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...]
Six protesters who were involved in the Seattle May Day clash with police were charged on Thursday, with prosecutors charging five more who are suspected of attacks against the police and other bystanders. Those eleven individuals were arrested during an unauthorized demonstration on Wednesday evening, which participants designated as an “anti-capitalist” protest. Those event occurred just a few hours after orderly marches by immigration reform groups, labor advocates and others … [Read more...]
Every day, the media covers hundreds of stories on jobs, income, unemployment and the U.S. economy. But what happens when we step back and ask a few bigger, simpler questions: What do Americans do for a living? And in what way has the employment landscape changed over the last 30 years? Planet Money has answered these questions with two graphs. Jobs where people manufacture goods now constitute significantly fewer of the total employment landscape. Americans still made a lot of … [Read more...]
Did you know that the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) founded Guide Dogs of America? Guide Dogs of America is committed to the mission of training guide dogs and providing instruction in their use at no charge to blind and visually impaired Americans. This allows individuals to pursue their goals with enhanced mobility and independence. Guide Dogs of America was founded more than 60 years ago by a joint effort between Joseph Jones (a retired member of … [Read more...]
Last week the New York Times ran an op-ed by Casey B. Mulligan, economics professor at the University of Chicago and author of “The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy.” Proposals by the Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour prompted Casey Mulligan's recent article "Hidden Costs of the Minimum Wage," where he points out that economists disagree on the historical effects of minimum-wage changes, and whether minimum wage … [Read more...]
