v.19 n. 10 – Released March 4, 2015
Laughing Planet Café has 14 restaurants spread across Oregon and Nevada. Its 280 employees spend their workdays making burritos named after Che Guevara and mixing up salads called Highway to Kale. And now, in a move nearly unheard of in the restaurant world, they will all have three months of fully paid parental leave after they have a new baby.
Laughing Planet’s owner and chief executive Franz Speilvogel made the decision last week, after a pregnant store manager expressed concerns that she wouldn’t be able to take any maternity leave. “She’s entering her final trimester, and she talked about the circumstances of being an employee in my company and what she’s faced with,” said Speilvogel, whose Portland (Ore.) company didn’t previously have any parental leave policy in place. “I told her, let me think about it and get back to you.” He was still thinking about it a few days later when President Obama announced that federal workers would now get six weeks of paid sick leave and that he planned to push Congress to extend those rights to everyone else.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that select H-4 visa holders will be eligible for employment authorization.
It was part of President Obama’s executive action on immigration in November, but has been part of a grassroots movement for much longer. It is the first reform to be implemented that’s geared toward high-skilled immigrants.
The H-4 visa is given to spouses of those on an H-1B, as well as a handful of other, less common, visas. At present, H-4 visa holders can’t earn an income or possess a social security number.
Small, local businesses lack access to capital. Banks will place restrictions before giving loans, like asking for collateral, wanting to see years of revenues, or asking for personal covenants. And then venture and angel investors aren’t interested in the low-rate returns hairdressers, restaurants and furniture-makers can offer; they want “high growth.”
That is why small, local businesses generally stay as small, local businesses. But what if small businesses could reach over the top of those market failures to the general public and investors who are willing to suffer the relatively low returns on offer? That might open up options.
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This latest episode of Modern Workplace explores how the Internet of Things is changing how people and technology interact.
While U.S. cable television customers are longing to finally be able to pay for just the channels they actually watch, others have begrudgingly accepted that bundled television is still the way to go for getting their money’s worth. Companies like DISH, Verizon, and Sony have only announced in the last year their own plans for stand-alone streaming services. With a few clicks, $8 for Netflix NFLX +0.75%, $15 for HBO, $20 for ESPN could easily add up to a higher total than what customers currently pay for only a few channels they actually watch in a bundle. What’s more, it doesn’t look like companies will use the same set-top box, if they use set-top boxes at all (Sony and Verizon are looking to offer services completely on the cloud).
v.19 n. 09 – Released February 24, 2015
Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
This isn’t like the secret police, this IS the secret police. You should be pissed and complaining about this to anyone who will listen. Note that this is a BRITISH newspaper exposing this travesty. – Ed
Since 2008, the number of employer businesses going under has exceeded the number of employer businesses being founded, driving down the stock of American employers. Combined with the 49 percent decline in the per capita rate of formation of new employees that occurred between 1977 and 2012, this trend has some observers worried.
Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, argued in a recent article that the recent pattern is America’s “single most serious economic problem” and that “economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends.”
While I agree with Mr. Clifton and others that the three-decade long decline in the new employer creation rate is distressing, I believe that the problem it reveals is more subtle than his article lets on. Taken in conjunction with other data, the decline in the rate of employer firm formation indicates primarily that American business owners are becoming less willing to hire others.
With the U.S. economy gaining steam, employers are finally hiring — and those benefits have spread to most corners of the job market. Even America’s young adults, who bore the brunt of the downturn, are starting to regain their economic footing.
That doesn’t mean all is well for millennials, especially those who entered the workforce when things were at their worst. Improvements in the headline statistics mask some of the longer-lasting effects of the recession. Here are some of the scars that recession graduates may bear for a long time to come.
Dispatches From The Front 