making the decision after Gov. Paul LePage apparently threatened to withhold state funding for the school.

The school said Wednesday that the board of directors had “voted to seek a new direction for the institution’s leadership” in order to avoid “political controversy.” But Eves’ attorney said the state legislator had been “terminated … without cause” and hinted at legal action against the governor.

Eves, meanwhile, released a statement accusing LePage of “blackmailing” the school for at-risk youths by threatening to cut $500,000 in state funding. He said that could potentially cause the loss of another $2 million in private funding for the school, which has an annual budget of $4.5 million.

“The governor knows that these financial losses would put the school out of business, but he has refused to back down,” said Eves, D-North Berwick. “This is an abuse of power that jeopardizes Maine children. The governor’s actions represent the worst kind of vendetta politics Maine has ever seen. If it goes unchecked, no legislator will feel safe in voting his conscience for fear that the governor will go after the legislator’s family and livelihood.”

Good Will-Hinckley, in Fairfield, announced June 9 that it had hired Eves as the school’s new president despite a last-minute intercession by LePage. On Wednesday, board Chairman Jack Moore announced the decision to withdraw the offer to Eves, who was scheduled to begin work next Wednesday.

“The basis for this decision is grounded in the institution’s desire not to be involved in political controversy that will divert attention away from our core mission of serving children and has the potential to jeopardize the future of our school,” Moore said in a prepared statement. “Good Will-Hinckley has a very dedicated staff. The board’s first priority is to act in the best interest of students and educators alike and the board’s actions reflect its unwavering commitment to them.”

Eves is seriously considering suing LePage, and it appears that “Hizzoner” made his threats in writing.

The Maine Attorney General is also, “Very troubled,” by the Governor’s behavior, though she has issued no further comment.

My first question was, “Where is the impeachment investigation?”

Well, here it is:

Six lawmakers said Thursday they will attempt to launch impeachment proceedings against Republican Gov. Paul LePage for his alleged role in pushing Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves out of a new job at Good Will-Hinckley School.

Independent Reps. Jeffrey Evangelos of Friendship and Ben Chipman of Portland and Democratic Reps. Pinny Beebe-Center of Rockland, Lydia Blume of York, Roberta Beavers of South Berwick and Charlotte Warren of Hallowell said Thursday they are exploring disciplinary action against LePage, including impeachment.

“I’m asking my fellow legislators to study abuse of authority, conduct unbecoming and possible misuse of public assets,” said Evangelos, who is leading the effort. “I believe that Gov. LePage has violated his authority by intimidating a private entity with the end objective of violating speaker Eves’ civil rights, his ability to seek outside employment and provide for his family.”

The House of Representatives has “sole power of impeachment” according to Article 4 of the Maine Constitution. The Senate has the “sole authority to try all impeachments.” Impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

Unfortunately, the leadership in the House are going all wobbly on this:

Democratic leaders on Friday said they are reviewing all options to deal with what they describe as a disturbing pattern of behavior by Republican Gov. Paul LePage. At the same time, they have asked their colleagues to not act rashly and to stay focused on legislative work – especially an override of an expected LePage budget veto that will require a bipartisan, two-thirds vote.

House majority leader Rep. Jeff McCabe, D-Skowhegan, and assistant leader Rep. Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, said that “nothing is off the table,” when it comes to possible actions against LePage, but they urged restraint among activists and rank-and-file lawmakers.

The two spoke a day after House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, said that LePage threatened to yank state funding from the Good Will-Hinckley school unless it broke its contract to hire Eves as its next president. The story has dominated discussion at the state Capitol, where attention had been focused on getting a state budget passed, with members of both parties expressing concern that LePage overstepped his executive power by using funding for the school as a weapon against a political foe.

………

The Eves controversy has prompted a call for impeachment – unprecedented in Maine gubernatorial history – among some liberal lawmakers and activists. On Friday, McCabe and Gideon didn’t rule out such a proceeding, but focused more on the possibility of an investigation, by either state or federal authorities.

“Based on some of the comments that the governor has had recently, as well as his actions with Speaker Eves and impeding Speaker Eves from obtaining a job, I think there’s a lot of research that’s going to go on,” McCabe said. “There’s also some pending legal matters. So there’s nothing that’s off the table, but there’s a lot of research that needs to be done.”

Too many weasel words from the leadership.

This sort of sh%$ has former Texas Governor Rick Perry under indictment in Texas.  Do the people of Maine really want to be on the wrong side of abuse of power and Texas?

In that case, Perry had the fig leaf of a  DUI arrest for the DA, but here, the Governor is claiming that his threats are only as a result of the political stances of an opponent.

I hope not.

Light is a Disinfectant

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A few weeks back, the New York Times reported on how Disney was laying off IT workers, and forcing them to train their H-1B (Gastarbeiter) replacements.

Now that this has come to light, and generated a sh%$ storm of condemnation,. Disney has decided not to lay off its workers:

In late May, about 35 technology employees at Disney/ABC Television in New York and Burbank, Calif., received jarring news. Managers told them that they would all be laid off, and that during their final weeks they would have to train immigrants brought in by an outsourcing company to do their jobs.

The training began, but after a few days it was suspended with no explanation. In New York, the immigrants suddenly stopped coming to the offices. Then on June 11, managers summoned the Disney employees with different news: Their layoffs had been canceled.

“We were read a precisely worded statement,” said one of the employees, who was relieved but reluctant to be named because he remains at the company. “We were told our jobs were continuing and we should consider it as if nothing had happened until further notice.”

Although the number of layoffs planned was small, the cancellation, which was first reported by Computerworld, a website covering the technology business, set off a hopeful buzz among tech employees in Disney’s empire. It came in the midst of a furor over layoffs in January of 250 tech workers at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. People who lost jobs there said they had to sit with immigrants from India, some on temporary work visas known as H-1B, and teach them to perform their jobs as a condition for receiving severance.

 Let’s be clear on this:  If you have to train your replacements, and your replacements are brought in under H-1B (or the related L-1) visa, and you have to train them, then you are violating the law.

It is required that the visa recipients have, “highly specialized knowledge,” and if they need months of training, as is reported in the Disney World stories, they clearly do not have this knowledge.

It’s not about, “highly specialized knowledge,” it is about getting cheaper and more docile (they have to leave the country if they leave the job) workers, and about depressing wages in the field.

Many people suggest that the solution is aggressive enforcement, but I disagree.

The solution is to ensure that the cost of an H-1B visa is always more than that of hiring a citizen or Green Card holder.

You can either do this through setting the fees high, or conduct monthly auctions for the right to make applications (I favor the latter because it fits into the “free market” ethos that seems to dominate national political discourse).

If tech companies have to pay a guest worker significantly of what they would pay an American, the number of visa applications would fall,and tech workers’ salaries would rise.

Your Uber Update

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Wow, it’s the sharing economy, everything is new and different. Hey, they don’t have to pay the fees that those stupid old taxi companies do, because you order them on the Internet.

Sorry to be a bit negative early on a Monday morning, but I was just reading in the Washington Post that Uber is arguing that it should not have to pay the same fees as traditional taxi companies to pick people up at airports. Uber says the fees are too high.

I have no strong opinion about the size of these fees, which are effectively a tax on taxi travel that is used to support the operation of the airport. However, there is no basis for Uber paying lower fees than their competitors in traditional taxi companies, even if it is cooler.

So not surprised.  Of course they want a government handout, because ……… Free Market.

On the other hand, the apparent behavior of Uber in China, which has taken to disciplining drivers who drive too close to political protests:

The next day, Uber told its drivers to keep away from such protests. The Financial Times reports that Uber drivers in Hangzhou received a message imploring them: “Please don’t wreck the good urban environment you have all worked so hard to help build… If you are at the scene, leave immediately.”

More damningly, the message added that there would be consequences for those who didn’t follow instructions, and that Uber would track drivers’ GPS devices (i.e., personal phones) to make sure they comply. These measures, reports the WSJ, are intended to “maintain social order.” Not something you want to hear from an employer.

An Uber spokesperson in Beijing told Quartz that “we firmly oppose any form of gathering or protest, and we encourage a more rational form of communication for solving problems.”

It makes sense for Uber to tread lightly in China, where it is reportedly planning a rapid expansion, with a price tag of more than one billion dollars. Maybe Uber should spend some of that money figuring out how to deal with its (many) privacy issues, first.

Indeed.

It should be noted that there is some good Uber news though, even if the news is not good for Uber, The California Labor Commission has ruled that Uber drivers are employees of the firm:

In a ruling that fuels a long-simmering debate over some of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing technology companies and the work they are creating, the California Labor Commissioner’s Office said that a driver for the ride-hailing service Uber should be classified as an employee, not an independent contractor.

The ruling ordered Uber to reimburse Barbara Ann Berwick $4,152.20 in expenses and other costs for the roughly eight weeks she worked as an Uber driver last year. While Uber has long positioned itself as merely an app that connects drivers and passengers — with no control over the hours its drivers work — the labor office cited many instances in which it said Uber acted more like an employer. Uber is appealing the decision.

The ruling does not apply beyond Ms. Berwick and could be altered if Uber’s appeal succeeds. Uber has also prevailed in at least five other states in keeping its definition of drivers as independent contractors. Yet the California ruling stands out because officials formally laid out their arguments for why Uber drivers are employees. That could bolster class-action lawsuits against the company in the state. California law expressly requires employers to reimburse employees for business expenses and several suits proceeding against Uber are based on that state law.

………

“For anybody who has to pay the bills and has a family, having no labor protections and no job security is at best a mixed blessing,” said Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “At worst, it is a nightmare. Obviously some workers prefer to be independent contractors — but mostly they take these jobs because they cannot find better ones.”

The California ruling, which was made June 3 and came to light after Uber filed an appeal Tuesday evening, noted that the company provided drivers with phones and had a policy of deactivating its app if drivers were inactive for 180 days.

“Defendants hold themselves out as nothing more than a neutral technological platform, designed simply to enable drivers and passengers to transact the business of transportation,” the Labor Commissioner’s Office wrote about Uber. “The reality, however, is that defendants are involved in every aspect of the operation.”

In a statement, Uber said the decision was “nonbinding and applies to a single driver.” The company said individual cases about worker classification in at least five other states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas, have resulted in rulings that categorize drivers as contractors.

………

Other Uber drivers may also be inspired to follow Ms. Berwick’s example, given that filing a claim with the California labor office is a relatively simple process.

Here is hoping that this sticks.

Uber is not about innovation, it is about regulatory arbitrage.

If they are allowed to ignore labor law, taxi regulations, licensing requirements, they are effectively being subsidized by the rest of us.

Nope, No Corruption Here………

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It is not surprising that Obama wants to move a portion of military pension to defined contribution (401(k) type) plan, because, after all, Obama has been all about allowing Wall Street to loot, but it is a bit unseemly for the White House to direct most of the business a longtime political supporter, Blackrock:

American service members are confronting a potential haircut. Under a proposal the Pentagon outlined last week, new members of the armed forces would see their guaranteed retirement benefits cut by one-fifth if Congress approves the plan.

But if future veterans are being asked to make do with less, one key constituency stands to capture more: Wall Street.

Under the details of the Pentagon plan, the federal government would divert 3 percent of service members’ pay into a 401(k)-style plan that would be managed largely by BlackRock, a financial firm whose executives helped bankroll President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.

The change could wind up transferring as much as $50 billion from military paychecks to BlackRock, generating tens of millions of dollars in fees for the Wall Street giant. BlackRock employees have donated over $90,000 to Obama’s campaigns directly, and nearly $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the course of Obama’s two presidential campaigns, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink was also a prominent supporter of Obama’s election campaigns, and the company in 2013 named Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff to its board of directors.

Gee, what a surprise.

Well, I guess that funding for the Barack Obama Presidential library, and 6-7 figure speaker fees don’t generate themselves.

What Are the Limits of Political Activism by an Employee?

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A few days ago, I wrote of a Texas elementary school teacher, who, in response to the police officer abusing black teens in McKinney, suggested that the reinstitution of segregation might be a good thing.

I just learned that this teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, has been fired.

Good news everyone!


I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

My first reaction is that the Professor Farnsworth quote, “Good News, Everyone.”

Certainly, I don’t want any children taught by an open racist, which Ms. Fitzgibbons post clearly indicates.

On the other hand, it is profoundly worrying when a public employee is fired for expressing their political views as a private citizen, no matter how abhorrent.

In this case, I think that the firing is justified, I think that she no longer had the credibility required to deal with students and their parents, and any decision made regarding minorities in her class would naturally be suspect.

I do hope that the school district is reviewing any disciplinary actions involving minorities.

Skepticism of her entire career as an educator is justified.

Return of the Mad Sh%$ter

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The funniest thing ever posted to the internet is an essay, “The Attack of the Mad Sh%$ter” a hilarious essay on an instance of fecal sabotage at what was then Texas Instruments.

Well, it appears that literal poo flinging in the workplace is far more common that I had anticipated, and now we have a lawsuit challenging an employer demanding DNA samples in order to identify a dung defiler:

Who was the “devious defecator” leaving their “offending fecal matter” across an Atlanta-area warehouse that stored and delivered products for grocery stores?

That’s how US District Judge Amy Totenberg described the issue as she ruled (PDF) in favor of two employees who were forced to give a buccal cheek swab to determine if their DNA was a match. But a match was not to be had. The two sued, claiming that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibited their 2012 tests by a forensics lab hired by their employer, Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services.

Employees Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds are expected to go to trial against their employer on June 17 in what could be the first damages trial resulting from the 2008 civil rights legislation, which generally bars employers from using individuals’ genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions. The Office of Management and Budget has said the “potential misuse of this information raises moral and legal issues.”

Ahead of trial, Judge Totenberg set aside Atlas Logistics’ claims that the “genetic information” at issue wasn’t covered by the law. Atlas Logistics asserted that GINA excludes analyses of DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites if such analyses do not reveal an individual’s propensity for disease. The judge ruled that the “plain meaning of the statute’s text” is satisfactory for the case to go forward despite the tests at issue not revealing disease propensities.

But how much is a breach of this act worth to the warehouse workers Lowe and Reynolds? Phrased differently, what’s the monetary value of falsely being fingered as the “devious defecator”?

According to Atlas Logistics, the answer is a combined $200,000 for both plaintiffs. Days ago, the company offered that deal (PDF) without admitting wrongdoing. “This Offer includes any and all damages sought by Plaintiffs in this matter and is inclusive of attorneys’ fees and taxable costs,” Atlas Logistics attorney Dion Kohler wrote.

The plaintiffs, however, said the offer was a load of doo doo. “We are not taking the offer,” Amanda Farahany, the plaintiffs’ attorney, told Ars in an e-mail.

When asked how much damages they were seeking, Farahany replied, “We are asking that a jury determine the value of this important right.”

I have to agree with the plaintiffs:  Employers are not entitled to the genetic information of their employees.

It’s also funny as hell.

I Finally Have Something Nice to Say about Los Angeles

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Kudos to the “City of Angels” which has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, including tipped workers:

The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.

The increase, which the City Council passed in a 14-to-1 vote, comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wages by ballot initiative.

The effect is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, almost 50 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. Under the plan approved Tuesday, the minimum wage will rise over five years.

………

Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase. A wage increase to $12 an hour over the next few years would achieve about the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak.

Many restaurant owners here aggressively fought the increase, saying they would be forced to cut as much as half of their staff. Unlike other states, California state law prohibits tipped employees from receiving lower than the minimum wage. The Council promised to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs.

The restaurant owners can, to quote Bender Rodriguez, “bite my shiny metal ass.”

There is no justification to pay slave wages to your employees, and there is no reason for a wait person to have to tolerate bad behavior from a customer because they depend on tips for their livelihood.

If your business cannot make it if you have to pay your employees a fair wage, then your business should not make it, no saving throw.

For Once, the Law Applies to the Little Guy

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The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the pension gutting law past last year is unconstitutional. I am further amused because it looks like Rahm Emanuel’s equivalent law in Chicago is also covered by the ruling:

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled unconstitutional a landmark state pension law that aimed to scale back government worker benefits to erase a massive $105 billion retirement system debt, sending lawmakers and the new governor back to the negotiating table to try to solve the pressing financial issue.

The ruling also reverberated at City Hall, imperiling a similar law Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through to shore up two of the four city worker retirement funds and making it more difficult for him to find fixes for police, fire and teacher pension funds that are short billions of dollars.

At issue was a December 2013 state law signed by then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn that stopped automatic, compounded yearly cost-of-living increases for retirees, extended retirement ages for current state workers and limited the amount of salary used to calculate pension benefits.

Employee unions sued, arguing that the state constitution holds that pension benefits amount to a contractual agreement and once they’re bestowed, they cannot be “diminished or impaired.” A circuit court judge in Springfield agreed with that assessment in November. State government appealed that decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing that economic necessity forced curbing retirement benefits.

On Friday the justices rejected that argument, saying the law clearly violated what’s known as the pension protection clause in the 1970 Illinois Constitution.

“Our economy is and has always been subject to fluctuations, sometimes very extreme fluctuations,” Republican Justice Lloyd Karmeier wrote on behalf of all seven justices. “The law was clear that the promised benefits would therefore have to be paid and that the responsibility for providing the state’s share of the necessary funding fell squarely on the legislature’s shoulders.

During the financial crisis, Wall Street made arguments that their obscene pay was contractually guaranteed, and as such, could not be regulated.

At the very same time, they were cutting wages and benefits of auto workers at GM and Chrysler.

I am amused.

Additionally, I am amused because this means that teabagger governor Bruce Rauner is going to be forced to raise taxes.

Heh.

Decent, but Not Great Unemployment News

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In April, non-farm payroll increased by 223,000and the (U-3) unemployment rate fel by 0.1% to 5.4%:

The American job market rebounded in April, the government said on Friday, helping to ease worries that the economy was on the brink of another extended slowdown after a bleak winter in which the overall economy stalled. But the growth in jobs failed to translate, once again, into any significant improvement in pay.

Employers added 223,000 positions last month, the Labor Department reported, and the unemployment rate decreased to 5.4 percent, a turnaround from the disappointing performance in March, initially reported as a modest 126,000 gain and then revised down on Friday to 85,000.

“We expected a rebound following the numbers in March and we got it, but not much more,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. “Wage growth is still the missing piece.”

Indeed, before Friday’s report, some economists were estimating that average hourly earnings might rise 0.2 percent or more in April, signaling an upswing from the slow pace of wage gains since the end of the recession.


But average hourly earnings rose only 0.1 percent in April, producing a 2.2 percent annual gain. That modest showing suggests that any meaningful wage gains for most workers are still delayed, despite the steadily falling unemployment rate.

 This really ain’t much.

First, population increase requires about 200,000 new jobs each month to run in place, so 223,000 is not much, and second the drop in unemployment is largely an artifact of rounding:

………

In April, 8.549 million Americans were unemployed. The civilian labor force, which includes the employed and everyone looking for jobs, stood at 157.072 million. Based on those numbers, the unemployment rate was 5.443%.

In March, there were 8.575 million unemployed and 156.906 million in the labor force, which meant the unemployment rate back then was closer to 5.465%.

That’s a 0.022% point decline in the unemployment rate. That’s definitely less of a drop than the 0.1% drop rounding will get you.

On the brighter side, the Black unemployment rate fell tyo below 10% for the first time in 7 years.

Another Reason to Love Bernie

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Senator Sanders (D-VT) is very dubious of the arguments put forward by the advocates of the H-1B immigrant visa:

The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that’s what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting.

As a senator, Sanders does not have a lot of political clout. He’s an independent socialist whose major campaign contributors are unions. But Sanders this week announced he’s running for the Democratic nomination for president, a move that could raise the visibility of the H-1B visa as a national issue.

Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they’re cutting staff. He’s especially critical of the visa’s use in offshore outsourcing.

“Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies,” Sanders said in a Senate speech in 2013. “These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries.”

The points raised by Sanders echo those made by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who chairs the Senate’s Immigration subcommittee. In fact, Sanders was one of 10 senators who signed a recent letter by Sessions and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to several federal departments seeking an investigation into H-1B use.

Sanders does accept, with limitations, high-tech industry arguments “that they need the H-1B program so they can hire the best and the brightest science, technology, engineering, and math workers in the world, and that there are not enough qualified American workers in these fields. In some cases — let me be very honest — I think that is true.”

There are some companies “in some parts of the country that are unable to attract American workers to do the jobs that are needed,” said Sanders. But he also cites a Government Accountability Office report that said just over half of the H-1B workers are employed in entry-level jobs. He cites other studies that suggest H-1B workers are paid less than similarly employed U.S. workers.

95%+ of the H-1B (and L-1) visas out there are about cheap (and captive) labor, not essential talent.

Not only are they more poorly paid, they serve to depress the wages of citizens and green card holders.

Set a limited number of visas, and let employers bid against each other for them.

Suddenly it becomes a higher cost option, which weeds out the people who are looking for cheap labor.

In Space, No One Can Hear You File a Workplace Complaint

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Which explains why Amazon chief Jeff Bezos is getting into the rocket business:

Blue Origin, a startup space company owned by Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos, launched an experimental suborbital spaceship from Texas, the first in a series of test flights to develop commercial unmanned and passenger spaceflight services, the company said on Thursday.

The New Shepard vehicle blasted off on Wednesday from Blue Origin’s test facility near Van Horn, Texas, and rose to an altitude of 58 miles (93 km) before the capsule separated and parachuted back to Earth.

“Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return,” Bezos said in a statement.

The descent of the liquid hydrogen- and liquid oxygen-fueled rocket, however, was not successful.

“We lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent,” Bezos noted. “Fortunately, we’ve already been in work for some time on an improved hydraulic system … We’ll be ready to fly again soon.”

Who cares about the landing? 

After the astronauts have done their job, they are not Bezos’s concern, just like the employees in the Amazon warehouses have to wait unpaid in long lines to punch in and out.

I Now Understand Why Jon Stewart is Leaving The Daily Show

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After many years of commenting on cable TV wankitude, he can no longer handle watching Fox News anymore:

………

My biggest objection to Fox News, I say, is not the scaremongering, it’s the way it’s reshaped the Republican party. It will misrepresent social and economic issues, and promote the more extreme elements of the party, politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, in a way that is hugely detrimental to American politics. (For the record, Rupert Murdoch disagrees, and last year claimed that Fox News “absolutely saved” the Republican party.) “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” says Stewart. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”

Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realize, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”

OK, I get it now.

If I had to watch Fox News for a living, I’d be ……… I’d be ………

Hell, I need a full fifth of Jack and a bong full of Maui Wowie to even consider it.

Least Surprising Education News of the Year

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In the New York Times, Paul Campos notes that much of the increase in the cost of a college education comes from an explosion of spending in administrators:

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

He also notes that university presidents are now getting 7 figure salaries.

I am not sure how to fix this, but with a 17 year old daughter, I’d love to find a fix.

That Sound You Hear is the Revolving Door Spinning Fast Enough to Generate a Sonic Boom

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US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he’s going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis’ courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

………

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump’s Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court’s heavy load and was Ward’s permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John “Johnny” Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis’ son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.

Amazon is Evil, Part XXIII

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It turns out that the company which makes minimum wage workers spend nearly an hour unpaid waiting to be searched while leaving their warehouses, is now making those workers sign 18 month non-compete agreements:

Amazon is the country’s largest and most sophisticated online retailer, but it still runs largely on manual labor. Scattered around the country are massive warehouses staffed by workers who spend their days picking objects off shelves and putting them in boxes. During the holiday season, the company calls on a huge reserve army of temporary laborers.

The work is repetitive and physically demanding and can pay several dollars above minimum wage, yet Amazon is requiring these workers — even seasonal ones — to sign strict and far-reaching noncompete agreements. The Amazon contract, obtained by The Verge, requires employees to promise that they will not work at any company where they “directly or indirectly” support any good or service that competes with those they helped support at Amazon, for a year and a half after their brief stints at Amazon end. Of course, the company’s warehouses are the beating heart of Amazon’s online shopping empire, the extraordinary breadth of which has earned it the title of “the Everything Store,” so Amazon appears to be requiring temp workers to foreswear a sizable portion of the global economy in exchange for a several-months-long hourly warehouse gig.

The company has even required its permanent warehouse workers who get laid off to reaffirm their non-compete contracts as a condition of receiving severance pay. When Amazon shut down a massive warehouse in Coffeyville, Kansas, earlier this year, hundreds of employees lost work. One laid-off warehouse worker, who earned just over $12 an hour unloading inbound freight at the Coffeyville facility, showed The Verge a clause in her severance agreement that admonished her to “fully comply” with the noncompetition agreement. This worker wished to remain anonymous because of a non-disclosure agreement she signed with Amazon.

………

Starr, who reviewed the Amazon agreement, said that while attorneys may differ in their interpretations on which services count as having been “supported” by a warehouse employee, the 18-month duration seems “incredibly long,” especially for a temporary job. In the case of a stint lasting three months, the restrictions would stretch six times longer than the actual length of employment, Starr noted in an email. “A restriction like this could only be credible if the type of information the individual learned in a short time could be very damaging to the firms.”

Yet Garden, the Seattle University law professor, notes that such a contract being legally enforceable may in fact be entirely beside the point in a low-wage workplace. “One way to look at this is as a kind of invidious approach to having workers sign a contract that is very likely to be unenforceable,” Garden says. “Knowing that people who have been working for 10 and 11 dollars an hour are not going to be able to hire a lawyer to fight for them later on.“

(emphasis mine)

And this last bit is what these non-competes are all about: preying on the weakest and least knowledgeable of their employees in order to maintain a state of serfdom.

It makes Walmart look like Ralph Nader.

Here’s hoping that there is a lawyer out there who can find a way to use the RICO law against the motherf%$#ers.

Clearly, We Need to Have a Full Congressional Investigation Over This………

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It appears that the White House and its head florist have parted ways, and some reporter who really needs to get a life demands to know why:

When White House chief pastry chef Bill Yosses left the executive mansion last summer, the president publicly mourned the loss of “the crust master’s” mysteriously addictive pies. And when the first family’s personal chef and pal, Sam Kass, left in December, Michelle Obama heaped praise on Kass’s “extraordinary legacy of progress” in an official White House statement.

 But the recent exit of head florist Laura Dowling, who’d been in the job since 2009, has been a much quieter affair. So hush hush, in fact, that most outside of 1600 Penn knew nothing about it. There’s still no official comment on why Dowling is no longer at the White House, but according to a source with close ties to current residence staffers, she was escorted from the building on Friday, Feb. 13.
The East Wing initially confirmed via a very brief e-mail that “Laura left her position earlier this year” but provided no further details. Later, the first lady’s office (not quoting the first lady specifically, mind you) sent this enhanced statement:

“As Chief Florist, Laura Dowling and her team treated guests of the White House to their beautiful floral arrangements. Ms. Dowling’s creations were always lively and colorful, reflecting not only the season but the unique and historic rooms which they graced. No two arrangements were ever the same and each one left guests with a lasting impression of the elegance and history of the People’s House. We are grateful for her contribution over the years and wish her well”

………

 Hours after we put in a call to Dowling’s Alexandria floral design shop, Intérieurs et Fleurs, she issued a statement via the law firm Sidley Austin.

“After almost 6 years as Chief Floral Designer at the White House, I have resigned in order to pursue exciting new opportunities and explore my passion for floral artistry and design. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be launching a new platform for my work as an author, speaker, instructor and design consultant that builds on the creative ideas and partnerships I’ve formed during my tenure there. It’s been such an honor to work at the White House and I will always be grateful for this incredible opportunity.”

There is then a followup article, which seems to indicate that it was that Michelle Obama wanted to move the White House aesthetics in a new direction, with an equally breathless tone:

………

In this town, matters of taste — much like positions on marriage equality — can “evolve” over time. Just ask Dowling, who left because her “fussy style” was not in line with the first lady’s emerging modern and clean aesthetics, several sources said.

 Laura’s work “is just different. I’m not sure if it was right for the White House,” said one top floral designer in the area who has done freelance florist work for splashy big events at 1600 Penn. This designer, like many we talked to, spoke on the condition of anonymity because “the floral community is very small, and nobody wants to put down anybody’s work.”

I understand that this needs to be covered, and I understand that the author, Helena Andrews, is, “The co-author of The Reliable Source,” the Washington Post‘s Society/Gossip column, but the breathless tone is a bit over the top.

Truth be told, I do not blame her.  I blame her editors.

The editors should have told her to walk back the tone a bit.

STEM Shortage, My Ass!

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For years, various industries have claimed that there is a shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) employees in asking for training subsidies and visas (H-1B and L-1).

People on the other side have observed that colleges and universities are pumping out more than enough graduates, and that the lobbying for subsidies for companies to hire STEM workers in order to drive the cost (wages) of technical employees down.

Well, it appears that notwithstanding the claims of a worker shortage STEM graduates cannot find jobs:

All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields.

In the face of these stark facts, we now see several studies that seem to be desperate Hail Mary passes, using rather unconventional means to find “shortages.” Some analysts do this by expanding the definition of STEM jobs – traditionally those involved in innovation, discovery and development – to include air conditioning technicians and even some retail jobs to make the case that this workforce is large and growing. Without any coherent meaning, such analyses now serve only rhetorical purposes to advance particular legislation.

Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guestworkers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guestworkers for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees, holding down wages for both them and new hires.

The problem is not that there is a shortage of tech workers, it’s that employers want them on the cheap, so they can spend the money of obscene bonuses for upper management, stock buybacks, and lobbying Congress.

F%$# that.

This is not Capitalism, it is Parasitism

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Digby quite clearly demonstrates that remuneration for Wall Street finance types are not an artifact of any capitalist imperative, but instead are out and out looting:

With all the changes that have taken place on Wall Street since the financial crisis hit – the mergers, the new regulations and the lawsuits that continue to take a toll on banks’ bottom lines, not to mention the Federal Reserve’s demands that they continue to prove their health via regular “stress tests” – one thing remains unaltered.

It’s the ritual of the annual bonus check handed out to those lucky folks who have survived the job cuts and who continue to endure the Hobbesian life – nasty, brutish and short – on trading desks and in investment banking groups across Wall Street.

Given the banking industry’s reputation for ruthlessness and its emphasis on the “buyer beware” philosophy, you might expect a difficult environment to be reflected in the size of those bonuses.

Well, not so fast. This is Wall Street, after all.

True, Wall Street’s profits aren’t what they used to be. Pretax profits fell 4.2% in 2014 to $16 billion, according to New York’s office of the state comptroller. If you think that sounds like a relatively modest decline, consider that 2014 profits were 33% below 2012 levels, and a whopping 74% below 2009, when Wall Street posted record results as markets zoomed back to life after the crisis and banks profited from ultra-low asset values and interest rates.

But, reflecting the new clout of banks and bankers, bonus payments didn’t dip in response to this decline. Instead, they rose. In fact, it’s the second year in a row that a decline in profitability has been accompanied by a gain in the size of bonus checks. In 2013, to be sure, the contrast was more marked: a 30.1% decline in profitability, and a 15% increase in bonus payments. This year’s gains are more modest: the New York State comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, announced the average bonus would edge up only 2%.

Of course, here’s where the fun and games start on Wall Street. Bonuses don’t come out of a bank’s profits, but out of its revenues. It’s only folks like you and I – and, one would hope, at least some of the investors – who might want to take a look at these numbers and tie them to profits. Because what good is it rewarding employees for bringing revenue through the door if it isn’t profitable revenue?

This year, bonus payouts will amount to a whopping 170% of the profits reported by New York stock exchange member firms – profits that continue to be eroded by legal settlements and regulatory expenses. Back in 2009, that figure was slightly more than 36% of profits, and it has crept steadily higher.

The people working on Wall Street think that they are Galtian superman sitting astride the economy.

They are not.  They are parasites, sucking the marrow from our economy.

In the words of Ayn Rand, these would be moochers and looters, not producers.

H/t to Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, whose post you should read if you are a Chronicles of Riddick fan.