"As workforce well-being dips, leaders ask: What will it take to move the needle? Empowering managers. Promoting accountability. Focusing on human outcomes. The Deloitte Well-being at Work survey sheds light on what leaders can do to make progress." For this one, think of the private sector. Obviously the big ones: Google. Apple. Amazon. Starbucks. UPS. Any company with a Chief executive officer (CEO), or a Chief financial officer (CFO), or a Chief operating officer (COO), etc.  No surprise, things are not well for the employees in these organizations. Let’s start here: as reported by Reuters. Average weekly earnings for U.S. private sector employees was $1,132 in December, up 3.6% from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CEO's higher gains pushed the median "pay ratio" at companies led by the CEOs studied by Equilar to 288 times the pay of their median employee, up from 254 times in 2021. But hey, who needs a fair distribution of wealth or any semblance of economic justice? Let's continue applauding the CEOs for their exceptional leadership and for single-handedly lifting the economy on their broad shoulders, while their workers struggle to catch a glimpse of that elusive American Dream. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

The Supreme Court strikes again. Affirmative action defies our color-blind constitution, when the framers were anything but. A website designer never asked by any LGBTQ couple to design anything is now free to discriminate. And today’s topic, as reported by NPR, “Student loan borrowers blast Supreme Court Decision on Debt Forgiveness.” The image accompanying the piece features a graduate in cap and gown, one tassel being pulled forward, and the other with a dollar sign at the end of it pulling her back. The halls of academia and all of their promise in the background. Her face, needless to say, is pointing forward.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

My wife and I are at Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Geneva Lake, WI. The kids are with their grandma in Illinois. We drove 13 hours for a babysitter so we could get away for a few days-- a much needed respite to reclaim us for us. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

Hospitals and other health care providers in New York would be banned from reporting medical debt to credit agencies under a bill passed this week by the state’s legislature — a measure intended to limit the damage that illness and injury can do to someone’s financial health. If signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the law would make New York the second state, after Colorado, to prohibit medical debt from being collected by credit reporting agencies or included in a credit report. It would make you laugh if it wasn’t so unconscionable. Maybe it still does. It’s an angle I never considered, having never been burdened this way, but you sure know it if you have.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

Two intersecting labor stories reinforce firmly that elections have consequences, and those consequences are borne right down to the ground level by the working class. On one hand, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the nullification of local water break rules for construction workers in Texas. Yes, you heard that right. On the other, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, which took effect yesterday in New York.  I’ll be the first to say that at the national level, both parties are either batshit insane, in the case of Republicans, or bought and sold, in the case of Democrats. It’s at the state and local levels where politics generally impacts the populace at large. And so it goes here, whether it’s you vs. nature in the scorching heat, or vs. algorithmic quotas in the warehouse. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

Per NPR's Planet Money, a new working paper, ‘The Economics of Financial Stress' looks at what stress can do to a household's financial situation.  The paper is by economists from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, and the University of California, Berkeley. They polled a group of 10,000 prime-age, employed American workers about their current financial situation, and asked them to speculate about how they would behave if certain financial conditions prevailed in their lives. And they found that the respondents fell into two rough groups: financial sophisticates, and financial naifs. Most of us are naifs, while a select few are sophisticates. With another recession on the horizon, this has implications-- and reflects, as usual, on capitalism. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

As reported by CNBC: The “quiet luxury” trend has quickly caught on, even though, these days, most Americans are more likely to live paycheck to paycheck. Marked by expensive materials in muted tones, quiet luxury is also known as "stealth wealth." As Americans’ economic circumstances get increasingly divided, consumers could benefit from the shift to low-key basics over loud logos, one financial expert says. Trouble is, all that still assumes a certain privileged economic position. Quiet or loud, it's all the same at the margins. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

My wife has been working as a server a couple nights a week at a rollicking local restaurant and bar, leaving me to hold down the fort until bedtime. Meanwhile, the show hits 500 listens. What's 500 more? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

Last year, our new contract included a provision for a $500 retention bonus to acknowledge what we'd been through as a staff during the pandemic. So we knew we were getting it at some point this year-- we just didn't know when. As it turns out, payday is coming tomorrow-- on payday. And it isn't sudden generosity. It was negotiations, and tomorrow would be just the same old payday without the union. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support

If you're a public worker who joined the NY State and Local Retirement system after April 1, 2012, you're unfortunately in Tier 6. Work until 63, or retire at 55 with a steep penalty. Pay in for your entire career, and pay more if you get a raise. Meanwhile, Watertown (NY) is set to hold its first-ever job fair to try and fill vacant public and civil service positions. Some jobs have been vacant for over a year. Something has to give. We MUST #FixTierSix. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laborforcepod/support