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1,343 | abcnews--2019-01-28--Federal employees back at work facing backlogs IT issues | 2019-01-28T00:00:00 | abcnews | Federal employees back at work facing backlogs, IT issues | Hundreds of thousands of federal government employees headed back to work Monday, and their back pay is on the way, but it could be a while before it's back to business as usual. For example, congressional sources estimate it will take at least a year for IRS to recover from unanswered taxpayer questions and other work that piled up during the shutdown. The backlog of unanswered letters to IRS increased to 5 million pieces of mail during the shutdown and IRS is still receiving more than 700,000 pieces of a mail a day. The IRS told members of Congress last week that more than half of employees called back to work to start processing tax refunds those employees couldn't go back to work due to financial difficulties or were unreachable. The IRS also told members of Congress 25 information technology staff left to look for other jobs every week during the shutdown. Meanwhile, federal workers are expected to receive back pay from the 35-day government shutdown by later this week, though the exact timeline varies by agency. At some departments, payroll staff worked through the weekend to start processing checks for more than 800,000 employees who were furloughed or worked without pay during the shutdown. Some of those employees have said they're already worried about the possibility of another shutdown in three weeks, when the temporary budget agreement between the president and Democrats in Congress is set to expire. Employees at several agencies are being told to expect money in their accounts by Thursday, Jan. 31 -- including the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Housing and Urban Development. National Park Service employees should also get their first paycheck with back pay on Wednesday and the rest on Friday, but many NPS staff were being paid the last several weeks after the agency announced it would tap into reserve funds to keep parks open. Agency leaders welcomed their employees back on social media and in person as many came back to the office for the first time in weeks. While the government officially reopened over the weekend, the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo are set to reopen on Tuesday and some national parks in remote areas may need more time to remove snow or ice before visitors can enter safely. Federal workers will also have some logistical hurdles on their first day back at work. Some agency heads tweeted that extra resources and IT support would be available to help employees who couldn't access their computer or email during the shutdown and may now be locked out due to expired passwords. ABC News' Anne Flaherty and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report. | Stephanie Ebbs | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/federal-employees-back-work-monday-facing-backlogs-issues/story?id=60676436 | 2019-01-28 18:44:33+00:00 | 1,548,719,073 | 1,567,550,523 | labour | labour relations |
1,884 | abcnews--2019-11-04--McDonald's CEO pushed out after relationship with employee | 2019-11-04T00:00:00 | abcnews | McDonald's CEO pushed out after relationship with employee | McDonald's chief executive officer has been pushed out of the company after violating company policy by engaging in a consensual relationship with an employee, the corporation said Sunday. The fast food giant said former president and CEO Steve Easterbrook demonstrated poor judgment, and that McDonald's forbids managers from having romantic relationships with direct or indirect subordinates. In an email to employees, Easterbrook acknowledged he had a relationship with an employee and said it was a mistake. "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on," Easterbrook said in the email. McDonald's board of directors voted on Easterbrook's departure Friday after conducting a thorough review. Details of Easterbrook's separation package will be released Monday in a federal filing, according to a company spokesman. He will also be leaving the company's board. Easterbrook was CEO since 2015. McDonald's would not provide details about the employee with whom Easterbrook was involved, and an attorney for Easterbrook declined to answer questions. The board of directors named Chris Kempczinski, who recently served as president of McDonald's USA, as its new president and CEO. Two weeks ago, McDonald's reported a 2% drop in net income for the third quarter as it spent heavily on store remodeling and expanded delivery service. The company's share price has dropped 7.5% since, though it's still up 9.2% for the year. The burger chain also has been plagued by declining restaurant traffic. The leadership transition is unrelated to the company's operational or financial performance, the company said in a news release. McDonald's decision to act may be a sign of progress on workplace issues that have come to light in the #MeToo era, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "Other companies don't always act on that kind of information or fire their CEO for that, and so it seems like they trying to enforce a pretty strict policy in this situation," Tobias said. Among other challenges at its restaurants, McDonald's has faced workplace harassment charges. In May, McDonald's said it was enhancing training and offering a new hotline for workers after a labor group filed dozens of sexual harassment charges against the company. Fight for $15, the group which filed the charges, said McDonald's response to its sexual harassment complaints has been inadequate, and "the company needs to be completely transparent about Easterbrook's firing and any other executive departures related to these issues." Kempczinski joined McDonald's in 2015. He was responsible for approximately 14,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. He was instrumental in the development of McDonald's strategic plan and oversaw the most comprehensive transformation of the U.S. business in McDonald's history, said Enrique Hernandez, chairman of McDonald's board, in a statement. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mcdonalds-ceo-steps-relationship-employee-66728072 | Mon, 04 Nov 2019 02:18:42 -0500 | 1,572,851,922 | 1,572,881,242 | labour | employment |
1,884 | abcnews--2019-11-04--McDonald's CEO pushed out after relationship with employee | 2019-11-04T00:00:00 | abcnews | McDonald's CEO pushed out after relationship with employee | McDonald's chief executive officer has been pushed out of the company after violating company policy by engaging in a consensual relationship with an employee, the corporation said Sunday. The fast food giant said former president and CEO Steve Easterbrook demonstrated poor judgment, and that McDonald's forbids managers from having romantic relationships with direct or indirect subordinates. In an email to employees, Easterbrook acknowledged he had a relationship with an employee and said it was a mistake. "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on," Easterbrook said in the email. McDonald's board of directors voted on Easterbrook's departure Friday after conducting a thorough review. Details of Easterbrook's separation package will be released Monday in a federal filing, according to a company spokesman. He will also be leaving the company's board. Easterbrook was CEO since 2015. McDonald's would not provide details about the employee with whom Easterbrook was involved, and an attorney for Easterbrook declined to answer questions. The board of directors named Chris Kempczinski, who recently served as president of McDonald's USA, as its new president and CEO. Two weeks ago, McDonald's reported a 2% drop in net income for the third quarter as it spent heavily on store remodeling and expanded delivery service. The company's share price has dropped 7.5% since, though it's still up 9.2% for the year. The burger chain also has been plagued by declining restaurant traffic. The leadership transition is unrelated to the company's operational or financial performance, the company said in a news release. McDonald's decision to act may be a sign of progress on workplace issues that have come to light in the #MeToo era, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "Other companies don't always act on that kind of information or fire their CEO for that, and so it seems like they trying to enforce a pretty strict policy in this situation," Tobias said. Among other challenges at its restaurants, McDonald's has faced workplace harassment charges. In May, McDonald's said it was enhancing training and offering a new hotline for workers after a labor group filed dozens of sexual harassment charges against the company. Fight for $15, the group which filed the charges, said McDonald's response to its sexual harassment complaints has been inadequate, and "the company needs to be completely transparent about Easterbrook's firing and any other executive departures related to these issues." Kempczinski joined McDonald's in 2015. He was responsible for approximately 14,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. He was instrumental in the development of McDonald's strategic plan and oversaw the most comprehensive transformation of the U.S. business in McDonald's history, said Enrique Hernandez, chairman of McDonald's board, in a statement. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mcdonalds-ceo-steps-relationship-employee-66728072 | Mon, 04 Nov 2019 02:18:42 -0500 | 1,572,851,922 | 1,572,881,242 | labour | labour relations |
2,146 | abcnews--2019-11-12--Huawei giving employees bonus for coping with US sanctions | 2019-11-12T00:00:00 | abcnews | Huawei giving employees bonus for coping with US sanctions | Huawei is paying its employees bonuses totaling more than $285 million as thanks for helping the Chinese tech giant cope with U.S. sanctions that threaten its smartphone and other businesses. Huawei scrambled to remove U.S. components from its products following curbs announced in May on access to American technology after Washington accused the company of being a security risk. It has unveiled a smartphone operating system it says can replace Google's Android if necessary. Some 90,000 employees will share a 2 billion yuan ($285 million) bonus, or about 22,000 yuan ($3,100) each, according to a company announcement circulated Tuesday on social media. In addition, Huawei's full 180,000-member workforce will receive an additional month's salary. Huawei Technologies Ltd. confirmed in a written statement the document was genuine but said it had no comment. The bonuses are to "thank you for your efforts" since the announcement of U.S. sanctions, the announcement said. Huawei, China's first global tech brand, is the biggest global maker of network gear for phone and internet companies and the No. 2 smartphone brand. The company denies U.S. accusations it is a security risk and might facilitate Chinese spying. Washington has postponed enforcement of the curbs and U.S. officials say some sales will be permitted. But suppliers of processor chips and other vendors that depend on Huawei for billions of dollars in annual revenue still are waiting for licenses. The larger bonus to 90,000 employees goes to people who work in chip production, research and development and manufacturing-related jobs. Those units have been most affected by efforts to overhaul Huawei's products. Huawei can keep using Android in its smartphones but will lose access to Google's music, maps and other services. Huawei said its sales rose 24.4% over a year earlier in the first nine months of 2019 to 610.8 billion yuan ($86 billion). However, chairman Liang Hua warned in July the company will "face difficulties" in the second half. The company is a leader in next-generation network technology meant to support self-driving cars and other new applications. Its increased reach makes that more politically sensitive. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/huawei-giving-employees-bonus-coping-us-sanctions-66933722 | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 06:57:45 -0500 | 1,573,559,865 | 1,573,560,394 | labour | employment |
2,146 | abcnews--2019-11-12--Huawei giving employees bonus for coping with US sanctions | 2019-11-12T00:00:00 | abcnews | Huawei giving employees bonus for coping with US sanctions | Huawei is paying its employees bonuses totaling more than $285 million as thanks for helping the Chinese tech giant cope with U.S. sanctions that threaten its smartphone and other businesses. Huawei scrambled to remove U.S. components from its products following curbs announced in May on access to American technology after Washington accused the company of being a security risk. It has unveiled a smartphone operating system it says can replace Google's Android if necessary. Some 90,000 employees will share a 2 billion yuan ($285 million) bonus, or about 22,000 yuan ($3,100) each, according to a company announcement circulated Tuesday on social media. In addition, Huawei's full 180,000-member workforce will receive an additional month's salary. Huawei Technologies Ltd. confirmed in a written statement the document was genuine but said it had no comment. The bonuses are to "thank you for your efforts" since the announcement of U.S. sanctions, the announcement said. Huawei, China's first global tech brand, is the biggest global maker of network gear for phone and internet companies and the No. 2 smartphone brand. The company denies U.S. accusations it is a security risk and might facilitate Chinese spying. Washington has postponed enforcement of the curbs and U.S. officials say some sales will be permitted. But suppliers of processor chips and other vendors that depend on Huawei for billions of dollars in annual revenue still are waiting for licenses. The larger bonus to 90,000 employees goes to people who work in chip production, research and development and manufacturing-related jobs. Those units have been most affected by efforts to overhaul Huawei's products. Huawei can keep using Android in its smartphones but will lose access to Google's music, maps and other services. Huawei said its sales rose 24.4% over a year earlier in the first nine months of 2019 to 610.8 billion yuan ($86 billion). However, chairman Liang Hua warned in July the company will "face difficulties" in the second half. The company is a leader in next-generation network technology meant to support self-driving cars and other new applications. Its increased reach makes that more politically sensitive. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/huawei-giving-employees-bonus-coping-us-sanctions-66933722 | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 06:57:45 -0500 | 1,573,559,865 | 1,573,560,394 | labour | labour relations |
1,988 | abcnews--2019-11-07--Chemical mixture at Buffalo Wild Wings kills 1 employee | 2019-11-07T00:00:00 | abcnews | Chemical mixture at Buffalo Wild Wings kills 1 employee | Massachusetts police say one person has died and eight others have been hospitalized following a chemical incident at a Buffalo Wild Wings. WHDH-TV reports officials responded to reports of a chemical reaction in the kitchen area of the restaurant in Burlington on Thursday where they found a male employee suffering from nausea. Burlington police say in a release they believe that the employee had breathed in fumes from the cleaning agent. The employee was taken to Lahey Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. Police evacuated the restaurant and are urging anyone who was inside at the time and believes they may be impacted to seek immediate medical treatment. The cause of the chemical incident remains under investigation. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chemical-mixture-buffalo-wild-wings-kills-employee-66838034 | Thu, 07 Nov 2019 21:22:39 -0500 | 1,573,179,759 | 1,573,181,299 | labour | labour relations |
2,476 | abcnews--2019-11-21--Lawsuit alleges McDonald’s puts employees in physical danger | 2019-11-21T00:00:00 | abcnews | Lawsuit alleges McDonald’s puts employees in physical danger | A group of employees from 13 McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that the company’s drive for profits puts workers at “daily risk” of physical attack by dangerous customers. In the lawsuit filed in Cook County court, the 17 workers say McDonald’s has failed to protect them from what they say is a “citywide and nationwide” pattern of violence and that police respond to more than 20 911 calls every day regarding Chicago McDonald’s restaurants. They cite several examples of the violence, including an incident in which a customer beat an employee with a sign and another in which a customer urinated on a worker. “McDonald’s has failed, at a systemic level, to protect its workers from violence in the workplace,” said Danny Rosenthal, an attorney for the workers. “Throughout the country, McDonald’s workers are regularly threatened, assaulted, and injured by customers.” McDonald’s did not respond to the lawsuit’s specific allegations, but it said in a statement that, “McDonald’s takes seriously its responsibility to provide and foster a safe working environment for our employees, and along with our franchisees, continue to make investments in training programs that uphold safe environments for customers and crew members.” The lawsuit contends that in its effort to increase profits, McDonald’s has taken steps that have made working at its restaurants more dangerous. For example, it alleges that by lowering and tearing down physical barriers at check-out counters, the company has made it easier for dangerous customers to attack workers. McDonald’s has also ignored the “recommended practice” of designing drive-thru windows so that customers cannot crawl through them, according to the lawsuit. Because McDonald’s does not allow workers to lock bathroom doors when they are sent there to clean them, the company puts workers at greater risk of sexual violence, the lawsuit asserts. One of the plaintiffs “was cleaning inside the men’s bathroom when men entered and exposed themselves to her in a sexual manner,” it states. The lawsuit marks the latest in a string of legal problems for the fast food giant. McDonald’s has faced protests and dozens of lawsuits over what workers call sexual harassment at its restaurants and the company’s failure to address their complaints. Earlier this month, a former employee sued McDonald’s and one of its Michigan franchisees, alleging that the general manager did nothing to stop a co-worker from groping and physically assaulting her. And just days before that lawsuit was filed, McDonald’s fired its CEO, Steve Easterbrook, for having a consensual romantic relationship with an employee. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lawsuit-alleges-mcdonalds-puts-employees-physical-danger-67201280 | Thu, 21 Nov 2019 18:09:53 -0500 | 1,574,377,793 | 1,574,381,198 | labour | labour relations |
1,078,444 | usnews--2019-11-15--Antenna Systems Company Promises 100 New Jobs for Maryland | 2019-11-15T00:00:00 | usnews | Antenna Systems Company Promises 100 New Jobs for Maryland | SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — A startup company has announced expansion plans in Maryland that could bring 100 new jobs to Salisbury. APEX RF Conditioning supplies distributed radio access networks, antenna systems and assemblies. The Salisbury Times reported Thursday on the expansion announced by its CEO David Chambers. His statement says the current push toward 5G deployment means now is a great time to expand. The new jobs include engineers, technicians and assemblers. The combined payroll for the new jobs is estimated to exceed $8.5 million annually once the expansion is complete. The timeline is unclear. The Salisbury-Wicomico Economic Development Business Expansion Fund provided some financing to the company, which plans to move to Northwood Industrial Park. Information from: The Daily Times of Salisbury, Md., http://www.delmarvanow.com/ Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | Associated Press | https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/maryland/articles/2019-11-15/antenna-systems-company-promises-100-new-jobs-for-maryland | Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:36:41 GMT | 1,573,835,801 | 1,573,822,280 | labour | labour market |
3,182 | abcnews--2019-12-14--Ex-bank employee accused of taking cash from vault arrested | 2019-12-14T00:00:00 | abcnews | Ex-bank employee accused of taking cash from vault arrested | CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Federal authorities are accusing a former Wells Fargo employee of stealing more than $88,000 in cash from the vault of a bank in North Carolina. An indictment unsealed this week alleges 29-year-old Arlando M. Henderson took the cash from customer deposits on at least 18 occasions throughout 2019 and then rigged the books to try to hide his actions. He is accused of using the money to pay for personal expenses, including a $20,000 down payment on a 2019 Mercedes-Benz. The Charlotte resident was arrested in San Diego Dec. 4. He faces several charges, including two counts of financial institution fraud and 19 counts of theft. The Charlotte Observer reports the indictment alleges Henderson regularly posted on social media about his newfound riches, including photos with cash in his hands or all over the floor. His federal public defender in California did not respond to a request for comment from the newspaper Friday. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bank-employee-accused-taking-cash-vault-arrested-67735390 | Sat, 14 Dec 2019 16:24:23 -0500 | 1,576,358,663 | 1,576,368,422 | labour | labour relations |
3,272 | abcnews--2019-12-17--Employers post more jobs in October in sign of solid economy | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | abcnews | Employers post more jobs in October in sign of solid economy | WASHINGTON -- The number of available jobs jumped in October after hitting an 18-month low the previous month, a sign the job market remains strong. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the number of available positions rose 3.3% to nearly 7.3 million. That suggests that businesses remain confident enough in the economic outlook to create more jobs. The figures provide the latest evidence that employers have largely shrugged off the uncertainties surrounding the U.S.-China trade war and slowing global growth. While the number of open jobs has declined from a record high of 7.6 million a year ago, they are still at a historically high level. For roughly a year and a half there have been more job postings than unemployed people. The figures follow a healthy jobs report earlier this month that showed a surprisingly robust gain of 266,000 jobs while the unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.5%. “The numbers should calm worries that employer demand for workers is drying up,” said Julia Pollak, labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “Rather than falling substantially, job openings now appear to have remained fairly stable for over a year.” The number of Americans who quit their jobs also rose, though that figure remains below the peak reached in July. Quits are a good sign for the economy because most workers quit jobs for new, usually higher-paying, positions. Data compiled by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank show that workers who switch jobs are seeing larger wage gains than those who stay. More quits can also push companies to pay more to retain their staffs. Job openings jumped 125,000 in the retail sector, likely reflecting strong demand for temporary workers for the holiday season. The government seeks to seasonally adjust the data for those fluctuations but isn't always able to do so perfectly. October's gain was the largest increase in retail job openings since April 2018. Manufacturers also posted slightly more open jobs after several months of decline. Finance and insurance firms and health care also posted more available positions. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/employers-post-jobs-october-sign-solid-economy-67776295 | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:52:17 -0500 | 1,576,619,537 | 1,576,627,584 | labour | labour market |
3,691 | activistpost--2019-01-08--CBS Series NCIS Los Angeles Episode on Microwave Weapons Being Used to Harm Employees | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | activistpost | CBS Series, “NCIS: Los Angeles” Episode on Microwave Weapons Being Used to Harm Employees | Earlier this week, popular long-running series, NCIS: Los Angeles featured an episode called “The Sound of Silence” Characters reference the ongoing media coverage of microwave weapons being suspected of harming U.S. employees at the Cuban Embassy. Microwave weapons are nothing new . During the 1950s, the Russians aimed microwave weapons at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. This is often referred to as the “Microwaving of the Moscow Embassy.” “Microwave Sickness” is commonly mistaken for other illnesses. Exposure to microwave (aka wireless or WiFi) radiation and other sources of “Electrosmog” can cause a variety of symptoms and conditions – whether it’s directed or not. It sometimes resembles “The Flu.” Many experts strongly recommend eliminating or at least reducing exposure – especially to children and pregnant women. Despite all of this, some health care professionals continue to ignore and/or dismiss its potential to harm patients including animals. Wireless implants are also dangerous as they are constantly emitting radiation AND they are susceptible to hacking. In 2004, former Vice President, Dick Cheney, had the wireless turned off on his pacemaker because he was afraid someone would try to kill him by hacking into it. Insurance companies have refused to cover wireless radiation exposure risk for many years now. Residents of Gateshead, England became sick after 5G wireless was installed in street lights and eventually council members were held liable. Despite this and plenty of research that has already proven harm from exposure, there are still campaigns being promoted (including the “Race for 5G”) to install more microwave radiation emitting devices and infrastructure in the U.S., around the world, and in outer space. Proponents insist that installing harmful technology is what’s best for humankind and the environment. Of course, they are also being paid to do so. For more information, visit the following websites: | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/cbs-series-ncis-los-angeles-episode-on-microwave-weapons-being-used-to-harm-employees.html | 2019-01-08 21:18:25+00:00 | 1,547,000,305 | 1,567,553,377 | labour | labour relations |
3,795 | activistpost--2019-01-18--Imagine if the Media Had as Much Sympathy for Small Business Owners as it Does for Federal Employees | 2019-01-18T00:00:00 | activistpost | Imagine if the Media Had as Much Sympathy for Small Business Owners as it Does for Federal Employees | During this partial government shutdown, it’s become nearly impossible to avoid news articles, and segments on television and radio outlining the many ways that federal employees are apparently suffering financially as a result of the partial government shutdown. The stories are very diverse in topic. Some take a “human interest story” angle, simply looking at how the daily lives of some of these employees have been affected. Others look at the apparent injustice of the fact that some workers are “being told to work without pay.” Still other suggest that the lack of federal paychecks will drive down economic growth figures. The number of ways to cover the story is quite large, and editors and journalists are apparently looking to see how many different options they can explore. In truth, of course, virtually no one is working “without pay” since Congress has already approved a plan to provide nearly all affected workers with back pay. Nor is is mentioned that, on average, federal workers earn 17 percent more than private sector workers of similar education levels. Also not mentioned is the fact that the unemployment rate is at a historically low level — and thus changing careers is easier now than usual. None of this, of course, is emphasized in the many media stories on the topic. Indeed, the usual slant of the articles is that federal workers somehow suffer more greatly than private sector workers. Just imagine, though, if the media took a similar interest in small business owners and the self-employed in general. Would we then hear about the struggles of how the local Subway franchisee struggles to make payroll in the face of government regulations and taxes? Would we hear about how the local courier company with 23 employees had to cut wages — and thus lose some of his best employees — because tariffs (i.e., taxes) on autos has driven up his costs? Would we hear about how a new increase in the minimum wage forced the local mom-and-pop hardware store to increase prices, thus driving down revenues? Here are some of the news leads we might see see if this were the case: EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Small business owners have cut back hours and laid off workers as the result of new minimum wage requirements that went into effect last week. Lisa Cooper, a single mother of three who opened Bob’s Bar and Grille six years ago noted she’ll have to lay off some staff and raise prices on some menu items. “It will definitely take a cut out of our revenues,” Cooper said. “It looks like I’ll have to cancel music lessons for the kids this year.” Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? SEATTLE, Wash. (AP) — Mandatory paid family leave mandates have left some local business owners scrambling for ways to cover employee absences. New mandates passed by the state legislature went into effect last month. Rob Hunnicut, the broker-owner of Oak Realty is unsure how his employees will react. “This is a burden that will fall on all my employees,” Hunnicut said, after a staff meeting Thursday morning. “When some employees take paid family leave, that means everyone else in the office has to pitch in to do the same amount of work. Even worse, since we have to keep paying the employees on leave, we can’t afford to bring in temp workers.” Hunnicut noted he has often provided paid leave in the past when business was brisk. “But now things are different,” Hunnicut said. “With these rigid mandates, everyone who’s left in the office, including me, will just have to do with less, including those of us who already have small children at home.” You get the idea. Other possibilities for stories might include: This isn’t to say that the media never covers these topics. But it is fairly safe to say that beyond publications intended specifically for business readers, ordinary media outlets have rarely showed much interest in examining the plight of small business owners in a way similar to how they’ve been covering the effect of the current shutdown on federal workers. Rarely does mainstream coverage emphasize the daily problems that small business owners face in providing payroll for workers (and themselves), meeting customer demands, and keeping the lights on. Moreover, business owners face these sorts of problems daily — and every time a government hands down a new regulation tax or mandate — while federal employees rarely face the sorts of uncertainties over income that are common in the private sector. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/imagine-if-the-media-had-as-much-sympathy-for-small-business-owners-as-it-does-for-federal-employees.html | 2019-01-18 18:24:13+00:00 | 1,547,853,853 | 1,567,551,808 | labour | employment |
4,443 | activistpost--2019-04-10--Busted Thousands of Amazon Employees Listening to Alexa Conversations | 2019-04-10T00:00:00 | activistpost | Busted: Thousands of Amazon Employees Listening to Alexa Conversations | Amazon employs thousands of people to listen in on what people around the world are saying to their Alexa digital assistant, according to what is sure to be a Congressional hearing-inspiring report by Bloomberg, which cites seven people who have worked on the program. While their job is to “help improve” NSAlexa – which powers the company’s line of Echo speakers – the team “listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices,” which are then transcribed, annotated and fed back into the software in order to try and improve Alexa’s understanding of human speech for more successful interactions. In other words, humans are effectively helping to train Amazon’s algorithm. The listening team is comprised of part-time contractors and full-time Amazon employees based all over the world; including India, Romania, Boston and Costa Rica. Listeners work nine-hour shifts, with each reviewing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift according to two employees from Amazon’s Bucharest office – located in the top three floors of the Romanian capital’s Globalworth building. The location “stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure” of the Pipera district and “bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.” While much of the work is boring (one worker said his job was to mine for accumulated voice data for specific phrases such as “Taylor Swift” – letting the system know that the searcher was looking for the artist), reviewers are also listening on people’s most personal moments. Occasionally Amazon listeners come across upsetting or possibly criminal recordings – such as two workers who say they listened in on what sounded like a sexual assault. According to the report, when things like this happen the workers will mention it in the internal chat room to “relieve stress.” And while Amazon says that it has procedures to follow when workers hear distressing things, two of the Romania-based employees say they were told “it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere” when they requested guidance for such instances. “We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously,” said an Amazon spokesman in a statement provided to Bloomberg. “We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone,” the statement continues. “We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.” That said, Amazon does not mention the fact that humans are listening to recordings of some of the conversations picked up by Alexa. Instead, they have a generic disclaimer in their FAQ that says “We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.” According to Amazon’s Alexa terms of use, the company collects and stores most of what you say to Alexa – including the geolocation of the product along with your voice instructions, reported CNBC’s Todd Haselton last November. Last May, an Amazon Echo recorded a conversation between a husband and wife, then sent it to one of the husband’s phone contacts. Amazon claims that during the conversation someone used a word that sounded like “Alexa,” which caused the device to begin recording. “Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa,’” said Amazon in a statement. “Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.” The wife, Danielle, however said that the Echo never requested her permission to send the audio. “At first, my husband was like, ‘No, you didn’t,’” Danielle told KIRO7. “And he’s like, ‘You sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘Oh gosh, you really did!’” Alexa does allow people to stop sharing their voice recordings for the development of new features, while a screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg reveals that the recordings provided to Alexa’s listeners do not provide the full name or address of a user. It does, however, link the recording to an account number, the user’s first name, and the device’s serial number. “You don’t necessarily think of another human listening to what you’re telling your smart speaker in the intimacy of your home,” said UMich professor Florian Schaub, who has researched privacy issues related to smart speakers. “I think we’ve been conditioned to the [assumption] that these machines are just doing magic machine learning. But the fact is there is still manual processing involved.” “Whether that’s a privacy concern or not depends on how cautious Amazon and other companies are in what type of information they have manually annotated, and how they present that information to someone,” added Schaub. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/04/busted-thousands-of-amazon-employees-listening-to-alexa-conversations.html | 2019-04-10 23:00:52+00:00 | 1,554,951,652 | 1,567,543,260 | labour | employment |
4,465 | activistpost--2019-04-13--Walmart Says Employees are Happy That Robots Are Taking Their Jobs | 2019-04-13T00:00:00 | activistpost | Walmart Says Employees are “Happy” That Robots Are Taking Their Jobs | Self-checkouts have been replacing human employees for quite some time, and now robots are taking other jobs. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart is deploying robots to carry out mundane tasks like mopping its floors and tracking inventory as it seeks to cut down on labor costs after raising wages last year. Naturally, the mega-retailer wants us to believe that robots taking over certain tasks in their stores is a good thing – a change that will allegedly benefit their human employees. “With automation, we are able to take away some of the tasks that associates don’t enjoy doing,” Mark Propes, senior director of central operations for Walmart US, told The Wall Street Journal. “At the same time, we continue to open up new jobs in other things in the store.” The company said the addition of a single machine can cut a few hours a day of work previously done by a human, or allow Walmart to allocate fewer people to complete a task, a large saving when spread around 4,600 U.S. stores. Executives said they are focused on giving workers more time to do other tasks, and on hiring in growing areas like e-commerce. Instead, Walmart is spending to battle Amazon.com Inc. and serve more shoppers buying online. Walmart has hired around 40,000 store workers to pick groceries from shelves to fulfill online orders. The company is also raising wages, adding worker training, and buying e-commerce startups. Store workers spend two to three hours a day driving a floor scrubber through a store using the manual machines, said a company spokesman last year. The automatic conveyor belts cut the number of workers needed to unload trucks by half, from around eight to four workers, said executives at a company presentation last June. (source) In a press release titled #SquadGoals: How Automated Assistants are Helping Us Work Smarter, Walmart refers to the robots as “smart assistants” and claims that the response from associates has been “overwhelmingly positive” so far: Some employees might be happy now, but what if they eventually end up with robot supervisors? A recent report from The Guardian titled UK Businesses Using Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Staff Activity describes a system called Isaak that is being used to monitor the actions of 130,000 people in the UK and abroad in real time. Isaak “scrutinizes staff behavior minute-to-minute by harvesting data on who emails whom and when, who accesses and edits files and who meets whom and when” and ranks staff members’ attributes, according to the report. Phil Duffy, innovative vice president of Brain Corp., the company that developed the software that allows the robots to function, told WSJ that machines and humans will work in harmony as “operational partners.” He added that in a tight labor market, it’s difficult for employers to fill some of these low-wage positions. “It’s very hard for employers to get the workforce they need,” Mr. Duffy said. “None of the customers we’re working with are using our machines to reduce their labor costs; they’re using them to allow their teams, their janitorial teams, to perform higher-value tasks.” Retailers and other companies that hire large numbers of low-skilled hourly workers are increasingly looking to automation as they face higher labor costs and aim to improve retention amid the lowest unemployment in decades. Target Corp. added machines to count cash to backrooms of stores last year, following a similar move by Walmart. Last week Target said it has raised starting wages for store workers to $13 an hour and has previously said it will raise starting wages to $15 next year. Last month, Costco WholesaleCorp. raised starting wages for U.S. and Canadian store workers to $15. Amazon did the same for U.S. workers last year. Walmart raised starting wages for store workers to $11 last year. Executives said at a recent investor conference that Walmart is keeping wages competitive by store and market. (source) Remember that AI can develop prejudice and hate without human input, and apparently does not have a good sense of humor. Those don’t sound like good qualities to have in coworkers or supervisors. While Walmart and other retailers may like to spin the impending robot workforce takeover as a positive thing for humanity, in reality it “is an issue of growing concern for many employees across a range of industries,” reports Digital Trends: Late last year, in an article titled “Replaced by Robots: 10 Jobs That Could be Hit Hard by the A.I. Revolution”, Digital Trends listed professions (including some that will surprise you) that will likely suffer the effects of an AI takeover: That list includes lawyers, data entry clerks, journalists (I am certainly not happy to hear this), drivers, chefs (like Flippy), financial analysts, telemarketers and customer service assistants, medics, manual labor jobs, musicians, and artists. Retail jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. A retail apocalypse has been escalating for several years, and job losses have been piling up. Retail has already lost 41,000 jobs this year – and that isn’t including the numbers for March, as SHTFplan.com reports. “This is significant, and marks an acceleration of store closures and job cuts in the near term,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “Retail is ground zero for seeing the shifts of change in our lives.” Now it appears that remaining retail positions are increasingly at risk of being lost to artificial intelligence. How long until humans are rendered entirely obsolete? The late Dr. Stephen Hawking warned us that robots will eventually take over. In 2014, he told the BBC: The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded. (source) What do you think about this? Do you think robots will eventually replace human workers entirely? If so, how soon do you think it will happen? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of an experienced journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM. This article was sourced from The Organic Prepper. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/04/walmart-says-employees-are-happy-that-robots-are-taking-their-jobs.html | 2019-04-13 15:20:31+00:00 | 1,555,183,231 | 1,567,543,023 | labour | labour relations |
4,465 | activistpost--2019-04-13--Walmart Says Employees are Happy That Robots Are Taking Their Jobs | 2019-04-13T00:00:00 | activistpost | Walmart Says Employees are “Happy” That Robots Are Taking Their Jobs | Self-checkouts have been replacing human employees for quite some time, and now robots are taking other jobs. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart is deploying robots to carry out mundane tasks like mopping its floors and tracking inventory as it seeks to cut down on labor costs after raising wages last year. Naturally, the mega-retailer wants us to believe that robots taking over certain tasks in their stores is a good thing – a change that will allegedly benefit their human employees. “With automation, we are able to take away some of the tasks that associates don’t enjoy doing,” Mark Propes, senior director of central operations for Walmart US, told The Wall Street Journal. “At the same time, we continue to open up new jobs in other things in the store.” The company said the addition of a single machine can cut a few hours a day of work previously done by a human, or allow Walmart to allocate fewer people to complete a task, a large saving when spread around 4,600 U.S. stores. Executives said they are focused on giving workers more time to do other tasks, and on hiring in growing areas like e-commerce. Instead, Walmart is spending to battle Amazon.com Inc. and serve more shoppers buying online. Walmart has hired around 40,000 store workers to pick groceries from shelves to fulfill online orders. The company is also raising wages, adding worker training, and buying e-commerce startups. Store workers spend two to three hours a day driving a floor scrubber through a store using the manual machines, said a company spokesman last year. The automatic conveyor belts cut the number of workers needed to unload trucks by half, from around eight to four workers, said executives at a company presentation last June. (source) In a press release titled #SquadGoals: How Automated Assistants are Helping Us Work Smarter, Walmart refers to the robots as “smart assistants” and claims that the response from associates has been “overwhelmingly positive” so far: Some employees might be happy now, but what if they eventually end up with robot supervisors? A recent report from The Guardian titled UK Businesses Using Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Staff Activity describes a system called Isaak that is being used to monitor the actions of 130,000 people in the UK and abroad in real time. Isaak “scrutinizes staff behavior minute-to-minute by harvesting data on who emails whom and when, who accesses and edits files and who meets whom and when” and ranks staff members’ attributes, according to the report. Phil Duffy, innovative vice president of Brain Corp., the company that developed the software that allows the robots to function, told WSJ that machines and humans will work in harmony as “operational partners.” He added that in a tight labor market, it’s difficult for employers to fill some of these low-wage positions. “It’s very hard for employers to get the workforce they need,” Mr. Duffy said. “None of the customers we’re working with are using our machines to reduce their labor costs; they’re using them to allow their teams, their janitorial teams, to perform higher-value tasks.” Retailers and other companies that hire large numbers of low-skilled hourly workers are increasingly looking to automation as they face higher labor costs and aim to improve retention amid the lowest unemployment in decades. Target Corp. added machines to count cash to backrooms of stores last year, following a similar move by Walmart. Last week Target said it has raised starting wages for store workers to $13 an hour and has previously said it will raise starting wages to $15 next year. Last month, Costco WholesaleCorp. raised starting wages for U.S. and Canadian store workers to $15. Amazon did the same for U.S. workers last year. Walmart raised starting wages for store workers to $11 last year. Executives said at a recent investor conference that Walmart is keeping wages competitive by store and market. (source) Remember that AI can develop prejudice and hate without human input, and apparently does not have a good sense of humor. Those don’t sound like good qualities to have in coworkers or supervisors. While Walmart and other retailers may like to spin the impending robot workforce takeover as a positive thing for humanity, in reality it “is an issue of growing concern for many employees across a range of industries,” reports Digital Trends: Late last year, in an article titled “Replaced by Robots: 10 Jobs That Could be Hit Hard by the A.I. Revolution”, Digital Trends listed professions (including some that will surprise you) that will likely suffer the effects of an AI takeover: That list includes lawyers, data entry clerks, journalists (I am certainly not happy to hear this), drivers, chefs (like Flippy), financial analysts, telemarketers and customer service assistants, medics, manual labor jobs, musicians, and artists. Retail jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. A retail apocalypse has been escalating for several years, and job losses have been piling up. Retail has already lost 41,000 jobs this year – and that isn’t including the numbers for March, as SHTFplan.com reports. “This is significant, and marks an acceleration of store closures and job cuts in the near term,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “Retail is ground zero for seeing the shifts of change in our lives.” Now it appears that remaining retail positions are increasingly at risk of being lost to artificial intelligence. How long until humans are rendered entirely obsolete? The late Dr. Stephen Hawking warned us that robots will eventually take over. In 2014, he told the BBC: The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded. (source) What do you think about this? Do you think robots will eventually replace human workers entirely? If so, how soon do you think it will happen? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of an experienced journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM. This article was sourced from The Organic Prepper. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/04/walmart-says-employees-are-happy-that-robots-are-taking-their-jobs.html | 2019-04-13 15:20:31+00:00 | 1,555,183,231 | 1,567,543,023 | labour | employment |
4,939 | activistpost--2019-07-03--Walmart and Others Train Employees with Virtual Reality Despite Research Proving Harm Caused by It | 2019-07-03T00:00:00 | activistpost | Walmart and Others Train Employees with Virtual Reality Despite Research Proving Harm Caused by It | Research has already proven that Virtual Reality (VR) is not safe. The goggles expose users to harmful (and sometimes blinding) Blue Light and harmful (and sometimes cancerous) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) at close-range. From the Association for Psychological Science (February 2014), “Virtual avatars may impact real-world behavior”: “Our results indicate that just five minutes of role-play in virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to reward or punish anonymous strangers,” says lead researcher Gunwoo Yoon of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. So companies who force employees to use VR as part of their job training seem to be just begging for lawsuits. Coincidentally, for many years now, telecom companies have been warning investors that they may eventually be held liable caused by harm from their products (and infrastructure). In the meantime, though, employers will likely be held liable to employees who become temporarily or permanently disabled from using VR as part of their training. Obviously, schools who force students to use VR as part of their curriculum have put themselves in the same dumb position. For more information, visit the following websites: Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/07/walmart-and-others-train-employees-with-virtual-reality-despite-research-proving-harm-caused-by-it.html | 2019-07-03 15:22:57+00:00 | 1,562,181,777 | 1,567,536,987 | labour | labour relations |
4,588 | activistpost--2019-05-02--Caltrans Loses Appeal Must Pay 3M in Employees Perfume Allergy Lawsuit Estimated 55 Million Amer | 2019-05-02T00:00:00 | activistpost | Caltrans Loses Appeal, Must Pay $3M in Employee’s Perfume Allergy Lawsuit. Estimated 55 Million American Adults have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) | Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) has been recognized as a disabling condition by the Americans for Disability Act (See 1, 2). Within the past decade, chemical sensitivity and diagnosed Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) has increased significantly with an estimated 55 million American adults who now have it. Last year, University of Melbourne research revealed that 1 in 4 Americans report sensitivity to common chemicals such as inspect spray, paint, cleaning supplies, fragrances, and gas fumes. Almost ½ of this group was also medically diagnosed with MCS. This seems to indicate that 1/8 of Americans are suffering from MCS. In March a jury decided that a California company must pay $3M to an employee after ignoring his request for accommodation due to diagnosed chemical allergies. From the Sacramento Bee: Caltrans must abide by a jury’s decision to award $3 million to an employee who claimed his supervisors harassed him by ignoring his allergies to perfume and several cleaning products, an appeals court ruled Thursday. The ruling appears to leave Caltrans little room to keep fighting the award, which a Nevada County jury set in May 2017 after a one-month trial. Employee John Barrie, 62, of Grass Valley, filed suit after supervisors repeatedly ignored directives to keep perfumes and cleaning chemicals like Windex and Comet away from him starting in 2010. He said his supervisor called him an “idiot” and a “jerk” and that after his desk was moved he would sometimes find his things soaked in perfume. Caltrans contested the jury’s $3 million figure. A trial court judge sided with the department, ruling the award was “so excessive as to indicate that it was prompted by passion, prejudice, whim or caprice” on the part of the jury. That judge determined that $350,000 would be fair and reasonable, according to court documents. Barrie appealed the judge’s decision, saying the judge didn’t cite sufficient evidence for his decision. The Third Appellate District Court of Appeal agreed with him in its ruling Thursday directing Caltrans to pay him the full $3 million judgment. “I am very pleased at the Third Appellate District Court’s unanimous ruling today,” Barrie said in an email. “This ruling is a major victory for disabled persons everywhere, including those with ‘invisible’ disabilities, such as heart disease, epilepsy, diabetes, and chemical sensitivities. This ruling sends a clear message to employers everywhere: honor the rights of the disabled and ensure they are accommodated.” In addition to the $3 million, the appeal court ruled Caltrans has to pay Barrie about $44,000 in lost income, and it has to pay his attorneys’ fees for the appeal. According to research posted at Environmental Health Trust, exposure to WiFi and other Electromagnetic Fields increases chemical sensitivity: …wireless and EMF radiation can synergistically increase the effect of these daily toxic exposures because of the ways in which wireless radiation alters the body’s natural functioning. Wireless radiation has been shown to damage sleep and the blood-brain barrier, which in turn can lead to higher toxic load on the body. …research studies have found that a known carcinogen exposure in combination with wireless and EMF exposure leads to a significantly increased risk of cancer development. EHTrust.org highlighted several factors along with research to substantiate them including: Electromagnic Sensitivity (ES) has also been federally recognized as a disabling condition. It has a long history and was originally named “Microwave Sickness” in the 1950s. Many people who have MCS also have Electromagnetic Sensitivity. The EI Wellspring website provides great information about how to cope for those who suffer with both conditions. In 2010, experts stated that as many as 1/3 of the population is “sensitive” to sources of “Electrosmog” which includes “Dirty Electricity” as well as cell phone and wireless WiFi radiation.” No one is immune to sources of Electrosmog though some will handle exposure better than others. Of course after enough exposure it’s possible for anyone to become “sensitive.” Exposure also affects animals. Unfortunately many doctors and vets still don’t consider Electrosmog exposure when diagnosing and treating patients. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/caltrans-loses-appeal-must-pay-3m-in-employees-perfume-allergy-lawsuit-estimated-55-million-american-adults-have-multiple-chemical-sensitivities-mcs.html | 2019-05-02 15:17:27+00:00 | 1,556,824,647 | 1,567,541,352 | labour | labour relations |
4,588 | activistpost--2019-05-02--Caltrans Loses Appeal Must Pay 3M in Employees Perfume Allergy Lawsuit Estimated 55 Million Amer | 2019-05-02T00:00:00 | activistpost | Caltrans Loses Appeal, Must Pay $3M in Employee’s Perfume Allergy Lawsuit. Estimated 55 Million American Adults have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) | Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) has been recognized as a disabling condition by the Americans for Disability Act (See 1, 2). Within the past decade, chemical sensitivity and diagnosed Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) has increased significantly with an estimated 55 million American adults who now have it. Last year, University of Melbourne research revealed that 1 in 4 Americans report sensitivity to common chemicals such as inspect spray, paint, cleaning supplies, fragrances, and gas fumes. Almost ½ of this group was also medically diagnosed with MCS. This seems to indicate that 1/8 of Americans are suffering from MCS. In March a jury decided that a California company must pay $3M to an employee after ignoring his request for accommodation due to diagnosed chemical allergies. From the Sacramento Bee: Caltrans must abide by a jury’s decision to award $3 million to an employee who claimed his supervisors harassed him by ignoring his allergies to perfume and several cleaning products, an appeals court ruled Thursday. The ruling appears to leave Caltrans little room to keep fighting the award, which a Nevada County jury set in May 2017 after a one-month trial. Employee John Barrie, 62, of Grass Valley, filed suit after supervisors repeatedly ignored directives to keep perfumes and cleaning chemicals like Windex and Comet away from him starting in 2010. He said his supervisor called him an “idiot” and a “jerk” and that after his desk was moved he would sometimes find his things soaked in perfume. Caltrans contested the jury’s $3 million figure. A trial court judge sided with the department, ruling the award was “so excessive as to indicate that it was prompted by passion, prejudice, whim or caprice” on the part of the jury. That judge determined that $350,000 would be fair and reasonable, according to court documents. Barrie appealed the judge’s decision, saying the judge didn’t cite sufficient evidence for his decision. The Third Appellate District Court of Appeal agreed with him in its ruling Thursday directing Caltrans to pay him the full $3 million judgment. “I am very pleased at the Third Appellate District Court’s unanimous ruling today,” Barrie said in an email. “This ruling is a major victory for disabled persons everywhere, including those with ‘invisible’ disabilities, such as heart disease, epilepsy, diabetes, and chemical sensitivities. This ruling sends a clear message to employers everywhere: honor the rights of the disabled and ensure they are accommodated.” In addition to the $3 million, the appeal court ruled Caltrans has to pay Barrie about $44,000 in lost income, and it has to pay his attorneys’ fees for the appeal. According to research posted at Environmental Health Trust, exposure to WiFi and other Electromagnetic Fields increases chemical sensitivity: …wireless and EMF radiation can synergistically increase the effect of these daily toxic exposures because of the ways in which wireless radiation alters the body’s natural functioning. Wireless radiation has been shown to damage sleep and the blood-brain barrier, which in turn can lead to higher toxic load on the body. …research studies have found that a known carcinogen exposure in combination with wireless and EMF exposure leads to a significantly increased risk of cancer development. EHTrust.org highlighted several factors along with research to substantiate them including: Electromagnic Sensitivity (ES) has also been federally recognized as a disabling condition. It has a long history and was originally named “Microwave Sickness” in the 1950s. Many people who have MCS also have Electromagnetic Sensitivity. The EI Wellspring website provides great information about how to cope for those who suffer with both conditions. In 2010, experts stated that as many as 1/3 of the population is “sensitive” to sources of “Electrosmog” which includes “Dirty Electricity” as well as cell phone and wireless WiFi radiation.” No one is immune to sources of Electrosmog though some will handle exposure better than others. Of course after enough exposure it’s possible for anyone to become “sensitive.” Exposure also affects animals. Unfortunately many doctors and vets still don’t consider Electrosmog exposure when diagnosing and treating patients. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/caltrans-loses-appeal-must-pay-3m-in-employees-perfume-allergy-lawsuit-estimated-55-million-american-adults-have-multiple-chemical-sensitivities-mcs.html | 2019-05-02 15:17:27+00:00 | 1,556,824,647 | 1,567,541,352 | labour | employment legislation |
5,795 | activistpost--2019-10-07--GE Freezes Pension Benefits For 20,000 Employees To Lower Debt Burden | 2019-10-07T00:00:00 | activistpost | GE Freezes Pension Benefits For 20,000 Employees To Lower Debt Burden | In what looks like a dry run of the looming pension crisis facing corporate America, GE said on Monday that it would freeze pension plan benefits for 20,000 American employees with salaried benefits, WSJ reports. The company also plans to freeze supplementary benefits for roughly 700 employees who became executives before 2011 in an attempt to shave as much as $8 billion off its long-term pension deficit. With GE shares down 20% since Larry Culp took over as CEO last year, the CEO who was supposed to rescue the company’s perennially-languishing share price is facing pressure to cut GE’s debt burden amid a downturn in the company’s power-equipment business, Bloomberg reports. To offset the cuts, the company is planning to pre-fund $4 billion to $5 billion of the retirement obligations it’s anticipating for 2021 and 2022 (the obligations are owed according to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa). The money will come from $38 billion GE expects to net from divestitures and savings from the pension freezes. GE plans to offer 100,000 former employees who haven’t yet started collecting retirement benefits the option of a lump sum, in effect buying them out of the company’s retirement obligations. It expects roughly one-fifth of those offered to accept the buyout. See: 177 Different Ways to Generate Extra Income The company’s shares climbed 2% on the news in premarket trading. The cuts are part of an already-announced net debt reduction plan intended to shave between $9 billion and $11 billion off GE’s debt burden, helping to lower the company’s leverage ratio to roughly 2.5x net debt to EBITDA by the end of next year. GE closed its pension plan to new entrants at the start of 2012. While several states, including Illinois and New Jersey, have opted recently to start reducing their pension shortfalls, US corporations are often in even worse shape than the public sector. But these cuts should help forestall the pension nightmare facing the US, if only for a little while. This article was sourced from ZeroHedge.com Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/10/ge-freezes-pension-benefits-for-20000-employees-to-lower-debt-burden.html | Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:19:29 +0000 | 1,570,465,169 | 1,570,492,219 | labour | employment |
5,795 | activistpost--2019-10-07--GE Freezes Pension Benefits For 20,000 Employees To Lower Debt Burden | 2019-10-07T00:00:00 | activistpost | GE Freezes Pension Benefits For 20,000 Employees To Lower Debt Burden | In what looks like a dry run of the looming pension crisis facing corporate America, GE said on Monday that it would freeze pension plan benefits for 20,000 American employees with salaried benefits, WSJ reports. The company also plans to freeze supplementary benefits for roughly 700 employees who became executives before 2011 in an attempt to shave as much as $8 billion off its long-term pension deficit. With GE shares down 20% since Larry Culp took over as CEO last year, the CEO who was supposed to rescue the company’s perennially-languishing share price is facing pressure to cut GE’s debt burden amid a downturn in the company’s power-equipment business, Bloomberg reports. To offset the cuts, the company is planning to pre-fund $4 billion to $5 billion of the retirement obligations it’s anticipating for 2021 and 2022 (the obligations are owed according to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa). The money will come from $38 billion GE expects to net from divestitures and savings from the pension freezes. GE plans to offer 100,000 former employees who haven’t yet started collecting retirement benefits the option of a lump sum, in effect buying them out of the company’s retirement obligations. It expects roughly one-fifth of those offered to accept the buyout. See: 177 Different Ways to Generate Extra Income The company’s shares climbed 2% on the news in premarket trading. The cuts are part of an already-announced net debt reduction plan intended to shave between $9 billion and $11 billion off GE’s debt burden, helping to lower the company’s leverage ratio to roughly 2.5x net debt to EBITDA by the end of next year. GE closed its pension plan to new entrants at the start of 2012. While several states, including Illinois and New Jersey, have opted recently to start reducing their pension shortfalls, US corporations are often in even worse shape than the public sector. But these cuts should help forestall the pension nightmare facing the US, if only for a little while. This article was sourced from ZeroHedge.com Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/10/ge-freezes-pension-benefits-for-20000-employees-to-lower-debt-burden.html | Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:19:29 +0000 | 1,570,465,169 | 1,570,492,219 | labour | labour relations |
5,802 | activistpost--2019-10-08--Banking Giant HSBC Set to Fire 10,000 More Employees | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | activistpost | Banking Giant HSBC Set to Fire 10,000 More Employees | The banking sector continues to suffer drastic layoffs as the global economic outlook remains uncertain. The latest financial institution reported to be set for cutting a massive amount of workers is HSBC, which has already announced firing thousands of people just a few weeks ago. London-headquartered multinational investment bank HSBC is planning to let go of up to 10,000 of its employees as a new cost-cutting measure, British media reported on Monday. The latest round of downsizing will target mostly high-paid roles and will be mainly focused on shrinking the bank’s operations in Europe. This news comes just a few weeks after the investment bank announced the previous firing of up to 4,700 employees, about 2% of its global workforce. Those cuts were said to be focused on management roles and were in response to a bleak global outlook. They also coincided with the sudden and unexplained exit of HSBC’s former CEO. “We’ve known for years that we need to do something about our cost base, the largest component of which is people – now we are finally grasping the nettle,” an unnamed HSBC insider told the Financial Times. “There’s some very hard modelling going on. We are asking why we have so many people in Europe when we’ve got double-digit returns in parts of Asia.” The new restructuring plan at HSBC is being attributed to economic uncertainty due to Brexit as well as the trade war between the U.S. and China hurting global growth. However, it can not be delinked from the historically low interest rates around the world that make it difficult for banks to profit from their traditional loans businesses. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, investment banks have been hit with limiting regulations and major fines with regards to their trading practices. As we recently reported, prior to the latest news from HSBC, banks have announced nearly 60,000 job cuts so far this year. The contraction in the banking sector is spread around the world but is most strongly felt in Europe. The top financial institutions by the number of job cuts are Banco Santander, Commerzbank, HSBC, Barclays, Alfa Bank, KBC, Societe Generale, Caixabank, and the National Bank of Greece, with Deutsche Bank leading the pack with 18,000 job cuts. See: 177 Different Ways to Generate Extra Income What do you think about HSBC firing so many employees? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Avi Mizrahi is an economist and entrepreneur who has been covering Bitcoin as a journalist since 2013. He has spoken about the promise of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at numerous financial conferences around the world, from London to Hong-Kong. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/10/banking-giant-hsbc-set-to-fire-10000-more-employees.html | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 16:50:00 +0000 | 1,570,567,800 | 1,570,573,154 | labour | labour relations |
7,604 | aljazeera--2019-01-04--Chinas Huawei punishes employees for iPhone tweet blunder | 2019-01-04T00:00:00 | aljazeera | China's Huawei punishes employees for iPhone tweet blunder | China's Huawei Technologies has punished two employees for New Year greetings sent on the smartphone maker's official Twitter account using an iPhone, an internal memo shows. Huawei, whose P-series handsets compete with Apple's iPhones, on New Year's Day wished followers a "Happy #2019" in a tweet marked sent "via Twitter for iPhone". The tweet was quickly removed, but screenshots of the blunder spread across social media. "The traitor has revealed himself," quipped one user on microblog Weibo, in a comment "liked" over 600 times. In an internal Huawei memo, dated January 3 and seen by Reuters news agency, corporate Senior Vice President and Director of the board Chen Lifang said, "The incident caused damage to the Huawei brand." The mistake occurred when outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced "VPN problems" with a desktop computer, so used an iPhone with a roaming SIM card in order to send the message on time at midnight, Huawei said in the memo. Twitter, like several foreign services such as those from Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc, is blocked in China, where the Internet is heavily censored. To gain access, users need a virtual private network (VPN) connection. Huawei, which overtook Apple as the world's second-largest smartphone vendor by volume in January-September, declined to comment on internal issues when contacted by Reuters. Sapient did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via the contact form on its website. Calls to its Beijing office went unanswered. Huawei in the memo said the blunder showed procedural incompliance and management oversight. It said it had demoted two employees responsible by one rank and reduced their monthly salaries by 5,000 yuan ($728.27). The pay rank of one of the employees - Huawei's digital marketing director - will also be frozen for 12 months, it said. It is not the first time the use of the Apple product has given cause for embarrassment. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of nationalistic tabloid Global Times, was mocked online last year after he used his iPhone when expressing support for Huawei and domestic peer ZTE Corp. He later said his actions were not hypocritical as foreign brands should not be discriminated against. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-huawei-punishes-employees-iphone-tweet-blunder-190104055240303.html | 2019-01-04 07:22:10+00:00 | 1,546,604,530 | 1,567,553,977 | labour | labour relations |
12,178 | aljazeera--2019-04-18--Jet Airways grounded employees desperate to save jobs | 2019-04-18T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Jet Airways grounded, employees desperate to save jobs | Around 16,000 workers of once India's second-largest airline are hoping to save their jobs. Jet Airways has grounded all flights because it has run out of money. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/jet-airways-grounded-employees-desperate-save-jobs-190418185102846.html | 2019-04-18 18:51:02+00:00 | 1,555,627,862 | 1,567,542,579 | labour | labour relations |
12,178 | aljazeera--2019-04-18--Jet Airways grounded employees desperate to save jobs | 2019-04-18T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Jet Airways grounded, employees desperate to save jobs | Around 16,000 workers of once India's second-largest airline are hoping to save their jobs. Jet Airways has grounded all flights because it has run out of money. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/jet-airways-grounded-employees-desperate-save-jobs-190418185102846.html | 2019-04-18 18:51:02+00:00 | 1,555,627,862 | 1,567,542,579 | labour | employment |
19,211 | anonnews--2019-01-07--In One Year a Full-Time McDonalds Employee Brings Home this Salary | 2019-01-07T00:00:00 | anonnews | In One Year, a Full-Time McDonald’s Employee Brings Home this Salary | In the United States, we’re actually lucky to not pay worse taxes, compared to a lot of European countries. Still, the taxes are intense, and the pay that is given by a corporate job like McDonald’s is guaranteed to be what they call the minimum wage. A while ago, it was reported that one person working at McDonald’s made a mere $13,811 in a year: it seems like that’s before taxes too, because it said “YTD Total Gross.” The national minimum wage is indeed low, but the problems are complicated. Unfortunately the articles about this pretty much gravitated straight toward the idea of raising the minimum wage. It wasn’t just the articles, the organization that originally shared the McDonald’s image, Fight for $15, itself is a campaign to raise the minimum wage in the United States to $15 an hour. Many people understand that the concept of a minimum wage, is the concept of the government forcing all businesses, large and small, to pay their employees a certain amount of money or not hire them at all. By this point, it should be known that when people are forced to do something, most of the time they find a way to get out of it. As a result of minimum wage laws, small businesses suffer tremendously. The only way a small business can possibly survive a dramatic increase in the minimum wage is if they only hire people under the table, and that puts them at risk of being shut down, because it’s illegal to pay someone under the table, slightly less than the minimum wage because that’s all the business can afford. Small restaurants increase their prices as the minimum wage increases, with no choice whatsoever because they have to pay an employee more. Make no mistake, wherever a major minimum wage increase occurs, the small businesses will suffer. It’s an extremely unnatural influence on society, to position corporations like McDonald’s and Wal-Mart to be able to pay people more than a small, worthy of supporting business can. An Investors.com article about this cited the Washington Post, and they said: “Increasing the minimum wage increases the costs of hiring workers. As a result, employers must accept reduced margins or customers must pay steeper prices. If employers cannot stay in business while paying their staff more, they will either hire fewer people or give their workers fewer hours. As a result, even if wages per hour increase workers’ total earning could decline.” That’s right: welcome to fewer hours that your corporate job will pay you. People didn’t think these big corporations would find a way to skirt the law? By any means necessary, people adapt to regulations that are forced on them for the better or for the worse. People certainly deserve to earn more money, and they deserve to choose what they want to pay taxes for, and what services they want in exchange for their taxes from the government, if any. However, if people think it’s common sense to raise the minimum wage, they don’t understand it’s all proportional, and why should we even be begging for a wage from these companies who don’t care about us? It was said that no prices had changed after Seattle’s minimum wage hike: no retail prices, from large corporations who can avoid the consequences of the regulations and hire people for less hours, or do whatever they do. Small business prices did change. The only true, long-term way out of this entire financial situation of working paycheck to paycheck is really to own a small business or do some kind of endeavor like that, capable of making more money than minimum wage. However, if a small business can’t even legally function without paying an amount to employees that perhaps the job doesn’t even require, that business is dead and they are forced into the black market. If people can sustain their business in the black or grey markets as Agorism would describe, all the power to them. The way out of financial depression is not a change in the law, it’s a change in how people support each other in the community and earn money. | Adam Goldberg | http://www.anonews.co/in-one-year-a-full-time-mcdonalds-employee-brings-home-this-salary/ | 2019-01-07 17:44:32+00:00 | 1,546,901,072 | 1,567,553,565 | labour | employment |
18,046 | aljazeera--2019-12-05--Lebanon's Daily Star employees on strike, citing unpaid salaries | 2019-12-05T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Lebanon's Daily Star employees on strike, citing unpaid salaries | Beirut, Lebanon - Members of staff at Lebanon's The Daily Star newspaper have gone on strike, saying salaries had gone unpaid for months. More than a dozen reporters and editors at the English-language daily did not go to work on Thursday. Some said they had not been paid in nearly six months despite working full-time. • Who can lead Lebanon out of political crisis? • Lebanon's Saad Hariri says he does not want to be next PM "First it was a week, then two, then a month," said Timour Azhari, a reporter at The Daily Star and one of those on strike. "Then suddenly we went for two or three months without anything." "We've had promises saying the money is coming, we’re working on getting the money… but in the end, we have no money," he said. "So we've been pressuring, we've been holding meetings, we've been asking, sending emails. But generally we felt that our demands were not getting through." Employees last week had warned management of the impending strike, submitting a document asking for one month's salary to be paid by Wednesday, and for a schedule to be drawn up for the rest of the outstanding payments. The newspaper's editor said it was unable to meet these demands. "Yes, we have a cashflow problem; yes, salaries have been somewhat delayed, that of course is true," Editor-in-Chief Nadim Ladki told Al Jazeera. "We are doing as much as we can to resolve the situation. But, as you know, the newspaper industry around the globe is facing challenges, so we are part of that." Ladki said employees could ask the company accountant to pay small sums in emergency circumstances on a case-by-case basis. Staffers said this system helped them to survive this long, with one likening the process to asking employees to "beg for our salaries". Previous promises to pay wages soon had gone unfulfilled due to Lebanon's anti-government protests, which have been ongoing for six weeks, having disrupted the banking system and driven down advertising sales, Ladki said. "I'm not saying the staff are not within their rights to demand the full amount, and of course this is the duty of the paper. But there are circumstances that have really not helped us." As staffers met on Wednesday afternoon to decide whether or not to proceed with the strike, long-time employee Benjamin Redd received an email from management telling him it was his last day at the newspaper: He was being let go due to financial constraints. "At the end of my shift I got an email basically saying you're fired, get out, don't come back … on the eve of the strike," Redd said. "I don't believe it was just a financial decision. The timing is very convenient." The consensus among staff was that Redd had been fired for appearing to lead calls for a strike, according to Azhari, who submitted his resignation on Thursday, citing Redd's dismissal. "Management seemed to think that he had taken on a leading role, which I must stress is not true," he said. "It really was democratically by consensus, with all staff members, but somehow they got the impression that he was leading it and he was fired for that." Staff said if management had intended firing Redd to dampen calls for a strike, it had the opposite effect. "[It] was the trigger for a lot of the people who went on strike today, because it came very much out of the blue, and it appeared to be in response to Ben's role in helping organise this action," said one current staffer taking part in the strike, who asked to remain anonymous as they feared jeopardising their job following Redd's dismissal. "We just weren't convinced that it was done in good faith." "It was a clear tactic of intimidation coming from upper management … and I received that message as a clear threat," said another. Ladki insisted Redd was let go solely for financial reasons, but acknowledged that the timing was unfortunate. "Ben was on a high salary and high expenses … so the idea was that for his salary, I can get three or four younger journalists, that was the decision," Ladki said. "The timing looked very bad, yes." Several staffers at The Daily Star confirmed to Al Jazeera on Thursday that they had resigned or planned to do so imminently. One said they had been thinking about leaving over the pay issue, but Redd's firing "was the last straw". Tens of employees have left the newspaper in recent months thanks to payment issues, leaving it severely understaffed. The Daily Star is almost entirely owned by the family of Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Saad Hariri. Employees of several media companies owned by the family have consistently gone unpaid. In September, Hariri announced the suspension of operations at Future TV, once one of Lebanon's most-high profile channels, citing financial difficulties. At the time, the majority of the station's 380 staff had been on a weeks-long strike after going unpaid for months. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/lebanon-daily-star-employees-strike-citing-unpaid-salaries-191205150907753.html | Thu, 05 Dec 2019 17:34:49 GMT | 1,575,585,289 | 1,575,592,950 | labour | labour relations |
19,690 | anonnews--2019-11-08--CBS Fired Employee Who Leaked Video About Epstein Cover-Up at ABC News | 2019-11-08T00:00:00 | anonnews | CBS Fired Employee Who Leaked Video About Epstein Cover-Up at ABC News | On Tuesday, a video was leaked by Project Veritas, showing ABC’s Amy Robach talk about how the network covered up information about the Epstein case for years. In the previously unaired footage, Robach said that she had conducted an earlier interview with Virginia Roberts, one of Epstein’s victims. It was suggested that the interview was canceled by ABC due to pressure and threats from the royal family, who was concerned about Prince Andrew being implicated in the scandal. The palace reportedly threatened the network with not allowing them to interview members of the royal family if they aired the footage. Now, just days after the leak, it was revealed that an employee with CBS news, a different network, was the staffer responsible for the leak. As soon as their identity was discovered, they were swiftly fired from the network. The following video shows the off the record taping where a very upset Amy Robach talks about how she tried for three years the get her interviews and research published through ABC news but they continually crushed the story because of its connections to the royal family. Prince Andrew has found himself at the center of the Epstein scandal since the testimony of Virginia Roberts has finally reached the public. As expected, the prince denies any type of illegal behavior and denies that he had ever met Roberts. However, Roberts was able to produce evidence that the two had known each other, including photographs where Prince Andrew is holding the young girl by the waist before she was 18-years-old. In a recent interview with “60 Minutes Australia,” Roberts says that Prince Andrew should be in jail for what he did to her and other women, who were underage girls at the time. However, she doubts that he will ever see justice because of his position in society. In the new special, Roberts says that she was trafficked around to the elite of the world, which included a variety of billionaires and politicians. As ABC’s Amy Robach says in the recently leaked footage, no one knew or cared who Jeffrey Epstein was until very recently. For years there were a small number of activists and reporters who were working to bring his crimes to light, but it was not until this year that the case became national news. The investigation of those who surrounded Epstein was abruptly halted after his alleged suicide in prison, but there are many doubts about the circumstances surrounding his death. Around the end of October, Epstein’s name was back in the news again, after expert pathologist Michael Baden published a report suggesting that that evidence leads him to believe that a homicide was more likely than a suicide, as the injuries are more associated with strangulation by a large margin. However, this was just an independent ruling, the state’s medical examiner is still standing by the official story. It was reported by CBS that screams were heard from Epstein’s cell that night. Suspiciously, the security camera that was tasked with monitoring the area malfunctioned at the time of his death as well. After Epstein was found dead, Attorney General William Barr said that there were “serious irregularities” at the jail where he was being held. In a speech to a law enforcement group in New Orleans, Barr said that he was angry with the facility for their “failure to adequately secure” the prisoner. | David Cohen | https://www.anonews.co/cbs-fired-employee-who-leaked-video-about-epstein-cover-up-at-abc-news/ | Fri, 08 Nov 2019 01:37:24 +0000 | 1,573,195,044 | 1,573,301,324 | labour | labour relations |
609,136 | thedailyecho--2019-01-28--Openreach announces plans to create 450 new jobs across the south | 2019-01-28T00:00:00 | thedailyecho | Openreach announces plans to create 450 new jobs across the south | OPENREACH today unveiled plans to hire more than 450 trainee engineers across the south as part of a huge recruitment drive. The new roles being created in Hampshire and six other counties will help Britain’s biggest team of telecoms experts expand and upgrade the company’s national broadband network. Trainees will be recruited mainly to deliver the Fibre First programme, which is bringing faster and more reliable technology to millions of properties. Under the proposals Openreach will hire 93 young engineers in Hampshire. Clive Selley, the company’s chief executive, said: “Openreach is determined to build full fibre as quickly as possible to ensure the country has a reliable broadband network capable of supporting data-hungry services and applications essential for boosting productivity. “We’re making great progress towards our target of upgrading three million homes and businesses to full fibre by the end of next year. “Our new apprentices will enable us to fulfil our commitments, with an ultimate ambition to deliver the best possible connectivity to everyone across the entire country.” The national recruitment drive has been praised by a government minister. Speaking at the opening of an Openreach training school Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said: “This is a huge expansion in high skilled, well paying jobs across the UK and yet another demonstration of the jobs success we have seen since 2010. “Behind every employment number is a person whose self-esteem, mental wellbeing and life chances are all vastly improved by being in the workplace. “Apprenticeships can help create opportunities for women in what are traditionally, male-dominated industries. “Last year a record number of women moved into work, something reflected in Openreach’s record of hiring more female staff than ever before.” Regional director David Jordan added: “We want people from all walks of life to apply for roles at Openreach, to build a diverse workforce that reflects the hugely diverse communities we serve. “Last year we recruited more women than ever before and this year we want to go even further.” | null | https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17389068.openreach-announces-plans-to-create-450-new-jobs-across-the-south/?ref=rss | 2019-01-28 05:10:08+00:00 | 1,548,670,208 | 1,567,550,525 | labour | labour market |
35,649 | bbcuk--2019-01-21--Stonewall 100 MI5 and law firm among best LGBT employers | 2019-01-21T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Stonewall 100: MI5 and law firm among 'best LGBT employers' | MI5, a law firm, a fire brigade and the Welsh government are among the best LGBT employers in the UK, according to Stonewall. Solicitors Pinsent Masons is number one in a list of the top 100 companies for 2019, says the LGBT charity. Several universities, the British Army, Lloyds Bank and homeless charity St Mungo's also feature. Its executive director Darren Towers says Pinsent Mansons is "leading the way, championing lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality in the workplace". "They know that helping staff feel that they can bring their full selves to work doesn't just make a huge difference to individual team members - it makes real business sense too." Stonewall says the law firm topped the list because of its inclusive policies, attitudes towards transgender staff and visitors, and involvement in campaigns - including marriage equality in Northern Ireland. "When you are able to bring your whole self to work, you are more productive, you're happier and you stay longer," says 27-year-old lawyer Finlay Fraser, who's LGBT and works at Pinsent Masons. "A goal for me is to be as authentic as I can be and I definitely feel like I am where I work." Finlay believes the reason the company is number one is because of its diverse workforce and the support and understanding it has for its staff. "A person who is LGBT and BAME is going to have a different experience than someone who is white and LGBT," he says. "This company does a lot of work recognising that those two groups will have different experiences. "It creates an environment where employees from diverse backgrounds want to work." As well as Pinsent Masons, the other companies which make the top five are Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, MI5, the National Assembly for Wales and law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. Cheshire's fire brigade - which is third - was recognised for its support networks and the work it does with LGBT people in the community. "There are a lot of factors, particularly among older LGBT people that in theory put them at more risk of fire," says Mark Shone, who works in community safety. "They're more likely to live alone, perhaps have mental health issues, more likely to be affected by substance misuse and they're all factors that make you at risk of fire. "We've done a lot of work to trying to map where those people are and engage them in community safety." A 2018 survey by Stonewall found that more than a third of LGBT staff had hidden they were LGBT at work for fear of discrimination. Darren Towers adds: "We know that people perform better when they can be themselves. They are more productive, creative and overall, morale is better. "This is the kind of workforce employers should want and it happens when people are in a workplace where they feel supported and included." Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46918549 | 2019-01-21 00:32:12+00:00 | 1,548,048,732 | 1,567,551,557 | labour | employment |
35,649 | bbcuk--2019-01-21--Stonewall 100 MI5 and law firm among best LGBT employers | 2019-01-21T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Stonewall 100: MI5 and law firm among 'best LGBT employers' | MI5, a law firm, a fire brigade and the Welsh government are among the best LGBT employers in the UK, according to Stonewall. Solicitors Pinsent Masons is number one in a list of the top 100 companies for 2019, says the LGBT charity. Several universities, the British Army, Lloyds Bank and homeless charity St Mungo's also feature. Its executive director Darren Towers says Pinsent Mansons is "leading the way, championing lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality in the workplace". "They know that helping staff feel that they can bring their full selves to work doesn't just make a huge difference to individual team members - it makes real business sense too." Stonewall says the law firm topped the list because of its inclusive policies, attitudes towards transgender staff and visitors, and involvement in campaigns - including marriage equality in Northern Ireland. "When you are able to bring your whole self to work, you are more productive, you're happier and you stay longer," says 27-year-old lawyer Finlay Fraser, who's LGBT and works at Pinsent Masons. "A goal for me is to be as authentic as I can be and I definitely feel like I am where I work." Finlay believes the reason the company is number one is because of its diverse workforce and the support and understanding it has for its staff. "A person who is LGBT and BAME is going to have a different experience than someone who is white and LGBT," he says. "This company does a lot of work recognising that those two groups will have different experiences. "It creates an environment where employees from diverse backgrounds want to work." As well as Pinsent Masons, the other companies which make the top five are Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, MI5, the National Assembly for Wales and law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. Cheshire's fire brigade - which is third - was recognised for its support networks and the work it does with LGBT people in the community. "There are a lot of factors, particularly among older LGBT people that in theory put them at more risk of fire," says Mark Shone, who works in community safety. "They're more likely to live alone, perhaps have mental health issues, more likely to be affected by substance misuse and they're all factors that make you at risk of fire. "We've done a lot of work to trying to map where those people are and engage them in community safety." A 2018 survey by Stonewall found that more than a third of LGBT staff had hidden they were LGBT at work for fear of discrimination. Darren Towers adds: "We know that people perform better when they can be themselves. They are more productive, creative and overall, morale is better. "This is the kind of workforce employers should want and it happens when people are in a workplace where they feel supported and included." Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46918549 | 2019-01-21 00:32:12+00:00 | 1,548,048,732 | 1,567,551,557 | labour | labour market |
35,702 | bbcuk--2019-01-22--UK employment total hits record high | 2019-01-22T00:00:00 | bbcuk | UK employment total hits record high | The number of people in work in the UK has reached a record high of 32.54 million, latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show. Unemployment was flat, with a small increase of 8,000 between September and November for a total of 1.37 million. Average earnings excluding bonuses increased by 3.3% in the year to November, as wage rises continued to outpace inflation. The number of job vacancies rose by 10,000 to a record high of 853,000. ONS head of labour market David Freeman said: "The number of people working grew again, with the share of the population in work now the highest on record. "Meanwhile, the share of the workforce looking for work and unable to find it remains at its lowest for over 40 years, helped by a record number of job vacancies. "Wage growth continues to outpace inflation, which fell back slightly in the latest month." The unemployment total is 68,000 lower than a year ago, with the jobless rate 0.2% down on this time in 2018. The number of job vacancies rose by 10,000 to a record high of 853,000. The increase in both unemployment and employment is explained by the UK's rising population and fewer people being classed as economically inactive, which includes those on long-term sick leave, students, and people who have given up looking for a job. The number of economically inactive people fell by 100,000 to 8.6 million, a rate of 21%, which is the lowest on record. Employment Minister Alok Sharma said: "Our pro-business policies have helped boost private sector employment by 3.8 million since 2010, and as the Resolution Foundation's latest report shows, the 'jobs-boom has helped some of the most disadvantaged groups find employment', providing opportunities across society." Andrew Wishart, UK economist at Capital Economics, said the figures were "reassuring, showing no sign of any hit to firms' hiring ambitions due to Brexit". However, Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, warned that the pace of wage increases may begin to ease. "We doubt that wage growth will be sustained over the next six months at November's strong rate," he said, "Pay settlements likely will weaken this year, as the previous year's inflation rate usually is the starting point for negotiations. "Nonetheless, the labour market now looks tight enough to ensure that wage growth does not slip below the 3% mark." At first blush the most surprising thing about the jobs market as portrayed by the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics is how robust it is. All this talk of Brexit uncertainty and yet employers continued to take people on. The number in work and the proportion in work continued to hit a new record - as it has done now, more or less continuously, for years. And the bulk of the new jobs were full-time; there are now a record 24 million full-time jobs in the UK. Is the jobs market simply ignoring all the Brexit-induced political chaos? Does this confirm suspicions that warnings of slower growth owing to the prospect of a no-deal Brexit was merely Project Fear? The answer to the latter question is "no", and to the former "we don't know yet". The key is that jobs figures trail the rest of the economy. Firms that took people on in the September to November period will have decided to do so in the summer, when confidence was higher and the politics less fraught. So we will still have to wait a few months to know if Brexit uncertainty has hit the jobs market or not. Tej Parikh, senior economist at the Institute of Directors, said the employment figures may not be a marker for any possible interest rate rises. "The Bank of England will be little moved by today's data. While the momentum behind wage growth may build support for interest rate hikes, Brexit remains the spanner in the works for the monetary policy committee," he said. Separate figures from the ONS showed that government borrowing rose last month. Public sector net borrowing, excluding state-owned banks, was £3bn in December, which was higher than expected and up £300m from the same month a year earlier. Borrowing in the current financial year-to-date was has now reached £35.9bn, £13.1bn less than in the same period in 2017 and the lowest year-to-date figure for 16 years. However, analysts said that on current trends, borrowing was set to exceed the £25.5bn forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility for the 2018-19 financial year as a whole. "Much will depend on whether an expected marked pick-up in corporation tax receipts materialises and how well the economy holds up over the first quarter of 2019, particularly given the current heightened Brexit uncertainties," said Howard Archer, chief economic adviser to the EY Item Club | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46958560 | 2019-01-22 11:19:04+00:00 | 1,548,173,944 | 1,567,551,407 | labour | labour market |
38,033 | bbcuk--2019-03-19--UK employment at highest since 1971 | 2019-03-19T00:00:00 | bbcuk | UK employment at highest since 1971 | The number of employed people in the UK has risen again, to a new record number of 32.7 million people between November and January, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show. The 76.1% employment rate is the highest since records began in 1971. Unemployment fell by 35,000 to 1.34 million in the period, putting the rate below 4% for the first time since 1975. The figure is 112,000 lower than a year ago, giving a jobless rate of 3.9%, well below the EU average of 6.5%. Average weekly earnings, excluding bonuses, were estimated to have increased by 3.4%, before adjusting for inflation, down by 0.1% on the previous month but still outpacing inflation. ONS senior statistician Matt Hughes said: "The employment rate has reached a new record high, while the proportion of people who are neither working nor looking for a job - the so-called 'economic inactivity rate'- is at a new record low." Employment Minister Alok Sharma said: "Today's employment figures are further evidence of the strong economy the chancellor detailed in last week's Spring Statement, showing how our pro-business policies are delivering record employment." The number of men in employment increased by 77,000 to a record high of 17.32 million. The number of employed women rose by 144,000 to a record high of 15.40 million - the largest increase since February-to-April 2014. The UK's highest regional employment rate was in the south-west of England (79.9%), while the largest estimated increase in workforce jobs was in the south-east of England (59,000). In December, London (91.5%) had the highest estimated proportion of people working in the services sector, while the East Midlands had the biggest proportion of production jobs (14.5%). The ONS figures also reveal a record number of 1.67 million people working for the NHS in December - 32,000 more than a year earlier. The unemployment rates for both men and women aged 16 years and above have been generally falling since late 2013. Men's unemployment then stood at 7.4% and women's at 6.9%. The new total unemployment rate of 3.9% has not been lower since the November 1974 to January 2015 period. The 4% figure for men is at its lowest since April to June 1975, while the 3.8% for women is the lowest since comparable records began in 1971. Meanwhile, the number of economically inactive people fell by 117,000 to 8.55 million, a rate of 20.7%, the lowest on record. The number of job vacancies in the economy increased by 4,000 to 854,000. If you were being uncharitable to politicians, you might say today's jobs figures demonstrate how little they matter. "Crisis, what crisis?" said recruiters as they hired 220,000 people in the three months to the end of January. How can you reconcile all that job creation with talk of a Brexit-induced slowdown? One answer is that the jobs market lags behind the rest of the economy. Recruiting people takes time; it can be months between noticing you need some new staff and their starting work, so the recruitment decisions reflect recruiters' sentiments months ago. Another reason may be that our jobs market is highly flexible, which is to say the risks fall on employees. In uncertain times, a company whose order book is expanding may prefer to take on people who can be "let go" later if things go wrong. That can be less costly than investing large sums in new plant and machinery, for example - investment which might prove wasted if demand for your goods shudders to a halt in a few months' time. If that story is right, it helps explain why the economy is generating jobs, but not much investment. And although there are more of us working, notably women and older people joining the workforce, the amount we each produce is barely growing. That puts a question mark over the sustainability of real wage growth of 1.4% - the strongest in more than two years. It appears that Brexit is not stopping firms hiring staff - at least, not yet. Tej Parikh, senior economist at the Institute of Directors, said: "Businesses have been steadfast in bringing on board new staff and in creating vacancies, despite question marks over the future path of the economy. "But with uncertainty around Brexit reaching a crescendo, firms are becoming more and more cagey over their hiring decisions." Andrew Wishart, UK economist with Capital Economics, said: "There was no sign in the labour market data of Brexit concerns at the start of the year, as the data beat expectations in every regard." Stephen Clarke, senior economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said that Britain was closing in on Nordic employment rates and added: "While business investment has stagnated, firms are choosing instead to invest heavily in new staff." Wages are still ahead of inflation, despite a lower increase than last month. Analysts think that the outcome of Brexit could lead to an interest rates rise later this year. Mr Wishart said: "If there is a long delay to Brexit or a deal is struck, we suspect the [Bank of England's] Monetary Policy Committee will raise interest rates this summer." And Mr Parikh added: "Employers will want to avoid a disorderly withdrawal from the EU and will above all be urging policymakers to return some much-needed oxygen to the skills and productivity agenda." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47622415 | 2019-03-19 12:07:35+00:00 | 1,553,011,655 | 1,567,545,694 | labour | labour market |
40,630 | bbcuk--2019-06-04--Avon and Somerset employs 19 officers with criminal convictions | 2019-06-04T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Avon and Somerset employs 19 officers with criminal convictions | A police force has been criticised for employing officers who have broken the law. A BBC freedom of information (FOI) application found 19 officers from Avon and Somerset Police have a criminal record. The force said the suitability of those convicted of an offence to keep their job would always be reviewed. Steven Smith, who was assaulted by an officer from Avon and Somerset, said he wanted a change in the law. The force said nine of the convictions came before the individuals joined the constabulary, while 10 were committed by serving officers. The force, which employs 2,771 officers, said the offences included burglary, assault and deception. PC Mark Foster was convicted of assault after placing Steven Smith in a hold outside a Bristol pub in 2014. He was found guilty of assault at Bristol Crown Court in 2016 but the judge said he would still be "an asset to the force". Following a police misconduct hearing, PC Foster was permitted to keep his job. Mr Smith thinks the force should not employ anyone with a criminal record. "If it's violence or excessive force I do think maybe a law change could be a good idea," he said. Avon and Somerset Police said: "When officers are charged with offences, they will be subject to open and transparent court procedures and could then face internal misconduct processes. "The suitability of those convicted of an offence to remain employed by the constabulary will always be reviewed and the circumstances relating to their conviction will be taken into consideration when a decision is made." The Police Federation said officers were "human", adding "does one mistake mean that they're no longer a value to society?" In 2012, figures released by 33 of the 43 forces in England and Wales after FOI requests, found more than 900 serving police officers and community support officers had a criminal record. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-48498333 | 2019-06-04 00:16:53+00:00 | 1,559,621,813 | 1,567,539,163 | labour | employment |
40,905 | bbcuk--2019-06-21--Lap dancers sign union deal with Glasgow club employers | 2019-06-21T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Lap dancers sign union deal with Glasgow club employers | Dancers and staff at a Glasgow lap-dancing club have signed a trade union agreement with their employers. They will be now able to bargain collectively over their terms and conditions following the deal between GMB Scotland and Seventh Heaven. The deal formalises the presence of a recognised trade union in the industry for the first time in Scotland. It will cover annual pay negotiations, disciplinary and grievance procedures and health and safety at work. The agreement comes as Glasgow City Council launches a public consultation over the future licensing regulations of the city's lap-dancing venues. Scottish government ministers have also proposed a licensing scheme which would give local authorities the power to set the number of licences at zero. GMB Scotland described the move as an important milestone in the union's efforts to "organise workers across Glasgow's lap-dancing bars and wider adult entertainment sector". Spokeswoman Rhea Wolfson said: "Workers should always have a voice over decisions that affect their livelihoods. "Dancers and staff in our lap-dancing venues should be no different, which is why we are delighted to get this agreement signed. "This is bread-and-butter trade unionism and if people look beyond the intrigue they'll see this agreement gives our members a framework to collectively bargain over their terms and conditions of employment - the same is it would in any other workplace." She added: "This agreement is good news for employees at Seventh Heaven and good news for our campaign to improve standards across the wider adult entertainment sector in Glasgow." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-48720212 | 2019-06-21 12:59:23+00:00 | 1,561,136,363 | 1,567,538,471 | labour | labour relations |
41,458 | bbcuk--2019-07-02--Newport soldier says employers discriminate because of PTSD | 2019-07-02T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Newport soldier says employers 'discriminate' because of PTSD | A former soldier injured in two blasts in Afghanistan believes employers are discriminating against him because of his post-traumatic stress disorder. Anthony Lock, 37, a former corporal in the Royal Welsh, also criticised Jobcentre staff for not being aware of their own scheme to support veterans. Mr Lock, from Newport, is unemployed despite a citation for "exemplary leadership and bravery" and submitting "hundreds" of job applications. Mr Lock said: "No-one will employ me because I have post-traumatic stress disorder. "That's how I feel, it's discrimination - it's always when I have to tell them why I've got a six or seven year gap off work, and that's when it goes dead. "So it's either because I've got PTSD, mental health issues or I've had a number of injuries and they think I'm going to be on the sick all the time." On one trip to a Jobcentre, Mr Lock said staff had no knowledge of the armed forces champions scheme, aimed at helping veterans into work, and told him to contact the Salvation Army. A UK government spokesman said: "We deeply value the service of our armed forces and apologise to Mr Lock if he feels his visit to the Jobcentre fell below his expectations. "Every Jobcentre has an armed forces champion and if he'd like to make contact with us again, then we'd be happy to speak to him about the support we can provide." Mr Lock was injured twice in six weeks by two separate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan in 2009, resulting "serious life-changing injuries" including a broken neck and ruptured spleen. He feels he has been let down by the Army, UK Government and employers, saying: "The Army cannot even find the English and maths qualifications I gained while serving". His mental health declined in the years after leaving the Army and said he was close to suicide when he decided to write a book about his experiences. He said: "I was looking at the view, and there was a massive drop in front of me, and I thought 'I can do this now, I can end my suffering' - and something just stopped me. "It was almost like somebody grabbed me from the back, I'd like to believe it was one of the boys who passed away". He wants more employers to realise PTSD is not a barrier to giving someone a job and added: "We're not bad people, a lot of us come with some really, really good skills that can help your business." Newport East MP Jessica Morden raised Mr Lock's story in the House of Commons during an armed forces debate, saying there was "a lack of support for veterans like Anthony" and too little oversight of the Jobcentre. She added: "We need to do far more with our veterans to help them into employment, to ease that transition into civilian life." The Army has been asked to comment. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48840349 | 2019-07-02 23:19:34+00:00 | 1,562,123,974 | 1,567,537,256 | labour | labour relations |
41,864 | bbcuk--2019-07-22--Employment tribunals I sued my boss and won | 2019-07-22T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Employment tribunals: 'I sued my boss and won' | In the early stages of a difficult second pregnancy, Charlotte Loubser had been sick, nauseous and found herself unable get out of bed. The birth of her first child had been troubled and her second pregnancy was considered high risk, so the doctor signed her off work in the early months. However, after she passed the 12-week stage in the pregnancy, Charlotte felt ready to go back to work at a hairdressing salon where she was a receptionist. But on the afternoon she was supposed to return, in January last year, she received a phone call saying she was no longer needed. "I was obviously extremely upset, my husband was angry," Charlotte said. When she didn't receive her wages, Malcolm, her husband, wrote an email to the salon owner. But after receiving no reply the couple joined a growing number of people who are bringing claims against their former employers. It wasn't easy. "It's a lot of work, it's really emotional and it's very, very draining," said Malcolm who did a lot of the legal work on the case, even though he's not a lawyer. And it worked. Charlotte was awarded about £2,000 in wages that had been withheld and £15,000 in compensation, although the couple have only seen a fraction of the cash. Charlotte would warn anyone considering bringing a claim to "take it seriously". "It was so much hard work and it was so emotional." The Loubsers did not have the money to pay for a lawyer but even if they had, it may not have paid off. In almost all cases, claimants are left to pay their own costs and that leaves many with no choice but to go it alone. That can leave them at a huge disadvantage, according to employment barrister Bruce Carr. He's seen an increase in the number of people representing themselves in employment tribunal cases. But he says the complexity of the process is a "huge disincentive" for those considering bringing a claim. "It's quite intimidating," he says. In the past year, the number of people making a claim to an employment tribunal has increased by 10%. The courts accepted a total of 121,075 claims last year, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The number of claims soared in 2017 when tribunal fees were scrapped after the Supreme Court ruled that it was unlawful to charge people to bring a case. That has left the tribunal system understaffed. "There are more delays than there used to be because there just aren't enough people to handle those claims at the moment," says Daniel Cotton, an employment lawyer at law firm DWF. Whereas claims used to be dealt with in a matter of months, Mr Cotton says it's not unusual for the process to take more than a year now. The Ministry of Justice told the BBC it had hired an extra 58 judges to deal with additional claims. But Mr Cotton says the tribunal system is more complicated than it used to be. "The tribunal system was designed to be user friendly, so to be accessible to general members of the public without legal representation," he says. "It probably has moved quite a long way away from that." However, the MoJ said it had spent £8m on support measures for litigants in person and has pledged another £3m. Even though he is representing himself, Paul (not his real name) says he felt relaxed walking into the tribunal room, which looks more like a conference room than a court. Paul is suing his former employer for racial discrimination and constructive dismissal after he was let go last year. He didn't want the BBC to report his name or the specifics of his case for fear of harming his future employment prospects. He filed his claim in December last year and since then he reckons he's spent a month working full-time on the case. He swotted up on the law by reading cases online and watching YouTube videos. In the hearing, Paul is the first to take the stand. The pressure is on, as his former employer has threatened to try to force him to pay its costs if he loses the case. In employment tribunals, those bringing claims are rarely asked to pay the other side's costs, unless the judge decides that they were acting maliciously and deliberately making things more expensive for their former bosses. Paul said the threats over costs were an attempt to intimidate him and he thinks the lawyers used that tactic because he's a litigant in person. Mark Doherty - who went through an employment tribunal five years ago - thinks that's a problem with the system. After he filed his claim, lawyers bombarded him with paperwork. He said "letters came in almost daily" from the law firms "in order to wear you down and make sure that you collapsed and did not take [the case] any further". "It is bullying tactics on the parts of lawyers that pummel claimants into submission," he said. Mark describes himself as "long in the tooth" but he fears younger workers may be intimidated by the tactics. "They wouldn't have done it, they would not have gone all the way through because the big lawyers would have pummelled them into the ground with document after document." "A lot of youngsters do not have the wherewithal to contend with that," he fears. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49024243 | 2019-07-22 23:17:21+00:00 | 1,563,851,841 | 1,567,536,174 | labour | labour relations |
44,571 | bbcuk--2019-11-04--'Why I want to sue Asda over new employment contract' | 2019-11-04T00:00:00 | bbcuk | 'Why I want to sue Asda over new employment contract' | Duncan Carson has just lost his job as a baker at an Asda store near Stoke, but he is preparing to put up a fight. He is among the Asda workers who have been sacked after refusing to sign up to new contracts, but he aims to take the supermarket to an employment tribunal. "I think someone should stand up to them," he said. "What is the point in having a contract if they can unilaterally change it?" Asda gave its workers until midnight on Saturday to agree to new terms, which include unpaid breaks, changes to night shift payments and being called to work at shorter notice. The supermarket said 120,000 workers had agreed to the deal, and that fewer than 300 had yet to sign up to the new contract. But Mr Carson, who has worked for Asda for 13 years, said the new contract was "unacceptable". "I have an appointment with my union officer on Thursday to start the process," he said. He usually works from 06:00 until noon as a baker, which he says suits him as he is used to working mornings. The new contract means he can be asked to work any hours from 05:00 until midnight. The move will destroy trust in the business, he says. While the new terms stipulate that Asda must give four weeks' notice of new shift patterns, "what will stop them changing it again?" he asks. Asda has extended its deadline to accept the new term by a week, meaning workers who return can do so on the new terms. Those who do not will remain sacked, however. "We have been clear that we do not want anyone to leave us as a result of this necessary change and so we have written to the fewer than 300 colleagues who have not signed the contract to offer a little more time to sign up and continue to work with us, should they wish," the company said. It added that it had always been clear that it understood people had responsibilities outside of work and would "always help them to balance these with their work life". • Asda workers are 'terrified for their jobs' • Asda's contract changes are 'just not fair' Neil Derrick, GMB regional officer for Yorkshire and North Derbyshire, said his union would offer advice on what legal challenges his members can mount. "We are working with every individual member with a view to lodging a claim," he said, which might be based on unfair dismissal, sex discrimination or potentially disability discrimination. Many Asda workers are women who are on part-time contracts to fit in with looking after family members, he added. "This new contract completely turns that on its head," he said. However, Sarah Crowther, a barrister at Outer Temple Chambers, noted that other retailers had made similar contract changes and that they were perfectly legal. She said employees that refused to accept the changes had two potential ways to make a claim: unfair dismissal or indirect discrimination. "Those with two years of qualifying employment could bring a claim for unfair dismissal. In that situation it would depend on whether the tribunal was satisfied that there was a good business reason and that procedurally everything had been done with adequate consultation," she told the BBC's Today Programme. Ms Crowther added that people "disproportionately affected" by the change such as "those less able to accommodate the flexibility... might have a case, but then it would be open to an employer to justify that". Last week, Leeds-based Asda said it was increasing its hourly pay rates. The supermarket said it would raise its basic rate for its hourly-paid retail employees to £9.18 an hour from 1 April next year, following an increase to £9 from 3 November. In London, which has an additional allowance to reflect the higher cost of living, basic pay will increase to £10.31 an hour. The retailer, owned by Walmart, acknowledged that the announcement for April pay rises had come earlier that usual. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50291416 | Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:31:40 GMT | 1,572,903,100 | 1,572,909,799 | labour | labour relations |
45,531 | bbcuk--2019-11-26--Election 2019, Your Questions Answered: What's being done for the self-employed? | 2019-11-26T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Election 2019, Your Questions Answered: What's being done for the self-employed? | With the general election fewer than three weeks away, parties' views on tax, finances and jobs have been topics on the minds of our readers. Here, we answer a selection of your questions we have received. What is each party planning to do with the tax regulations for the self-employed? - Kim Rahbek, Milton Keynes The UK's IR35 legislation makes sure that contractors, or self-employed people, pay the same tax and National Insurance (NI) contributions as employees do. Changes in April will mean that big private companies will be responsible for assessing contractors' employment status and NI contributions, rather than individuals. In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats have called for a review of recent proposals to change the IR35 rules. No other parties mention the regulation specifically in their campaign pledges. But the Conservatives have said that they would make the tax system "easier to navigate" for the self-employed. Labour has promised to end "bogus self-employment", where self-employed people work for just one company using a middle man like a limited company, which can cut tax bills for them and their employer. In this case, they should often be classed as an employee. Will anyone address the huge unfair tax burden on single income families by introducing tax allowance transfer between parents? - Becky, Houghton Married couples or those in a civil partnership are able to claim a tax break if they have a combined income of under £62,500. The marriage allowance was introduced in 2015, and lets people transfer £1,250 of their personal allowance to the higher earning partner to reduce their tax bill. In the 2018 financial year, 1.78 million people claimed marriage allowance, costing the UK government £485m. However, the tax break doesn't apply to co-habiting couples, regardless of how much they earn or how long they've been together. Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have committed to scrapping the tax break altogether. Other parties have not mentioned the policy in their manifestos. • How much do British people pay in tax? Some parties are advocating borrowing massive amounts of money each year to invest in services. Where will this money be borrowed from? - Rose Lee, Guildford The amount the government borrows to make up the difference between what it spends and what it collects is known as "public sector net borrowing". It's also often referred to as "the deficit". The government borrows this money in financial markets, by selling bonds. A bond is a promise to make payments to whoever holds it on certain dates. There is a large payment on the final date - in effect the repayment. Interest is also paid to whoever owns the bond in the meantime. So it's basically an interest-paying "IOU". The buyers of these bonds, or "gilts", are mainly financial institutions, like pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies. Private savers also buy some. The appeal to the investors is that British government bonds are seen as essentially no risk - there is no risk that the money won't be paid. • Read more on how government borrowing works • POLICY GUIDE: Who should I vote for? • POLLS: How are the parties doing? • A TO Z: Our tool to explain election words • REGISTER: What you need to do to vote Are any of the party leaders obliged to provide a copy of their tax returns during the election process? - Mark Errington, Egerton There's no legal obligation for party leaders to publish their tax returns during an election period. But some senior politicians have chosen to do so in the past. Former prime minister Theresa May published four years' worth of returns in the 2016 Conservative leadership contest, for example. Boris Johnson published a tax statement covering four years when he was mayor of London. It showed that in 2016 he paid £1m on his mayoral salary, earnings from newspaper columns and speaking engagements. Both Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell have made their returns public since 2015. Mr Corbyn's 2017-18 tax return shows that he paid just over £46,000 for that tax year. Do elected MPs have the equivalent of a contract of employment and job description? - Paul Sayer, Milton Keynes The simple answer is "no". People tend to regard it as a contract between the voters and the MP - it's down to the voters whether MPs have a position and whether they keep it. There is no job description and the office holder can choose how to run things. There are many different management styles and it's up to each MP to decide how to carry out their duties. Most MPs will choose to run constituency surgeries, perhaps once a week or once a month - but some choose not to have any. All MPs receive the same annual basic salary (currently £79,468) although it varies with extra responsibilities, for example if they're a minister or committee member. MPs are paid a salary from the day they are elected to the day they lose their seat. MPs' pensions are similar to the rest of the public sector and depend on the number of years they are in the job, as well as their salary. So if you've been an MP for 30 to 40 years you will have a good pension, but if you were elected in 2017 and lose your seat at this election, you won't have earned a very good pension. • Are there record numbers of NHS staff? • Could my student debt be written off? What are your questions about the general election? You can let us know by completing the form below. In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50547793 | Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:07:38 GMT | 1,574,744,858 | 1,574,771,023 | labour | employment |
45,531 | bbcuk--2019-11-26--Election 2019, Your Questions Answered: What's being done for the self-employed? | 2019-11-26T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Election 2019, Your Questions Answered: What's being done for the self-employed? | With the general election fewer than three weeks away, parties' views on tax, finances and jobs have been topics on the minds of our readers. Here, we answer a selection of your questions we have received. What is each party planning to do with the tax regulations for the self-employed? - Kim Rahbek, Milton Keynes The UK's IR35 legislation makes sure that contractors, or self-employed people, pay the same tax and National Insurance (NI) contributions as employees do. Changes in April will mean that big private companies will be responsible for assessing contractors' employment status and NI contributions, rather than individuals. In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats have called for a review of recent proposals to change the IR35 rules. No other parties mention the regulation specifically in their campaign pledges. But the Conservatives have said that they would make the tax system "easier to navigate" for the self-employed. Labour has promised to end "bogus self-employment", where self-employed people work for just one company using a middle man like a limited company, which can cut tax bills for them and their employer. In this case, they should often be classed as an employee. Will anyone address the huge unfair tax burden on single income families by introducing tax allowance transfer between parents? - Becky, Houghton Married couples or those in a civil partnership are able to claim a tax break if they have a combined income of under £62,500. The marriage allowance was introduced in 2015, and lets people transfer £1,250 of their personal allowance to the higher earning partner to reduce their tax bill. In the 2018 financial year, 1.78 million people claimed marriage allowance, costing the UK government £485m. However, the tax break doesn't apply to co-habiting couples, regardless of how much they earn or how long they've been together. Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have committed to scrapping the tax break altogether. Other parties have not mentioned the policy in their manifestos. • How much do British people pay in tax? Some parties are advocating borrowing massive amounts of money each year to invest in services. Where will this money be borrowed from? - Rose Lee, Guildford The amount the government borrows to make up the difference between what it spends and what it collects is known as "public sector net borrowing". It's also often referred to as "the deficit". The government borrows this money in financial markets, by selling bonds. A bond is a promise to make payments to whoever holds it on certain dates. There is a large payment on the final date - in effect the repayment. Interest is also paid to whoever owns the bond in the meantime. So it's basically an interest-paying "IOU". The buyers of these bonds, or "gilts", are mainly financial institutions, like pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies. Private savers also buy some. The appeal to the investors is that British government bonds are seen as essentially no risk - there is no risk that the money won't be paid. • Read more on how government borrowing works • POLICY GUIDE: Who should I vote for? • POLLS: How are the parties doing? • A TO Z: Our tool to explain election words • REGISTER: What you need to do to vote Are any of the party leaders obliged to provide a copy of their tax returns during the election process? - Mark Errington, Egerton There's no legal obligation for party leaders to publish their tax returns during an election period. But some senior politicians have chosen to do so in the past. Former prime minister Theresa May published four years' worth of returns in the 2016 Conservative leadership contest, for example. Boris Johnson published a tax statement covering four years when he was mayor of London. It showed that in 2016 he paid £1m on his mayoral salary, earnings from newspaper columns and speaking engagements. Both Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell have made their returns public since 2015. Mr Corbyn's 2017-18 tax return shows that he paid just over £46,000 for that tax year. Do elected MPs have the equivalent of a contract of employment and job description? - Paul Sayer, Milton Keynes The simple answer is "no". People tend to regard it as a contract between the voters and the MP - it's down to the voters whether MPs have a position and whether they keep it. There is no job description and the office holder can choose how to run things. There are many different management styles and it's up to each MP to decide how to carry out their duties. Most MPs will choose to run constituency surgeries, perhaps once a week or once a month - but some choose not to have any. All MPs receive the same annual basic salary (currently £79,468) although it varies with extra responsibilities, for example if they're a minister or committee member. MPs are paid a salary from the day they are elected to the day they lose their seat. MPs' pensions are similar to the rest of the public sector and depend on the number of years they are in the job, as well as their salary. So if you've been an MP for 30 to 40 years you will have a good pension, but if you were elected in 2017 and lose your seat at this election, you won't have earned a very good pension. • Are there record numbers of NHS staff? • Could my student debt be written off? What are your questions about the general election? You can let us know by completing the form below. In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50547793 | Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:07:38 GMT | 1,574,744,858 | 1,574,771,023 | labour | labour market |
48,842 | bigleaguepolitics--2019-12-26--‘Transmasculine’ Employee Sues Nike for $1.1 Million After Being Called ‘Wrong’ Pronouns at Work | 2019-12-26T00:00:00 | bigleaguepolitics | ‘Transmasculine’ Employee Sues Nike for $1.1 Million After Being Called ‘Wrong’ Pronouns at Work | Jazz Lyles, a former engineering contractor with Nike, is suing the far-left corporation for $1.1 million for being “misgendered” by their co-workers. Lyles, who was born a female before undergoing a transition of sorts, demands compensation because co-workers would not use the preferred pronouns of “they, them, and their.” “The lawsuit, filed this week in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleges Nike … exposed Lyles to gender identity-based discrimination and harassment and retaliation,” Willamette Week reported last Tuesday. “Lyles identifies as transmasculine/nonbinary. That means Lyles was assigned the female gender at birth but identifies with masculinity and is a nonbinary person.” Trending: Joe Biden Tells Audience at Democrat Debate to “Get Used to” Mass Migration The lawsuit contains a great deal of “woke” gobbledygook, and represents the latest encroachment upon civil society by a deranged LGBT activist. take our poll - story continues below “Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender,” Lyles’ lawsuit reads. “One’s gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth. An individual’s gender identity is at the core of an individual’s self-concept.” Lyles filed the lawsuit in the Multnomah County Circuit Court last week. Lyles has also accused Mainz Brady, an IT staffing firm based in San Mateo, Calif., of discrimination as well. “Nike had a pattern and practice of turning a blind eye to reported and known harassment,” the lawsuit states, “instead blaming the harassed, treating them as the problem and as troublemakers, all the while failing to ever investigate or take corrective action to remedy the harassment.” Lyles blames the fact that “they” were not hired as a permanent employee because of the discrimination, and believes that their civil rights were not adequately protected. Nike is finally paying the price after pushing washed up NFL QB Colin Kaepernick as a hero for dropping to his knees because he hates the American flag. Big League Politics has reported on Nike’s work to divide the country in order to maximize their profits: A former NFL quarterback has been selected as the face of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign for its 30-year anniversary. Colin Kaepernick Tweeted the first image from this year’s campaign Monday afternoon. “Believe in something,” he said. “Even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt” … Kaepernick started the NFL’s National Anthem protest controversy by kneeling for the Anthem in 2016. Players who have joined in the protest say that it is about recognizing unfair treatment of minorities by police. In August of the same year, Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers in the same month, and has been jobless ever since. Nike is starting to pay the price for fanning the flames of social justice insanity. | Shane Trejo | https://bigleaguepolitics.com/transmasculine-employee-sues-nike-for-1-1-million-after-being-called-wrong-pronouns-at-work/ | Thu, 26 Dec 2019 02:12:48 +0000 | 1,577,344,368 | 1,577,364,079 | labour | labour relations |
48,842 | bigleaguepolitics--2019-12-26--‘Transmasculine’ Employee Sues Nike for $1.1 Million After Being Called ‘Wrong’ Pronouns at Work | 2019-12-26T00:00:00 | bigleaguepolitics | ‘Transmasculine’ Employee Sues Nike for $1.1 Million After Being Called ‘Wrong’ Pronouns at Work | Jazz Lyles, a former engineering contractor with Nike, is suing the far-left corporation for $1.1 million for being “misgendered” by their co-workers. Lyles, who was born a female before undergoing a transition of sorts, demands compensation because co-workers would not use the preferred pronouns of “they, them, and their.” “The lawsuit, filed this week in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleges Nike … exposed Lyles to gender identity-based discrimination and harassment and retaliation,” Willamette Week reported last Tuesday. “Lyles identifies as transmasculine/nonbinary. That means Lyles was assigned the female gender at birth but identifies with masculinity and is a nonbinary person.” Trending: Joe Biden Tells Audience at Democrat Debate to “Get Used to” Mass Migration The lawsuit contains a great deal of “woke” gobbledygook, and represents the latest encroachment upon civil society by a deranged LGBT activist. take our poll - story continues below “Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender,” Lyles’ lawsuit reads. “One’s gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth. An individual’s gender identity is at the core of an individual’s self-concept.” Lyles filed the lawsuit in the Multnomah County Circuit Court last week. Lyles has also accused Mainz Brady, an IT staffing firm based in San Mateo, Calif., of discrimination as well. “Nike had a pattern and practice of turning a blind eye to reported and known harassment,” the lawsuit states, “instead blaming the harassed, treating them as the problem and as troublemakers, all the while failing to ever investigate or take corrective action to remedy the harassment.” Lyles blames the fact that “they” were not hired as a permanent employee because of the discrimination, and believes that their civil rights were not adequately protected. Nike is finally paying the price after pushing washed up NFL QB Colin Kaepernick as a hero for dropping to his knees because he hates the American flag. Big League Politics has reported on Nike’s work to divide the country in order to maximize their profits: A former NFL quarterback has been selected as the face of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign for its 30-year anniversary. Colin Kaepernick Tweeted the first image from this year’s campaign Monday afternoon. “Believe in something,” he said. “Even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt” … Kaepernick started the NFL’s National Anthem protest controversy by kneeling for the Anthem in 2016. Players who have joined in the protest say that it is about recognizing unfair treatment of minorities by police. In August of the same year, Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers in the same month, and has been jobless ever since. Nike is starting to pay the price for fanning the flames of social justice insanity. | Shane Trejo | https://bigleaguepolitics.com/transmasculine-employee-sues-nike-for-1-1-million-after-being-called-wrong-pronouns-at-work/ | Thu, 26 Dec 2019 02:12:48 +0000 | 1,577,344,368 | 1,577,364,079 | labour | employment legislation |
53,266 | birminghammail--2019-01-04--Indian restaurant which fed the Home Secretary employed illegal immigrants | 2019-01-04T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Indian restaurant which fed the Home Secretary employed illegal immigrants | A 'popular' Indian restaurant which counts the Home Secretary Sajid Javid among its high profile customers employed illegal immigrants, it has been revealed. Jilabi, in Sheldon, this week (Thursday, January 3) had its alcohol licence stripped permanently by Birmingham City Council in a landmark immigration case for the authority. A licensing sub-committee heard that police, alongside Home Office and immigration officials, swooped on the premises on Coventry Road around 8pm on November 23 following a tip-off. Five men tried to run out of the back door where awaiting police officers ushered them back inside the restaurant. The restaurant was nominated as one of best Indian restaurants in Birmingham according to the English Curry Awards 2017. Three men, all from Bangladesh, were ultimately arrested, the longest offender having been an illegal immigrant since 2010. Inspectors were later told up to ten further men had removed their staff clothing and blended in with customers to avoid detection, although investigators could not confirm the allegations. Police also found that CCTV was not installed, in breach of the restaurant's licence, and that staff training was not up to standard. All three immigrants have since been returned or are due to be returned to their home country. Addressing the committee PC Abdool Rohomon, West Midlands Police licensing officer, said: "This is not about how well they are run, how good the curry is and how popular they are. "It is a very popular place there are pictures of the Home Secretary having been there, I'm sure he'd love that now." He added: "You instil upon them trust and they have to comply. The trust has totally been eroded by their actions." The council took an interim step to suspend the licence on December 7 prior to today's expedited review. Around a dozen customers had wrote to the authority in support of the restaurant calling for the sanction to be lifted. One claimed that Home Secretary Sajid Javid was a regular. The MP for Bromsgrove was photographed at Jilabi in August and the venue even subsequently renamed its Railway Lamb Curry to Sajid's Railway Lamb in honour of the visit according to a post on its Facebook page. Other high profile customers have also frequented the venue in recent months. A Facebook post in October pictured Midsomer Murders actor Jason Hughes saying he had joined the 'Jilabi Club of fame' while another stated Watford FC captain - and Birmingham City fan - Troy Deeney was a weekly regular. Jilabi opened in 2002 and expanded into the former Chinese restaurant next door in 2014. The fact that they had two licences, one for Jilabi and another for Delicious Buffet, was another thorny issue with police who argued they had been effectively operating as one business. Abdul Rouf, one of the joint licence holders at the premises, claimed two of the immigrants had started a trial period the day before the police raid and that he had delegated responsibility for checking their paperwork because he had taken a day off at short notice. He admitted that the third man had been there around two weeks and they had only seen his driving licence. Mr Rouf pointed out that since the inspection he had hired an administrator to help with checks and paperwork, installed CCTV and updated staff training. He said: "I apologise profusely. I am sorry for having to bring everybody here. "I'm responsible for everything that went on and going forward I have taken on board our mistakes. They happened inadvertently and I want to reassure that nothing of this nature or any other mishap will occur under my watch." Mr Rouf confirmed he would have to lay off a number of staff due to the licence revocation - the strongest sanction available to the council. He added: "I have let myself down, my customers down and the environment around me down." | Carl Jackson | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/indian-restaurant-hired-illegal-immigrants-15628849 | 2019-01-04 10:50:09+00:00 | 1,546,617,009 | 1,567,553,889 | labour | employment |
58,459 | birminghammail--2019-03-18--Big Johns fast food restaurant in Solihull fined for employing illegal worker | 2019-03-18T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Big John's fast food restaurant in Solihull fined for employing illegal worker | One of Birmingham’s fast food joints has been whacked with a whopping £10,000 fine for employing an illegal worker. Home Office inspectors discovered the worker, who did not have the right to work in the country, when they visited Big John’s on Station Road, Solihull, in January 2018. Dobhai Franchise, the company behind the brand, was later handed the fine by the Home Office, which published the case in its illegal working civil penalties quarterly list. A home office spokeswoman said: “Big John’s, Station Road, Solihull, was visited by Immigration Enforcement officers on 4 January 2018. “A civil penalty of £10,000 was imposed on 6 March 2018 to Dobhai Franchise Ltd in relation to one illegal worker who was encountered during this visit. “The penalty is still outstanding and the case is progressing through the debt recovery stage.” Big John’s is one of the city’s main takeaway chains. The company has 14 branches in West Bromwich, Solihull, Handsworth, Shirley, Selly Oak, Quinton, Perry Barr, Kingstanding, the Lawley Middleway, Highgate, Erdington, the city centre, Chelmseley Wood and Acocks Green. The quarterly reports show the number of illegal workers found and the value of the fine imposed. The Halal Meat Centre on the High Street in Dudley and Perry Barr Hair and Cosmetics, off Wellington Road, also featured on the list. They were fined £15,000 each after illegal workers were also found on their respective premises. Illegal working leaves people vulnerable to exploitation and ends up with unscrupulous employers undercutting complaint businesses. It can also impact the wages of lawful workers and is linked to other labour market abuse such as tax evasion, breach of national minimum wage and exploitative working conditions including modern slavery. Employers are advised to read the Home Office’s Right To Work guide on their website before recruiting new workers. | birminghammail.co.uk | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/big-johns-fast-food-restaurant-15974995 | 2019-03-18 12:19:01+00:00 | 1,552,925,941 | 1,567,545,741 | labour | employment |
62,940 | birminghammail--2019-06-03--The incredible coffee cup test employers are using at job interviews - and how to pass | 2019-06-03T00:00:00 | birminghammail | The incredible 'coffee cup test' employers are using at job interviews - and how to pass | We all get nervous at job interviews, and that's only natural, given the feeling you're being put under the microscope. Of course, prospective employers are well within their rights to size you up and put you through the ringer. After all, they're going to be tasked with working alongside you - should you be successful - for years, potentially. That means they need to find the perfect person to fit their company's values, ethics and atmosphere. And a job interview - which typically lasts between half an hour and 90 minutes - can be too quick to truly do this. Thankfully, employers have a handy hack (or trick) to try and separate the wheat from the chaff. The 'coffee cup trick' was initially reported by Metro. Trent Innes of software firm Zero Australia uses the trick in every single interview. Trent will take candidates on a walk when they arrive for their interview, he says. He will deliberately pass the kitchen and make sure they come away with a hot drink. After the interview is all done, Trent watches to see if the person offers or attempts to take the empty coffee/tea cup back to the kitchen. It's an easy way to find out how selfless someone is. If they just leave their cup at the table and leave, they won’t get the job. Trent Innes said: "If you do come in and have an interview, as soon as you come in and you do meet me, I will always take you for a walk down to one of our kitchens and somehow you always end up walking away with a drink. "Then we take that back, have our interview, and one of the things I’m always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen? "You can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience but it really does come down to attitude, and the attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of “wash your own coffee cup”." | [email protected] (James Rodger) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/incredible-coffee-cup-test-employers-16369479 | 2019-06-03 07:35:59+00:00 | 1,559,561,759 | 1,567,539,188 | labour | employment |
65,274 | birminghammail--2019-07-31--Gambling addict gets job working at casino - after stealing 10000 from ex-employers | 2019-07-31T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Gambling addict gets job working at casino - after stealing £10,000 from ex-employers | A gambling addict who stole £10,000 from his former employer at a café has a new job - at a CASINO. Daniel Harrington siphoned £10,000 from his bosses while working as the chef-manager of an eatery. The café was operated by a catering company and now the 24-year-old has found new work as a team leader at a casino. The 24-year-old was 'highly regarded' and 'well spoken of' at the firm, Warrington-based Dine Contract Catering. But the Manchester Evening News reports the new role poses a 'very dangerous environment' for 'someone like' the Oldham man, according to a judge. He had worked at the firm for three years, a court heard, and his duties included cashing up proceeds from the café and providing financial reports to company bosses. But cash due to be collected started going missing, Manchester Crown Court was told. Harrington gave a number of excuses, saying he had forgot to send some cash for collection,and that he had cancelled one cash collection to reduce costs. Prosecuting, Mark Kellet said bosses were not suspicious at first because Harrington was a trusted employee. Company bosses then asked Harrington for the key to a safe so they could get another cut. Harrington told them he had forgotten it, saying he had been up all night as his grandmother was ill. He then provided a key which didn't fit, so the company took the safe to a locksmith. When it was opened, they found only £120 in coins. Asked why the safe was 'empty', Harrington said: "I don't know. My head is up my a***." Harrington was unable to explain where the money was, the court heard. He was suspended and the police were called in. In interview with officers, Harrington accepted being responsible for losing the money, but denied stealing it. But he pleaded guilty to one count of theft by employee before magistrates, admitting stealing a total of £10,787. For the latest on trials and court cases from across Birmingham and the West Midlands, join BirminghamLive's Court Facebook group . In a message to his former employers, Harrington, who defended himself in court, said: "I can only apologise for what I put them through and for letting them down. "Obviously I was highly regarded and worked very hard there, but I spiralled a long way. "I am not trying to justify anything I have done whatsoever. At the time I was under a great deal of stress." Harrington said he had a 'horrible gambling addiction' and suffered from mental health problems. He now combines jobs as a chef and a role as a team leader at a casino in the evenings, the court was told. After Judge Suzanne Goddard QC said a casino could be a 'very dangerous environment' for him, Harrington said: "I have not once had any negative thoughts about it, and it has helped me a lot." Harrington, of Victoria Street, Lees, said he has limited his gambling to £10 a week, and is working towards cutting it out altogether. Sentencing, the judge told him: "This was a responsible job. Unbeknown to your employer and your family, you were in the midst of a gambling addiction. "It seems robbing Peter to pay Paul was always going to be found out. "By the time of the magistrates hearing you realised you had nowhere else to go." The judge was told that the loss to the company didn't have a significant impact on staff or trading, but said any loss of £10,000 is 'significant for any company at all'. Harrington was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 18 months. He was ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work, and 15 rehabilitation activity requirement days. | [email protected] (Andrew Bardsley, James Rodger) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/gambling-addict-gets-job-working-16676669 | 2019-07-31 14:56:23+00:00 | 1,564,599,383 | 1,567,535,189 | labour | employment |
65,510 | birminghammail--2019-08-08--Unison seeks clarification over major issue with council employee wages | 2019-08-08T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Unison 'seeks clarification' over 'major issue' with council employee wages | Could not subscribe, try again later Staff at Dudley council are being told their wages are safe after a recent audit report warned their pay could be late or wrongly calculated. Local authority bosses are now reassuring their 13,000 staff they will be paid on time and correctly after a recent report stated there was a ‘major’ issue in the payroll service. In a corporate risk register presented to councillors on the audit and standards committee, senior officers gave the issue its highest rating of 20, stating: “Failure to address the actions in the internal audit report may result in staff not being paid or not being paid correctly” It added: “Payroll, ICT and Finance are working closely to identify the root causes of the issues.” “If necessary, the previous payroll months would be applied, with priority efforts concentrated on new starters and over payments.“ The report did not specify what the problem was but said the risk level had increased from a previous rating of 16 . In response to a request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service Councillor Simon Phipps, cabinet member for procurement, transformation and commercialisation, said: “Dudley Council cares about the welfare and wellbeing of everyone on our payroll, our employees and the employees we pay on behalf of other organisations." "We always prioritise work to ensure they are paid correctly and on time. “Internal audit work has identified scope for improvement to our payroll. “We are now working hard to strengthen the relevant processes and this will be reviewed by Audit and Standards Committee later this year.” A spokesperson for the town hall trade union, Unison, said they had not seen an increase in complaints over wages but it would now be seeking clarification from senior management. | [email protected] (George Makin) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/unison-seeking-clarification-over-major-16720936 | 2019-08-08 16:37:10+00:00 | 1,565,296,630 | 1,567,534,564 | labour | employment |
129,876 | dailyheraldchicago--2019-11-09--Indo American museum plans permanent gallery in Lombard | 2019-11-09T00:00:00 | dailyheraldchicago | Indo American museum plans permanent gallery in Lombard | A national hub for recognizing the contributions Indian Americans have made to the broader American culture is coming to Lombard. The National Indo American Museum has been established for 10 years and has an office in Chicago, but it is planning to open its first permanent gallery and event space sometime next year in the Lilac Village. The museum's facility at 815 S. Main St. has been donated by Umang and Paragi Patel, who also are funding a renovation to turn the 8,000-square-foot building into a place to host exhibits, contests, educational programs and children's activities. Amita Banerji, vice president of the organization that became a national group last December, said the museum aims to celebrate the stories of Indian Americans across generations and document the ways they have contributed to the shaping of America. "The Patel Center will serve as a model for sharing and connecting the community's stories in Indian American museums across the country," Banerji said. "We strive to tell stories beyond those that regularly surface in the media." The museum has been a largely digital effort so far, with much of its outreach and storytelling conducted through technology, educational programs or pop-up events. The museum engages schoolkids in Chicago with courses called Ethnic Dialogues, which covers cultural elements such as religion, festivals and food, and the Gandhi Peace Program, which brings ethicist Mahatma Gandhi's message of nonviolence to the classroom. The museum also celebrates Indian culture with festivals in the suburbs called "Cricket Melas," using the Sanskrit word for a gathering or a fair in the name of the events designed to enjoy the heritage games of cricket and kite-flying. Banerji said museum leaders, staff members and volunteers are looking forward to the advent of a permanent physical space next year but do not yet have a target date for the opening. To raise funds for the Patel Center's operations, the museum is hosting a gala at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center. The event aims to raise $100,000 and will honor former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi by making her the second inductee into the National Indo American Museum's Hall of Fame. Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer became the first when he was inducted in 2016. During the gala, Nooyi is set to engage in conversation with Lakshmi Menon, one of the museum's founding board members, to answer questions and connect with younger audience members. "That has raised a lot of excitement," Banerji said. | null | http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20191109/indo-american-museum-plans-permanent-gallery-in-lombard | Sat, 9 Nov 2019 16:23:21 -0500 | 1,573,334,601 | 1,573,345,269 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
161,272 | eveningstandard--2019-01-24--Tower of London Museum tour history facts tickets and all you need to know before visiting | 2019-01-24T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Tower of London: Museum tour, history, facts, tickets and all you need to know before visiting | London is home to a fascinating history which is immortalised in landmarks dotted around the capital. We are even lucky enough to have four UNESCO World Heritage Sites on our doorstep which are an excellent place to start if you want to soak up the best of London's culture. Here is all you need to know about one of the most famous fortresses in the world - The Tower of London. Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, to use its official name, is a castle on the north bank of the River Thames that was built in 1066 during the Norman Conquest of England. It is a prime tourist attraction, with thousands of people flocking there every year, itching to catch a glimpse of the crown jewels, which are on display under armed guard. From the year 1100 until 1952, the Tower was used as a prison – with the Kray twins among some of the last criminals to be kept there. Other prisoners kept in the Tower were Queen Elizabeth I before she took the throne, and Richard III’s two nephews – The Princes in the Tower – who were famously found dead in their cell in 1483 after their father, Kind Edward IV, died. The Tower has been used for many other purposes over the centuries – including a public record office and the home of the Royal Mint. The Yeoman Warders – more commonly known as Beefeaters – are the guardians of the Tower of London. The traditional Beefeater uniform is a black and red long coat with a matching hat – just like on the label of a bottle of Beefeater Gin. Originally, they would have been responsible for guarding any prisoners in the Tower and keeping the crown jewels safe. Since the Victorian era, they have conducted guided tours around the Tower. At the moment, there are an estimated 38 beefeaters working there. The Yeoman Warder tours, which are an hour long, run every 30 minutes from 10am on Tuesday-Saturday and from 10.30 on Sunday and Monday. The last tour of the day is at 2.30pm in winter and 3.30pm in summer. During the tour, the Beefeaters will guide you through the Tower while teaching you about its history, from the grand to the gruesome. Among the stops you can visit are the crown jewels themselves and the infamous torture chamber. NB: The Tower of London’s website warns some parts of the tour might be a bit scary for young children. The Yeoman Warder tours are included in the price of your ticket, so no need to pay extra. You can buy tickets here (buy online to get a 15% discount). The closest stations to the Tower of London are Tower Hill (district and circle lines) and Tower Gateway (DLR), at just 2-3 minute walk from the site. | Jessica Taylor | https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/culturecity/tower-of-london-unesco-world-heritage-site-a4045871.html | 2019-01-24 12:20:39+00:00 | 1,548,350,439 | 1,567,551,003 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
162,131 | eveningstandard--2019-01-30--Best London exhibitions in March 2019 Art galleries museums and culture in the capital | 2019-01-30T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Best London exhibitions in March 2019: Art galleries, museums and culture in the capital | With the likes of Van Gogh and Henry Moore on display, March is looking especially good for exhibitions to enjoy across London. Culture lovers have plenty to get to grips with this spring, from vibrant shows exploring big name artists to thought-provoking displays on lesser-known creatives. Ready to hit the galleries? These are the standout shows more than worthy of a visit this March. London is bracing itself for a whole lot of nakedness this March. A new exhibition at the Royal Academy is diving into the heart of Renaissance art — the nude figure. The 15th and 16th centuries were a pivotal time for the nude in Western art and this show charts its gradual developments, from anatomical studies to miniature portraits, through the works of Renaissance titans including da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, Durer and Cranach. Green fingered enthusiasts and art lovers alike will enjoy this new exhibition at the Garden Museum, which focuses on Emma Tennant’s botanical watercolours. The show will track Tennant’s career, from her early days in her garden in southern Scotland to her travels to Norfolk, Suffolk, north Wales and beyond. The works will be accompanied by artist notes that detail the history of her horticultural subjects, paying tribute to explorers and gardens that have cultivated the plants in her pieces. If headwear is your thing, this exhibition at the Wallace Collection will be just the ticket. British sculptor Henry Moore had something of a fascination with helmets and armour and this show will be the first time his works have been on display alongside the Renaissance armour that inspired them. Visitors will find more than sixty sketches, drawings and full-sized sculptures in plaster, lead and bronze, all created by Moore himself. A new exhibition on Polish artist Joanna Piotrowska opens as part of Tate Britain’s ongoing Art Now series, which shines a spotlight on new and recent work by emerging artists. Piotrowska is known for pieces that explore human power dynamics and relationships, and this exhibition will show 16mm films and black and white photographs that explore ideas of the human body and social structures. Each of her pieces are deliberately staged and directed. The Saatchi Gallery is offering a trip down memory lane with an installation taking inspiration from kaleidoscopes. The exhibition will feature works from nine contemporary artists and explore how human perception can be distorted. Visitors can expect sculptural works from Tillman Kaiser and still-life paintings from Florence Hutchings, alongside the interactive large-scale kaleidoscope by artist Laura Buckley. Following a major restoration project, the Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery will open with a solo show by British sculptor Anish Kapoor. The exhibition will feature a series of sculptures, some of which have never been seen before in Britain, each which challenge traditional ideas of form and space by disorientating the observer. This show at the National Gallery will be the first UK exhibition on Spanish Impressionist Sorolla in over a century. Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida may be a lesser-known name in the UK but this London show will highlight how he captured light on his dynamic canvases. Set to showcase 60 works spanning Sorolla's career, the exhibition will feature some of his most renowned seascapes and garden views alongside portraits and landscapes. The Serpentine Gallery will host the first UK solo exhibition on the late Swiss artist Emma Kunz. As both a healer and researcher, Kunz considered her drawings to be energy fields and used a pendulum to plan the structure of them. The show will explore how her works demonstrate philosophical, spiritual and scientific themes, all of which held relevance during her life in the late 19th and early 20th century, and still do today. One of the most anticipated exhibitions of the year is landing at the Tate Britain. The show will bring together 45 iconic works by Vincent van Gogh, exploring how his pieces were inspired by Britain and its artists. Specifically, the show will focus on Van Gogh’s love for British culture, including his fondness of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, and how this impacted his paintings through his lifetime. Set to be the largest collection of his artwork in the UK for almost a decade, the exhibition will feature some of his most famous pieces from around the world, including Shoes, Starry Night on the Rhône and L'Arlésienne. | Lizzie Thomson | https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/london-exhibitions-best-art-galleries-museums-history-culture-paintings-this-month-a4053176.html | 2019-01-30 17:15:00+00:00 | 1,548,886,500 | 1,567,550,216 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
167,292 | eveningstandard--2019-03-12--The worldaposs first floating museum is opening in Paris | 2019-03-12T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | The world's first floating museum is opening in Paris | This May, Paris will welcome a new museum to its already-impressive culture hub. On the banks of the Seine River, next to the Invalides Bridge, Fluctuart will be the world’s first floating museum. The sustainable three-storey floating structure will be entirely dedicated to urban art and will be free to enter and open all year round. The first travelling exhibition to be showcased at the new age museum will be works from the urban artist Swoon – the name used by Caledonia Curry, an American classically trained visual artist and printmaker. The museum will welcome artworks from both French and international urban artists, with at least three different exhibitions per year. Fluctuart’s rooftop will offer panoramic views of the Grand Palais, located across the river, a brunch service, workshops and a space for children. The museum was the winner of the 2017 ‘Réinventer la Seine’ (Reinvent the Seine) which saw the city of Paris look for projects that could revamp its iconic river. The plan is to launch 40 projects along the banks of the Seine and its canals – with Fluctuart being just one of the projects. Fluctuart will open in May and will be free to the public. You can find it at 2 port du Gros Caillou, 75007 Paris, France, fluctuart.fr/ | Laura Hampson | https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/worlds-first-floating-museum-paris-fluctuart-a4089456.html | 2019-03-12 13:00:15+00:00 | 1,552,410,015 | 1,567,546,545 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
170,372 | eveningstandard--2019-04-04--Imperial War Museum exhibitions look at how war eradicates culture | 2019-04-04T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Imperial War Museum exhibitions look at how war eradicates culture | In 1942 Hitler launched the Baedeker Raids. The Luftwaffe wanted to destroy picture postcard Britain and so bombed towns and cities with high cultural value that had been written about in the famous German Baedeker travel guide. Exeter was first city to be bombed, followed by Bath, Norwich and then York. The story of the Baedeker blitz is one of many being explored in a new season of exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum that looks at how war eradicates culture. Taking place between July 5 and January 5 2020, the 'Culture Under Attack' season looks at architecture, photography, art and music. As well as exploring why some people try to exploit it, the exhibitions also explore why others risk everything to protect and rebuild it. Created in partnership with Historic England, the first exhibition 'What Remains' looks at contemporary buildings, places, art and artefacts that have been deliberately targeted. As well as the story of the Baedeker Raids, the exhibition looks at the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddas in 2001. Carl Warner, head of Cold War and Late 20th Century at IWM said: "Culture has become victim of both indiscriminate and deliberate damage, especially as the line between the home front and the battlefield continues to blur. We hope that the visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to question how we respond as individuals, communities and nations to the void often left behind". 'Art in Exile' is another exhibition at IWM that looks at how cultural treasures in British museums and galleries have been protected. At the outbreak of the Second World War, a small proportion of IWM's collection was chosen to be evacuated. This included 281 works of art and 305 albums or photographs which accounted for less than one per cent of the entire collection. The works were by prominent twentieth-century artists including Paul Nash, John Singer Sargent, John Lavery and William Orpen. They were put in storage in the country homes of IWN's Trustees where it was thought German bombers were unlikely to go. The National Gallery, the V&A and the British Museum also moved work to country estates and later to underground quarries. Alex Walton, curator of First World War and Early Twentieth Century at IWM and curator of Art in Exile said: "Early in its existence, IWM was ground-breaking in the way it collected everyday items about ordinary people's war experiences, such as the ration books, diaries and clothing seen in the museum today. "However, its collection also contained many important paintings and sculptures. Over eighty years ago, IWM London was the scene of hurried planning and quick decision making, as an evacuation project was put into motion to transport artworks that were considered in the 1930s to be some of the most precious items in the museum's collection out of London." Another exhibition 'Rebel Sounds' looks at how people have used music to speak out against war and oppression. Specifically it looks at Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Northern Ireland in the 1970s, Serbia in the 1990s and present day Mali. One story explored is that of the Cold War Russian bootleggers who defied government bans on Western music. They did this by secretly etching forbidden music onto discarded X-rays called 'bone records'. The 'Culture Under Attack' season of exhibition takes places at the IWM London from July 5 to January 5 2020. | Phoebe Weston | https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/culturecity/imperial-war-museum-looks-at-how-war-eradicates-culture-a4108641.html | 2019-04-04 10:03:00+00:00 | 1,554,386,580 | 1,567,544,006 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
175,101 | eveningstandard--2019-05-21--Manga exhibition at the British Museum From Tezuka Osamu to Higashimura Akiko the manga artist you | 2019-05-21T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Manga exhibition at the British Museum: From Tezuka Osamu to Higashimura Akiko, the manga artist you need to know | From a jellyfish-loving introvert to a dog that’s half eel, the world of manga is full of eclectic characters. The Japanese visual narrative storytelling form is already a global phenomenon, and now it’s about to take over London, with the British Museum opening the biggest exhibition ever held outside of Japan. It’s the only type of book that you’re reading correctly if you start from back to front, and such is its popularity that even texts like Karl Marx’s Das Kapital have been given the manga treatment. Originating in the 1800s from satirical cartoon strips in newspapers, manga is now a multi-billion dollar business that has spawned hundreds of movie franchises and merchandise. Early handscroll illustrations from the 1100s, Disney films, and the influence of American culture in post-war Japan have all been cited as influences on the artform, which hundreds of subgenres. The British Museum’s exhibition explores manga’s cultural dominance, from the cosplay conventions it has inspired to its most iconic characters. With hundreds of illustrations and texts - and even a replica bookshop where visitors can get stuck into some of the world’s most famous manga books - it’s only a slice of the versatile visual artform. If you don’t know your comic book from your cosplay, we’ve rounded up some of the most influential manga artists that you’ll find in the British Museum’s exhibition. Considered by many to be the founding father of the artform, ‘God of manga’ Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989) first came to prominence when he was just 18. His first book New Treasure Island was published in 1947 and defined modern manga as we know it, using everything from early Japanese illustration to Disney as his inspiration. One of his best known characters, Astro Boy, will be one of the officially licensed products sold in Japan during the 2020 Olympics and Paralympic Games taking place in Tokyo next year. With her iconic character Princess Jellyfish, Higashimura Akiko (b. 1975) is a contemporary pioneer of one of manga’s most popular genres: shōjo manga (manga for girls). The central character in her Princess Jellyfish series, which ran for almost ten years until 2017, is Kurashita Tsukimi, an introvert who loves jellyfish and dreams of becoming an illustrator. The appetite for cute cat stories is strong with manga fans, who have been loving Konami Kanata’s (b. 1958) work for over 30 years. Her best known character is little lost kitten Chi - so popular that it was even recently adapted into English for Amazon Prime - and appeals to audiences young and old. In the stories, kitten Chi is adopted by a family but frustrated by the humans who can’t understand her. During the 1970s, a collective of female manga artists calling themselves the Year 24 Group became influential within the scene. One of the leading figures was Hagio Moto (b. 1949), who established a new genre within shōjo manga: BL, or boy’s love. Aimed at a female readership, it explored the love between men with homoerotic scenes and deep psychological insights. One of her most famous works, The Poe Clan, was published in 1972 and tells the story of a family of vampires in Europe. One of the striking things about Kōno Fumiyo’s (b. 1968) work is that some of the frames are completely bare other than words within them. It’s a fitting treatment for some of the more difficult subjects that her work has explored, such as Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, which looks at the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. The British Museum has been acquiring manga for its collection for over a decade - and it’s also the subject of a manga too. Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure, published in 2011, is the work of Hoshino Yukinobu (b. 1954), a prolific science fiction manga artist. Manga always has a playful side, and never more so than in the work of Akatsuka Fujio (1935 - 2008), who specialised in comedy manga. His iconic characters range from Eel-dog (half dog, half eel), to his longest-running creation, The Genius Bakabon. Alongside his influential illustrations, he also set up an award for new comedy manga artists which has nurtured new talent since 1974. Tagame Gengoro (b. 1964) published his first work at the young age of 18 and has gone on to become a leading artist of gay erotic manga. His work depicts men in ways that are not often portrayed, with facial and body hair, and directly deals with the issues around coming out in Japan. His work My Brother’s Husband explores the relationship between a Japanese man and the widowed Canadian husband of his twin brother. Manga is at the British Museum from May 23 to August 26; britishmuseum.org | Jessie Thompson | https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/manga-exhibition-british-museum-artists-a4148001.html | 2019-05-21 16:21:24+00:00 | 1,558,470,084 | 1,567,540,264 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
179,256 | eveningstandard--2019-07-04--Culture Under Attack New exhibit at Imperial War Museum looks at importance of art and music during | 2019-07-04T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Culture Under Attack: New exhibit at Imperial War Museum looks at importance of art and music during wartime | “It’s interesting to think about how people react in a crisis,” says Alex Walton, Curator of First World War and Early Twentieth Century at Imperial War Museum and the curator of the museum’s latest exhibition, Art in Exile. Part of the Culture Under Attack programme, the exhibit focusses on how the Imperial War Museum set about protecting its artefacts in the Second World War and decided what was worth saving. “I think one thing that seems to have happened during this lead up to the Second World War is certain values are brought into stark relief,” says Walton. “Culture was clearly important for people’s hearts and minds, and we see that when we talk about how the National Gallery opened up its building for different cultural events, like concerts. But clearly culture has monetary value as well, and we can see that from the Imperial War Museum’s decisions about what objects to evacuate. So it’s about ownership as much as it’s about accessing cultural objects.” A relatively new museum, which focussed on military history, the Imperial War Museum took the unusual decision to only evacuate a very small proportion of its collection, unlike the older and more established British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum. And its choices reveal a lot about what ‘culture’ meant to the museum staff. Just 281 works of art and 305 albums of photographs were moved, less than one per cent of the museum’s entire collection. Not a single piece of art was by a woman. “It was a surprise because the Imperial War Museum during the First World War was quite interesting in the way that they collected, they set up sub-committees, and those sub committees had particular focuses,” says Walton. “One of the sub-committees was the women’s work sub-committee headed up by Lady Priscilla Norman. So the museum had a definite wish to represent the work of women during the First World War. “The one thing that they were very good at doing was commissioning great female artists of the day to create works for them and the museum ultimately ended up with a very strong collection of work by female artists, usually with the women’s work theme. Some of these women, Anna Airy and Norah Neilson Gray, they were very prominent,” she said. Never before seen documents displayed at exhibition include a typed notice issued to staff at the Imperial War Museum in 1939 as part of a collection ‘priority list’ of what items should be saved. “When it came to the priority list, we can see that women’s work as a subject matter for works of art was definitely a feature of the priority list, so they wanted to save works which showed women’s work. But, for some reason, all of the works showing women’s work were by male artists.” “I can’t account for it really, but the only thing I can say when looking at the priority list as a whole is that they were being in some ways a bit conservative in their tastes and decision making. It’s interesting to think about how people react in a crisis. “When it came to making this priority list for evacuation just before the Second World War, they chose objects that you would say are more elite. So they definitely chose artworks from the collection that were by prominent artists and especially maybe from an older generation of artists who were a bit more established. So any works by John Singer Sargent, for example. “Others that we are very familiar with today, who were part of a slightly younger generation and a bit more modernist and that type of thing such as John Nash, they certainly weren’t left off the priority list but they were just represented by a few works.” Walton also emphasised that oil paintings were preferred over works on paper, probably because of their monetary value: “Oil paintings are usually a bit more expensive, a bit more robust, and on the art market, they go for more money,” she said. In this way, culture came to have an increasingly monetary and even propagandistic value. Because of the museum’s military collection, the Imperial War Museum became very useful to the government. “They didn’t want to hide it away, in fact what they did was make a lot of their research library collection and things like that available to people who needed to do research, basically war research, even propaganda purposes, all kinds of training purposes, they had books, they had maps, all kinds of diaries,” said Walton. All of the photographs that were evacuated at the beginning of the war were also returned to be accessed by the public and the military and put to use. Walton also emphasises how much money was spent by the government to protect these ‘cultural treasures’. “They are a possession that the country has, and they mean something with their status.” The government went to great expense to create underground quarries in Wales to store the country’s possessions, and continued to pay for their upkeep for many years after the war in case London came under attack again, and Walton believes the government would do the same again today. “There’s all sorts of ethical questions that come up with these things, but even when Notre Dame was damaged there were a few billionaires that committed money. There is a question about where we allocate resources. I do think that the world always seems to be prepared to spend money on culture, especially on objects or buildings that are very established cultural icons. It is bound with patriotism,” she said. However, she highlighted the changes we may see in ‘priority lists’ of today’s artworks. “One thing that collections are for is to represent the whole population and make sure the diversity of the population is present and part of the collection, so I think today, it’s hard to know how we will behave in a crisis, but diversity would be something that we would think about. Diversity of artists that are included, diversity of portraits of people are included, are we getting a diversity of subjects represented? Even diversity of media possibly, painting, sculpture, new media. In a way we might think that is representative of our collection. I think we’d like to think that today we’d think along those lines. That it’s a kind of important, it’s almost a cultural shift within museums themselves.” Art in Exile is part of the Imperial War Museum’s Culture Under Attack programme, running from July 5 to January 5, 2020. There will be a variety of free exhibitions, live music and performances at the museum looking at how war threatens people’s lives, and the things that make their lives worth living. | Sian Bayley | https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/culturecity/imperial-war-museum-culture-culture-under-attack-art-john-nash-john-singer-sargent-british-museum-a4182691.html | 2019-07-04 13:15:00+00:00 | 1,562,260,500 | 1,567,536,874 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
189,002 | eveningstandard--2019-11-12--Vagina Museum founder Florence Schechter on body politics, teasing trolls and millennia of marginali | 2019-11-12T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Vagina Museum founder Florence Schechter on body politics, teasing trolls and millennia of marginalisation | Ask Florence Schechter why she is opening the world’s first bricks-and-mortar vagina museum in Camden Market — naturally — and she will not miss a beat. “Why not?” she shrugs, evenly. “I discovered there’s a penis museum in Iceland, but no vagina equivalent anywhere in the world. And I thought that was bulls***.” So Schechter did not fanny around. She spent six months workshopping the idea with “people from museums, medical people, random people I knew, saying, ‘Do you think this is something you’d visit?’” She drew up a plan, pitched successfully to some trustees and registered as a charity. “And here we are.” Here we are indeed: sitting inside the museum, an airy Grade II-listed site in the Stables, on a drizzly autumn day. It opens to the public on Saturday, with its inaugural (free) exhibition, Muff Busters: Vagina Myths and How to Fight Them. While none of the artefacts will be “super-old or precious, because you need to have temperature control, humidity control”, examples of potential props include menstrual cups and artworks. There’ll also be a programme of events on many evenings — including Bajingo Bingo next Monday (“Have you ever wished you could play bingo and learn about the world’s most misunderstood body part?”), and a monthly “cliterature” book club, and the premises has a small bar. “If you’re coming to a play about abortion, sometimes it’s nice to have a glass of wine to help it go down easier.” Despite Schechter’s breeziness, inevitably the news that a vagina museum was coming to town has raised certain fairly predictable reactions from certain fairly predictable cohorts; a Venn of prudes, trolls and misogynists. “We’ve got a fair amount of backlash, but I think it’s probably only 10 per cent of the reactions we’ve got,” Schechter shrugs. “A minority.” She convinces the “morality brigade” by arguing for the importance of destigmatising vaginas in order to tackle gynaecological cancers. Trolls — the museum has almost 31,000 followers on Twitter — are also easy to detoxify. “What you need to do is get in on the joke with them.” Easy, since they’re not very unimaginative. “‘I thought there already was a vagina museum — it’s called the House of Commons.’ We get that one all the time.” L-O-L. There have also been clashes with a few people who contest the museum’s trans-inclusive stance. “I’m happy to have a conversation if they want to come in.” In the last few years, the body in all its fleshy glory has become the cornerstone of a new fourth wave of feminism, — or as Schechter puts it, “vaginas are definitely having a moment”. Books such as Period, by the BBC presenter Emma Barnett, and Vagina: A Re-education, by journalist Lynn Enright, both published this year, have taken discourse about female anatomy from the margins into the mainstream, destigmatising and consequently prioritising the conversations. “I think it’s been brewing for a few years now, and then I think Harvey Weinstein was the cultural trigger that turned fourth wave into something that was going to happen into something that is happening,” Schechter agrees. “I think one of the things that it’s concerned about is the body, how it’s represented, how we’re looking after it.” Femtech — software and products that focus on women’s health, from breast pumps to pelvic floor trainers to organic tampons — is expected to be worth £39 billion by 2025, which, admittedly, might be more to do with the mercenary savviness of investors than fourth-wave feminism, but has had some impact in driving conversations (and money) towards female health. And activists such as Jameela Jamil and Lizzo — two of Schechter’s dream patrons — have amplified conversations about body positivity online. “Body positivity is what we’re all about.” Still, there’s millennia of marginalisation to overturn here; a museum is a potent symbol. “Museums are used by society to showcase what they think is important,” Schechter observes. “We have museums set up to our most important artists to set the art canon, museums to tell the official history of our nation. Communities use museums to inform their cultural identity and I think a vagina museum is important because that’s then us as a community making this official statement, ‘Hey, this is something we think is important.’” Well put. The team will be launching a podcast, too, and the dream is to “have a big permanent collection and exhibitions on everything from science to culture to history.” Schechter hopes school parties will be some of the first through the doors. “The first exhibition is going to be about vagina myths, so it’s good for kids and teenagers.” Frankly, it would take a fairly robust teacher to lead a scrum of teenagers into a vagina museum, but Schechter is more than up to the task of tour guide (besides her, there are two full-time members of staff and 40 volunteers who’ll play front of house). She is “unembarrassable” — “I was a healthcare assistant for four years so I’ve seen a lot of fannies in my life” — plus her background in “science communication” (namely documentaries and podcasts) and a degree in biochemistry means she also speaks fluently and eloquently on the science part — and has become used to being introduced at parties as “vagina museum lady”. Watercooler conversation in the office skews gynaecologically, “but we have regular office chats, too”. Inevitably, saying vagina or vulva countless times in a meeting comes with her territory — though Schechter has been “surprised” by others who have taken it in their stride. On the day we meet, she has spent the morning “with our solicitors and a policeman, who were checking out our premises licence. I was surrounded by older men, and they were all just saying the word ‘vagina’ really casually, which was interesting — because older men is one of the demographics that I was sure we were never going to be able to engage. It was really weird to hear them be super-cool.” All the traders in the Market are “really excited” about the new kids on the block. “All the security guards think we’re hilarious.” So, who would she like to cut the ribbon for the opening ceremony? “Helen O’Connell, an Australian surgeon who did the first scientific study on the clitoris. I really like her.” The Vagina Museum is at Unit 17 & 18 Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, London NW1 8AH, vaginamuseum.co.uk | Phoebe Luckhurst | https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/vagina-museum-interview-florence-schechter-a4284801.html | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:28:00 GMT | 1,573,572,480 | 1,573,562,044 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
193,083 | eveningstandard--2019-12-16--London gallery and museum memberships 2019: Best annual passes for the Tate, V&A, British Museum | 2019-12-16T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | London gallery and museum memberships 2019: Best annual passes for the Tate, V&A, British Museum and more | Looking for the perfect gift for the culture lover in your life? You can't go wrong with a passport to one of London's best arts venues. Many of the capital's museums and galleries offer great membership packages and gift deals. It's a present that promises to keep on giving all the way through until next year. These are the best memberships to snap up for a loved one. This savvy annual membership at £78 per year secures unlimited free entry to every exhibition across the four Tate galleries — that means the St Ives and Liverpool venues too. That's just £7.50 a month! It also grants access to Members Hours, where guests have the opportunity to explore exhibitions during quieter intervals. Other benefits include a discount in the Tate shop and free entry for up to six children aged 16 or under. Across London and the UK, for more information visit shop.tate.org.uk/membership FOMO is an unknown concept for Southbank Centre members because they're always first in line for tickets for upcoming gigs, festivals and events, thanks to priority booking. Buying membership for a loved one, which costs £69 (the direct debit option), will also entitle them to free entry to Hayward Gallery exhibitions and 20 per cent off the gift shop, not to mention access to the members lounge on the top floor — an ideal spot for grabbing a pre-show drink. Annual membership for the Royal Academy of Arts is slightly more expensive that its fellow London galleries at £128, but the rewards that come with it are, in many ways, more exclusive. The devil is in the detail here. Firstly, you’re not a member but in fact a “friend” of the Royal Academy. This relationship guarantees free entry to all exhibitions for you and a guest as well as exclusive first-look previews of shows before they open to the public. Friends of the RA also get extended opening hours and priority booking to all events and discount in the shop, as well as private viewings and invites to special showcases. They can also stay up-to-date with the programme through the RA magazine and weekly email newsletter. More than two million years of human history is on offer for British Museum members and unlimited free entry means that exhibitions don't cost a penny. Membership, costing £64 for individual gift membership or £86 for joint membership, unlocks a secret programme of events that are not available to the general public, including lectures, tours, parties and out-of-hours experiences. Other benefits include a 10 per cent discount at the venue’s shops, cafes and restaurants as well as three copies a year of the British Museum Magazine. This £75 membership really is double the fun, mainly because it guarantees unlimited free access for you and a guest for 12 months. There’s also no need to faff with queueing for tickets on arrival — simply turn up and flash your membership card to gain entry to the exhibitions. For those craving more design-related goodies, there are member-only Lates and out of hours access to shows. London's iconic cultural centre offers something for everyone — from art and cinema to music and beyond. Film fans can enjoy 20 per cent off cinema tickets with a guest, alongside the same discount on selected music and theatre events. The £59 membership package offers member-only events, free access to exhibitions and priority booking. What a win. For those who prefer to soak up an exhibition more than once, this membership ensures guests can experience it time and time again, with unlimited access for the entire year. There’s something to tickle every fancy too. Fashionistas can soak up both the Mary Quant and Christian Dior exhibitions, while foodies can feast on FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, which explores the politics and pleasure of food. Membership, costing £79 a year, grants exclusive previews and priority booking for evening talks and specially curated member-only showcases. Future generations also benefit from this arrangement, as members can bring up to four children in for free. As well as getting free entry to all National Gallery exhibitions, those with membership, which starts from £58, can also secure invites to exclusive activities, including member-only preview days, concerts, film screenings, gallery talks, courses and workshops. This £80 membership really does go a long way. Not only does it give members and a guest free entry to British Library exhibitions, but it also ensures priority booking for events with up for four free tickets on offer each year. Listing guides are regularly sent out to members so they’re always the first to know what the venue has in store. Book lovers can also take a guest into the daytime members room, which has exceptional, Insta-worthy views overlooking the King’s Library. | Jessie Thompson, Lizzie Thomson | https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/london-museum-gallery-memberships-best-annual-pass-exhibitions-a4014631.html | Mon, 16 Dec 2019 10:36:00 GMT | 1,576,510,560 | 1,576,499,583 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
222,024 | freedombunker--2019-07-23--Daisy Airgun Museum | 2019-07-23T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Daisy Airgun Museum | The small and excellent Daisy Airgun Museum tells the story of America's most iconic manufacturer of air guns, including the famed Red Ryder, the most common first gun for many generations of American children. The museum is located in the center of Rogers, Arkansas, about a mile south of Daisy's manufacturing facility in the same city. Admission is only two dollars, and exhibits can be thoroughly examined in about an hour. The gift shop offers Daisy airguns at bargain prices, including remanufactured basic models as low of $15. While powder arms are powered by burning gunpowder, air guns are propelled by compressed air. As the exhibit shows with airguns as old as 1770, air guns have been around for a very long time. Back in the eighteenth century, some airguns were comparable in caliber and kinetic energy to powder guns. The Daisy story begins in 1882, with the founding of the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, in Michigan. Making windmills from iron rather than wood was a good idea, but the windmill market was declining. One of the founders made an air gun in his spare time. When another founder gave it a try, he exclaimed "That's a daisy!"—a common expression of praise at the time. By 1895, the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company had changed its name to Daisy Manufacturing Company and had stopped making windmills. In 1958, the company closed its aging facility in Michigan, and opened a new factory in northwest Arkansas—becoming the leading edge of an economic revival in the region. The Museum tells the Daisy story from the 19th century to the present, using exemplar guns, vintage advertising, newspaper and magazine articles, and excellent narrative text. There's even a reproduction of the original Daisy. Daisy made a lot of different items over the years, including toy guns, pop guns, and even powder arms for a short period. During World War II, manufacturers were not allowed to use steel for the domestic market, so Daisy employed its expertise in stamping steel to make artillery canisters, spark plug gaskets for military vehicles, and other war materiel. But what has made Daisy great has been its air guns. They're not the precision models for Olympic competitors, but rather an affordable and reliable first or second gun for American youth. Most famous of the Daisy air guns is the lever action Red Ryder. Gene Shepherd's memoir, later made into the movie A Christmas Story, captures the popularity of the Red Ryder after its 1938 introduction (and for decades afterward). Incidentally, as the exhibits explain, the particular model that Ralphie aspired to in A Christmas Story, didn't exist on the market. Ralphie wanted a Red Ryder an engraved stock containing a compass and sundial. Daisy never made such a gun until 1983, when the company produced a Christmas Story limited edition. There's a lot more to learn at the Daisy Museum. Did you know that when astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon, it was a Daisy logo ball? Moon shots aside, the Daisy story has been at the wholesome core of America's gun culture for 137 years. The Daisy Museum tells the story with pride and love. After you finish the Daisy Museum, you can drop by the showroom and store of A.G. Russell Knives, also located in Rogers, Arkansas. | David Kopel | http://freedombunker.com/2019/07/23/daisy-airgun-museum/ | 2019-07-23 20:16:44+00:00 | 1,563,927,404 | 1,567,536,018 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
232,879 | greenwichtime--2019-12-13--New museum exhibits and other things to see and do in Greenwich | 2019-12-13T00:00:00 | greenwichtime | New museum exhibits and other things to see and do in Greenwich | New museum exhibits and other things to see and do in Greenwich For the latest events and activities happening in Greenwich, turn to For the record. To have your event included, submit a description, date, time, price and contact information. Photos are welcome. Drop us an email about your latest goings-on at [email protected]. Abilis Gardens & Gifts is selling holiday gifts and its greenhouse is filled with holiday wreaths and greenery. It is a must-shop store offering handcrafted candles, bath products, children’s gifts, jewelry, housewares and gifts, with fresh flowers, plants and microgreens in the greenhouse. Prices range from $5 to $40 and proceeds support Abilis’ programs. Abilis Gardens & Gifts provides job training for adults with special needs. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 10 a.m. to 3p.m. Tuesdays; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays; and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays in December. Abilis Gardens & Gifts is at 50 Glenville St. For more info, visit www.abilis.us or call 203-531-GIFT (4438). The Cos Cob Library is showcasing the beautiful work of the Common Threads quilters for their biannual show through Saturday. The Community Room and turret is decorated with their creations and they will also be featured hanging from our rafters. Visitors to the library are invited to view the display. The Byram Shubert Library is hosting an exhibition of the work of two artists — photographer Brent Keeting and painter Marialiisa Pettengi — in a show called “Lyrical Landscapes and Bold Abstractions” through Dec. 28. There will be an artists reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Community Room. Refreshments will be served and sponsored by the Friends of the Byram Shubert Library. The Bruce Museum’s latest exhibition will feature depictions of sea serpents crushing ships, 7-foot-tall giants, a mummified Porsche, and a menagerie of other oddities sure to pique the interest of any visitor interested in the intersection of art and science. The display, called “Collecting Reimagined: A 2D Curiosity Cabinet” will open on Saturday and be on view in the museum’s Bantle Lecture Gallery through March 24. The exhibit was curated by H.S. Miller, the Museum’s Zvi Grunberg Resident Fellow for 2019-20. Miller will also discuss the stories behind some of the exhibition’s more curious objects in a talk, “Tales from the Cabinet,” from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 12. Admission to the Bruce Museum is free through Jan. 31. For more information, visit brucemuseum.org. The Greenwich Library will host Sing-a-Long Music Time with Tom Weber from 10:30 to 11:15 a.m. Saturday in the rear of Children’s Room. Tom’s performances are filled with interactive movement, props, singing, dancing, and lots of energetic fun! His repertoire includes original songs as well as traditional favorites. Tom’s music is intended to get children moving, singing, feeling confident and having fun. Join Greenwich Audubon Center on the second Saturday of the month as it supports people who are sensory-sensitive and would like to enjoy learning about nature in a quiet and soothing space. This program is part of the Audubon For All initiative, which offers accessible and inclusive programs to support people with intellectual and physical challenges. During the Sensory-Sensitive Saturday sessions, Audubon provides relaxing nature films, natural artifacts with interesting textures, books, and pictures. Staff naturalists are present to support learning about nature in this soothing environment. Event will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Audubon at 613 Riversville Road. All are welcome for the free event. RSVP is required with Accessibility Coordinator Caroline Bailey at [email protected] or 203-900-3349. The next session will be Jan. 11. First Congregational Church of Greenwich will presents its 43rd annual performance of Part I of Handel’s Messiah, the Christmas portion and concluding with the Hallelujah chorus, at 4 p.m. Saturday. The First Church Festival Chorus will be accompanied by the First Church Chamber Orchestra. While community participation is central, the performance will be anchored by professional soloists, including soprano Rise Renea Harman, mezzo soprano Sarah Bleasdale, tenor Daniel Young, and bass Constantine Novotny. For more information, contact Craig Symons at [email protected]. The performance is open to the public and a free-will offering will be received, with suggested $20 donation. Join yoga instructor Brittani Kelly (BK) for Nature Yoga sessions on Sundays at the Greenwich Audubon Center at 613 Riversville Road. Discover healthy living for people and wildlife together — these unique sessions will bring attention to what is happening in nature around us and the health of the environment, while developing techniques in yoga and wellness. Bring a yoga mat if you have one; mats will be available to borrow. The class from 10 to 11 a.m. is intended for adults, teens, and kids ages 12 and up, with all levels of experience and abilities are welcome. Admission is $10 per session. The class from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. is for families and is intended for all ages, experiences levels, and abilities. Admission is $5 for children and $10 for adults. The Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, host Family Gallery Tours from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Sundays. The tours are geared for kids ages 6-10. Free with regular admission, and no registration is required. Visit brucemuseum.org for more info. Each year, Greenwich Audubon Center participates in this annual tradition to monitor winter bird populations throughout North America. Teams of birders head out on Sunday to count as many individual birds as possible in a given count area within 24 hours. The count in this area is known as the “Greenwich-Stamford Count Circle.” All of the data compiled is submitted to ornithologists who conduct vital research on the health of our winter bird populations. There are two ways to participate. Join a count team, which will be assigned to different areas within the count circle and at Greenwich Audubon Center, and then go out and count birds by foot and car. Some teams will begin counting before dawn to count owls and will continue until 5 p.m. Or you can participate in the Christmas Bird Count at home by counting birds at your backyard feeders. Simply complete the checklist provided by Audubon and submit it by 5 p.m. Sunday. All participants are invited to gather at Greenwich Audubon Center at 5 p.m. to compile results and enjoy a complimentary dinner. For those interested in participating at Greenwich Audubon Center, contact Ted Gilman at [email protected] or 203-930-1353. For those interested in joining a team in your neighborhood or conducting a feeder-watch, contact Cynthia Ehlinger at [email protected] or 203-219-1963. Weekly open duplicate Bridge games are held at 12:15 p.m. Mondays at the Greenwich YWCA. The games are sanctioned by the American Contract Bridge League, with masterpoint awards to top finishers. The card fee to play one session is $12. For more information, contact Steve Becker at 203-637-8927. Registered nurse Roberta Brown, from integrative medicine, will present a lecture on“Self Care: Sound Healing Meditation” in Greenwich Hospital’s Noble Conference Center from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday. Explore mindful self-care practices to quite the mind, calm the nervous system and restore the body. Experience a relaxing guided meditation, accompanied by the healing sounds of Tibetan singing bowls. Dress comfortably; bring a yoga mat if possible. Chairs will be provided. To register, call 888-305-9253 or visit greenwichhospital.org/events. Free. A drop-in conversation series for English Language Learners called “Time to Talk: A Conversation Series for English Language Learners” will be held from 6:30 to 8: p.m. Dec. 17 in the Byram Shubert Library Community Room. Come to improve your communications skills, learn more about American culture and feel more comfortable in the community. Peer-to-peer conversations offer an opportunity to practice casual language in a less formal environment than a classroom. Volunteers facilitate conversations on everyday topics such as doctors visits, grocery shopping, and finding housing or work. This series is open to all adults. Beginners welcome. As the library will be closed, entrance will be downstairs at the program room. Bruce Beginnings is a program for children ages 2.5 to 5 with an adult at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesdays at the Bruce Museum. Explore the museum collections and exhibitions through picture books and hands-on activities. This program takes place on the museum’s free admission day and space is limited. See the visitor service desk upon arrival to secure a spot. Topics change weekly. Visit brucemuseum.org for more info. The Perfectly Polite Bridge Group has Duplicate Bridge games at the Greenwich YMCA on Wednesdays from 9:45 a.m. to noon for Relaxed Duplicate Bridge and from 12:45 to 2:45 p.m. for Relaxed Duplicate Bridge / Conventions. The cost is $10 for members and $12 for nonmembers. You do not need a partner to play. Only prepaid players are guaranteed a seat. There is also a Beginner Game/Class with relaxed play and discussion from 3 to 5 p.m. Seating is limited. If you are not on the email list, call Frank Crocker at 203-524-8032 to register. The Greenwich Retired Men’s Association offers a free program every Wednesday at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 W. Putnam Ave., that is open to the public; no reservations required. Social break starts at 10:40 a.m., followed by speaker at 11 a.m. For info, visit www.greenwichrma.org or contact [email protected]. Future speakers include Pam Kuhn & The Angel Choir will perform for the RMA Family Holiday Celebration on Dec 18. No meetings will be held on Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Speakers return on Jan. 8 with Patricia Sesto, director of environmental affairs for the Town of Greenwich, on “How Can Greenwich Handle Rising Sea Levels.” Tai Chi is a relaxing exercise that can loosen joints, improve balance and teach graceful movements to music. Fun and no pressure classes are held at 8 a.m. Wednesdays and at 9 a.m. Thursdays in the auditorium at the First Congregational Church Auditorium on Sound Beach Avenue in Old Greenwich, opposite Binney Park. The cost is $10 per one-hour session. Newcomers welcome. For info, call Joe at 203-504-4678. The Greenwich Conservatory Ballet will present the must-see holiday classic, “The Nutcracker.” at the Westport Country Playhouse. The performances will feature Conservatory students and guest from The Rock School of PA, ABT JKO School, NY Dance Theatre and the European School of Ballet. Charming, family-friendly, an ideal holiday performing arts event. Shows are at 4 p.m. Dec. 22 and at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. Dec. 23. Santa and his live reindeer — Dasher, Dancer and Prancer — have returned for the 11th annual Greenwich Reindeer Festival & Santa’s Village at Sam Bridge Nursery & Greenhouses, 437 North St., this holiday season. The town tradition continues through Dec. 24. Visitors can have their photo taken with Santa, meet the reindeer and enjoy Santa’s Village, train and carousel rides at the “North Pole on North Street.” Parking is free. Hours for photos with Santa are noon to 6 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. Closed on Sundays. The reindeer will depart on Dec. 22, but Santa will remain for photos Christmas Eve from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more details, visit www.Greenwichreindeerfestival.com. The Art Society of Old Greenwich will hold its 2019 Holiday Art Show and Sale at the Gertrude White Gallery at the YWCA of Greenwich, through Dec. 27. This festive show offers fine artworks created by ASOG’s member artists. All artworks, in a variety of media, are available for purchase. The YWCA is located at 259 E. Putnam Ave. For gallery hours, call 203-869-6501. The Greenwich Art Society is presenting “Glaser and the Grid,” a solo exhibition by Scott Glaser from the artist’s personal collection, through Jan. 3 at its gallery at 299 Greenwich Ave., second floor. The grid system is the common thread in Glaser’s work, from cityscapes created from men’s suit fabric, portrait mosaics made completely from Band-Aid-like bandages, neo-pointillist drawings, photorealist paintings or mixed media pieces. The artwork will be on view from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays. All works can be purchased by contacting the Greenwich Art society at 203-629-1533 or [email protected]. For info, visit www.greenwichartsociety.org. Start the New Year with a proper focus on your spiritual health. Enroll in a 15-week introductory class on the core beliefs of the Christian faith as found in the Bible. All are welcome — whether curious about Christianity or lifelong believers. Join First Luthern Church at 38 Field Point Road on Monday nights from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The class begins on Jan. 6. There is no cost, and no obligation to join the church. All materials will be provided. Contact Pastor Scamman at 203.962.8700 or by email at [email protected] to register. The Greenwich Library will host an interactive workshop from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 6 to help high school seniors and college students ages 18 to 23 kickstart their job or internship search. Titled “From College to Career,” the workshop will focus on helping students gain the essential skills they need to get their foot in the door. Participants will leave with a working resume, a LinkedIn page, a professional headshot, tips on what to wear (and what not to wear) when interviewing, and networking skills they can use throughout college and beyond. A registration packet with info on what to wear for the headshot and what to bring to prepare a resume will be sent to everyone who signs up in advance. Participants will be entered in a drawing for a chance to win gift certificates to Amazon and Garden Catering. This program will take place in The Flinn Gallery and is co-sponsored by the Greenwich Alliance for Education and Greenwich Library. Registration is required at GreenwichLibrary.org. The Greenwich Historical Society at 47 Strickland Road, Cos Cob, is presenting an exhibition on the immigrant experience called “An American Story: Finding Home in Fairfield County” through Jan. 6. The exhibit includes stories of the grit and resilience of immigrants and refugees, including 12 who found home in Greenwich. The stories illuminated in this exhibition reach across the world from five continents, shining a light on the ways that refugees and asylum seekers find hope and persevere in the face of challenges for creating new lives in Fairfield County. It is presented in partnership with the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants. For more information, visit greenwichhistory.org. This program at the Bruce Museum provides a welcoming and engaging museum experience for toddlers, ages 10 to 24 months, and their caregivers through hands-on play and exploration. Bruce Beginnings Jr. sessions are inspired by the museum’s collections and exhibits. It is held from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. on the second Thursday of each month, next time on Jan. 9. This program is free with general admission but space is limited. See the visitor service desk upon arrival to secure a spot. The Greenwich Symphony Orchestra will be in concert on Jan. 11 and Jan. 12 will featue Verdi, Overture to La Battaglia di Legnano; Schumann, Piano Concerto with Benjamin Hochman on piano; and Korngold, Symphony, Op. 40, with Benjamin Hochman on piano. The concerts on Feb. 22 and Feb. 23 will feature Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (Eroica); and Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor), with John O’Conor on piano. The concerts on April 18 and April 19 will feature Hindemith, Concert Music for Strings and Brass; Herbert, Concerto No. 2 for Cello, with Daniel Miller on cello; and Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique. Concerts are at the Greenwich High School Performing Arts Center, 10 Hillside Road, at 8 p.m. on Saturdays and 4 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $40 per person, $10 for students. For more information, call 203-869-2664 or visit www.greenwichsymphony.org. The Flinn Gallery at the Greenwich Library has reopened after being closed for several months while construction was going on outside its walls. The exhibit, “In Plain Sight, Library Art Collection,” is made up of works that belong to the library’s permanent collection and will be on display through Jan. 30. Many pieces on display have been hanging in various locations, often behind closed doors. Barbara Richards is the curator and sleuth who has gathered and arranged this collection. The gallery’s hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Closed Mondays. Visit flinngallery.com or call 203.622.7947 for more information. Family Centers will welcome New York Times columnists and Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as the latest speakers in its popular Titans Series. The breakfast event to benefit the Greenwich-based nonprofit will be at 7:30 a.m. Feb. 11 at the Stamford Sheraton at 700 E. Main St. This husband-and-wife duo were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer in journalism and have written a series of best-selling books together. Their latest book, “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” will be released in early 2020 and all attendees will get a copy. Tickets start at $125, and proceeds will support Family Centers’ network of health, education and human service programs. For more information, visit www.familycenters.org. For its 100th Anniversary Gala, the League of Women Voters of Connecticut will honor Indra K. Nooyi, a Greenwich resident and former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, and Juanita T. James, president and CEO of the Fairfield County Community Foundation. Nooyi will receive the Outstanding Woman in Business award and James will be recognized with the Outstanding Woman in Philanthropy award. The gala will take place Feb. 22 at the Italian Center in Stamford. For more information, visit www.lwvct.org. The St. Lawrence Society will hold its 29th annual Charity Golf Tournament on May 11. Enjoy a perfect day of golf, food and fun. Get your foursomes together and join the fun. Cost is $175 for everything: the luncheon, cart, golf, cocktail hour and dinner. For cocktails and dinner only, it’s $100. Starts at 11:30 a.m. at E. Gaynor Brennan Golf Course, with a 12:45 p.m. shotgun start, scramble format. Golf is followed by cocktail hour, antipasti and a prime rib dinner back at the Club. To RSVP, visit www.stlawrencesociety.com/events or call 203-618-9036. | null | https://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/New-museum-exhibits-and-other-things-to-see-and-14904595.php | Fri, 13 Dec 2019 21:00:00 UT | 1,576,288,800 | 1,576,285,015 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
363,734 | newyorker--2019-02-28--Termite Art and the Modern Museum | 2019-02-28T00:00:00 | newyorker | Termite Art and the Modern Museum | Douglas, Arizona, was once a smelter town, processing copper mined nearby in Bisbee, Courtland, and Nacozari de García. The painter and critic Manny Farber, who was born in 1917 and died a little more than a decade ago, grew up there, eight blocks from the Mexican border, and his life was marked by an abiding interest in borders and burrowing things: centipedes, tapeworms, termites. In 1962, he published “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art,” in Film Culture. “A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity,” he wrote. White-elephant art, on the other hand, was “masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago.” Ever suspicious of grand gestures, message films, and stuff that smacked of “giltculture,” Farber championed small, stolen moments and improvised gestures, which he tended to find in collective productions that left lots of room for surprise. He valued craftsmen like Anthony Mann over auteurs like Truffaut or Antonioni, although he reserved the right to change his mind, and did so often. Hard as he was to nail down, he liked most the artists and filmmakers who were “involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or for anything.” Farber never came out and said so, but this opposition seems linked to left-wing debates from the nineteen-thirties, and Farber’s disdain for the left-leaning artists who had Barton Finked their way to Hollywood when the call came. Working as a carpenter, on and off, for much of his life, he took care not to rely on his art or his writing for money. The job gave him the freedom to rail against those who did. Carpentry also gave Farber the freedom to follow his personal interests, from Abstract Expressionist works to representational paintings; from appreciations of tough-guy American filmmakers (Samuel Fuller, Raoul Walsh) to celebrations of Europeans (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman); from New York to the University of California San Diego, where, in the seventies, he helped assemble a top-notch department of visual arts. One of Farber’s first hires, Jean-Pierre Gorin, had been Jean-Luc Godard’s partner in the Dziga Vertov Group of leftist filmmakers. Gorin and Farber became close, and Gorin made a feature-length film called “Routine Pleasures,” from 1986, that cuts between Farber’s studio and a team of train buffs, in Del Mar, California, who are building a landscape for their model railroad to move through—which just might be the ultimate termite endeavor. Projected onto a gallery wall, “Routine Pleasures,” is one of the first things you see in “One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art,” an exhibit running at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, until March 11th. Should you choose to sit for a while, there are five chairs to pick from, all made by the artist and architect Roy McMakin, a former student of Farber’s who salvaged two wooden chairs from a thrift shop and made these immaculate copies by hand. The original chairs have been hung on a wall perpendicular from the projection—an inversion that might be too easy, or too on the nose. Still, McMakin’s affection for his former teacher comes through. By all accounts, Farber was a powerhouse teacher. In the classroom, he’d screen films backward or without sound, freeze the frame, ask his students to see what they were seeing in purely pictorial terms. In a catalogue essay that accompanies the show, Helen Molesworth, who sat in on Farber’s lectures in the eighties, describes his screening of Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets.” “He showed the opening scene several times—once straight through, once without sound, and once while he spoke,” she writes. She goes on, “When Farber talked, he talked about how Robert De Niro moved like a dancer, and asked us to watch carefully as De Niro moved his body through the streets, to see how the character seemed to inhabit his physical frame, how a low hum of criminality was embodied in those lilting footsteps—the compactness of his hips over his knees—all this, just before he put a cherry bomb in a mailbox on a street corner in downtown New York and scampered away, his entire body looking like a shit-eating grin.” This is lovely, and also a little bit sly, because Molesworth—who assembled “One Day at a Time,” then lost her job as MOCA’s curator before it went up, but saw the show through, nonetheless—has set off a few cherry bombs of her own. At MOCA, she feuded with the museum’s director, Philippe Vergne, over a survey, from 2017, of the work of the American minimalist Carl Andre. (In 1985, Andre was charged with the murder of his wife, the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. Acquitted in 1988, he was shunned by the art world for years, until a retrospective at Dia, in 2014, where Vergne was then the director.) At around the same time, Molesworth declined to work on a solo show by Mark Grotjahn, a blue-chip Los Angeles artist who sits on MOCA’s board. Grotjahn was also supposed to be the honoree at MOCA’s 2018 fund-raising gala; in January of last year, he declined, citing a lack of diversity. (The three previous honorees—Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari—had also been straight white men.) But Grotjahn’s change of heart came too late, as save-the-date cards had already gone out. The gala was cancelled in February. MOCA was in turmoil. Molesworth was fired in March. Two months later, in May, Vergne announced his resignation. It didn’t go unnoticed in the art world that, within four months, at the height of the #MeToo moment, four women who had stood at the helm of major cultural institutions—Laura Raicovich, at the Queens Museum; Maria Inés Rodríguez, at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux; Beatrix Ruf, at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum; and Molesworth—all lost their jobs. Molesworth, who had come to MOCA after serving as the chief curator at the I.C.A., in Boston, and the Wexner Center, in Columbus, Ohio, had spent her career questioning her place inside the museum. “The Western institution I have dedicated my life to, with its familiar humanist offerings of knowledge and patrimony in the name of empathy and education, is one of the greatest holdouts of the colonial enterprise,” she wrote, last year, in Artforum. “I don’t think there’s any way for MOCA to not be a white space,” she said in a lecture at U.C.L.A., just before the dustup with Grotjahn. “The DNA is too deep. We don’t have anyone of color on our board.” In her three years at MOCA, Molesworth curated ambitious, important shows by artists of diverse backgrounds: the first retrospective of Kerry James Marshall’s work, a major retrospective of works by Anna Maria Maiolino. She was better with interesting, out-of-the-way artists than she was with the big names, with the board, and with potential donors—and that brings us back to Farber, the straight white male who has been enlisted, in this case, to serve as Molesworth’s Trojan horse in a show that raises the same questions that she has raised in public. There are twenty-three late paintings by Farber, all of them still-lifes made between 1975 and 2000. They include works from his oil-on-paper “Stationery” series, in which everyday objects (erasers, scissors, paper clips, bottles of liquid paper) skitter toward the edges of the frame; works from the “Auteur” series, which make glancing references to films by Altman and Fassbinder while zooming in on the bric-a-brac (candy bars, notebooks) that film critics fiddle with in screening rooms. Farber painted on tables, and you see his pictorial plane from above, at an angle that’s tilted slightly. In the absence of fixed-point perspective, your eye moves freely across the canvas. The results are demotic, de-centered, democratic—and also cartoonish and just shy of kitsch. They’re not to everyone’s taste, though Farber, a proud man, was sure of their value. Asked about the relationship between his painting and film criticism, Farber said, “The brutal fact is that they’re exactly the same thing.” You see some of that here: like his arguments, the paintings are full of jostling, circling, scuffling things. Taken together, they give the feeling that Farber described when he held Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” up as a perfect example of termite art—a sense of “buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, over all, concentration of nailing down one moment without glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed; the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.” Farber is a Trojan horse in another way, too, because Molesworth has used him to sneak a number of termite-like artists into the show: Nancy Shaver, who collects textiles and objects that are as likely to end up in her antique shop in Hudson, New York, as they are in galleries; Beverly Buchanan, who built bumpity, shrunken-down shotgun shacks, cook shacks, and sharecropper cabins out of wood and foam core; Dike Blair, whose mournful gouaches of ashtrays, alarm clocks, and empty airport armchairs read like an essay on negative space. There are flashier works, including Josiah McElheny’s “An End to Modernity,” from 2005, a super-sized, nickel-plated, aluminum attempt to depict the known universe, which looks like a Lobmeyr light fixture, with the galaxies rendered in hand-blown glass and electric lights doubling as quasars. It’s enormous and glitzy, which makes it a bit of a stretch for the show; but, despite its size, the sculpture’s chandelier-like qualities make it feel indoorsy and intimate. Becky Suss’s “Bathroom,” from 2016, a meticulous re-creation, in oil, of the bathroom that her grandparents shared on Long Island, is more intimate still. Catherine Opie’s photographs of Elizabeth Taylor’s curtains, closet, and kitchen—taken in 2010 and 2011, the year that Taylor died—are elegiac and stately, and deeply revealing of Taylor’s interior life. There are two beautiful domestic paintings by Patricia Patterson, Farber’s partner and eventual wife, who moved with him to California, co-wrote his later essays, and lived with him, happily, until his death. In all, there are thirty-four artists, plus Jason Simon, who programmed a series (films by Danny Lyon, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, and others) to go with the show. Molesworth has said that, out of all of the exhibitions that she’s organized, this is her most personal. It’s powerful, too, in a quiet, cumulative way, because the domestic sphere that she’s focussed on here is so close to the heart. But there’s more to it than that. In Molesworth’s hands, which we feel as heavily as those of the artists she’s gathered, the show becomes an argument cast in the form of a question: What is the proper place for minor-key, handmade, pictorial works that ignore, dance around, or deplore the spectacle side of today’s garish, moneyed art world? Or, how can today’s museums be more than mechanisms that validate prices set by the galleries and auction houses? During her “heady college days,” Molesworth writes in her catalog essay, “I, like so many others, developed a crush on the twentieth century’s call for art to broker an arrangement with life. . . . Now, I find my attraction to the everyday to be a form of defense against what I perceive to be the near total eclipse of criticism by the market values of art as an asset class, the demand for museums to produce blockbuster shows, and the apotheosis of profit as the primary marker of cultural value that I see embodied in the frictionless finish fetish of Jeff Koons, the narcissistic grandiosity of Damien Hirst, or the production of charm without affect by Takashi Murakami.” These strong words play out in striking and unexpected ways as you walk through the galleries. Charles Ray’s “Tractor,” from 2005, is a life-size, aluminum reconstruction of a broken-down tractor that Ray came across in California’s San Fernando Valley. Ray towed the thing to his studio, took it apart, and had ten of his assistants sculpt each part in clay. He made molds and cast them, and the results are startling. Some of the parts look machine-tooled. Others have clearly been sculpted by hand, retaining the mark of their individual, anonymous makers. Still, the machine comes together. It works. Is this sculpture, which looks like a super-sized Monopoly token, really an example of termite art? Is it an example of the Fordist, assembly-line practices that Molesworth abhors when it comes to someone like Jeff Koons—a perfect piece of white-elephant art? The answers seem to be yes, and that tractor’s still stuck in my mind, a few months after I first walked through the show. It seems to embody the pitfalls and contradictions that come with critiquing the institution from within, and also the ways that an object can cut through critique and simply broadcast its thingness. “By the way,” Gorin says, in an exchange with Molesworth about Manny Farber that’s included in the catalog, “he said he hated ‘White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art.’ I think he hated it in part because people tried to tether him to it. He knew the article was fundamentally flawed, and what’s flawed about it is the ‘versus.’ ” Molesworth agrees. “Of course!” she writes. “The essay is structurally flawed by a false antinomy, an either/or scenario doomed to generate opinions rather than dialogue. Anyway, who wants to have an argument that only has two sides?” More than any debt they owe to Farber, that kind of willingness to wander, beaver-like, into the thickets, in search of nothing in particular—or nothing at all—is what the best artists here have in common. It’s not the stuff of which art-world blockbusters are made at the moment, and that probably goes some way toward explaining why Molesworth’s tenure at MOCA couldn’t last. And yet this tricky, important farewell show suggests the ways that museums must change, and are changing already. No one, not Farber or anyone else, said it was going to be easy. | Alex Abramovich | https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/termite-art-and-the-modern-museum | 2019-02-28 17:50:00+00:00 | 1,551,394,200 | 1,567,547,059 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
383,285 | npr--2019-01-17--McJesus Sculpture To Be Pulled From Israeli Museum After Violent Protests | 2019-01-17T00:00:00 | npr | 'McJesus' Sculpture To Be Pulled From Israeli Museum After Violent Protests | 'McJesus' Sculpture To Be Pulled From Israeli Museum After Violent Protests Less than a week after hundreds of Christian protesters descended on the Haifa Museum of Art, clashing with police in a demonstration against a controversial sculpture, the Israeli city's mayor says the object of their outrage is getting withdrawn. Einat Kalisch-Rotem announced Wednesday that McJesus, a work of art depicting a crucified Ronald McDonald, "will be removed and returned as soon as possible." "Without any connection, we believe in freedom of speech as a cornerstone of democracy," she wrote on Twitter, according to a translation by The Times of Israel. "We regret the distress experienced by the Christian community in Haifa, and the physical injury and violence that followed," Kalisch-Rotem added, referring to the bloodshed that left three police officers injured last Friday. "We thank the heads of the Christian churches and priests in Haifa for the dialogue and desire to bridge, the effort to reach a solution, and to prevent violence." The sculpture, created by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, has stood on display since August as part of the museum's Sacred Goods exhibition. There it stood largely without incident for some five months, with its luridly colorful fast-food mascot nailed to the cross, slumped in an attitude recalling Jesus Christ. Elsewhere in the exhibition were plastic action figures of Jesus, packaged to look like Ken dolls, and a print of the Christian messiah with arms outstretched — only this time holding up shopping bags. "In the contemporary context, the artists participating in the exhibition employ religious symbols to criticize the encroachment of the consumer culture on our lives in general, and on the religious sphere in particular," the exhibition's organizers explained on the museum website. "The artists also criticize the way religions use consumer values and practices in order to prosper in the contemporary reality." Many among Israel's Arab Christian minority didn't appreciate Leinonen's nod to their religious iconography, however. And last Friday, their simmering discontent erupted into violence, as protesters sought to storm the museum, allegedly tossing stones and even a couple of firebombs before being dispersed, according to Haifa law enforcement. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev, too, recently called for the sculpture's removal, though her request was reportedly rebuffed by the country's deputy attorney general. It was already scheduled to be returned to the Finnish museum that the Israeli curators had loaned it from, but Kalisch-Rotem suggested that the process will now be expedited "in agreement with church leaders." Ironically, the news is likely to cheer not just the Christian protesters, but the very artist whose work they were protesting. Leinonen himself had demanded that McJesus be taken down — though for very different reasons. "I joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, that upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity," he told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. "Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people," he continued. "Therefore I do not wish to be part of this exhibition and I asked the museum to take my artwork off the exhibition." He explained that he had asked for his piece's removal even before the violent protests, and when he heard of them, he repeated his demand: "I insist my work will be taken off the exhibition instantly." Now, it appears he's finally getting his wish — but not everyone was pleased with the decision. Kalisch-Rotem's announcement represents a "capitulation to violence and severe damage to artistic freedom of expression," Dan Yakir, chief counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, told the Israeli publication Haaretz. "The mayor, like the culture minister, is not authorized to decide what is or isn't displayed at the city museum." | Colin Dwyer | https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/686199231/mcjesus-sculpture-to-be-pulled-from-israeli-museum-after-violent-protests?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-01-17 21:01:20+00:00 | 1,547,776,880 | 1,567,552,092 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
386,217 | npr--2019-07-22--At Whitney Museum Biennial 8 Artists Withdraw In Protest Of Link To Tear Gas Sales | 2019-07-22T00:00:00 | npr | At Whitney Museum Biennial, 8 Artists Withdraw In Protest Of Link To Tear Gas Sales | At Whitney Museum Biennial, 8 Artists Withdraw In Protest Of Link To Tear Gas Sales More artists are telling the Whitney Museum for American Art they are withdrawing from the museum's high-profile Biennial contemporary art showcase currently underway in New York. "It was a really easy decision," says artist Nicholas Galanin, who spoke by phone from Alaska, where he lives. Along with three other artists, he told the Whitney on Friday that he wanted his multimedia work pulled from the show. Over the weekend, Galanin and the others were joined by four more artists and collectives. Many in the art world expect other artists in the show to follow suit during the coming week. The artists are protesting the vice chair of the Whitney's board, Warren B. Kanders, over his ownership of military supply companies that sell tear gas and bullets, which the artists allege to have been used against migrants on the U.S. southern border and against unarmed civilian protesters in Gaza. One of the pieces in the Biennial show, a short video entitled "Triple-Chaser," lays out a case against Kanders, with the help of gruesome footage of a Palestinian protester getting shot. It was made by a London collective called Forensic Architecture, along with Praxis Films, a company run by filmmaker Laura Poitras. Forensic Architecture is among the artists requesting that their work be removed from the Whitney Biennial. "We might just end up with a Biennial of empty rooms," says Zachary Small, senior writer for the art news website Hyperallergic. "That would be an amazing statement about who is funding culture." Art critic Blake Gopnik, a contributor to the New York Times, agrees. "The artists who withdrew from the Biennial actually made the best work of art in the Biennial. This is an excellent work of political art," he said, referring to the artists' defection. Other critics have pointed out these artists have benefited from the exposure and notoriety, and that it seems awfully convenient that they waited to withdraw their art until after the reviews were in. Thousands of people have seen their work and the show will close relatively soon, on Sept. 22. "But look, we're talking about these issues," Gopnik says. "It's raising our awareness of the contradictions involved and the subtleties and ambiguities — and that's what art is good at doing." Two visitors who went to the Whitney Biennial on Sunday, Rachel Weber and her friend Coral Bourgeois, said that usually when they go to museums, it's for inspiration — not to reflect upon how the money behind them may have come from the tools of war. "This really brought it home," Weber said, as Bourgeois chimed in her agreement. "That this is what the Whitney is." In a statement, Whitney president Adam D. Weinberg said "the Whitney respects the opinions of all the artists it exhibits and stands by their right to express themselves freely. While the Whitney is saddened by this decision, we will of course comply with the artists' request." As of Sunday, none of the art had been taken down and it's unclear what will happen with the artists' fees. Nicholas Galanin says he was paid $1,500 for his pieces in the show. But he said that did not cover the costs of traveling to the opening from Alaska, where he lives, and then putting himself up in New York. Those costs, he said, the Whitney did not pay for. But Galanin said he'll happily return his fee to the Whitney if the museum wants it in return for taking his work down. | Neda Ulaby | https://www.npr.org/2019/07/21/743993348/at-whitney-museum-biennial-8-artists-withdraw-in-protest-of-link-to-tear-gas-sal?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-07-22 03:55:00+00:00 | 1,563,782,100 | 1,567,536,176 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
386,710 | npr--2019-08-25--Firearms Museum Focuses On Gun Safety History And Culture | 2019-08-25T00:00:00 | npr | Firearms Museum Focuses On Gun Safety, History And Culture | The Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming recently reopened after an extensive renovation that included bringing a more educational approach to guns and gun culture. **Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio The Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming recently reopened after an extensive renovation that included bringing a more educational approach to guns and gun culture. Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio Tucked away in the northwest corner of Wyoming is one of the largest gun collections in the world: The Cody Firearms Museum. But it's recently gotten a makeover, moving away away from being a monument to guns and toward being an educational space on gun safety, history and culture. The museum is located at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West alongside four other museums and near the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park. So often, people just happen upon it. That was the case for Kim Cato and her family, visiting from Idaho. "We were not planning to go in here," Cato said. Cato said that's because of her own previous experience with the museum. "I was here as a child and my dad dragged me through it and it was just rows and rows of guns and it was just not exciting." But now, the recently renovated museum seemed more intriguing. So Cato and her husband Kevin, their 12-year-old son, Tyson, and 15-year-old daughter, Jillian, took a tour with Ashley Hlebinsky, the curator. **People and technology** "So we're actually going to start right here," said Hlebinsky, as she led the family to the mission statement plastered in big letters on a wall at the entrance of the museum. "A lot of times when you talk about firearms history, you think about the history of technology, but it's also a history of people, and with that history of people it can be good, bad and indifferent." In an effort to address the good, the bad, and the indifferent, the first gallery is focused on basic firearm safety, especially where kids are involved. There's an interactive table and the first thing you see, "Do you know what to do if they [children] are out in the real world and they encounter a real firearm?" We had an experience where a child climbed over a fence and handed my son a gun. Kim Cato, Cody Firearms Museum visitor Under the question, a set of rules are mounted at a height designed to be read by children. They include: Stop. Don't touch the firearm. Get an adult or a law enforcement officer. Cato found these guidelines really helpful. "We had an experience where a child climbed over a fence and handed my son a gun," Cato said. "And didn't you try to shoot it?" "No, I didn't even touch it," replied Tyson. Cato was surprised because she had heard a different story when it happened a couple of years ago. It turned out some of the details were murky. Nothing bad happened but it was scary for the family. "Tyson, are you aware of these rules now?" Cato asked. Rather than being a monument to guns, the Cody Firearms Museum explores the history of guns as well as gun safety and the cost of war. **Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio Rather than being a monument to guns, the Cody Firearms Museum explores the history of guns as well as gun safety and the cost of war. Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio Tyson replied in affirmative. This is the kind of conversation the museum is trying to foster. Even if visitors walk in with nearly no idea about firearms, the museum's administrators hope that at least they can learn how to handle hard situations that firearms may present. Next, Hlebinsky took the Catos to the Cost of War exhibit. "As we're walking into this gallery, really the first thing you encounter is this big graphic," Hlebinsky said. "And some of the images you see when you walk into the gallery are the gravestones at the Arlington Cemetery and children affected by war." The Catos also learned about Audie Murphy, the World War II veteran and actor who broke a taboo of the time by talking about his experience with what we would now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. And the family learned that during the Civil War, some arms were produced by enslaved people. **Multiple viewpoints** The renovation tries to address the diverse audiences expected to visit. Hlebinsky said the museum offers different lenses through which people can learn about firearms, such as shooting sports, the technological evolution of firearms, and military history. Some of the Cody Firearms Museum exhibits focus on the design and mechanics of guns. **Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio Some of the Cody Firearms Museum exhibits focus on the design and mechanics of guns. Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Radio Museum leaders say they also don't want to ignore the current conversations around the misuse of firearms, specifically in mass shootings. The Catos ended their tour in front of a big black and white mural, produced by the artist known as JR in partnership with _Time Magazine_. Fifteen-year-old Jillian Cato described the mural this way: "It's a big group of people. Many of them have signs. It seems to be a huge debate. One side is anti-gun and the other side is pro-guns rights." The mural is derived from a video featuring images of Americans on all sides of the debate. Hlebinsky said as a museum curator, she can't tell people what they should think about firearms. But she hopes the information spurs conversations among visitors. As the Cato family looked at the mural, the father, Kevin said they aren't really gun enthusiasts. "I'm not into killing things. There's no reason to have a gun unless you're going to try to kill something," he said. "I have really enjoyed this, though, and I'm going to do more research on the history of guns and how they are going to affect warfare." That's the goal of the new Cody Firearms Museum. Not to win people over as gun enthusiasts, but to help them learn and think about gun culture. | Kamila Kudelska | https://www.npr.org/2019/08/25/753448348/firearms-museum-focuses-on-gun-safety-history-and-culture?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-08-25 12:06:00+00:00 | 1,566,749,160 | 1,567,533,451 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
404,250 | pamelagellerreport--2019-10-16--British Museum exhibit explores the influence of Muslim culture on the West | 2019-10-16T00:00:00 | pamelagellerreport | British Museum exhibit explores the influence of Muslim culture on the West | Does this exhibit explain how the Islamic influence on Western art was severely limited by the fact that Sharia forbids representation of the human form? Or would that reflect negatively upon Islam and Sharia, and so is forbidden to be stated? Will the British Museum host an exhibition on how Western art influenced the Islamic world, a topic about which there is a great deal that could be said, ranging from the cultural appropriation of Byzantine church architecture to the stylistic similarities of Shi’ite iconography to Western art? The answer to both questions is “of course not.” This is just another example of the British intelligentsia’s ongoing efforts to compel Britons to be ashamed of their own culture and heritage, and to think of Islamic culture as antecedent and superior to their own. It’s just more of Britain’s ongoing cultural suicide. “Exploring the influence of Muslim culture on the West,” by Gavin O’Toole, Al Jazeera, October 13, 2019: London, United Kingdom – A 19th-century painting of a harem by European artist Antoine-Ignace Melling has been animated, subverting the depictions of the women within, from passive subjects of erotic fantasy to drab creatures engaged in jerky, repetitive movements reminiscent of a cuckoo clock. This is contemporary Turkish artist Inci Eviner’s reimagining of a “classic” portrayal of an Ottoman harem and its message is serious. Art from the Middle East is outgrowing its “Orientalist” straitjacket. Her work is part of a major exhibition in London’s British Museum called Inspired by the East, that explores the significant – yet often unacknowledged – influence of Eastern culture on the West. “Discover centuries of art inspired by the Islamic world,” the museum promises visitors. Co-curator Julia Tugwell said there has been a resurgence of interest in Orientalist work after it fell out of fashion for years, and she hopes the exhibition can help to reduce barriers thrown up by politics. “People might forget that there has been an exchange between East and West for centuries, much longer than we think and while, of course, some of that has been warfare, a lot of it has been diplomatic relations and artistic exchange. “Looking at this through an artistic medium and showing how there has been this interest in the ‘other’ from both directions over the years shows that there has been an ongoing dialogue.” Organised in collaboration with the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, the exhibition traces Western fascination with the Eastern and Muslim world since the medieval era…. Catherine Futter of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, who contributed to the exhibition’s catalogue, said Islamic influence in European design endures. “We still see Islamic arches and patterns incorporated into architecture and perhaps we see them so often they seem part of our currency and we have forgotten their sources – whereas in the 19th century they would have seemed far more unusual. “One of the things that is exciting about this exhibition is that it is highlighting that important contribution to art, culture, science and technology made by the Islamic world.”… Egyptian-British artist Iythar, who lives in London, said the exhibition could not have come at a better time amid rising anti-Muslim sentiment. “This is very important and should have been done sooner because it helps people see the positive impact Islam has had in the world – not just in art but culture in general. “Many people only choose to listen to what they hear in the media and don’t know anything about Islam, so when they go to an exhibition like this and appreciate the benefits of the Islamic culture, it fosters tolerance.” | Pamela Geller | https://gellerreport.com/2019/10/british-museum-exhibit-explores-the-influence-of-muslim-culture-on-the-west.html/ | Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:00:28 +0000 | 1,571,248,828 | 1,571,264,007 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
488,133 | slate--2019-05-01--How Art Museums Must Transform to Thrive in a PostHilma af Klint World | 2019-05-01T00:00:00 | slate | How Art Museums Must Transform to Thrive in a Post–Hilma af Klint World | Earlier this month, as the Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition of the formerly little-known Swedish painter Hilma af Klint drew to an end, art world power broker Thelma Golden posted an unusually emotional Instagram caption. “For these past months the Guggenheim has felt like church,” she wrote. “All about spirit and soul. I have loved every visit.” Many of her peers, who had also posted about their last pilgrimage to the show, shared similarly jubilant impressions. This message by the director of the Studio Museum made explicit what the museum world already understands: The Hilma af Klint show marks an important moment for a cultural industry struggling with hypercommercial forces, ethical crises, and an urgent pressure to diversify at every level.* Audiences are clearly hungry for provocative, unusual, eye-opening aesthetic experiences that draw them away from their screens and into communal aesthetic experiences. How will museums respond to an environment that rewards the right kind of curatorial risk? Which institutions will take the lead in this new era? Hilma af Klint imagined a new visual and mystical universe as early as 1906, before many of the recognized pioneers of the avant-garde (“the male trinity of Kandinsky, Malevitch and Mondrian,” as the New York Times’ Roberta Smith put it). She devised a manifesto for living with a group of women called the Five, transforming visions from medium séances into “paintings for the future.” She produced more than 200 paintings, along with notes, drawings, and diagrams, mostly in secret, demanding that her work not be shown until 20 years after her death. The images were to be displayed, ideally, in a divine temple; they found their home in the Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral-shaped altar. The exhibition’s unexpected critical and commercial success has rarely been seen in the art world. It brought 600,000 visitors to the museum, becoming the Guggenheim’s most popular show since the museum opened 60 years ago; 30,000 catalogs were sold (more than Kandinsky’s 2009 record-breaking book sales at the museum); the Guggenheim recorded a 34 percent increase in memberships. “When I saw the show I was just surprised at how strongly I reacted to the work, especially when you walk up the ramp and see these large, fragile paintings,” explained Eugenie Tsai, senior curator at the Brooklyn Museum. “Part of the draw is the fact that they’re not representational. The abstract language is poetic and it’s very soothing but also points out to the existence of a larger reality. It doesn’t speak the same language of the contemporary visual overload.” Nevertheless, the exhibition was adopted by the platform of contemporary visual overload, Instagram, with almost 39,000 hashtagged posts from the af Klint show showing the singularly organic forms and cool pastel tones. On the gram, af Klint provoked reactions that ranged from queer pride (“Artsygaylove,” with two women kissing in front of a painting) to the New Age–y (“Feeling all sorts of spiritual,” posted a young woman posing scantily dressed in front of her pink-and-yellow poster). In an era obsessed with feminine liberation and spirituality, it transformed the artist into a cult of her own. As the once male, Western-centric history of art is expanded and rewritten to include those it traditionally pushed out, female artists are experiencing revivals and being praised for their pioneering visions. Institutions that have recently chosen to showcase radical women have been rewarded with massive recognition—and dollars. The success of af Klint can be viewed as a successor to Marina Abramovic, who drew crowds to MoMA in 2010, and Yayoi Kusama, who at 90 is breaking museum attendance records around the world with her polka dots and infinity mirror rooms. Many other underrecognized artists outside the white, male-centric narrative, such as the black sculptor Betye Saar and the Lebanese painter and poet Etel Adnan, have received late and sudden fame after decades of struggle. “There may now be a greater openness to women and to the belief they can tell the truth,” said said Tsai, whose Brooklyn Museum has seen recent hits like Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving and the female-heavy Soul of a Nation.* She compared af Klint to Kahlo and to the rising sculptor Simone Leigh, whose show now follows af Klint’s at the Guggenheim, as “incredibly powerful artists who have so much to say, but whose voices had been ignored or stifled.” “I wonder if Hilma was an unexpected blockbuster,” continued Tsai. “To me this show was an affirmation of the importance of the museum; it took on a life of its own. Everything was in alignment: the art, the architecture, the moment. Exhibitions don’t happen in a vacuum; they reflect a collective state of mind, a hunger for something transcendent.” Now several museums are getting ready to exhibit more work by lesser-known artists from previously marginalized groups, such as MoMA, which is totally revamping its collection and curatorial purpose for the first time in its history. As women such as Joan Mitchell, Suzanne Lacy, and others get their own exhibitions, the lessons of Hilma af Klint are clear. Transforming museums and galleries into malls hasn’t proved to be a successful strategy and has failed to inspire the public, sparking activist backlashes instead. In our era of awakening, audiences want to see themselves represented in culture. They want to connect with great stories, which institutions should continue to tell. “I think this shows us that we have narrowed the field of ‘blockbuster’ artists to a very small number of men,” said the critic and curator Helen Molesworth, citing Warhol, Basquiat, and Picasso. “But there are other great artists that capture the imagination of the public.” Some risk-averse museums will continue leaning on those “blockbuster” artists, to their detriment. (Please, not another Old Masters or Bill Viola show!) But when institutions expand their own perspectives, take bold risks, and bring in a wider range of voices, they connect with deeper social movements and with visitors—sometimes more of them than an institution ever expected. | Shirine Saad | https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/hilma-af-klint-attendance-guggenheim-legacy-blockbuster.html?via=rss | 2019-05-01 11:30:02+00:00 | 1,556,724,602 | 1,567,541,462 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
560,547 | tass--2019-01-29--Russian Museum confirms recovered paintings authenticity | 2019-01-29T00:00:00 | tass | Russian Museum confirms recovered painting’s authenticity | ### Arkhip Kuindzhi’s painting "Ai-Petri. Crimea" © Russia's Interior Ministry/TASS ST. PETERSBURG, January 29. /TASS/. Experts from the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, who came to Moscow to inspect Arkhip Kuindzhi’s painting "Ai- Petri. Crimea," have confirmed its authenticity, the museum’s press service told TASS on Tuesday. The painting, which comes from the Russian Museum’s collection and had been brought to Moscow for an exhibition of the artist’s masterpieces, was stolen from the State Tretyakov Gallery on January 27 but was recovered the next day. "The Russian Museum’s experts have confirmed the painting’s authenticity. It received minor damage, there are small scratches, but its overall condition is satisfactory," a spokesperson said. The media reported earlier, citing head of the Russian Culture Ministry’s Museum Department Vladislav Kononov, that experts from the Tretyakov Gallery - the chief curator and researchers - had inspected the painting and found some "tiny scuffs." ## Museum theft The painting titled "Ai-Petri. Crimea" by Arkhip Kuindzhi was stolen from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow on January 27. The suspect, Denis Chuprikov, was detained in hot pursuit in the Zarechye settlement, Moscow Region. He said he had hidden the paining at a construction site in the Odintsovo District where it was eventually recovered. Police sources pointed out that the suspect was on bail in connection with a drug passion case. According to preliminary information, the crime was committed for financial gain. Investigators are working to establish the suspect’s possible accomplices. Security measures at the State Tretyakov Gallery were stepped up following the incident. Kononov said there were plans to install digital sensors on all paintings in the gallery. Kuindzhi’s 39 by 53 cm painting in oil on canvas and paper dates back to the 1890s. It comes from the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and was brought to Moscow for an exhibition of the artist’s masterpieces. In other media | null | http://tass.com/society/1042296 | 2019-01-29 14:08:31+00:00 | 1,548,788,911 | 1,567,550,366 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
591,348 | thedailybeast--2019-02-07--If You Love Dogs This New York City Museum Is for You | 2019-02-07T00:00:00 | thedailybeast | If You Love Dogs, This New York City Museum Is for You | There’s a ceramic bulldog in a constable’s cap. There are two basset hounds, painted mid-hunt. At the AKC (American Kennel Club) Museum of the Dog, back in New York City after a 32-year-long run in St. Louis, there are simulations, sculptures, and skeletons—all of dogs. The museum, which opens to the public on Feb. 8, is at AKC headquarters, 101 Park Avenue, a building steps from Grand Central Station. Its goal, roughly, is the preservation and interpretation of art of the dog to “enhance the human/canine relationship.” A projection of a dog paced the lobby’s ceiling. Alan Fausel, the Executive Director of AKC cultural resources, was my guide; he is an art historian specializing in dog portraiture (what else?) and a contributor to PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. The first floor is largely a display of paintings dating from the 1800s: snarling mastiffs, aristocratic canines in gilded frames; dogs who had clearly traveled in posher circles than I could dream. One notable piece is by Queen Victoria’s favorite painter, the famed Sir Edwin Landseer. My favorite was Christine Merrill’s portrait of Millie, First Pet of the Bushes. Beside the frame hangs a letter signed by Barbara Bush (“Best wishes for a wonderful opening!”). “Reimagine” is the foremost effort here, though. Figurines from disparate cultures–Asian, Mexican, English–are showcased in a multi-floor glass display. We stopped for a moment at a 2,000-year-old paw print and a 30 million-year-old dog fossil (its name: hesperocyon). Similar institutions attempt the same goal, Fausel said, but “only the American Kennel Club has the collection to pull it off.” With enthusiasm, he demonstrated each interactive element of the museum. There’s a “Find Your Match" kiosk which matches your image to an AKC-registered dog breed. I got a Maltese: Charming, Playful, Gentle (a mostly inaccurate description of me). There is a “Meet the Breeds” touch screen board where visitors can explore different breed’s histories and traits. Visitors can even train a virtual Labrador, reminding you of your long-dead Nintendog. The Museum of the Dog is yet another niche museum, like the pop-up Museum of Ice Cream launched here in 2016, where visitors wade through pools of rainbow sprinkles in a pastel room. Sugar Factory’s Candy Museum is coming soon and promises the world’s largest gummy bear. The entrance fee is steep, the crowds dense and young. (Does that thought make you anxious too?) Such venues, as Sam Eichner argued in The Daily Beast, tend to prize the taking of good Instagram pictures above much else. Like them, the Museum of the Dog undeniably has strands of “Big Fun” in its DNA. Dogs are, traditionally, slam dunk crowd-pleasers. The interactive elements have the option to “share” the experience on social media. And yet. The space isn’t consciously engineered for selfies. The walls are a clean white and the layout is fairly conventional. I can’t imagine its Insta feed will be up for any Webby Awards (The Museum of Ice Cream snagged one in 2018). More important, there’s the impression that the visitor can, and y'know, should learn something. And I did. For example: 19th-century dog collars were spiked to protect the canine’s neck while boar hunting. Victorian children were led in wooden carriages by mastiffs for a delightful if not problematic jaunt. The place is not lacking in whimsy. There are Chihuahuas holding Frisbees and dogs doing taxes. But a history of dogs is a history of owners. How was the pet a product of the era? When, I wonder, did they become something that demanded memorializing. These are not just snapshots of dogs, but snapshots of moments in time. A painting of a pug looked particularly odd, all long legs and pointed snout. “This is a pug from around the 1800’s who doesn’t look like any alive today,” said Fausel. “Preserving this [painting] is preserving a historical record.” | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thedailybeast/articles/~3/i2DV1hnKD6Q/if-you-love-dogs-this-new-york-city-museum-is-for-you | 2019-02-07 10:10:18+00:00 | 1,549,552,218 | 1,567,549,267 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
694,515 | theguardianuk--2019-03-23--How will British museums survive if they subject every donor to an ethical audit Mark Lawson | 2019-03-23T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | How will British museums survive if they subject every donor to an ethical audit? | Mark Lawson | Consumers of culture will have been aware of the name “Sackler” above the frame of rooms and galleries in artistic institutions around the world. I remember once briefly wondering, when ducking under such an arch, how they had made the money that permitted such extensive philanthropy. Now everyone knows. The photographer Nan Goldin has advertised demonstrations outside the [Metropolitan](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nan-goldin-s -anti-opioid-activist-group-storms-new-york-museums) Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and [threatened](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/feb/16/nan-goldin- sackler-gift-oxycontin-national-portrait-gallery) to withdraw a planned exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, in protest at the institutions receiving donations from the Sacklers. The objection is that the wealth of those members of the Sackler family being targeted by the protests derives from a stake in OxyContin, a strong opioid painkiller that has [been implicated](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2019/mar/21/sackler-family-500-cities-counties-and-tribes-sue-oxycontin- maker) in thousands of deaths from addiction or overdose. Following this scrutiny, the Sacklers have withdrawn a £1m handout that was held up in the NPG’s ethics committee, which decides whether the promised dosh is “in conflict with the objectives and values of the gallery”. The Tate galleries soon [announced ](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/21/tate- art-galleries-will-no-longer-accept-donations-from-the-sackler-family)that they would no longer take Sackler cash. There has been a discernible glee at the institutions having become purer, if also poorer, similar to the smack of satisfaction in literary circles when the Man Group hedge fund recently decided to [drop its sponsorship](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/27/booker-prize- trustees-search-for-new-sponsor-after-funding-dropped) of the Booker prize, possibly due to frequent criticism from writers uneasy about the collision of books and book-keeping. As OxyContin is literally so toxic, it can be seen as an extreme test-case. But just as the controversy over the conduct of Harvey Weinstein led to hunts for similar alleged offenders, the Sacklers will surely not be the last philanthropists to face sacking. And, in the quick and vicious audit of the source of gallery and museum donations and sponsorship, it will be easy to find unethical specks on the hands that wrote the philanthropic cheques. What would count as an acceptable way of having become rich enough to have some spare to dish out to the arts? Sponsorship by BP and Nestlé has been questioned because of environmental or ethical concerns about the nature of the patrons’ business. Airlines, which have consistently been generous to the arts, are now on the wrong side of history, as, in a post-crash era queasy about capitalism, are most makers of money. Watching what has happened to the Sacklers, I began to fear for Sir Lloyd Dorfman, one of the most generous cultural benefactors in Britain. His private subsidising of the Royal Opera House, Royal Academy and National Theatre has been so extensive that the NT even [renamed an auditorium](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/oct/28/national-theatre- dorfman-donation) the Dorfman. The original source of the fortune was foreign exchange dealing. There is no suggestion that Dorfman’s success in this field ever involved impropriety, but legality and decency might not be enough to prevent his largesse being queried. The new puritans among the producers and consumers of arts do not rely on financial audit or legal due diligence but on a subjective sniff test. It would be surprising if their delicate moral nostrils entirely approved of someone becoming super-rich by swapping one currency for another. The big concern is how holes in the coffers left by a donor-wash will be filled. The Old Vic theatre in London, for instance, has received several payouts from the Sacklers and, receiving no direct state funding, would surely struggle if forced to close off that source. And if the funding of buildings and exhibitions is subject to ethical scrutiny, then why not their content as well? The “objectives and values” of the various national and royal artistic institutions, policed by their ethics committees, seem unlikely to include paedophilia, incest, rape, fraud, racism or fascism and yet you do not have to lose much shoe leather in their halls to come across a creative figure who has been implicated in one or more of those sins. The usual defence of continuing to tolerate the work of a controversial creative is that great artists are rarely great people, and, on the issue of arts patronage, the equally sensible position is that all money is to some extent dirty, especially when microscopically examined from a perspective inherently suspicious of riches and defining philanthropy as, an accusation made against the Sacklers, “reputation laundering”. Nan Goldin held a ‘die-in’ at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in February, in protest against its funding by members of the Sackler family. Photograph: Yana Paskova/The Guardian It seems unlikely that many contemporary winners of Nobel prizes are actively enthusiastic about dynamite and armaments, the cash from which set up the foundation that now honours titans of thinking. It must be particularly odd for recipients of the peace prize to reflect on where the money came from, yet laureates presumably take the view that the somewhat bloodied money can now be put to purer use. This attitude is understandable and might offer a model for the response of artists and gallery-goers haunted by the provenance of the wonga that allows the institutions to put on the shows. At the end of this process of ethical cleansing looms the spectre of a museum that, after returning exhibits to the owners from whom they were looted by colonising collectors, and sending to the storerooms works by artists whose behaviour offends the morals of today, stands completely empty. And, above the doors of those barren galleries, the wood is chipped and discoloured from the emergency removal of the names of those donors whose wealth or values risk gathering pickets outside exhibitions. If, unsurprisingly, the Sacklers now take their money elsewhere and are followed out of the boardroom doors by other philanthropists concerned that their bank accounts will be found to lack sufficient moral underpinning, then it will be our cultural institutions – and, as a consequence of their funding poverty, artists and gallery-goers – that suffer a pain from which, in a state that increasingly encourages the arts to seek private funding, there will be no easy relief. • Mark Lawson is a writer and broadcaster | Mark Lawson | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/23/how-will-british-museums-survive-if-they-subject-every-donor-to-an-ethical-audit--sackler | 2019-03-23 18:00:15+00:00 | 1,553,378,415 | 1,567,545,134 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | culture |
613,562 | thedailyecho--2019-09-03--Deliveroo comes to Eastleigh and creates 50 new jobs | 2019-09-03T00:00:00 | thedailyecho | Deliveroo comes to Eastleigh and creates 50 new jobs | EASTLEIGH residents can enjoy even more takeaway options with the arrival of a new delivery service to the town. Delivery company Deliveroo has launched this week in Eastleigh. The app and website lets residents order food from a range of restaurants and takeaways near to then. It will work with independent restaurants like The Hog Shack and as well as high street chains including KFC, Prezzo and Frankie & Bennys. To celebrate the launch, Deliveroo is giving away hundreds of free doughnuts around the town centre this Saturday. The company is also giving customers 30% off orders for the next four weeks. MP for Eastleigh, Mims Davies said: "The launch of Deliveroo in Eastleigh is a positive boost for the town and a great opportunity for our local restaurants looking to expand their offer and it will create more flexible local jobs. "Customers will be able to enjoy a convenient treat or quick meal from their favourite high street restaurants from the comfort of their own home which will make life easier for many busy local families. I am sure many people will be looking forward to making their first order." More than 50 jobs will be created in Eastleigh over the first year, with the majority of these being Deliveroo riders, who aim to deliver food, which will be cooked, fresh to order and delivered from the restaurant kitchen to the customers in under 30 mins. Harrison Foster, Regional Director in the UK, "Launching in Eastleigh is a key milestone for Deliveroo. Eastleigh has a thriving foodie community and a wide range of restaurants, so we’re excited to connect them. We look forward to working with our new restaurant partners to reach a new customer base and expand their businesses. Deliveroo will also create work for 50 local riders and are thrilled to offer a flexible role to the community.” Customers have the option to schedule orders via the Deliveroo app up to one day in advance or receive food as soon as possible between 5pm and 11pm on weekdays and 11.30am and 11pm on weekends. | null | https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17876635.deliveroo-comes-eastleigh-creates-50-new-jobs/?ref=rss | 2019-09-03 04:14:23+00:00 | 1,567,498,463 | 1,569,331,564 | labour | labour market |
610,083 | thedailyecho--2019-03-12--Banking firm to create 150 new jobs in Southampton | 2019-03-12T00:00:00 | thedailyecho | Banking firm to create 150 new jobs in Southampton | A BANKING firm is to open a new office in Southampton creating 150 jobs in the city. On line bank Starling has chosen the city for its first office outside of London, citing the area's wealth of tech talent as one reason for the move. The bank could not give the exact location of the offices but confirmed it would be in the city centre and would be open by the summer.. The new offices will house up to 50 software engineers and 100 customer service staff. Most of these jobs will be new hires. Starling, which was founded five years ago, has 500,000 current account customers and 30,000 business customers. It is one of a host of digital-only challenger banks that have sprung up in recent years aiming to take market share from traditional lenders. Much of its business is done via mobile phone apps. The bank was attracted to Southampton because of its "growing and skilled jobs market, reputation as a burgeoning tech hub, transport links and easy access to London". Southampton was recently identified a "super cluster" technology hotspot by CBRE, a property advisory group, for its high employment of technology professionals. Chief executive Anne Boden said: "We are growing so fast that we are rapidly running out of space in our London offices. "What really attracts us to Southampton is its entrepreneurial spirit and its level of tech talent. "We're looking for new people - engineers as well as customer service team members - to join us in Southampton now and will be expanding the office quickly." Starling was awarded £100 million last month from the Royal Bank of Scotland competition remedies fund that aims to break the high street giants' grip on the banking sector. Ms Boden said Starling was looking to increase its number of business customers, aiming at sole traders, start-ups and SMEs (small to medium enterprises). "We want to build a business bank and much of the work needed to do that will happen in Southampton," she said. Starling arrival was welcomed by the city's business leaders. Mark Baulch, head of policy & representation at Hampshire Chamber of Commerce, said; "This is a very positive piece of news following most of the decisions and changes being made by the banking industry recently. This number of high quality jobs being created in the city will also be very warmly received by the retail and hospitality sectors as it brings additional people with disposable income into the catchment area. "It is also very pleasing to see the banks’ reasons for choosing Southampton, which justify the investment that we have seen recently and hope to see in the future." Sandeep Sesodia, chair of the chamber's Commerce Southampton Business Strategy Group added: "Given the continuing changes in the banking sector and the way that customers bank, this is a very welcome and modern banking alternative. It will drive the economy, boost employment and give businesses a new option. For Southampton this is a massive confidence booster." Southampton Itchen MP Royston Smith said: "This is testament to the national reputation we have as a key hub on the south coast for business and our internationally renowned universities. The creation of up to 150 new jobs is welcome news and I wish them well with their launch.” | null | https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17493635.online-banking-firm-starling-to-open-new-southampton-office/?ref=rss | 2019-03-12 05:20:50+00:00 | 1,552,382,450 | 1,567,546,565 | labour | labour market |
1,695 | abcnews--2019-10-18--California unemployment rate falls to record low of 4% | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | abcnews | California unemployment rate falls to record low of 4% | California's economy kept humming in September, dropping the unemployment rate to a record low 4% statewide and under 2% in San Francisco and some of its neighboring counties, a level that economists once thought impossible. "That is almost unthinkable," said Sung Won Sohn, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University. "It flies in the face of economic theory." However, the explosive job growth has done little to close the gap in wages, making California — and San Francisco in particular — one of the most unequal places in the country as high-wage earners push up prices for everyone else. From 1980 to 2015, the top earners in San Francisco saw their wages jump 120% while the lowest earners saw their wages increase just 20%, according to an analysis published last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Corey Cantu makes $16 an hour tending an artisanal cookie kiosk in downtown San Francisco and pays $850 a month for a bedroom "the size of a closet" in a condominium he shares with four others in the city. "I see a lot of people in designer clothing and can tell (the economy) is booming for them but it's not booming for me," Cantu said. "It feels like we're disposable as employees working (for) minimum wage." Across California, unemployment fell to 4% last month, the lowest on record under a methodology the state has been using since 1976. California's economic growth is now in its 115th consecutive month, breaking the previous record of 113 months set in the 1960s. The job growth is not limited to the diverse and complex economies of Silicon Valley. Fresno and Kern counties, located in the heart of California's agricultural region in the Central Valley, have historically had double-digit unemployment rates for most of the past 40 years. In September, Fresno's unemployment rate was 5.3% while Kern's was 6%. Meanwhile, homeless populations in California continue to grow in the strong economy. Over the past two years, homeless populations have jumped 17% in San Francisco. Last month, Los Angeles County reported a 12% year-to-year increase in its homeless population. "Why are there so many homeless people if this economy is booming? That's crazy!" said Ernest Lew, an estate planning attorney, when told about the report. Lew said he is doing well because a lot of his clients work at Google, Facebook and other tech companies. "This economy is booming for some people, but a lot more people are hurting," Lew said as he walked is dog in the financial district. While the economy is booming, trouble could be looming. The United States' ongoing trade war with China has slowed shipping activities in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Plus, the inland communities of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario — which include warehouses and trucking companies — have lost jobs since their peak of December 2018, according to an analysis by Sohn at Loyola Marymount University. "At some point it's very simple: If you don't have bodies, you can't grow," Sohn said. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-unemployment-rate-falls-record-low-66371698 | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 19:52:06 -0400 | 1,571,442,726 | 1,571,490,232 | labour | labour market |
1,695 | abcnews--2019-10-18--California unemployment rate falls to record low of 4% | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | abcnews | California unemployment rate falls to record low of 4% | California's economy kept humming in September, dropping the unemployment rate to a record low 4% statewide and under 2% in San Francisco and some of its neighboring counties, a level that economists once thought impossible. "That is almost unthinkable," said Sung Won Sohn, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University. "It flies in the face of economic theory." However, the explosive job growth has done little to close the gap in wages, making California — and San Francisco in particular — one of the most unequal places in the country as high-wage earners push up prices for everyone else. From 1980 to 2015, the top earners in San Francisco saw their wages jump 120% while the lowest earners saw their wages increase just 20%, according to an analysis published last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Corey Cantu makes $16 an hour tending an artisanal cookie kiosk in downtown San Francisco and pays $850 a month for a bedroom "the size of a closet" in a condominium he shares with four others in the city. "I see a lot of people in designer clothing and can tell (the economy) is booming for them but it's not booming for me," Cantu said. "It feels like we're disposable as employees working (for) minimum wage." Across California, unemployment fell to 4% last month, the lowest on record under a methodology the state has been using since 1976. California's economic growth is now in its 115th consecutive month, breaking the previous record of 113 months set in the 1960s. The job growth is not limited to the diverse and complex economies of Silicon Valley. Fresno and Kern counties, located in the heart of California's agricultural region in the Central Valley, have historically had double-digit unemployment rates for most of the past 40 years. In September, Fresno's unemployment rate was 5.3% while Kern's was 6%. Meanwhile, homeless populations in California continue to grow in the strong economy. Over the past two years, homeless populations have jumped 17% in San Francisco. Last month, Los Angeles County reported a 12% year-to-year increase in its homeless population. "Why are there so many homeless people if this economy is booming? That's crazy!" said Ernest Lew, an estate planning attorney, when told about the report. Lew said he is doing well because a lot of his clients work at Google, Facebook and other tech companies. "This economy is booming for some people, but a lot more people are hurting," Lew said as he walked is dog in the financial district. While the economy is booming, trouble could be looming. The United States' ongoing trade war with China has slowed shipping activities in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Plus, the inland communities of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario — which include warehouses and trucking companies — have lost jobs since their peak of December 2018, according to an analysis by Sohn at Loyola Marymount University. "At some point it's very simple: If you don't have bodies, you can't grow," Sohn said. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-unemployment-rate-falls-record-low-66371698 | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 19:52:06 -0400 | 1,571,442,726 | 1,571,490,232 | labour | employment |
66,573 | birminghammail--2019-09-20--National Lottery employee confessed 25million ticket fraud to friends court told | 2019-09-20T00:00:00 | birminghammail | National Lottery employee 'confessed £2.5million ticket fraud to friends', court told | A former Camelot employee who is said to have conspired with an alleged conman to fake a multimillion- pound-winning Lottery ticket told friends about the fraud before killing himself, a court heard. Edward Putman, 54, is on trial for fraud by false representation at St Albans Crown Court after allegedly claiming an outstanding jackpot of £2.5 million with a counterfeit ticket in 2009. He is said to have conspired with friend Giles Knibbs - who worked in the securities department at Lottery operator Camelot between 2004 and 2010 - to submit a damaged fake ticket to take the jackpot just before the 180-day limit to claim prizes was due to expire. The court heard Mr Knibbs told friends he had "conned" the Lottery, and that he had done so with Putman. John Coleyshaw said his friend Mr Knibbs told him about the plan in 2015. Jurors have already heard Mr Knibbs felt aggrieved he did not receive his fair share of the prize from Putman, and confronted the defendant in June 2015. Mr Knibbs was subsequently arrested for burglary, blackmail and criminal damage after Putman complained to police, and he killed himself in October that year. Mr Coleyshaw told the court that on an evening in September 2015, Mr Knibbs told him it looked like he was "going down for 10 to 15 years for blackmail". The court has been told Mr Knibbs had been working late one night during his time at Camelot when he saw a document being printed which contained details of big wins which had not yet been claimed. Mr Coleyshaw said it was correct when prosecutor James Keeley said that after Mr Knibbs told Putman about this, the two men - Putman and Mr Knibbs - had "agreed to run a scam". Mr Keeley said: "A scam where Eddie would collect one of the winning Lottery prizes and they would split the money between them." Mr Coleyshaw told jurors about receiving a phone call from Mr Knibbs in which he asked if he could drop off letters at his house. When he got home that night, there was an envelope on the door mat containing a suicide note, the court heard. Another friend, Andrew Sales, who had met Mr Knibbs while working at Camelot, also told jurors he had revealed the alleged fraud to him. Mr Keeley brought up a phone call from January 2015 between Mr Knibbs and Mr Sales. "He said to you he was in a really dark place," the prosecutor said, adding: "He said that Eddie owes him money." Mr Sales replied: "He said that, yes." Mr Knibbs is said to have told Mr Sales that Putman was "rubbing his nose in it" by not paying him, and said he seemed to have "plenty of money". The court heard that in early October, Mr Knibbs confessed to Mr Sales about the Lottery ticket. He told Mr Sales he had "gone in with Eddie and he had forged a Lottery ticket" and after forging the ticket Putman claimed a win of £2.5 million, jurors heard. Speaking to Mr Sales, the prosecutor said: "Your belief was that it would be impossible to do such a thing." He replied: "That was my belief, yes." The court heard Mr Sales said to Mr Knibbs: "Don't be stupid. You can't forge a Lottery ticket." Mr Sales received an envelope from Mr Knibbs containing what the prosecutor described as a "goodbye letter". Another friend, John Whittaker, told the jury that Mr Knibbs also told him about the alleged lottery ticket fraud before his death. Prosecutor Mr Keeley said that Mr Knibbs told Mr Whittaker that when he worked for Camelot he found a way to influence a lottery win and that he and another man were going to "split the prize". Mr Whittaker said this was correct, and that he urged him to contact the police or seek legal advice. The jury also heard about a note that Mr Knibbs left for his partner Olivier Orphelin, in which he said Putman will "lie about everything". The jury heard Mr Knibbs said Putman may appear "sincere, concerned and even sympathetic", but said he could assure his partner that he is none of these. Jurors have already heard the "genuine" winning ticket, which was bought in Worcester, has never been discovered. The court was told Mr Knibbs claimed Putman went to 29 different shops as the clock ticked down to claim the cash, each providing a different ticket, before the right number was found. Mr Keeley said the defendant eventually submitted the correct code at a shop in High Wycombe on August 28, 2009. The prosecutor said: "He was lying. He did not hold the winning ticket, but a forgery created by Mr Knibbs. "The real winning ticket may still be out there, for the real winner has never been identified." Evidence suggested Mr Knibbs was paid an initial £280,000 from Putman for his part in the alleged ruse, followed by much smaller increments totalling £50,000, Mr Keeley said. The police investigation was initially opened in 2015 after Mr Knibbs's suicide, but closed when Camelot was unable to locate the alleged forgery. The case was then reopened in 2017 when the ticket was eventually located by a Camelot employee. Putman was first arrested for fraud in October 2015. He initially answered "no comment", but gave a prepared statement in September 2018 in which he said he was "a genuine winner", Mr Keeley said. The trial is listed to last for two weeks. | [email protected] (James Rodger) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/national-lottery-employee-confessed-25million-16956644 | 2019-09-20 17:29:42+00:00 | 1,569,014,982 | 1,569,590,552 | labour | labour relations |
3,047 | abcnews--2019-12-10--Employees fired after Tennessee juvenile detention escape | 2019-12-10T00:00:00 | abcnews | Employees fired after Tennessee juvenile detention escape | Four employees at a Tennessee juvenile detention center where four teenagers escaped on Nov. 30 are being fired, according to Nashville's juvenile court administrator. The court is conducting "an exhaustive review" of both the escape and its contract with Youth Opportunity, the company that manages the facility, administrator Kathryn Sinback said on Tuesday. An earlier report by the private contractor outlined a series of policy violations that led to the escape. Employees allowed the youths out of their cells after bedtime and then left them unsupervised. Once they were left alone, the teens got onto an elevator that was improperly left open, then tricked the operator into sending them to an unsecured floor. Finally, staff did not immediately call 911, according to the report. One of the teenagers was still at large as of Tuesday while the other three had been recaptured. All four of the employees were previously suspended. Sinback said she did not know the effective date of the their terminations. | null | https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/employees-fired-tennessee-juvenile-detention-escape-67631977 | Tue, 10 Dec 2019 14:00:31 -0500 | 1,576,004,431 | 1,576,022,743 | labour | labour relations |
9,929 | aljazeera--2019-02-16--Young and unemployed in Nigeria | 2019-02-16T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Young and unemployed in Nigeria | Africa's most populous nation and largest economy has a youth unemployment problem. In Nigeria, nearly a quarter of the population is out of work and 20 percent is underemployed. For young people aged 15 to 35, the figures are grim: 55.4 percent of them are without work. Creating jobs has been one of the key issues discussed throughout this year's election campaign. Being young in Nigeria is "very challenging", explains Andrew Nevin, advisory partner and chief economist at PwC Nigeria. "Graduates from university have a great deal of difficulty in getting established. People that didn't go to university who should be getting vocational training are not getting it. They're not getting into formal employment. Given the scale of Nigeria, it's a challenge not just for Nigeria, but for Africa and the whole world." There are systemic problems behind unemployment, Nevin points out. "Oil over the last 30 years in this country has meant people have taken their eye off other industries, there's a lack of diversification that we have. The good news is that everyone recognises it, and they recognise it's a crisis ... People are discussing youth unemployment, the need for youth to be employed to have something gainful to do." "Structural problems remain here, the government hasn't tackled issues around the exchange rate policy or the oil subsidy ... so all of these issues are holding back investment and growth in Nigeria." In order for Nigeria to grow faster, "The country needs more investment," according to Nevin. "The most important thing is we need the private sector to grow in the next decade 10-15 times larger to really make a dent in unemployment and poverty in Nigeria. And that means every sector ... the biggest sector that needs to grow in Nigeria is real estate. Everyone needs a place to live and we have a deficit of 17 million homes, and the great thing about real estate is that it employs a lot of people, particularly carpenters, plumbers, labourers - so it really absorbs that young population." "Africans are going to continue to be poor unless Africans trade with Africans and increase the value added. We're very strong proponents of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) ... it's obvious that if we're just exporting raw materials to Europe or Asia, that we're going to continue to be in poverty in Africa. So I think people have recognised that, and I think the speed at which the AfCFTA agreement has come together is really astonishing. It illustrates there's a sense of a pan-Africanism that's coming, and the leaders of that recognise that unless Africa trades with Africa and unless Africa invests in Africa, we're going to continue to be poor." Also on this episode of Counting the Cost: Airbus A380: Production of the world's largest passenger jet is to end as a result of falling orders. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus has announced plans to stop making the A380 in two years' time, threatening thousands of jobs, as Natacha Butler reports from Toulouse. "The A380 is a superb plane - it's technologically brilliant, but it's an expensive plane both, to build and also to fly because it uses a lot of fuel," according to David Bailey, professor of industrial strategy at Aston University in Birmingham. "We've seen a growth in mid-range planes which are much cheaper to fly, so airlines have tended to prefer those instead." "The A380 isn't selling as much and it's not profitable ... the plane will be in service for many years to come on big-trunk routes like major hubs in the Middle East, but going forward they're not looking to expand their fleets and they won't be looking to replace them ... so we'll still see them for many years, but simply not on the scale that Airbus had imagined when they invested very very heavily in developing this enormous aeroplane," says Bailey. Turkey's ghost estates: Unfinished houses, empty high rises and row upon row of homes fit for royalty have all become symbols of Turkey's struggling economy. Construction has been the turbine behind the country's growth, but high inflation and a devalued currency are threatening to make the industry go from boom to bust, as Stefanie Dekker reports from Mudurnu. Thailand fishing: Thailand is one of the world's largest exporters of fish. But its industry has faced accusations of human trafficking and abuse. Two very different movies at Berlin's film festival are highlighting the problem in an attempt to make us think more about the food we eat, as Nadim Baba reports from Berlin. Venezuela oil: The United States's decision to sanction Venezuela's oil assets two weeks ago was a move designed to keep oil revenues out of President Nicolas Maduro's hands. But he's been fighting back by stepping up efforts to keep state-run oil company PDVSA and its subsidiaries out of his rivals hands, as Lucia Newman reports from Caracas. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2019/02/young-unemployed-nigeria-190216073358024.html | 2019-02-16 12:20:50+00:00 | 1,550,337,650 | 1,567,548,331 | labour | labour market |
11,786 | aljazeera--2019-04-08--Iraqi youth fight unemployment with startups | 2019-04-08T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Iraqi youth fight unemployment with startups | Rising unemployment in Iraq is provoking growing demands - particularly by young people - for government action. The International Monetary Fund says youth unemployment is more than double the government's official rate of 20 percent. The jobless often blame corruption and mismanagement while government leaders say the problem stems from years of conflict. A solution to unemployment is The Station, established last year by young Iraqis to assist startup companies. The Station is privately funded by local and international non-government organisations and offers office space for rent and access to experts to provide business guidance. But many jobless Iraqis say it is still not enough to help tackle growing unemployment around the country. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/iraqi-youth-fight-unemployment-startups-190408105259812.html | 2019-04-08 10:52:59+00:00 | 1,554,735,179 | 1,567,543,605 | labour | employment |
11,786 | aljazeera--2019-04-08--Iraqi youth fight unemployment with startups | 2019-04-08T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Iraqi youth fight unemployment with startups | Rising unemployment in Iraq is provoking growing demands - particularly by young people - for government action. The International Monetary Fund says youth unemployment is more than double the government's official rate of 20 percent. The jobless often blame corruption and mismanagement while government leaders say the problem stems from years of conflict. A solution to unemployment is The Station, established last year by young Iraqis to assist startup companies. The Station is privately funded by local and international non-government organisations and offers office space for rent and access to experts to provide business guidance. But many jobless Iraqis say it is still not enough to help tackle growing unemployment around the country. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/iraqi-youth-fight-unemployment-startups-190408105259812.html | 2019-04-08 10:52:59+00:00 | 1,554,735,179 | 1,567,543,605 | labour | labour market |
36,562 | bbcuk--2019-02-08--Sir Philip Green paid employee 1m over harassment claims | 2019-02-08T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Sir Philip Green 'paid employee £1m over harassment claims' | Sir Philip Green paid a female employee more than £1m to keep quiet after she accused him of kissing and groping her, the Daily Telegraph has reported. The paper said the senior female employee was one of five members of staff who signed gagging orders after being bullied or harassed. It reported a black male executive also received £1m after Sir Philip said he was "throwing spears in the jungle". Lawyers representing Sir Philip told the Telegraph that he was a "passionate businessman, who can at times be over-exuberant and hot-headed" and that he could be "perceived at times as aggressive with senior and trusted staff". Sir Philip's lawyers added: "It is further denied that any of Sir Philip's conduct towards employees amounted to any type of crime, or anything that would amount to gross misconduct, or a serious risk to health and safety." The billionaire had previously used an injunction to stop the paper from publishing the allegations. Sir Philip is alleged to have told the female employee who received £1m that she was a "naughty girl" and made comments about her weight in front of other staff. Two other employees were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds, the Telegraph said. It did not say how much the fifth employee received. The paper added that all five staff had accepted the money in return for signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), preventing them from talking about their experiences. The Telegraph's report included testimony from other members of staff that it says witnessed the events. The paper fought a six-month legal battle against the billionaire, whose legal action against the paper was formally ended by a High Court judge. Sir Philip said the action was now "pointless" after he was named in Parliament as the businessman behind the injunction. He said the Daily Telegraph had pursued a "vendetta" against him. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47179344 | 2019-02-08 22:06:38+00:00 | 1,549,681,598 | 1,567,549,231 | labour | labour relations |
44,976 | bbcuk--2019-11-12--UK wage growth slows as unemployment falls | 2019-11-12T00:00:00 | bbcuk | UK wage growth slows as unemployment falls | UK wage growth slowed down in the three months to September, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Unemployment dropped by 23,000 to 1.31 million over the same period, while the number of people in work also fell. Average earnings excluding bonuses increased by 3.6%, compared with 3.8% growth in the previous month. The figures also showed the biggest annual drop in the number of job vacancies in nearly 10 years. The ninth consecutive monthly fall in available jobs saw advertised positions fall by 18,000 to 800,000. There were 32,75 million people in work during the three-month period, a fall of 58,000. It was the biggest drop since May 2015, when the total fell by 65,000. The ONS said this was down to falling numbers of people working in retail, after the collapse of several store chains and the implementation of shop closure programmes by other firms. Average weekly pay, in real terms before tax, was £470. "The employment rate is higher than a year ago, though broadly unchanged in recent months. Vacancies have seen their biggest annual fall since late 2009, but remain high by historical standards," said an ONS spokesperson. "The number of EU nationals in work was very little changed on the year, with almost all the growth in overseas workers coming from non-EU nationals." It comes after last week's news that the UK's economy had grown at the slowest annual rate in almost a decade. • Bank split on rates as it warns Brexit deal would hit growth Samuel Tombs, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures were likely to mean interest rates would stay unchanged for the foreseeable future. "The pace of weakening in the labour market remains gradual enough for the Monetary Policy Committee to hold back from cutting bank rate over the coming months," he said. IHS Markit economist Chris Williamson said the falling numbers of working people and job vacancies showed data "was falling into line with earlier warning signs of a weakening labour market from the surveys". He added: "Recruitment agencies reported that the demand for permanent staff at employers had grown at the joint slowest rate for a decade in October, as uncertainty and worries about the outlook reduced firms' appetite to take on extra employees." Andrew Wishart, UK economist at Capital Economics, said: "Overall, the figures appear to illustrate that demand for labour is easing, but no sharp downturn, which is a relief following disappointing GDP growth in the third quarter." Tej Parikh, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, warned that wage growth could continue to slow down. "The pick-up in wage growth earlier this year has been a plus, but there is clearly a limit to how high pay packets can go. With many firms facing elevated costs and difficulties raising their productivity game, the margins to raise pay are eroding. A further acceleration in wages now looks unlikely," he said. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50388220 | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:36:33 GMT | 1,573,572,993 | 1,573,561,500 | labour | labour market |
58,943 | birminghammail--2019-03-22--Ethnic minorities in Birmingham twice as likely to be unemployed as white people | 2019-03-22T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Ethnic minorities in Birmingham twice as likely to be unemployed as white people | Ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed as white people in Birmingham. New analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that just 4.9% of white people in Birmingham were unemployed in the 12 months to September 2018. In comparison, 9.8% of black and minority ethnic (BME) people were unemployed. That is a rate that’s two times higher. The figure rose to 10.5% of people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds. Experts say that the ethnic unemployment gap is likely caused by several different factors - including prejudice and racial discrimination. Rebecca Hilsenrath, Chief Executive at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “It is very disappointing to see that the unemployment rate for ethnic minorities is still so much higher than for white people. “The UK is such a diverse society and our workplaces would benefit from reflecting that. “High unemployment rates can be a result of a number of issues including differences in educational attainment. “We also know, though, that prejudice and racial discrimination in recruitment processes are a challenge. “The government must continue to monitor access to work for these groups and identify and address what causes the differences between employment rates so that there is real equality of opportunity in the workplace. “Bringing in mandatory reporting by ethnicity on staff recruitment, retention and promotion would be an important first step in helping employers shine a spotlight on the issue and provide the necessary insight to tackle underlying causes of inequality.” The situation has also seen little improvement over the last 14 years. Since the 12 months to September 2005, BME people in Birmingham have generally been around twice as likely to be unemployed as white people - if not more so. The gap peaked in the 12 months to September 2006, when BME people were 3.3 times more likely to be unemployed, and hit a low in the 12 months to September 2010, when they were 1.7 times more likely to be without work. The gap in Birmingham reflects the national average. Across the UK, just 3.7% of white people were unemployed compared to 7.3% of BME people - again twice as many. In October 2017, the government published and have continued to update a Race Disparity Audit, which aims to examine how people of different backgrounds are treated across areas including health, education, employment and the criminal justice system. The government say that BME employment is at the highest level on record - but clearly this has done little to close the gap. Employment minister Alok Sharma said: "I am pleased that under this government the ethnic minority employment rate is at a record high, delivering opportunities to more people regardless of background. “But there is much more to do. "The whole purpose of the Race Disparity Audit was to get us to face difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable, issues. “Where there were differences in representation, participation or achievement across ethnic minorities, we have been challenged to explain them, or change them. “Earlier this year we published a report detailing just some of the programmes underway to tackle employment inequality, ranging from pre-ESOL support, sessions for women from under-represented groups and interventions for young people involved in or on the edges of gang violence. “In addition, we will shortly roll out a nationwide mentoring initiative, designed to help jobseekers build their networks and get the careers they want.” | Annie Gouk, James Rodger | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/ethnic-minorities-birmingham-twice-likely-16012329 | 2019-03-22 10:50:01+00:00 | 1,553,266,201 | 1,567,545,172 | labour | labour market |
65,515 | birminghammail--2019-08-08--Wolverhampton food companys expansion plan will mean employing on more staff | 2019-08-08T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Wolverhampton food company's expansion plan will mean employing on more staff | A family-run catering company in Wolverhampton wants to expand its large existing operation even further by creating new offices. Middleton Food Products Ltd, based in Willenhall Road, wants to create the two-storey office block in preparation for planned future expansions of the business. The site where the new offices are set to be based currently houses a cash and carry, food production, packing and storage area. Middleton Recycling was also previously situated on the site until a purpose built facility was created on the adjacent Noose Lane, which will allow for the expansion of the food business. The food operation has grown considerably over the last 30 years and sees the company sending products to caterers across the country, including providing batter for award-winning fish and chip shops. Bosses said the offices would be used to accommodate extra staff they expect to take on as the operation expands. In their application to the City of Wolverhampton Council, managing director John Gwilt said: "Middleton moved onto the site in February 1988 with the relocation of the cash and carry business with three 7.5 tonne trucks and staff of about seven. "They now employ 36 full-time staff and 12 part-time and operate with a fleet of nine 12 tonne trucks and seven 7.5 tonne trucks servicing the catering industry throughout the Midlands. "Middleton Recycling moved onto the site a short time later and then Middleton Food Products Ltd, which was first registered in 1990 and formed to produce dry powder products for the catering industry. "From a small operation, it now employs 97 permanent staff and between 25 to 40 agency staff distributing both nationally and internationally with customers of the likes of Ramsdens, Iceland Foods, Brake, Aldi and Wetherspoons. "Five of the last eight shops that won Fish and Chips of the Year were users of Middleton branded products. "Middleton Recycling has now moved off this site and into a purpose built factory to accommodate the expansion of Middleton Food Products Ltd. "We therefore need to develop more office space to accommodate the extra staff we anticipate taking on." | [email protected] (Gurdip Thandi) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/office-plan-set-aid-wolverhampton-16722025 | 2019-08-08 16:07:25+00:00 | 1,565,294,845 | 1,567,534,564 | labour | employment |
68,672 | birminghammail--2019-12-04--The laws around tipping in the UK - and when employees could be banned from taking them | 2019-12-04T00:00:00 | birminghammail | The laws around tipping in the UK - and when employees could be banned from taking them | Christmas is just around the corner and bars and restaurants are gearing up for the most festive and busiest time of the year. It is definitely the ‘season to be jolly’ and many of us will be flocking to Christmas parties, work functions and catching up with friends. Whilst it may be the time for giving, we’re still unsure of the right etiquette when it comes to tipping. Are we legally obliged to do so? Does that money actually go to the staff or is it kept by the business owner? And as an employee, what does the law say about paying tax on the tips you receive? Thomas Pertaia from DAS Law has the answers on tipping in the UK… Do I *have* to tip? There is no legal obligation to tip, so if you decide to offer a tip it is at your discretion. Some establishments will state that there will be an obligatory tip; for example, when the number in your party goes over a certain threshold, paying the tip forms part of the contract that you are agreeing to with the restaurant. OK. If I *am* going to tip, how much? The standard tip in the UK is around 10%, but tipping is not an absolute expectation in most establishments. I have seen that there is an increase in the number of restaurants that have a ‘suggested tip’ amount included on the bill. Do I have to pay this or can I change it? There is no obligation to pay a suggested tip and no obligation to comply with the suggested tip. Feel free to deviate from the suggestion if you feel that the service does not warrant the amount suggested. Am I allowed to refuse to pay a tip at all? As already mentioned, because there is no legal oblation to pay a tip, you can make the decision as to whether to tip or not. As an employee, do I legally have to report all tips I receive to HMRC? Tax is payable on tips and would have to be reported to HMRC. However, whether you are responsible or the employer is responsible will depend on the way tips are paid to you. If you get tips directly from a customer, you will be responsible to pay tax and if you fill in a Self-Assessment tax return, you have to include the tips on it. If you don’t fill out a tax return then HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will estimate your tips based on information from you or your employer. If your employer pays the tips directly to you, they are responsible for making sure Income Tax is paid through PAYE. Where I work we pool our tips and share them equally. I make considerably more tips that my colleagues and don’t want to participate in the scheme – can I refuse and keep my own tips? How the tips are handled will generally be decided by the employer. There may be an agreement in place where a person other than the employer (called tronc master), is responsible for making arrangements to share tips amongst employees. In these circumstances, it is the tronc master who decides how the tips are shared. Participation is not compulsory and you will have to check with the employer if there are alternatives available in relation to possible retention of tips. Am I allowed to insist as an employer that employees disclose their tips? As an employer, you can request that the employees disclose the tips paid to them during their employment with you. Whilst it may not be best practice or advisable, employers are within their rights to prohibit employees from accepting tips. What’s the law on tipping in the UK? The law around tipping is rather vague, with no specific legislation in place. However, what is clear and enshrined in law is that tips cannot be used to meet national minimum wage obligations of the employer, meaning that if they are paid, then they need to be paid in addition to the National Minimum Wage. There have been discussions about reform in this area and the introduction of legislation, but this has not materialised yet. The Government has a Code of Practice (National minimum wage: code of best practice on service charges, tips, gratuities and cover charges) on how employers should handle tips. However, the code is voluntary and there is no obligation on an employer to follow it, but if an employer wants to operate a ‘best practice’ business they would be advised to comply with the code of practice. | [email protected] (James Rodger) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/laws-around-tipping-uk-employees-17360607 | Wed, 4 Dec 2019 10:39:52 +0000 | 1,575,473,992 | 1,575,462,743 | labour | employment legislation |
70,119 | bonginoreport--2019-12-21--Georgia’s Unemployment Reaches Lowest Level Since Records Kept | 2019-12-21T00:00:00 | bonginoreport | Georgia’s Unemployment Reaches Lowest Level Since Records Kept | ATLANTA, GA - Georgia's unemployment rate fell to 3.3 percent in November - the lowest in decades since record keeping began in 1976. The state also set a jobs record last month – 4.64 million jobs – while the number of employed Georgians also hit an all-time high of 4.96 million. "I can't recall us ever having a better month," Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler told Capital Beat News Service. "It's nice to see this at the end of the year. I think we are going to continue to see Georgia move in the right direction." Gov. Brian Kemp said the strong numbers are a sign the conservative agenda he and his Republican allies in the General Assembly have embraced is working. "To keep Georgia the best place to live, work and raise a family, we must support our small businesses, recruit projects of regional significance to our rural communities and dismantle criminal street gangs so our families are safe from harm," he told the Capital Beat News Service. Georgia added 6,500 jobs last month, up 69,000 from the same month last year. The most jobs were added in three areas - trade, transportation, utilities - with 3,200 jobs. Education and health services came close with was close with 3,100 jobs. The construction sector added 2,300 jobs. "We have seen the labor force start growing again, but it's still not where I want it to be," Butler told the Capital News Service. "We need more individuals in the workforce to take all the jobs we have open." Georgia's unemployment rate last month was slightly below the nation's, which fell 0.1 percent to 3.5 percent. | Matt Palumbo | https://patch.com/georgia/savannah/s/gyd1y/georgias-unemployment-rate-falls-all-time-low | Sat, 21 Dec 2019 01:32:51 +0000 | 1,576,909,971 | 1,576,932,302 | labour | labour market |
69,571 | birminghammail--2019-12-23--Workers face Universal Credit Christmas pay cut if employers break this one rule | 2019-12-23T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Workers face Universal Credit Christmas pay cut if employers break this one rule | Universal Credit and other benefits can cause big worries for claimants over the Christmas holidays. There are always extra costs at this time of year - including higher energy bills, festive food and drink, gifts for family and other loved ones. On top of all that, variations with payment dates can cause concern and confusion. Universal Credit replaces six existing benefits and is paid to those who are in work on a low income as well as people who are unemployed. But some claimants could be left with no money if their bosses don’t stick to the official guidance on paying wages at this time of year. The problem arises when claimants are paid early because of the Christmas holidays. That shows as two wages in one month, which then means Universal Credit payments are cut. Claimants are allowed to earn £287 a month if they get help with housing costs, or £503 a month if they don’t get that help. Every amount earned above those levels is subject to deductions of 63p in every £1. Above a certain level of income, the DWP stops paying Universal Credit altogether. That means claimants have to start all over again with claiming the benefit once their income goes down to normal levels. In its latest Employer Bulletin, HM Revenue and Customs gives guidance for company bosses on reporting PAYE information. It is reminding employers not to log early wage payments on the day but to record them on the day they would originally have been paid if Christmas holidays hadn’t got in the way. That prevents it looking like people have been paid twice in a month. The advice says: "In December 2018, we wrote to employers to advise a temporary easement on reporting PAYE information in real time, as we know some employers pay their employees earlier than usual over the Christmas period. "This can be for a number of reasons, for example during the Christmas period the business may close, meaning workers need to be paid earlier than normal. "Following feedback from employers and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) we have received approval to make this easement permanent. "If you do pay early over the Christmas period, please report your normal (or contractual) payday as the payment date on your Full Payment Submission (FPS) and ensure that the FPS is submitted on or before this date. "For example: if you pay on Friday 20 December 2019 but the normal/contractual payment date is Tuesday 31 December 2019, please report the payment date on the FPS as 31 December and ensure the submission is sent on or before 31 December. "Doing this will help to protect your employees’ eligibility for Universal Credit, as reporting the payday as the payment date may affect current and future entitlements. "The overriding PAYE reporting obligation for employers is unaffected by this announcement and remains that you must report payments on or before the date the employee is paid, i.e. payday." The issue has also been highlighted by Advice NI, an independent advice network in Northern Ireland, but it is also affecting claimants in England and Wales. Advice NI has expressed concerns about "a flaw in the Universal Credit (UC) system whereby claimants may be treated as receiving two monthly wages in one assessment period, resulting in a dramatically reduced or even nil Universal Credit award.” Bob Stronge, Advice NI Chief Executive said: “Government says that it’s all about work, making work pay and that Universal Credit will help make sure people are better off in work. However we are highlighting a fundamental flaw which could inflict hardship on claimants and undermine public confidence in Universal Credit. "For example if someone receives their monthly wage on the last Friday of each month then they will have been paid on Friday 29th November and ought to be paid on Friday 27th December. However many people will be paid early for Christmas, some as early as Friday 20th December. "Universal Credit assessment periods run for a calendar month, so for example if a UC claimant has an assessment period which runs from 25th to the 24th, they will in fact find that they have received 2 monthly wages in this assessment period (29th November & 20th December) and so may receive little or no Universal Credit at Christmas. "Whilst there may be months with no wage packet and other months with one wage packet which will lead to an increased Universal Credit award, Advice NI believes this issue will undoubtedly lead to claimants having a lack of certainty about finances and will undoubtedly cause distress and hardship for some at Christmas." Advice NI says it is concerned that neither employers nor employees are fully aware of the HMRC’s latest advice on reporting staff pay. Universal Credit - 7 things you need to know Universal Credit is the biggest change to the welfare system in a generation. But what exactly is it and how does the system work? Here's all you need to below. Follow the links below to find out more. Universal Credit is a new social security benefit that was approved in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and first appeared in 2013. By the end of 2018, it was rolled out to all jobcentres. It replaces six existing benefits, now known as 'legacy benefits'. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 2. Universal Credit calculator - how much you will get The amount you are given is calculated according to various factors. The Government says if you have children, a disability, or you need help paying for your rent, you may be entitled to extra amounts on top of the standard allowance. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 3. Universal Credit eligibility and how to apply Among the qualifying criteria, you must be on a low income or out of work. And it's important to bear in mind your partner’s income and savings will be taken into account, even if they themselves are not applying for the benefit. Find out more about eligibility by clicking on the link above. 4. How often is it paid and how the online account works To get Universal Credit, TWO accounts are needed. One is a Universal Credit online account where your details (such as the date of the next payment) are available to look at, the other is a payment account at a bank or building society where the Government pays in your money. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 5. Universal Credit contact numbers if you need help There are some special helpline numbers to call if you want assistance. They have been changed to freephone numbers so there is no charge for calling. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 6. How to change your payments if you're struggling Claimants need to be aware the first payment doesn't come through until five weeks after a claim - and then every month after that. If you're not used to waiting a whole month for your payment, it can prove difficult. But there is a little-known way around that. Find out more by clicking on the link above 7. What to do if your Universal Credit payments are cut There are occasions where the Department for Work and Pensions imposes sanctions on claimants if they appear to have broken the rules, for instance by not showing up at jobcentre appointments. In such cases, Universal Credit can be cut or stopped altogether. Find out what to do by clicking the link above. Universal Credit officials in Northern Ireland said it was not a flaw in the system, with a Department for Communities spokesman saying: “Where two sets of earnings are received in one month a customer will receive less benefit to reflect this. "However customers will then receive an increase in Universal Credit in those months where no earnings are received. "This is not a system flaw and is part of the design and build of Universal Credit.” BirminghamLive asked the Department for Work and Pensions - which is responsible for Universal Credit in England and Wales - about the issue. A DWP spokesman told us: "Assessment periods are fixed at the point of when a person makes a claim, and if two months’ wages are paid in the same period then either the previous Universal Credit payment or the next one will be higher to reflect this." | [email protected] (David Bentley) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/universal-credit-christmas-payments-cut-17463584 | Mon, 23 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000 | 1,577,116,800 | 1,577,104,197 | labour | employment |
69,571 | birminghammail--2019-12-23--Workers face Universal Credit Christmas pay cut if employers break this one rule | 2019-12-23T00:00:00 | birminghammail | Workers face Universal Credit Christmas pay cut if employers break this one rule | Universal Credit and other benefits can cause big worries for claimants over the Christmas holidays. There are always extra costs at this time of year - including higher energy bills, festive food and drink, gifts for family and other loved ones. On top of all that, variations with payment dates can cause concern and confusion. Universal Credit replaces six existing benefits and is paid to those who are in work on a low income as well as people who are unemployed. But some claimants could be left with no money if their bosses don’t stick to the official guidance on paying wages at this time of year. The problem arises when claimants are paid early because of the Christmas holidays. That shows as two wages in one month, which then means Universal Credit payments are cut. Claimants are allowed to earn £287 a month if they get help with housing costs, or £503 a month if they don’t get that help. Every amount earned above those levels is subject to deductions of 63p in every £1. Above a certain level of income, the DWP stops paying Universal Credit altogether. That means claimants have to start all over again with claiming the benefit once their income goes down to normal levels. In its latest Employer Bulletin, HM Revenue and Customs gives guidance for company bosses on reporting PAYE information. It is reminding employers not to log early wage payments on the day but to record them on the day they would originally have been paid if Christmas holidays hadn’t got in the way. That prevents it looking like people have been paid twice in a month. The advice says: "In December 2018, we wrote to employers to advise a temporary easement on reporting PAYE information in real time, as we know some employers pay their employees earlier than usual over the Christmas period. "This can be for a number of reasons, for example during the Christmas period the business may close, meaning workers need to be paid earlier than normal. "Following feedback from employers and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) we have received approval to make this easement permanent. "If you do pay early over the Christmas period, please report your normal (or contractual) payday as the payment date on your Full Payment Submission (FPS) and ensure that the FPS is submitted on or before this date. "For example: if you pay on Friday 20 December 2019 but the normal/contractual payment date is Tuesday 31 December 2019, please report the payment date on the FPS as 31 December and ensure the submission is sent on or before 31 December. "Doing this will help to protect your employees’ eligibility for Universal Credit, as reporting the payday as the payment date may affect current and future entitlements. "The overriding PAYE reporting obligation for employers is unaffected by this announcement and remains that you must report payments on or before the date the employee is paid, i.e. payday." The issue has also been highlighted by Advice NI, an independent advice network in Northern Ireland, but it is also affecting claimants in England and Wales. Advice NI has expressed concerns about "a flaw in the Universal Credit (UC) system whereby claimants may be treated as receiving two monthly wages in one assessment period, resulting in a dramatically reduced or even nil Universal Credit award.” Bob Stronge, Advice NI Chief Executive said: “Government says that it’s all about work, making work pay and that Universal Credit will help make sure people are better off in work. However we are highlighting a fundamental flaw which could inflict hardship on claimants and undermine public confidence in Universal Credit. "For example if someone receives their monthly wage on the last Friday of each month then they will have been paid on Friday 29th November and ought to be paid on Friday 27th December. However many people will be paid early for Christmas, some as early as Friday 20th December. "Universal Credit assessment periods run for a calendar month, so for example if a UC claimant has an assessment period which runs from 25th to the 24th, they will in fact find that they have received 2 monthly wages in this assessment period (29th November & 20th December) and so may receive little or no Universal Credit at Christmas. "Whilst there may be months with no wage packet and other months with one wage packet which will lead to an increased Universal Credit award, Advice NI believes this issue will undoubtedly lead to claimants having a lack of certainty about finances and will undoubtedly cause distress and hardship for some at Christmas." Advice NI says it is concerned that neither employers nor employees are fully aware of the HMRC’s latest advice on reporting staff pay. Universal Credit - 7 things you need to know Universal Credit is the biggest change to the welfare system in a generation. But what exactly is it and how does the system work? Here's all you need to below. Follow the links below to find out more. Universal Credit is a new social security benefit that was approved in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and first appeared in 2013. By the end of 2018, it was rolled out to all jobcentres. It replaces six existing benefits, now known as 'legacy benefits'. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 2. Universal Credit calculator - how much you will get The amount you are given is calculated according to various factors. The Government says if you have children, a disability, or you need help paying for your rent, you may be entitled to extra amounts on top of the standard allowance. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 3. Universal Credit eligibility and how to apply Among the qualifying criteria, you must be on a low income or out of work. And it's important to bear in mind your partner’s income and savings will be taken into account, even if they themselves are not applying for the benefit. Find out more about eligibility by clicking on the link above. 4. How often is it paid and how the online account works To get Universal Credit, TWO accounts are needed. One is a Universal Credit online account where your details (such as the date of the next payment) are available to look at, the other is a payment account at a bank or building society where the Government pays in your money. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 5. Universal Credit contact numbers if you need help There are some special helpline numbers to call if you want assistance. They have been changed to freephone numbers so there is no charge for calling. Find out more by clicking on the link above. 6. How to change your payments if you're struggling Claimants need to be aware the first payment doesn't come through until five weeks after a claim - and then every month after that. If you're not used to waiting a whole month for your payment, it can prove difficult. But there is a little-known way around that. Find out more by clicking on the link above 7. What to do if your Universal Credit payments are cut There are occasions where the Department for Work and Pensions imposes sanctions on claimants if they appear to have broken the rules, for instance by not showing up at jobcentre appointments. In such cases, Universal Credit can be cut or stopped altogether. Find out what to do by clicking the link above. Universal Credit officials in Northern Ireland said it was not a flaw in the system, with a Department for Communities spokesman saying: “Where two sets of earnings are received in one month a customer will receive less benefit to reflect this. "However customers will then receive an increase in Universal Credit in those months where no earnings are received. "This is not a system flaw and is part of the design and build of Universal Credit.” BirminghamLive asked the Department for Work and Pensions - which is responsible for Universal Credit in England and Wales - about the issue. A DWP spokesman told us: "Assessment periods are fixed at the point of when a person makes a claim, and if two months’ wages are paid in the same period then either the previous Universal Credit payment or the next one will be higher to reflect this." | [email protected] (David Bentley) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/universal-credit-christmas-payments-cut-17463584 | Mon, 23 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000 | 1,577,116,800 | 1,577,104,197 | labour | employment legislation |
70,835 | breaking911--2019-12-13--WATCH: CEO Surprises 100 Employees With $10 Million In Bonuses! (Average Bonus Was $50K) | 2019-12-13T00:00:00 | breaking911 | WATCH: CEO Surprises 100 Employees With $10 Million In Bonuses! (Average Bonus Was $50K) | Employees of a large commercial real estate firm received a life-changing surprise when they were gifted $10 million in bonuses at their company holiday party. Ed St. John, founder of St. John’s Properties in Baltimore, Maryland, and company president Lawrence Maykrantz, gave out 198 bonus checks to their employees during the festivities. | ---- | https://breaking911.com/watch-ceo-surprises-100-employees-with-10-million-in-bonuses-average-bonus-was-50k/ | Fri, 13 Dec 2019 02:20:22 +0000 | 1,576,221,622 | 1,576,238,454 | labour | employment |
70,835 | breaking911--2019-12-13--WATCH: CEO Surprises 100 Employees With $10 Million In Bonuses! (Average Bonus Was $50K) | 2019-12-13T00:00:00 | breaking911 | WATCH: CEO Surprises 100 Employees With $10 Million In Bonuses! (Average Bonus Was $50K) | Employees of a large commercial real estate firm received a life-changing surprise when they were gifted $10 million in bonuses at their company holiday party. Ed St. John, founder of St. John’s Properties in Baltimore, Maryland, and company president Lawrence Maykrantz, gave out 198 bonus checks to their employees during the festivities. | ---- | https://breaking911.com/watch-ceo-surprises-100-employees-with-10-million-in-bonuses-average-bonus-was-50k/ | Fri, 13 Dec 2019 02:20:22 +0000 | 1,576,221,622 | 1,576,238,454 | labour | labour relations |
72,857 | breitbart--2019-09-06--Black Unemployment Hits Record Low Black-White Unemployment Gap Shrinks to Smallest Ever | 2019-09-06T00:00:00 | breitbart | Black Unemployment Hits Record Low, Black-White Unemployment Gap Shrinks to Smallest Ever | One result: the persistent gap between white and black unemployment also narrowed to its smallest on record. The unemployment ratio has averaged around 2 to 1 or so for decades, meaning the black unemployment rate is typically twice the white unemployment rate. In good times, the unemployment rate of whites and blacks falls but the gap remains. And in bad times, the unemployment rate for whites and black rises, but black unemployment typically remains around twice that of white employment. A year ago, the black unemployment rate stood at 6.6 percent while the white unemployment rate was 3.4 percent, meaning black unemployment was 185 percent of white unemployment. In August, the gap narrowed so that black unemployment was under 162 percent of white unemployment. That is the smallest gap ever in records going back to January 1972. This is particularly remarkable because it comes at a time of remarkably low unemployment. Prior to the Trump era, the last time the gap fell below 170 percent was in August of 2009, when the black unemployment rate was 14.8 percent and the white unemployment rate was 8.9 percent. Back then the gap declined because white unemployment was increasing at a faster clip than the already sky-high black unemployment. In other words, the decline in employment inequality now is undeniably the best on record because it comes in the context of falling unemployment. | John Carney | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/k9AAH0z2mFE/ | 2019-09-06 14:40:43+00:00 | 1,567,795,243 | 1,569,330,989 | labour | labour market |
72,924 | breitbart--2019-09-06--The US Economy Created 130000 Jobs in August Wage Growth Accelerated Unemployment 37 | 2019-09-06T00:00:00 | breitbart | The U.S. Economy Created 130,000 Jobs in August, Wage Growth Accelerated, Unemployment 3.7% | Economists had expected the economy to between 150,000 and 180,000 with the median consensus at 163,000, according to Econoday. Unemployment was expected to remain unchanged. Last month’s jobs figure was originally reported at 164,000, now revised down to 159,000, and unemployment was 3.7 percent. Although the headline number was weaker than expected, wage growth was strong in August. Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 11 cents to $28.11, or 0.4 percent, following 9-cent gains in both June and July. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.2 percent. In August, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 11 cents to $23.59. Unemployment among African Americans fell to 5.5 percent, the lowest level on record. The labor force participation rate edged up to 63.2 percent in August, indicating that the strong labor market has continued to draw Americans into the workforce. The largest job gains came from professional and business services, which added 37,000. Census hiring boosted the federal government’s hiring to 28,000 workers. Health care added 24,000 to the total while financial services increased by 15,000. There were little to no gains in August for construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and leisure and hospitality. Holding the line on manufacturing jobs is a sign of strength given signs that manufacturing activity fell this summer. The retail sector shed 11,ooo jobs, with department stores losing 15,000 jobs (partially offset by gains in other retail venues). Over the year, so-called “general merchandise” retails jobs have fallen by 80,000. While the economy continued to grow in the second and third quarter, it has slowed from the rapid 3.1 percent rate of growth in the first three months of the year. Manufacturing appears to have contracted and business investment has been weak, with surveys indicating that uncertainty around trade policy and global economic weakness have become a drag on the U.S. Consumer spending and the labor market have been strong. Data released Thursday showed worker compensation rising strongly and well-above inflation. Rising labor costs can promote capital investment by businesses seeking to make workers more productive. With unemployment near 50-year lows, job growth has slowed and many businesses say they are having trouble hiring. Employment growth has averaged 158,000 per month thus far this year, compared with an average monthly gain of 223,000 in 2018. | John Carney | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/dcuZ7OofPWg/ | 2019-09-06 12:31:25+00:00 | 1,567,787,485 | 1,569,330,988 | labour | labour market |
73,494 | breitbart--2019-09-22--Sen Mike Lees America Indian Firm in Chicago Paid Employees India-level Wages Took Jobs from US | 2019-09-22T00:00:00 | breitbart | Sen. Mike Lee's America: Indian Firm in Chicago Paid Employees India-level Wages, Took Jobs from U.S. Graduates | The fraud exploited loopholes in the B1 visas, which are reserved for managers and trainees according to a press statement by the Department of Homeland Security. The announcement comes as Silicon Valley investors, the high-tech industry, and GOP Sen. Mike Lee are pressuring GOP Sen. David Perdue to let them pass a pro-Indian bill through the Senate via a “unanimous consent” vote. The bill, S.386, dangles the huge prize of valuable green-cards to millions of Indian graduates if they take middle-class jobs from college-graduate Americas. The vote could come as early as Tuesday. Lee S.386’s bill would offer up to 140,000 green cards each year — up from roughly 20,000 now — to Indian graduates who accept low wages while taking middle-class jobs from American software developers, doctors, therapists, designers, accountants, engineers, and managers. There is no limit on the number of Indian graduates who can take U.S. jobs while they compete for the green cards because there is no cap on H-1B visas, L-visas or OPT work permits. Already, roughly 1 million Indian college-graduates are working in U.S. jobs. Lee’s proposed green-cards-for-cheap-labor deal would be a huge boon for the Indian government. Lee’s deal would also aid U.S. investors — FWD.us, for example — by cutting their labor costs — and it would push the U.S. graduate class closer to the same traumatic downsizing that millions of American factory workers suffered when their jobs and careers were exported to China to boost stock values on Wall Street. The Senate vote to block or pass the legislation will be held in the Senate this week, according to Lee. So far, GOP Sen. Perdue is the only Senator who is blocking the outsourcing bill on behalf of tens of millions of young American college graduates — many of whom are strong advocates for more migration and diversity. The Democratic-run House already passed a similar HR.1044 bill, with the aid of 140 GOP legislators. President Donald Trump’s deputies have not said if he will veto the combined bill. The Department of Homeland Security described the Indian fraud at Mu Sigma: Mu Sigma – a large, advanced analytics service provider headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with its main delivery center in Bangalore, India – was illegally circumventing U.S. government H-1B visa regulations by actively employing B1 visitor visa holders under contract within the U.S. In addition, the company’s invitation letters for the B1 visa holders misrepresented the nature of the B1 visitors’ intended business. Furthermore, company officials illegally instructed potential B1 business visitors and company handlers how to avoid detection by U.S. authorities. Mu Sigma B1 visa holders who were illegally working in the United States were also paid in India at India-based wages, which are substantially lower than their U.S. counterparts. This unlawful employment tactic greatly increased Mu Sigma’s profit margins and the company’s ability to provide low bids for end-user contracts. This investigation identified about 400 potential B1 visa violators, and more than 300 instances of illegal visa bond contracts, during the defined five-year statute of limitations. Investigating special agents also identified nine Mu Sigma executives and managers who actively participated in these schemes. Indian graduates are paid roughly $7,000 a year. But the company — including nine managers — was only fined $2.5 million for the violations. Federal law includes loopholes for companies to claim they did not break the B1 visa rules. The DHS press statement linked to a document saying that B1 visas can be used for: Mu Sigma is a successful Indian firm, and was described in Forbes as “India’s first profitable unicorn” — which is Silicon Valley jargon for a privately held company worth more than $1 billion. The Mu Sigma case may be the tip of an iceberg of B1 fraud because the potential for Indian B1 fraud is vast. The B1 visas last for ten years and allow visitors to stay in the United States for six months at a time. In 2019, the DHS report on visa overstays reported that 1.o8 million Indians visited the United States using the combined B1/B2 visa. The report did not provide any details on the number of repeat visits by company employees. U.S. officials have already exposed numerous examples of H-1B and OPT fraud by Indian managers. “Based on your time in the U.S., you have basically defrauded everyone you could defraud,” a Seattle judge recently told one Indian executive as he was sentenced to seven years of jail for H-1B fraud, according to a report in the Seattle Times. The fraud will likely expand if the Indian government persuades the U.S. government to include India in the “Visa Waiver” program. Once added, millions of Indians could travel freely into the U.S. labor market. India’s fast-growing population of 1.3 billion people includes roughly 123 million young men aged between 15 and 24. Roughly 630,000 illegal-immigrant Indians have moved into the United States during the last decade or more, so driving down wages while boosting real-estate and stock values. The illegal population includes many lower-caste workers imported by higher-caste business owners and many young graduates who failed to into the H-1B visa program. Mu Sigma, the Indian-run firm in Chicago, also violated the American rules for H-1B visa workers, according to the DHS press statement: U.S. and Indian companies keep a population of roughly 600,000 Indian H-1B workers, along with at least 200,000 Indians on other work permits, including H4EAD, L-1, OPT, TN, and J- visas. Overall, at least 1.4 million foreign graduates hold U.S. white-collar jobs using the visas and work permits. This population is far larger than the 800,000 Americans who graduate from college in 2018 with degrees in healthcare, business, accounting, engineering, science, software, math or architecture. Many of these Indians are employed by U.S.-based subcontractors who are in long-term outsourcing contracts with brand-name companies, including in the Internet, retail, banking, insurance, travel, design, healthcare, and accounting sectors. Many of the Indian employers run their companies using Indian ideas and social norms — such as the idea of an ingrained “caste” hierarchy — regardless of U.S. laws against nepotism, bribery, and national, racial and sexual discrimination. The resulting corporate islands of India-style discrimination are causing Americans to file lawsuits against their Indian employers. For example, on September 9, Kotchen & Low filed a lawsuit in San Jose on behalf of an American who was allegedly belittled and sidelined by Indian managers at an U.S.-based Indian company, named “Happiest Minds.” The lawsuit says: Americans are also fired at higher rates by the company’s executive, says the lawsuit: The Indian managers publicly mistreated the plaintiff, Tami Sulzberg, says the lawsuit: Numerous other Americans describe similar episodes of Indian favoritism for other Indians. Beckie, a programmer at an international bank in North Carolina, told Breitbart: I was working on a project and doing well … [but] the Director from India decided to transfer the project management to his friend from India … The new project manager tried to make me look bad to the Director. He claimed that I was not showing interest in the project, was not attending meetings. I attended every meeting except for two. I missed the one meeting because the new project manager sent the meeting notification out by email literally 15 minutes prior to the meeting. I was working on something and did not see the notice in time. It was not an important meeting and he could have called if it had been. I missed the other meeting because the new project manager sent the meeting notification out by email late on Friday (after I would have left for the day) for a meeting that occurred on either Sunday or Monday (I forget). In any case, the meeting occurred before I would normally return to work on Monday. I missed the two meetings because I did not know about them. Luckily, I had the email notifications as proof, but I knew I would eventually be removed from the project because of the new project manager’s preference. I was grateful for the heads up I received from the American project manager! There was eventually a mass layoff at the same company. I was out that day, but when I went to clear out my desk the next day, I glanced down the aisle and noticed that the desk of the only other American left in the aisle had already been cleared out. He was not in my group. Beckie remains unemployed, partly because Indian recruiters can be paid bonuses for getting underemployed Indian visa-workers into the new jobs sought by young American graduates. | Neil Munro | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/I_h79lVI094/ | 2019-09-22 19:43:45+00:00 | 1,569,195,825 | 1,570,222,470 | labour | employment |
74,104 | breitbart--2019-10-08--Sanders Campaign Offers Special Protections for Transgender and Illegal Alien Employees | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | breitbart | Sanders Campaign Offers Special Protections for Transgender and Illegal Alien Employees | Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign is offering broad protections to transgender and illegal immigrant employees as part of its collective bargaining agreement, according to the Washington Examiner, which obtained a copy of the contract. The Sanders campaign — which has touted the socialist senator as the most pro-worker candidate — became the first presidential campaign in history to unionize this year. “Bernie Sanders is the most pro-union candidate in the field, he’ll be the most pro-union president in the White House and we’re honored that his campaign will be the first to have a unionized workforce,” Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir announced in March. The statement added that the “majority of the campaign’s bargaining unit employees designated the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent them as their exclusive bargaining representative.” The Washington Examiner obtained a copy of the bargaining agreement, which contains a variety of protections for a plethora of diversity-centered issues, from transgender worker rights to implicit bias training. The agreement allows the union to create committees designed to tackle issues such as “‘diversity, anti-harassment, microaggression, transgender worker rights, gender neutrality, inclusion, and implicit bias training,'” the Examiner reports. The agreement specifically requires the Sanders campaign to keep track of an employee’s “gender expression” and “preferred gender pronouns” and specifies that transgender employees may use whichever bathroom they identify with. It also requires fellow employees to “refer to transgender Employees by the names they choose and the pronouns they identify with.” Additionally, “boarding materials and policy manuals” are expected to refrain from gendered language. In order to best balance the personal preferences of all Employees, supervisors and Employees will be encouraged to make preferred pronouns a part of introductions at meetings, but no Employee will be required to state a preference, nor shall they be discriminated against for not stating a preference at such meetings. The contract also outlines protections for individuals who are not lawfully in the United States, even requiring the campaign to provide “English as a Second Language (ESL) and literacy classes to Employees, either directly or in partnership with not-for-profit ESL providers.” The Sanders campaign is also forbidden from asking about a candidate’s criminal history or conduct a background check on a potential employee prior to an offer, nor will an employee’s absence due to “detention or incarceration by law enforcement pursuant to the Employees’ citizenship status or Visa status” lead to any discipline or be recorded on his attendance record. In the case of a Social Security “No-Match” letter, a notice from the federal government if a potential illegal immigrant falsified his social security number, the Sanders’ campaign is forbidden from contacting the Social Security Administration and cannot “interrogate any Employees about their SSN.” The contract also outlines strict rules prohibiting campaign workers from cooperating with federal immigration officers. The Sanders campaign hit a rough patch over the summer after facing accusations of retaliating against staffers for unionizing. An unnamed individual listed the alleged violations of the National Labor Relations Act, accusing the campaign of “retaliation, repudiation, interrogation, discipline, and discharge.” The complaint alleges that the campaign terminated three employees “because the employees joined or supported a labor organization and in order to discourage union activities and/or membership.” It further states that the campaign disciplined or retaliated against three employees “because the employees engaged in protected concerted activities by, inter alia, discussion wages, hours, or other terms and conditions of employment and in order to discourage employees from engaging in protected concerted activities.” The report coincided with complaints from Sanders campaign employees, who accused the campaign of paying field organizers “poverty wages.” While Sanders initially suggested that they would make $15 an hour a reality by limiting employee hours, the two sides underwent negotiations and eventually reached an agreement. Despite suffering a heart attack last week, Sanders is determined to get back on the campaign trail and expected to participate in the October 15 Democrat primary debate in Westerville, Ohio. | Hannah Bleau | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/IiNs8D4vrlM/ | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 17:06:48 +0000 | 1,570,568,808 | 1,570,573,304 | labour | employment legislation |
74,104 | breitbart--2019-10-08--Sanders Campaign Offers Special Protections for Transgender and Illegal Alien Employees | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | breitbart | Sanders Campaign Offers Special Protections for Transgender and Illegal Alien Employees | Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign is offering broad protections to transgender and illegal immigrant employees as part of its collective bargaining agreement, according to the Washington Examiner, which obtained a copy of the contract. The Sanders campaign — which has touted the socialist senator as the most pro-worker candidate — became the first presidential campaign in history to unionize this year. “Bernie Sanders is the most pro-union candidate in the field, he’ll be the most pro-union president in the White House and we’re honored that his campaign will be the first to have a unionized workforce,” Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir announced in March. The statement added that the “majority of the campaign’s bargaining unit employees designated the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent them as their exclusive bargaining representative.” The Washington Examiner obtained a copy of the bargaining agreement, which contains a variety of protections for a plethora of diversity-centered issues, from transgender worker rights to implicit bias training. The agreement allows the union to create committees designed to tackle issues such as “‘diversity, anti-harassment, microaggression, transgender worker rights, gender neutrality, inclusion, and implicit bias training,'” the Examiner reports. The agreement specifically requires the Sanders campaign to keep track of an employee’s “gender expression” and “preferred gender pronouns” and specifies that transgender employees may use whichever bathroom they identify with. It also requires fellow employees to “refer to transgender Employees by the names they choose and the pronouns they identify with.” Additionally, “boarding materials and policy manuals” are expected to refrain from gendered language. In order to best balance the personal preferences of all Employees, supervisors and Employees will be encouraged to make preferred pronouns a part of introductions at meetings, but no Employee will be required to state a preference, nor shall they be discriminated against for not stating a preference at such meetings. The contract also outlines protections for individuals who are not lawfully in the United States, even requiring the campaign to provide “English as a Second Language (ESL) and literacy classes to Employees, either directly or in partnership with not-for-profit ESL providers.” The Sanders campaign is also forbidden from asking about a candidate’s criminal history or conduct a background check on a potential employee prior to an offer, nor will an employee’s absence due to “detention or incarceration by law enforcement pursuant to the Employees’ citizenship status or Visa status” lead to any discipline or be recorded on his attendance record. In the case of a Social Security “No-Match” letter, a notice from the federal government if a potential illegal immigrant falsified his social security number, the Sanders’ campaign is forbidden from contacting the Social Security Administration and cannot “interrogate any Employees about their SSN.” The contract also outlines strict rules prohibiting campaign workers from cooperating with federal immigration officers. The Sanders campaign hit a rough patch over the summer after facing accusations of retaliating against staffers for unionizing. An unnamed individual listed the alleged violations of the National Labor Relations Act, accusing the campaign of “retaliation, repudiation, interrogation, discipline, and discharge.” The complaint alleges that the campaign terminated three employees “because the employees joined or supported a labor organization and in order to discourage union activities and/or membership.” It further states that the campaign disciplined or retaliated against three employees “because the employees engaged in protected concerted activities by, inter alia, discussion wages, hours, or other terms and conditions of employment and in order to discourage employees from engaging in protected concerted activities.” The report coincided with complaints from Sanders campaign employees, who accused the campaign of paying field organizers “poverty wages.” While Sanders initially suggested that they would make $15 an hour a reality by limiting employee hours, the two sides underwent negotiations and eventually reached an agreement. Despite suffering a heart attack last week, Sanders is determined to get back on the campaign trail and expected to participate in the October 15 Democrat primary debate in Westerville, Ohio. | Hannah Bleau | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/IiNs8D4vrlM/ | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 17:06:48 +0000 | 1,570,568,808 | 1,570,573,304 | labour | labour relations |
74,834 | breitbart--2019-10-18--Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | breitbart | Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | Uber Technologies Inc. is laying off 400 American employees at its California offices while seeking to import hundreds of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program. As detailed by the Mercury News, Uber laid off 88 U.S. employees in August and is laying off about 320 U.S. employees this month at its San Francisco and Palo Alto offices. In total, Uber executives said about 350 U.S. employees had been laid off. The majority of the layoffs are software engineers. Simultaneously, Uber has sought to import more than 1,000 foreign workers through the H-1B visa to take U.S. jobs in Fiscal Year 2019. This year, alone, Uber asked to import up to 1,129 H-1B foreign workers despite the layoffs. “When they’re laying off, they shouldn’t be using H-1Bs at all, or maybe sparingly at best,” said Howard University Ron Hira to the Mercury News. “It runs totally contrary to the intent of the H-1B program.” Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program. The Mercury News reports that Uber was able to import nearly 300 H-1B foreign workers this year — about double what the tech corporation had previously imported. In 2018, Uber imported about 152 H-1B foreign workers and in 2017, nearly 160 H-1B foreign workers were imported. “Big Tech is laying off hard working Americans and replacing them with cheap foreign workers with H-1B visas,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote in an online post. “Silicon Valley should be hiring American workers FIRST.” Between 2016 and 2018, Uber has sought to import nearly 2,500 H-1B foreign workers to take high-paying white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to American STEM graduates and professionals. Oftentimes, importing a foreign worker on the H-1B visa is the first step in a multinational corporation’s effort to outsource the American job, as the foreign worker arrives in the U.S., is trained in the job, and then is eventually sent back overseas with the job. Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward areas is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | John Binder | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/Q_7mAAFB_u8/ | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 22:54:50 +0000 | 1,571,453,690 | 1,571,490,903 | labour | employment |
74,834 | breitbart--2019-10-18--Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | breitbart | Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | Uber Technologies Inc. is laying off 400 American employees at its California offices while seeking to import hundreds of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program. As detailed by the Mercury News, Uber laid off 88 U.S. employees in August and is laying off about 320 U.S. employees this month at its San Francisco and Palo Alto offices. In total, Uber executives said about 350 U.S. employees had been laid off. The majority of the layoffs are software engineers. Simultaneously, Uber has sought to import more than 1,000 foreign workers through the H-1B visa to take U.S. jobs in Fiscal Year 2019. This year, alone, Uber asked to import up to 1,129 H-1B foreign workers despite the layoffs. “When they’re laying off, they shouldn’t be using H-1Bs at all, or maybe sparingly at best,” said Howard University Ron Hira to the Mercury News. “It runs totally contrary to the intent of the H-1B program.” Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program. The Mercury News reports that Uber was able to import nearly 300 H-1B foreign workers this year — about double what the tech corporation had previously imported. In 2018, Uber imported about 152 H-1B foreign workers and in 2017, nearly 160 H-1B foreign workers were imported. “Big Tech is laying off hard working Americans and replacing them with cheap foreign workers with H-1B visas,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote in an online post. “Silicon Valley should be hiring American workers FIRST.” Between 2016 and 2018, Uber has sought to import nearly 2,500 H-1B foreign workers to take high-paying white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to American STEM graduates and professionals. Oftentimes, importing a foreign worker on the H-1B visa is the first step in a multinational corporation’s effort to outsource the American job, as the foreign worker arrives in the U.S., is trained in the job, and then is eventually sent back overseas with the job. Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward areas is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | John Binder | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/Q_7mAAFB_u8/ | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 22:54:50 +0000 | 1,571,453,690 | 1,571,490,903 | labour | employment legislation |
74,834 | breitbart--2019-10-18--Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | breitbart | Uber Lays Off 400 U.S. Employees, Imports Hundreds of Foreign Workers | Uber Technologies Inc. is laying off 400 American employees at its California offices while seeking to import hundreds of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program. As detailed by the Mercury News, Uber laid off 88 U.S. employees in August and is laying off about 320 U.S. employees this month at its San Francisco and Palo Alto offices. In total, Uber executives said about 350 U.S. employees had been laid off. The majority of the layoffs are software engineers. Simultaneously, Uber has sought to import more than 1,000 foreign workers through the H-1B visa to take U.S. jobs in Fiscal Year 2019. This year, alone, Uber asked to import up to 1,129 H-1B foreign workers despite the layoffs. “When they’re laying off, they shouldn’t be using H-1Bs at all, or maybe sparingly at best,” said Howard University Ron Hira to the Mercury News. “It runs totally contrary to the intent of the H-1B program.” Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program. The Mercury News reports that Uber was able to import nearly 300 H-1B foreign workers this year — about double what the tech corporation had previously imported. In 2018, Uber imported about 152 H-1B foreign workers and in 2017, nearly 160 H-1B foreign workers were imported. “Big Tech is laying off hard working Americans and replacing them with cheap foreign workers with H-1B visas,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote in an online post. “Silicon Valley should be hiring American workers FIRST.” Between 2016 and 2018, Uber has sought to import nearly 2,500 H-1B foreign workers to take high-paying white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to American STEM graduates and professionals. Oftentimes, importing a foreign worker on the H-1B visa is the first step in a multinational corporation’s effort to outsource the American job, as the foreign worker arrives in the U.S., is trained in the job, and then is eventually sent back overseas with the job. Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward areas is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | John Binder | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/Q_7mAAFB_u8/ | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 22:54:50 +0000 | 1,571,453,690 | 1,571,490,903 | labour | labour market |
74,970 | breitbart--2019-11-01--America Added 128,000 Jobs in October, Unemployment at 3.6% | 2019-11-01T00:00:00 | breitbart | America Added 128,000 Jobs in October, Unemployment at 3.6% | Job creation was much stronger than expected in October. The U.S. economy added 128,000 jobs for the month and the unemployment rate rose to 3.6 percent, higher than the month before but still near a 50-year low. Economists had expected the economy to add 75,000 jobs, with forecasts ranging between 55,000 and 155,000, according to Econoday. That unusually wide range was caused, in part, by differing views of how the General Motors strike would hit employment at suppliers and related businesses. Unemployment was expected to tick up to 3.6 percent. Prior months were revised upward, indicating that the labor market has been much stronger than initial reports suggested. August’s initial 168,000 was revised up to 219,000. September’s soared from 136,000 to 180,000. Those revisions brought the three-month average up to 176,000. The strength of the labor market was even more impressive because of the drag created by the GM strike and the government shedding workers it hired to conduct the census. The manufacturing sector shed 37,000 jobs in the month, many of which economists expect will be added back now that GM workers are back on the job. The government cut back by 17,000 jobs. The pace of average hourly earnings rose by one-tenth of a percent to a year-over-year 3 percent gain. The average workweek was unchanged at 34.4 hours. | John Carney | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/5wKo5MM1Bec/ | Fri, 01 Nov 2019 12:35:02 +0000 | 1,572,626,102 | 1,572,646,205 | labour | employment |
74,970 | breitbart--2019-11-01--America Added 128,000 Jobs in October, Unemployment at 3.6% | 2019-11-01T00:00:00 | breitbart | America Added 128,000 Jobs in October, Unemployment at 3.6% | Job creation was much stronger than expected in October. The U.S. economy added 128,000 jobs for the month and the unemployment rate rose to 3.6 percent, higher than the month before but still near a 50-year low. Economists had expected the economy to add 75,000 jobs, with forecasts ranging between 55,000 and 155,000, according to Econoday. That unusually wide range was caused, in part, by differing views of how the General Motors strike would hit employment at suppliers and related businesses. Unemployment was expected to tick up to 3.6 percent. Prior months were revised upward, indicating that the labor market has been much stronger than initial reports suggested. August’s initial 168,000 was revised up to 219,000. September’s soared from 136,000 to 180,000. Those revisions brought the three-month average up to 176,000. The strength of the labor market was even more impressive because of the drag created by the GM strike and the government shedding workers it hired to conduct the census. The manufacturing sector shed 37,000 jobs in the month, many of which economists expect will be added back now that GM workers are back on the job. The government cut back by 17,000 jobs. The pace of average hourly earnings rose by one-tenth of a percent to a year-over-year 3 percent gain. The average workweek was unchanged at 34.4 hours. | John Carney | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/5wKo5MM1Bec/ | Fri, 01 Nov 2019 12:35:02 +0000 | 1,572,626,102 | 1,572,646,205 | labour | labour market |
75,558 | breitbart--2019-11-11--T-Mobile Pressures Employees to Use Transgender Language | 2019-11-11T00:00:00 | breitbart | T-Mobile Pressures Employees to Use Transgender Language | The T-Mobile cellphone company is helping activist employees push the revolutionary claim that men can grab women’s pronouns and identity whenever they wish. “T-Mobile is launching new optional name badges for all retail employees that can include employees’ personal pronouns,” the telecommunications firm announced November 6. The press statement said: Executives are also looking for other ways to pressure employees to accept the revolutionary claim that men become women by just saying so: By encouraging employees to claim opposite-sex pronouns, the company is helping the elite gender-ideology activists. These activists want to erase linguistic, legal, and civic distinctions between men and women, and between girls and boys. The company policy bans speech by employees who recognize that men and women are different, complementary, and equal. For example, female T-Mobile employees will be forced to use the wrong pronouns when a male employee insists on being addressed by a feminine pronoun, such as “she” or “her.” “Women who have raised concerns about the impact of gender identity ideology and legislation … have been fired from their jobs, threatened, punched,” feminist Meghan Murphy told her audience at the Toronto Public Library on October 29. She continued: This is unacceptable. Women have the right to speak about their sex based rights and to discuss valid concerns about the impact of men identifying as women on their safety. This trans activist movement — this gender identity ideology — is nothing if not an absolutely regressive, irrational, anti-woman movement that appears to have become incredibly authoritarian, as no one is allowed to question, challenge, or disagree. And those who do, like myself, are threatened with just about every social and physical punishment imaginable — jail, social ostracization, loss of income, violence, even death. It is insanity. Even more so when you consider that it is those of us simply trying to speak — to have a conversation — to ask pivotal questions about laws and ideas and policies that impact our lives and the lives of others — who are accused of “bigotry,” “fascism,” and “violence.” The reversals boggle the mind. And the government and the media have completely failed women on this issue. By eliminating distinctions between women and men, the transgender movement is eliminating the recognition that women are defined by their female biology, Murphy said: The entire language of the trans activist movement has taken up the erasure of women in order to accommodate a tiny minority of people who would like us all to pretend that material reality doesn’t exist. We are no longer women, but ‘cis women’, which means, supposedly, we are women who ‘identify with the gender assigned to us at birth’. This is insulting. I am not a woman because I identify with femininity. Femininity refers to the set of stereotypes imposed on women in a patriarchal society. I do not identify with those stereotypes. I am not passive, irrational, or over emotional. I am not a woman because I wear makeup or high heels. My long hair does not make me a woman. If I were currently in sweatpants and sneakers, if I shaved my head and went makeupless and took up football, I’d still be a woman. The corporate support for a tiny subgroup of transgenders will undermine the recognition that women are different from men and have their own different set of legal rights, Murphy said: Over and over again, I ask those who insist that “transwomen are women” what the word “woman” means. They refuse to answer. They simply say, “It’s a person who identifies as a woman,” which essentially means, “it’s nothing at all” — it is anything anyone says it is. On what basis do women’s rights exist, if the word “woman” is meaningless? If anyone can identify in and out of femaleness on a whim? If we wish to maintain women’s rights and protect women’s spaces, we cannot separate women from femaleness. It is irrational and dangerous. It makes women and girls vulnerable. Beyond that, there is absolutely no reason why we can’t protect the rights of individuals to step outside gender roles, and to express themselves as they like, and also understand that sexual dimorphism is real, that males and females exist, and that those differences matter. T-Mobile executives adopted the gender language after being lobbied by an employee at a gay advocacy event, according to the press statement: Tiffanie [Moton] as inspired by a coworker who was transitioning, who did not want to be referred to as he or she. Tiffanie realized that a simple addition to name tags would help this employee from being misgendered and is an easy solution to bringing up the pronoun conversation. After meeting Jon Freier, T-Mobile’s Executive Vice President of Consumer Markets, at a World Pride in New York City over the summer, Tiffanie sent a follow-up email with an idea to add pronouns to name badges — citing wording from MyPronouns.org to help her explain the importance. The policy helps T-Mobile keep a high approval rating from the Human Rights Campaign, which is transitioning from advocacy for gays and lesbians into a pro-transgender group. The T-Mobile statement said: In general, the transgender ideology says a person’s legal and civic recognition as a man or a woman is determined by their “gender identity,” not by their biology. The ideology also insists that men and women are more or less interchangeable, and it objects to the public’s view of the two sexes as simultaneously different, complementary, and equal. The transgender advocates want to impose their ideology on Americans by establishing “transgender rights” laws. Those rights would require the Department of Justice to penalize individuals and groups who insist that biology determines each person’s male or female status — and also shapes peoples’ likely political, civic, and personal priorities. Polls show that the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents. In 2017, former President Barack Obama told National Public Radio (NPR) that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Multiple polls show that most Americans reasonably wish to help and comfort people who think they are a member of the opposite sex. But those polls also show that Americans reject the transgender ideology’s claim that people’s legal sex is determined by their feeling of “gender identity,” not by biology. A U.K. survey shows a similar mix of sympathy for people who say they are transgender alongside lopsided opposition to the ideology. The transgender movement is diverse, so its different factions have competing goals and priorities. It includes sexual liberationists, progressives, feminists who wish to blur distinctions between the two sexes, and people who glamorize the differences between the two sexes. It includes high-profile children, people who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex, troubled teenage girls trying to flee womanhood, and people trying to “detransition” back to their sex. It also includes men who demand sex from lesbians, masculine autogynephiles who say they are entitled to women’s rights, alpha males who insist they are the natural leaders of women, parents eager to support their children’s transgender claims, wealthy donors, politicians, political professionals, revenue-seeking drug companies, surgeons, and medical service providers. Transgender advocates claim that two million Americans say they are transgender to a greater or lesser extent. But very few people who describe themselves as transgender undergo cosmetic surgery of the genitals. Only about 4,118 Americans surgically altered their bodies in hospitals from 2000 to 2014 to appear like members of the opposite sex, according to a pro-transgender medical study. A Pentagon report commissioned by former Defense Secretary James Mattis said that “rates for genital surgery are exceedingly low- 2% of transgender men and 10% of transgender women.” Yet the gender ideology is rapidly gaining power, aided by huge donations from wealthy individuals and medical companies. In Ohio, for example, in February, a judge forced parents of a teenage girl to give up custody so she could begin a lifetime of drug treatments and surgery that would allow her to appear as a male. The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their male-and-female civic society around the idea of “gender identity” has already attacked and cracked many of the popular social rules that help Americans manage the cooperation and competition among and between complementary, different, and equal men and women. These pro-gender claims have an impact on different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, hiking groups for boys, K-12 curricula, university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, children’s safety, practices to help teenagers,health outcomes, women’s ideals of beauty, culture and civil society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, military culture, and children’s sexual privacy. | Neil Munro | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/xTGmKu10rSI/ | Mon, 11 Nov 2019 18:37:31 +0000 | 1,573,515,451 | 1,573,560,509 | labour | labour relations |
75,827 | breitbart--2019-11-15--New Jersey Orders Uber to Pay $650 Million in Employment Taxes for Drivers | 2019-11-15T00:00:00 | breitbart | New Jersey Orders Uber to Pay $650 Million in Employment Taxes for Drivers | Uber has been ordered to pay close to $650 million in employment taxes in New Jersey after the state’s department of labor said the ride-sharing company misclassified its drivers as independent contractors, according to a Bloomberg report. Bloomberg Law first reported Thursday that New Jersey has hit Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC with $523 million in past-due taxes for the last four years. In addition, the companies face as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts. Uber maintains that its drivers are independent contractors, saying it is determined to fight the assessment. “We are challenging this preliminary but incorrect determination, because drivers are independent contractors in New Jersey and elsewhere,” an Uber spokesperson told Bloomberg Law. Bloomberg Law said an open public records request revealed that New Jersey’s labor department has been pursuing Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years. Uber faces a similar dilemma in California, where it is fighting a recently passed state measure that would reclassify gig economy workers as employees, potentially entitling them to perks including a minimum wage and sick time. Companies including Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have pledged to spend $90 million to fight the law, which poses an existential threat to their business models. Uber is facing an unrelated lawsuit in New York by a class of 96,000 drivers seeking repayment for fees deducted from their fares. In New Jersey, the state’s tax determination against Uber is limited to unemployment and disability insurance, according to Bloomberg. The news outlet reported that Uber’s costs per driver could increase by more than 20% if it were forced to reclassify workers as employees. The state’s department of labor did not reply to a request for comment from Breitbart News. Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected] | David Ng | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/ZeEN5qO7L1A/ | Fri, 15 Nov 2019 19:08:18 +0000 | 1,573,862,898 | 1,573,863,031 | labour | employment |
76,134 | breitbart--2019-11-21--Elizabeth Warren: We Need 10,000 Federal Employees to ‘Rebuild Our National Forests,’ Fight Climate | 2019-11-21T00:00:00 | breitbart | Elizabeth Warren: We Need 10,000 Federal Employees to ‘Rebuild Our National Forests,’ Fight Climate Change | Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said on Wednesday at the Democrat debate that she wants to see alternatives to military service in the United States and promised if she is president, she will add 10,000 federal employees who will “rebuild our national forests.” She made the remarks after she was told that only one percent of Americans serve in the military and was asked if that number should be increased. Warren said it should. “I think it’s an important part of who we are as Americans,” Warren said. “I also believe we should have other service opportunities in this country.” Warren said that as president, she would “bring in 10,000 people.” “As a way to express both their public service and their commitment to fight back against climate change,” Warren said. In her closing statement, Warren said climate change would be a priority if she is elected president. | Penny Starr | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/JW_0KQx8h2s/ | Thu, 21 Nov 2019 04:51:56 +0000 | 1,574,329,916 | 1,574,338,133 | labour | employment |
76,362 | breitbart--2019-11-25--Goldman Sachs Tells Employees: Use Transgender Pronouns to Become an ‘Ally' | 2019-11-25T00:00:00 | breitbart | Goldman Sachs Tells Employees: Use Transgender Pronouns to Become an ‘Ally' | Male employees at Goldman Sachs can freely grab women’s female identities and pronouns, says the company’s pro-transgender policy. “Proactively share your pronouns to foster an environment of respect and awareness (ex: “Hi, I’m Karen! My pronouns are she/hers. Welcome to the team!”),” Goldman directed its staffers November 22. The company’s “diversity and inclusion” group posted the document on November 22, instructing employees to stop using pronouns which recognize the average biological, physiological, and psychological distinctions between men and women: Tips for Being an Inclusive Ally Pronouns should not be assumed by someone’s name or gender expression (i.e. physical appearance). Made a mistake? Don’t make a big deal out of it or draw extra attention to it; instead, make a swift apology and use the correct pronoun(s) moving forward. Practice using gender-neutral pronouns on your own time. Feeling comfortable with these terms does not happen immediately and can require concerted effort. Recognize that some people go by multiple sets of pronouns, while others may choose to only use their name and eschew pronouns completely. It is usually acceptable to use the “They / Them” pronoun set when referring to someone who has not expressly stated their pronouns. To publicize the new pro-transgender policy, the company released a video where transgender activists pressured company employees to drop their recognition of the two sexes. The activists then urged employees to accept the transgender ideology, which insists that women must let men freely slip into women’s identity, status, and private spaces. The three activists featured in the video used poll-tested language to divide and profile the company’s workforce as either “allies” or non-allies — such as enemies. They also threatened lawsuits against people who want to maintain popular distinctions between men and women. The trio also demanded public submission by women and men — but they offered nothing in exchange for their revolutionary demand that people must ignore the biological distinctions between men and women. For example, Sarah McBride, an advocate at the pro-transgender Human Rights Campaign, told the panel of unenthusiastic employees that they must enforce the gender-trumps-sex rule in the hallways and around the water-coolers, or else Goldman Sachs employees may attack other employees; An inclusive workplace environment goes beyond [company] policies and practices. It includes the everyday reality for transgender people; Whether they feel safe bringing their whole selves to work, whether their colleagues are inclusive and supportive, whether they’re hearing jokes in the hallways or around the water cooler. Those are integral parts to making sure the workplace is inclusive, and all of us, whether we are trans or not, can play an active role in making sure our workplaces are inclusive, and I think so often when we talk about allyship, it is so important to remember that that includes actions, and we need our allies to put something on the line. Oftentimes, that is their comfort, and most commonly that is going to be making sure that when they hear a comment or a joke — that even unintentionally demeans transpeople — that they speak out because those little indignities in the workplace, those can create a culture where more pervasive discrimination — or even violence — can occur. The activists did not provide any physiological and biological claim that men who live as women are actually women. “Gender identity is a very deeply held belief in your own gender … it is not just a preference or a whim, it is really a very deeply held feeling,” said Jillian Weiss, an attorney who also said the new transgender focus creates legal risks for company employees. A Goldman employee who is living as a woman argued company employees want to repent when they are rebuked for not appropriating women’s pronouns while speaking to a transgender man. “The natural inclusion is to get defensive and to say, ‘I’m really an ally, and I’m trying really hard, and I only want the best for you,'” said Katie Krasky. Amid the threats, McBride claimed moral superiority over the majority of Americans who do not want to transfer female pronouns to men, “We’ll demonstrate the grace that is required to allow you to grow.” “The only way that we can address these issues …is if we are truly increasing inclusive spaces for everyone,” said McBride, who pointedly ignored the majority of Americans who recognize the complementary biological differences among men and women. Throughout the presentation, the man who presented the panel was eager to please the activists. “Love that, absolutely love that,” said Gary Giglio, a regional manager. “If someone uses the wrong pronoun, say something to that person, pull them aside in private, say something, or if you have to do it publicly … all that is incredibly, incredibly important,” he warned the audience. The company’s top executives are adopting a pro-diversity policy to help hire more women. But the managers have not reconciled their pro-woman policy with the emerging policy of forcing women to surrender their female identity to men who insist they are women. In July, Fortune reported: Nine months into his new role as the CEO of the storied Wall Street firm, David Solomon says that diversity has become one of the company’s top priorities. “As a leader, you have to push on the things that make a company a more desirable place for people to be,” Solomon said. “One of the things that I’ve been very focused on since I became CEO is really making sure people know that a hugely important agenda item of mine is to improve the diversity and inclusiveness in this organization. I’m really taking it on in as forceful of a way as I can because it’s a business imperative and it’s right. It’s time for us to progress on this. It’s a big part of who we are as a firm.” Numerous data shows that transgender men comprise less than 1 percent of the population, and only about 10 percent of the men undergo expensive cosmetic surgery to reconfigure their genitalia. Gay men, lesbians, and feminists are increasingly joining with conservatives to speak out against the transgender demand. “Sisters, when a man puts you under constant surveillance and retaliates whenever you say no, and huffs about being indispensable, and he makes you lie to spare his feelings, and he always puts you in the wrong — no matter what — that is not a partnership,” said Natasha Chart, a New York feminist. “I will not be forced to lie. I will not submit. It’s abuse.” I have said that trans-identified males are male. Because they are. This is not a judgement or an insult, it is simply a material reality — a biological reality. If you are born male, you remain male for life. Everyone knows this. It is not a belief or an opinion, it is a fact. The entire language of the trans activist movement has taken up the erasure of women in order to accommodate a tiny minority of people who would like us all to pretend that material reality doesn’t exist. We are no longer women, but ‘cis women’, which means, supposedly, we are women who ‘identify with the gender assigned to us at birth’. Over and over again, I ask those who insist that “transwomen are women” what the word “woman” means. They refuse to answer. They simply say, “It’s a person who identifies as a woman,” which essentially means, “it’s nothing at all” — it is anything anyone says it is. On what basis do women’s rights exist, if the word “woman” is meaningless? If anyone can identify in and out of femaleness on a whim? If we wish to maintain women’s rights and protect women’s spaces, we cannot separate women from femaleness. It is irrational and dangerous. It makes women and girls vulnerable. Beyond that, there is absolutely no reason why we can’t protect the rights of individuals to step outside gender roles, and to express themselves as they like, and also understand that sexual dimorphism is real, that males and females exist, and that those differences matter. Despite claiming to oppose stereotypes, the transgender ideology is based on tight stereotypes about women and men. For example, McBride told the Goldman employees that men who like to cook are “gender non-conforming.” In contrast, conservatives recognize the clear physiological distinctions between men and women while also understanding the wide range of overlapping preferences and characteristics among men and women. The best way to accommodate the competing complexities, says conservatives, is to embrace a mixture of customs, science, laws, and jurisdictions which try to balance personal freedoms and average sex-related differences. In general, the transgender ideology says a person’s legal and civic recognition as a man or a woman must be determined by their “gender identity,” not by their biology. The ideology also insists that men and women are more or less interchangeable, and it objects to the public’s view of the two sexes as simultaneously different, complementary, and equal. The transgender advocates want to impose their ideology on Americans by establishing “transgender rights” laws. The laws would require the Department of Justice to penalize individuals and groups, which insist that biology shapes male-or-female bodies — and peoples’ likely political, civic, and personal priorities. Polls show that the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents. In 2017, former President Barack Obama told NPR that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Multiple polls show that most Americans reasonably wish to help and comfort people who think they are a member of the opposite sex. The polls also show that the public rejects the transgender ideology’s claim that people’s legal sex should be determined by their feeling of “gender identity,” not by biology. A U.K. survey shows a similar mix of sympathy for people who say they are transgender alongside deep opposition to the ideology. Surveys also show an almost universal rejection of transgender dating. The transgender movement is diverse because the different factions have competing goals and priorities. It includes sexual liberationists, progressives, and people who glamorize the differences between the two sexes. It includes high-profile children, people who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex, troubled teenage girls trying to flee womanhood, parents eager to describe their children as transgender rather than homosexual, and people trying to “detransition” back to their sex, It also includes feminists who wish to blur distinctions between the two sexes, men who demand sex from lesbians, masculine autogynephiles who desire validation from women, alpha males who insist they are the natural leaders of women. Other supporters include wealthy donors, politicians, political professionals, revenue-seeking drug companies, surgeons, psychiatrists, and medical service providers. Transgender advocates claim that two million Americans say they are transgender to a greater or lesser extent. But very few people who describe themselves as transgender undergo cosmetic surgery of the genitals. Only about 4,118 Americans surgically altered their bodies in hospitals from 2000 to 2014 to appear like members of the opposite sex, according to a pro-transgender medical study. A Pentagon report commissioned by former Defense Secretary James Mattis said that “rates for genital surgery are exceedingly low- 2% of transgender men and 10% of transgender women.” The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their male-and-female civic society around the idea of “gender identity” has already attacked and cracked many popular social rules. These transgender win have impacted different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, outdoor groups for boys, K-12 curricula, university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, children’s safety, practices to help teenagers, health outcomes, women’s ideals of beauty, culture and civil society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, military culture, and children’s sexual privacy. | Neil Munro | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/E_Tg0BSVsrk/ | Mon, 25 Nov 2019 21:33:00 +0000 | 1,574,735,580 | 1,574,770,099 | labour | labour relations |
76,576 | breitbart--2019-11-30--Starbucks: Employee Who Wrote 'PIG' on Police Officer's Cup Is 'No Longer a Partner' | 2019-11-30T00:00:00 | breitbart | Starbucks: Employee Who Wrote 'PIG' on Police Officer's Cup Is 'No Longer a Partner' | GLENPOOL, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma police chief says an officer bought Starbucks for 911 dispatchers working on Thanksgiving only to find that the word “PIG” was printed on the cups’ labels. The officer notified Kiefer Police Chief Johnny O’Mara, who called the store and spoke to a manager. O’Mara says they offered to reprint the computer-generated labels, but he took to social media and posted the photo. It has since gone viral. The officer told KTUL-TV that the employee reached out to him personally and apologized, saying it was a joke. However, in a Friday statement, Starbucks said the worker who wrote the offending word on the cup “used poor judgment and is no longer a partner’’ after the violation of company policy. “This language is offensive to all law enforcement and is not representative of the deep appreciation we have for police officers who work tirelessly to keep our communities safe,” the statement said. In a separate joint statement, Starbucks and the Kiefer Police Department stated they are committed to using the incident as an opportunity to promote greater civility. Starbucks officials said they will be meeting with Kiefer police officials to discuss ways to work together, including a jointly hosted event that will allow local law enforcement to meet with baristas and community members “to discuss the critical role dispatchers and police offers play in keeping our communities safe.” Last year, Starbucks closed stores and had employees undergo anti-bias training after the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia location. The coffee chain’s executives met with Arizona officers earlier this year after six officers were asked to leave a store because a customer felt unsafe. | Breitbart News | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/ns0meAiUfbE/ | Sat, 30 Nov 2019 04:20:29 +0000 | 1,575,105,629 | 1,575,137,258 | labour | labour relations |
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