A growing number of job-seekers are facing new requirements: “no smoking.” And this doesn’t just apply at work, but in their personal and home life as well. As smoking bans spread across the country, more and more employers — primarily hospitals — are also banning smokers themselves. They refuse to hire applicants whose urine tests positive for nicotine, which includes not only cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, but also patches. These tobacco-free hiring policies are meant to … [Read more...]
A newly-created TV and Internet advertising campaign is encouraging Washington state employers to offer light-duty jobs to employees during periods where they are recovering from workplace injuries. This “Stay at Work program” through the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) was enacted by the Legislature in 2011. The program reimburses employers for one half of an injured worker’s base wages plus a portion of training costs, tools and uniforms a worker might need to perform a … [Read more...]
Job openings in February rose to their highest level since the economic downtown in May 2008, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week. There were 4 million job openings at U.S. companies on the last day of February, up from 3.5 the previous month. Hiring and separation rates did not show much change, coming in at 3.3% and 3.1% respectively. With 52 million hires and 50.1 million separations in the 12 months ending in February 2013, the net employment gain came out to 1.9 … [Read more...]
According to results of a Department of Labor and Industries investigation, Bellevue Square escalator that malfunctioned and injured seven shoppers several months ago wasn't up on 32 of the state's safety codes. L&I investigators report that three of the escalator's safety-stop systems failed to work when a loose “panel skirt” snagged on the moving stairway, jamming the mechanism and snapping the escalator's chains, which then causing the stairway to pile on itself between the ground … [Read more...]
While some improvements in gender inequality have been made in the past decades, the unacceptable fact remains that women are paid much less, on average, than men. This is true even when women perform the exact same jobs. However, that gap varies considerable for workers in different careers. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Planet Money compared women’s earning to those of male counterparts in hundreds of different jobs. Below, we show the jobs where the wage disparity is … [Read more...]
