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Tag: compensation and benefits

  • An unexpected job surge confounds the Fed’s economic models

    An unexpected job surge confounds the Fed’s economic models

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    WASHINGTON — Does the Federal Reserve have it wrong?

    For months, the Fed has been warily watching the U.S. economy’s robust job gains out of concern that employers, desperate to hire, would keep boosting pay and, in turn, keep inflation high. But January’s blowout job growth coincided with an actual slowdown in wage growth. And it followed an easing of numerous inflation measures in recent months.

    The past year’s consistently robust hiring gains have defied the fastest increase in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate in four decades — an aggressive effort by the central bank to cool hiring, economic growth and the spiking prices that have bedeviled American households for nearly two years.

    Yet economists were astonished when the government reported Friday that employers added an explosive 517,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate sank to a new 53-year low of 3.4%.

    “Today’s jobs report is almost too good to be true,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “Like $20 bills on the sidewalk and free lunches, falling inflation paired with falling unemployment is the stuff of economics fiction.”

    In economic models used by the Fed and most mainstream economists, a job market with strong hiring and a low unemployment rate typically fuels higher inflation. Under this scenario, companies feel compelled to keep boosting wages to attract and keep workers. They often then pass those higher labor costs on to their customers by raising prices. Their higher-paid workers also have more money to spend. Both trends can feed inflation pressures.

    Yet even as hiring has been solid in the past six months, year-over-year inflation has slowed from a peak of 9.1% in June to 6.5% in December. Much of that decline reflects cheaper gas. But even excluding volatile food and energy costs, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge has risen at about a 3% annual rate over the past three months — not so far above its 2% target.

    Those trends have raised questions about a core aspect of the Fed’s higher rate policy. Chair Jerome Powell has said that conquering inflation would require “some pain.” And the Fed’s policymakers have forecast that the unemployment rate would rise to 4.6% by the end of this year. In the past, an increase that large in the jobless rate has occurred only during recessions.

    Yet Friday’s report suggests the possibility that the long-standing connection between a vigorous job market and high inflation has broken down. And that breakdown holds out a tantalizing possibility: That inflation could continue to decline even while employers keep adding jobs.

    “Their model is that this inflation is driven specifically by wage inflation,” said Preston Mui, senior economist at Employ America, an advocacy group. “In order to get that down, they think we have to bring some pain in the labor market in terms of higher unemployment. And what the past three months have shown us is that that model is just wrong.”

    That said, it’s possible that Friday’s report could still nudge the Fed in the opposite direction: The consistently strong job growth might convince Powell and other officials that, despite signs that wage growth is slowing, a powerful job market will inevitably reignite inflation. If so, their benchmark rate would have to stay high to cool the pace of hiring.

    With that outlook in mind, Wall Street traders are now pricing in an additional Fed rate hike this year: Investors foresee a 52% likelihood that the Fed will raise its benchmark rate by a quarter-point in both March and May, to a range of 5% to 5.25%. That’s the same level that Fed officials themselves had predicted in December.

    Many economists say the pandemic so disrupted the job market that it is acting differently than it has in the past.

    “There are a lot of norms …. that aren’t normal anymore,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said Friday. “We’re seeing a lot of companies maybe not doing layoffs in January that they normally would have because they went through a pandemic where they lost people and they didn’t come back.’’

    At a news conference this week, Powell argued that much of the easing in inflation since fall has reflected falling prices for goods — items like used cars, furniture and shoes — as well as sharply lower gas prices. Those price declines reflect a clearing of formerly clogged supply chains, he suggested, and will likely prove temporary.

    And Powell reiterated one of his central concerns: That inflation in the labor-intensive services sector is still rising at a steady 4% pace and shows no sign of slowing. Much of that increase is a consequence of strong wage growth at restaurants, hotels and transportation and warehousing companies, with fewer workers available to take such jobs.

    “My own view,” the Fed chair said, “would be that you’re not going to have a sustainable return to 2% inflation in that sector without a better balance in the labor market.”

    Yet even with the vigorous job gains, several measures of wage growth show a steady easing: Average hourly pay grew 4.4% in January from a year earlier, down from a peak of 5.6% in March.

    “More focus should be placed on the earnings data,” said Rob Clarry, investment strategist at Evelyn Partners, in a research note. “The high headline (job) reading does not appear to be translating into further inflationary pressure — an important finding for the Fed.”

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  • A surprising burst of US hiring in January: 517,000 jobs

    A surprising burst of US hiring in January: 517,000 jobs

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    WASHINGTON — For nearly a year, the Federal Reserve has been on a mission to cool down the job market to help curb the nation’s worst inflation bout in four decades.

    The job market hasn’t been cooperating.

    Consider what happened in January: The government said Friday that employers added a sizzling 517,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.

    The job gain was so large it left economists scratching their heads and wondering why the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hikes haven’t slowed hiring at a time when many foresee a recession nearing.

    Friday’s report added instead to the picture of a resilient U.S. labor market, with low unemployment, relatively few layoffs and many job openings. Though good for workers, employers’ steady demand for labor has also helped accelerate wage growth and contributed to high inflation.

    Still, the Fed’s inflation watchers might be reassured somewhat by January’s wage data: Average hourly pay rose 4.4% last month from a year earlier, slower than the 4.8% year-over-year increase in December. And from December to January, wages rose 0.3%, below the 0.4% increase the previous month.

    On top of the sizzling job growth it reported for January, the government on Friday also revised up its estimate of the gains in November and December by a combined 71,000.

    President Joe Biden called the jobs report “strikingly good news” and asserted that his Republican critics were wrong in their warnings of continued high inflation and a coming recession and layoffs.

    “Our plan is working,” Biden said, “because of the grit and resolve of the American worker.”

    January’s hiring gain, which far exceeded December’s 260,000, was broad-based across industries. A category that includes restaurants and bars added 99,000 workers. Professional and business services jobs, including bookkeepers and consultants, rose by 82,000.

    Governments added 74,000, boosted by the end of a worker strike against California’s state university system. Health care added 58,000 jobs, retailers 30,000. Construction gained 25,000 jobs. Manufacturing added 19,000.

    Economists had collectively estimated that the economy added just 185,000 jobs last month.

    “This is a labor market on heat,’’ said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management. It would be difficult, she suggested, “to see the Fed stop raising rates and entertain ideas of rate cuts when there is such explosive economic news coming in.”

    The Fed has raised its key rate eight times since March to try to slow the job market and contain inflation, which hit a 40-year high last year but has slowed since then.

    Yet companies are still seeking more workers and are hanging tightly onto the ones they have. Putting aside some high-profile layoffs at big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others, most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security even at a time when many economists foresee a recession approaching.

    For all of 2022, the economy added a sizzling average of roughly 375,000 jobs a month. That was a pace vigorous enough to have contributed to some of the painful inflation Americans have endured. A tight job market tends to put upward pressure on wages, which, in turn, feed into inflation.

    But year-over-year measures of consumer inflation have steadily eased since peaking at 9.1% in June. At 6.5% in December, though, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2% target, which is why the central bank’s policymakers have reiterated their intent to keep raising borrowing rates for at least a few more months.

    Giacomo Santangelo, an economist at the jobs website Monster, said he doubted the Fed would take much comfort from the decelerating wage gains — or relent in its rate-hiking campaign.

    “As long as unemployment continues to go down,” Santangelo said, “as long as the economy continues to be strong, the Fed’s going to keep fighting inflation.’’

    The Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” — a pullback in the economy that is just enough to tame high inflation without triggering a recession. The policymakers hope that employers can slow wage increases and inflationary pressures by reducing job openings but not necessarily by laying off many employees.

    But the job market’s resilience isn’t making that hoped-for outcome any easier. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 11 million job openings in December, an unexpected jump from 10.4 million in November and the largest number since July. There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.

    And in response, many employers have raised wages.

    Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, said the company’s series of hourly wage increases over the past two years have helped expand their job applicant pool. Entry-level hourly wages are now $17.

    For more specialized workers like butchers and bakers, hourly wages start at $25 to $30. Those pay gains have helped the chain attract about 10 to 12 applicants per job posting, the same level as before the pandemic. Earlier, the chain had been receiving as few as seven applicants per posting.

    “If you want good people, you have to pay,” Leonard said.

    He said he’s unsure whether the company will have to keep raising pay.

    “It’s almost a day-to-day decision,” he said. “But right now, we’re happy.”

    Over the past year or so, the job market has earned the label “The Great Resignation’’ because jobs are so plentiful and many workers are willing to change jobs to seek better pay or working conditions.

    Centura Health, a nonprofit that runs hospitals and clinics in Colorado and Kansas, has offered $15,000 “retention’’ bonuses to retain nurses, respiratory therapists and others for 24 months; 2,500 have accepted the offer. And for employees who perform routine but vital tasks like changing sheets and delivering meals to patients, Centura has raised entry-level hourly pay as high as $18.

    By streamlining hiring and directing managers to prioritize the filling of vacancies, Centura has slashed the time needed between receiving an application and putting a new hire to work.

    Sebastien Girard, who holds the title of “chief people officer,’’ said Centura has about 1,500 job openings each month. The market for clinical staff, like doctors, nurses and radiologists, remains extraordinarily tight, he said, though it’s eased a bit recently for other positions.

    Girard doesn’t think labor shortages are going away. He thinks America’s aging population means there will be an ongoing scarcity of available workers.

    “The Great Resignation is there to stay,’’ he said. “It is a generational shift.’

    ____

    AP Business Writers Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak in Washington and Anne D’Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.

    This story has been corrected to show that the labor force participation rate was unchanged in January and did not rise.

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  • The bizarre history of Groundhog Day — or, how we decided to trust a subterranean rodent | CNN

    The bizarre history of Groundhog Day — or, how we decided to trust a subterranean rodent | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Every year, Americans in snowy states wait with bated breath to see whether Punxsutawney Phil will spot his shadow. And every year, we take Phil’s weather forecast – six more weeks of winter, or an early spring? – as gospel, meteorology be damned.

    It’s about as strange (and cute) as holidays get. So how did Groundhog Day go from a kooky local tradition to an annual celebration even those of us who don’t worry about winter can find the fun in?

    We explore Groundhog Day’s origins from a tiny event to an American holiday we can all be proud of. Spoiler: there are badgers, immortality and at least one groundhog on the menu.

    Every February 2, the members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club trek to Gobbler’s Knob, Punxsutawney Phil’s official home just outside of town. Donning top hats and tuxedos, the group waits for Phil to leave his burrow, and if he sees his shadow, the town gets six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow, Punxsutawney gets an early spring.

    But the early seeds of the Groundhog Day we know today were planted thousands of years ago, according to Dan Yoder, a folklorist “born and raised in the Groundhog Country of Central Pennsylvania” who penned the definitive history of the folk holiday turned national tradition.

    The holiday evolved over centuries as it was observed by different groups, from the Celts to Germans to the Pennsylvania Dutch and eventually, by those in other parts of the US. Its evolution began in the pre-Christian era of Western Europe, when the Celtic world was the predominant cultural force in the region. In the Celtic year, instead of solstices, there were four dates – similar to the dates we use today to demarcate the seasons – that were the “turning points” of the year. One of them, per Yoder, was February 1.

    These turning point dates were so essential to Europeans at the time that they Christianized them when Western Europe widely adopted Christianity. While May 1 became May Day, and November 1 became All Saints’ Day, the February 1 holiday was pushed to the following day – and would eventually become Groundhog Day.

    First, though, the February holiday was known as “Candlemas,” a day on which Christians brought candles to church to be blessed – a sign of a source of light and warmth for winter. But like the other three “turning points,” it was still a “weather-important” date that signified a change in the seasons, Yoder wrote.

    In 1973, Punxsutawney Phil delighted onlookers with his cuteness and disappointed them by predicting six more weeks of winter.

    And when agriculture was the biggest, if not only, industry of the region, predicting the weather became something of a ritual viewed as essential to the health of crops and townsfolk. There was some mysticism attached to the holiday, too, as seen in a poem from 1678 penned by the naturalist John Ray:

    “If Candlemas day be fair and bright

    Winter will have another flight

    If on Candlemas day it be showre and rain

    Winter is gone and will not come again.”

    The animal meteorology element wasn’t folded in until German speakers came to parts of Europe formerly populated by the Celtic people and brought their own beliefs to the holiday – except, instead of a groundhog, they hedged their bets on a badger. An old European encyclopedia Yoder cited points to the German badger as the “Candlemas weather prophet,” though it’s not clear why. (Sources including the state of Pennsylvania and the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club say the Germans also considered hedgehogs as harbingers of the new season.) When the holiday came overseas with the Pennsylvania Dutch, they traded the badger for an American groundhog, equally shy and subterranean and likely more prevalent in the area in which they settled.

    Many sources claim that the original Groundhog Day took place in 1887, when residents of Punxsutawney set out to Gobbler’s Knob, known as Phil’s “official” home, but the first piece of evidence Yoder found of townspeople trusting a groundhog for the weather, a diary entry, was dated 1840. And since Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants mostly arrived in the mid-to-late 18th century, it’s likely that the holiday existed for decades earlier than we have recorded, per the Library of Congress.

    Part of the reason so many of us know about Groundhog Day is due to the 1993 film of the same name. The phrase “groundhog day” even became shorthand for that déjà vu feeling of reliving the same day over and over. But Punxsutawney Phil became something of a cult celebrity even before the film debuted – he appeared on the “Today” show in 1960, according to the York Daily Record, and visited the White House in 1986. He even charmed Oprah Winfrey, appearing on her show in 1995.

    Before he was a celebrity, though, he was lunch. In a terrible twist, the earliest Groundhog Days of the 19th century involved devouring poor Phil after he made his prediction. The year 1887 was the year of the “Groundhog Picnic,” Yoder said. Pennsylvania historian Christopher Davis wrote that locals cooked up groundhog as a “special local dish,” served at the Punxsutawney Elk Lodge, whose members would go on to create the town’s Groundhog Club. Diners were “pleased at how tender” the poor groundhog’s meat was, Davis said.

    Last year, the apparently immortal and married groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. AGAIN?!

    Groundhog meat eventually left the menu of Punxsutawney establishments as the townsfolk realized his worth. In the 1960s, Phil got his name, a nod to “King Phillip,” per the Groundhog Club. (The specific King Phillip he was named for is unclear; Mental Floss pointed out that there has not been a King Phillip of Germany, where many Pennsylvania settlers came from, in centuries). Before that, he was simply “Br’er Groundhog.”

    Punxsutawney Phil’s popularity has inspired several imitators: There’s Staten Island Chuck in New York, Pierre C. Shadeaux of Louisiana and Thistle the Whistle-pig of Ohio, to name a few fellow groundhog weather prognosticators. But there’s only one Phil, and he’s the original.

    Despite their early practice of noshing on Phil’s family, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club avers that there has only been one Phil since 1886. He’s given an “elixir of life” every year at the summertime Groundhog Picnic, which “magically gives him seven more years of life,” the club said. (Groundhogs can live up to six years in the wild and up to 14 in captivity, per PBS’ Nature, so do with that what you will.)

    Phil also doesn’t have to spend the offseason alone. He’s married to Phyliss, per the Groundhog Club, who does not receive the same elixir of life and so will not live forever like her groundhog husband. There is no official word on how many wives Phil has outlived through over the years.

    As for his accuracy in weather-predicting – Phil’s hit or miss. He often sees his shadow – 107 times, in fact, per the York Daily Record, which has analyzed every single one of Phil’s official weather predictions since the 19th century. Last year, Phil saw his shadow, which coincided with a huge winter storm. Fingers crossed for better luck for us all this year.

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  • Apple has infringed on worker rights, NLRB investigators say | CNN Business

    Apple has infringed on worker rights, NLRB investigators say | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Apple has illegally imposed rules on its employees that prohibit them from discussing their wages and engaging in other protected activity, according to investigators at the National Labor Relations Board.

    The findings by NLRB agents determined that “various work rules, handbook rules, and confidentiality rules at Apple” are unlawful because they “reasonably tend to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees” who attempt to assert their labor rights, NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado told CNN Tuesday.

    The probe involved several allegations dating to 2021, Blado said, some of which accused Apple of interfering with employee attempts to collect salary data and of “suppressive activity that has enabled abuse and harassment of organizers.” One of the charges claimed Apple had maintained “work rules that prohibit employees from discussing wages, hours, or other terms or conditions of employment.”

    Apple declined to comment. The agency findings were first reported by Bloomberg.

    The determinations could put pressure on Apple to settle the charges or risk facing a formal complaint by NLRB prosecutors in an internal administrative law proceeding — which could result in an order to change Apple’s business practices. The NLRB does not have the power to impose penalties, but can force employers to implement “make-whole remedies,” according to its website.

    According to Bloomberg, the cases in question were brought by two former Apple employees, one of whom cited an email from CEO Tim Cook vowing to crack down on information leaks at the company. Only some of the charges filed have been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests, and those that are available on the NLRB website are partially redacted. The contents of investigators’ findings also have not been made public.

    But Blado said as part of the investigation an NLRB regional office had “found merit to a charge alleging statements and conduct by Apple — including high-level executives — also violated the National Labor Relations Act.”

    Apple has previously clashed with the NLRB over its handling of workers looking to unionize at its retail stores.

    Apple was hit with a complaint from the NLRB over allegations that it interrogated employees regarding their support for a union and selectively prohibited the placement of pro-union fliers in a break room at a New York City Apple store. Apple pushed back at those claims in a filing with the NLRB.

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  • CEO pay cuts could be just the start | CNN Business

    CEO pay cuts could be just the start | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Corporate boards are slashing the pay of some leading CEOs in a new trend that could just be getting started.

    The pay cuts are hitting some of America’s best-known and highest-paid bosses, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

    The moves follow a dreadful year in the stock market – 2022 was the S&P 500’s worst year since 2008 – and come as a growing number of corporations lay off rank-and-file workers to brace for a potential recession.

    For example, Goldman Sachs laid off 3,200 employees earlier this month amid a downturn in Wall Street dealmaking. The bank then disclosed on Friday that Solomon’s 2022 pay is being cut by nearly 30%. Goldman Sachs’ profit dropped 49% last year as the slowdown in dealmaking curbed advisory fees.

    “This is a show of solidarity. CEOs need to share the pain,” said Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, which advises institutional investors on corporate governance matters.

    A similar pay cut could be coming for Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent Alphabet

    (GOOGL)    .

    After Alphabet announced 12,000 job cuts this month, Pichai told employees that top executives would take a “very significant” pay cut, Business Insider reported. Google did not respond to a request for comment.

    But don’t feel too badly for these top execs. They’re still raking in serious cash and stock awards, just not quite as much as in the past.

    Apple, for example, said it is cutting the target pay package of Cook by 40%. But that still leaves him with a massive $49 million in total compensation.

    “They are still overpaid. Let me super clear about that,” said Minow.

    Among the 500 largest public companies by revenue, the median CEO made $14.2 million in fiscal 2021, up 18.9% from the year before, according to the latest research from Equilar.

    Tech bosses have received the biggest pay hikes, with the median CEO pay surging by 42.1% in 2021 to $19.1 million, Equilar said.

    Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley announced Gorman made $31.5 million in total compensation for 2022, down 10% from the year before. The Wall Street bank said its compensation committee took into consideration the fact that “in a challenging economic and market environment firm performance for 2022 was not as strong as the prior year” when it enjoyed record results.

    Minow is relieved that some boards are imposing pain on CEOs.

    “That’s exactly the way pay is supposed to work,” Minow said. “The problem with pay traditionally is it’s been all upside and no downside. CEOs would often get all the credit and money for good times and then blame El Nino or some extraneous force for the downside. Now they are being forced to accept more responsibility.”

    Of course, some of that responsibility is coming because the rules have changed.

    After the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, regulators have required public companies to give shareholders a voice on compensation issues. So-called “Say on Pay” votes are advisory, meaning companies can still go forward even if 100% of shareholders vote no. Still, having shareholders reject pay packages is an embarrassment companies try to avoid.

    Last year, JPMorgan Chase suffered a blow when its shareholders voted down a massive $52.6 million retention bonus that was planned for CEO Jamie Dimon.

    This month, JPMorgan announced Dimon’s pay will be unchanged at $34.5 million – even though wages are rising for average workers. The bank also said it decided not to give Dimon a special award for the year.

    That means Dimon’s pay isn’t budging even as wages go up for many employees.

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  • Union members are poised to reject Disney World contract offer | CNN Business

    Union members are poised to reject Disney World contract offer | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Jonathan Pulliam has been working at Disney World since 2018, dressing up as everything from beloved Disney cartoon characters to Star Wars villains. And while he loves his job, he says he can’t afford it any longer.

    “Me loving it, that’s not enough to pay the bills,” he said about his $15.85-an-hour salary that usually earns him about $550 a week. With rent for a typical apartment in the Orlando area costing about $1,800 per month according to Realtor.com, he says he couldn’t get by if he wasn’t living with his sister.

    “I’d probably be living in my car. I know several who are living in cars because they can’t afford to pay rent,” said the Kansas native, who remembers annual childhood trips to Disney World with his family. “It’s a tourist area. Everything’s expensive.”

    On Thursday and Friday, about 32,000 Disney employees will be voting on a contract offer from management. These workers do everything from performing as characters to working in restaurants and shops, driving buses, trams and monorails as well as working at front desks and performing housekeeping duties at hotels.

    Those working under this contract, all of them full-time employees, represent more than 40% of all workers at Disney World. Currently, the park has 75,000 cast members, as the company refers to its employees, including full-time and part-time, hourly and salaried staff. It is comparable to Disney World’s pre-pandemic employment levels.

    The company’s five-year offer would raise salaries for cast members by a minimum of $1 an hour per year, taking most workers to at least $20 an hour by 2026. That would be $5 an hour more than the Florida minimum wage, which is in the process of being increased from the current $11 an hour to $15 an hour by 2026. The company said 46% of cast members will get more than a $1-an-hour raise in the contract’s first year.

    This is a “very strong offer” with guaranteed raises each year of the five-year agreement, said Andrea Finger, a Disney spokesperson. She said the majority of employees will see raises totaling 33% to 46% during the life of the contract.

    The company’s offer would pay housekeepers and bus drivers at least $20 an hour immediately and culinary staff would start at $20 to $25 per hour, depending on their role.

    There will also be retroactive pay increases dating back to October 1, when the previous contract expired, providing lump-sum pre-tax payments of about $700 to full-time workers.

    But union leadership is urging members to vote no. The unions say Disney presented this as its best offer and that is why it’s going to membership for a vote – not because there is a tentative agreement, which is the point at which an offer normally goes to rank-and-file union members for a vote.

    And this time around, all indications are that the company’s offer will be rejected.

    The six union locals working under the current contract want an immediate $3 an hour raise, or a 20% raise, for what it says is 75% of the members currently making $15 an hour, plus an additional $1 an hour raise every year after that.

    “The unions have been clear from our very first bargaining session that a dollar in the first year is not enough,” said Matt Hollis, president of the Service Trades Council Union, the collection of six union locals that are negotiating with Disney management. “A dollar does not afford Disney workers with the ability to keep up with the skyrocketing rent increases. And a dollar does not afford Disney workers with the ability to continue to purchase basic necessities, such as food, gas and utilities.”

    Pulliam, the character performer who says he can’t afford a dollar-an-hour raise, lives about an hour’s drive from the theme park, and says he’ll be voting no because he can’t get by with the wages being offered.

    “I’m filling my car three times a week,” he said. “I would love to ask these execs if they could get by on $1 an hour more. It’s disheartening. They don’t have to decide [whether]...to eat or get gas.”

    Pulliam said he’s angered by recent news reports about fired former Disney executives who left the company with huge pay packages, such as ex-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who received a $20 million severance package when he was fired by the board in November, or Geoff Morrell, who received $10.3 million for his three months overseeing corporate and public affairs, or more than $100,000 a day.

    Negotiations on a new union contract have been ongoing since August. Despite widespread expectations that unions’ rank-and-file will reject this offer, no strike deadline or strike authorization vote has been scheduled.

    Union leadership said they hope that Disney will return to the table with a better offer once union members reject this one. Disney doesn’t rule out further negotiations, saying that after no votes on contracts there typically are additional rounds of talks.

    “While Disney insists at the bargaining table that this is the best offer, we know Disney can do better, and Disney knows they must do better,” said Hollis. He said the workers who would get more than a $1 an hour pay increase are in jobs where Disney is having trouble filling openings and retaining workers.

    Unions have represented workers at Disney World since soon after the park’s 1971 opening, but employees have never gone on strike. Disney reported that its parks, experiences and products unit, which includes Disney World and other park locations worldwide, had revenue of $7.4 billion and operating income of $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2022, which ran through October 1. (The first six months of that fiscal year were affected by surging Covid cases.)

    Revenue was up 36% and profits more than doubled from the previous fiscal year. And both revenue and operating profits are above what the company posted in fiscal year 2019, before the pandemic, with a 12% rise in revenue and a 10% gain in earnings.

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  • Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.

    Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.

    Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.

    Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.

    Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.

    Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”

    Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.

    Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.

    Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

    “Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”

    Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.

    Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”

    Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

    In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”

    There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”

    Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.

    Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

    National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.

    Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

    Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

    There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.

    Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”

    Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.

    The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”

    Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.

    It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”

    Biden claimed the unemployment rate “is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”

    Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.

    The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.

    Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.

    The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.

    The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.

    Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.

    Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.

    Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.

    Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”

    Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”

    As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.

    The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.

    Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”

    Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

    Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.

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  • Advertised salary ranges are not set in stone. That’s why you still have to negotiate | CNN Business

    Advertised salary ranges are not set in stone. That’s why you still have to negotiate | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Now that more and more states are requiring companies to advertise salary ranges for open roles, you may assume the range is the range and you can’t negotiate for more.

    Not true.

    While the new pay transparency laws mean you’ll have more information about what an employer is willing to pay, the ranges advertised likely won’t give you an accurate picture of what you might be paid for the actual role you’re applying for. So unless you do your own research, ask questions and then negotiate, you might shortchange yourself.

    “I’ve seen people deterred from negotiating because they think [the advertised pay range] is set in stone. We haven’t found that to be the case,” said Brandon Bramley, founder of The Salary Negotiator, which provides one-on-one consultation for people seeking to improve their pay packages and online courses in salary negotiation.

    Here are three reasons why a published salary range is hardly the whole story:

    1. The range may not be the “full” range: Some employers only publish ranges between, say, the 25th and 75th percentiles of what they pay for a given position, said Lulu Seikaly, a senior attorney and pay transparency expert at Payscale. “A lot of organizations won’t post the entire range. It just has to be a good faith estimate.”

    What’s more, Seikaly added, even if an employer publishes the full range for a job, employers are legally allowed to pay more to the right candidate.

    “There’s always flexibility to offer more than the top of the range,” she said.

    2. The published range may be very wide: It’s not hard to find advertised salary ranges so wide you could drive a truck through them. Think yawning gaps of $100,000 or more between the minimum and the maximum.

    Some employers may do so because they’re using one posting to attract applicants for a few roles under the same general function — such as a software engineer. But each role is suitable to people at different levels of experience (such as a junior engineer, a mid-level engineer or a senior one), Seikaly noted.

    Similarly, an employer may publish the same wide range for each of several jobs with different responsibilities.

    And sometimes, it’s not clear what an employer is thinking. Companies are in the trial-and-error stage of compliance since pay transparency laws are quite new and vary from place to place. The oldest one on the books, in Colorado, has only been in place for two years. Pay transparency laws in California and the state of Washington went into effect on January 1. And employers in New York City only started advertising pay three months ago, while employers in the rest of New York State won’t have to do so until September.

    When a range is laughably broad — Seikaly cited one posting that included a range of $90,000 to $900,000 — she believes the company is making “a very big branding mistake” because it appears as if they are not offering a good faith estimate and potential applicants might well be wary. “It’s a big red flag that they don’t value employees,” she said.

    3. The range typically reflects base salary only: There is a lot more to your compensation than your regular paycheck.

    The published range for an open role usually just reflects your base pay, not bonuses, equity and annual increases.

    And all those parts are often negotiable for the candidate a company wants most, even if a hiring manager or recruiter asserts that they’re not, Bramley said.

    What’s more, there are other negotiable parts of compensation that can augment your pay package, such as tuition reimbursement, a home office stipend and additional paid time off.

    Don’t take advertised ranges as gospel. Instead:

    Do your own compensation research: Bramley recommends getting pay averages from three pay data aggregators such as Payscale and Comparably.

    That way you’ll be able to gauge whether the employer’s published range is within reason for the role you’re seeking.

    Get more information on the employer’s published range: If you’re considering applying for a job with a wide pay range, ask the recruiter what specific role the employer wants to slot you into and what the specific pay band is for that role. Then ask what skills and experience justify their offering a candidate pay at the top of the range.

    Some companies may most typically offer to pay candidates at the midpoint of the range unless the candidate is more junior or senior, said talent hiring executive Rachel Levine.

    An employer may choose to pay a candidate above the top of the advertised range if someone brings additional value or an exceptional skillset to the role than what current employees in that role have, Levine said.

    Avoid sharing your pay expectations prematurely: Many states and localities ban organizations from asking job applicants what they’re currently making. So instead recruiters early on will ask you what your pay expectations are.

    “You get a lot of pressure to share,” Bramley said. The risk is you will offer a number below what an employer is actually willing to pay the right candidate, thereby limiting what you might get in the end.

    “Flip the script when asked about your salary expectations,” Bramley suggested. “Ask what range they had in the mind for those who are best qualified.” Or, he added, you might say, “To be honest, my expectation may be near the top [of the advertised range]. But it’s hard to say right now because I want to learn more about the company, the role and its compensation structure.”

    It pays to ask for more: Once you have an offer in hand, you will be in the strongest position to negotiate for more because you know they want you, and most of the time you can secure something extra, Bramley said. But even if you can’t, he has never seen an offer rescinded because someone tried. “The worst case is they say ‘No’,” Bramley said.

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  • This prominent pastor says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’ | CNN

    This prominent pastor says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Left vs. right. Woke vs. the unwoke. Red State Jesus vs. Blue State Jesus.

    There are some leaders who see faith and politics strictly as an either/or competition: You win by turning out your side and crushing the opposition.

    But the Rev. William J. Barber II, who has been called “the closest person we have to MLK” in contemporary America, has refined a third mode of activism called “fusion politics.” It creates political coalitions that often transcend the conservative vs. progressive binary.

    Barber, a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, says a coalition of the “rejected stones” of America—the poor, immigrants, working-class whites, religious minorities, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community can transform the country because they share a common enemy.

    “The same forces demonizing immigrants are also attacking low-wage workers,” the North Carolina pastor said in an interview several years ago. “The same politicians denying living wages are also suppressing the vote; the same people who want less of us to vote are also denying the evidence of the climate crisis and refusing to act now; the same people who are willing to destroy the Earth are willing to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care.”

    Barber’s fusion politics has helped transform the 59-year-old pastor into one of the country’s most prominent activist and speakers. As co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, he has helped lead one of the nation’s most sustained and visible anti-poverty efforts.

    He electrified the crowd at the 2016 Democratic National Convention with a speech that one commentator called a “drop the mic” moment. And at a time when both political parties have been accused of ignoring the working class, Barber routinely organizes and marches with groups such as fast-food workers and union members.

    “There is a sleeping giant in America,” Barber told CNN. “Poor and low-wealth folks now make up 30% of the electorate in every state and over 40% of the electorate in every state where the margin of victory for the presidency was less than 3%. If you could just get that many poor and low-wealth people to vote, they could fundamentally shift every election in the country.”

    Starting this month, Barber will take his fusion politics to the Ivy League. Yale Divinity School has announced he’ll be the founding director of its new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. In that role, Barber says he hopes to train a new generation of leaders who will be comfortable “creating a just society both in the academy and in the streets.”

    Though he’s stepping down as pastor of the North Carolina church where he has served for 30 years, Barber says he is not retiring from activism. He remains president of Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit that promotes moral fusion politics.

    Barber recently spoke to CNN about his faith and activism and why he opposes White Christian nationalism, a movement that insists the US was founded as a Christian nation and seeks to erase the separation of church and state.

    Barber’s answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

    You’ve talked about poverty as a moral issue and said the US cannot tolerate record levels of inequality. But some extreme levels of poverty have always existed in this country. Why is it so urgent to face those problems now, and why should someone who isn’t poor care?

    Doctor King used to say America has a high blood pressure of creeds, but an anemia of deeds. In every generation we’ve had to have a moment to focus on the urgency of the right now. We will never be able to fix our democracy until we fully face these issues. We will constantly ebb and flow out of recessions because inequality hurts us all.

    Joseph Stiglitz (the Nobel Prize-winning economist) talks about this in his book “The Price of Inequality,” and says that it costs us more as a nation for these inequalities to exist than it would for us to fix them.

    Look at how much it costs us to not have a living (minimum) wage. There was a group of Nobel Peace Prize-winning economists two years ago that debunked the notion that paying people a living wage (the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour) would hurt business. They said it’s not true.

    Homeless veterans are housed in 30 tents on a sidewalk along busy San Vicente Boulevard outside the Veteran's Administration campus in Los Angeles on April 22, 2021.

    Well, President Roosevelt said that in the 1930s. He said that any corporation that didn’t pay people a living wage didn’t deserve to be an American corporation.

    I don’t think that American society as a democracy can stand much more. We’re moving toward 50% of all Americans being poor and low wealth. It’s unnecessary.

    We say in our founding documents that every politician swears to promote the general welfare of all people. You’re not promoting the general welfare of all people when you can get elected and go to Congress and get free health care but then sit in Congress and block the people who elected you from having the same thing.

    We say equal protection under the law is fundamental. Well, there’s nothing equal about corporations getting all kinds of tax breaks and all kinds of ways to make more and more money, while the average worker makes 300% less than the CEOs.

    WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump pray outside the U.S. Capitol January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress will hold a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican senators have said they will reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appoints a commission to audit the election results. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Marjorie Taylor Greene calls herself a ‘nationalist.’ This is what that means

    Some people cite the scripture where Jesus says, “The poor you always have with you” to argue that poverty is inevitable, and that trying to end it is a hopeless cause.

    Every time they say that, they are misquoting Jesus. Because that’s not what Jesus meant or said. He was saying, yeah, the poor are going to be with you always, because he was quoting from Deuteronomy [15:11]. The rest of that scripture says the poor will always be with you because of your greed — I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s the meaning of it. The poor will always be with you is a critique of our unwillingness to address poverty.

    To have this level of inequality existing is a violation of our deepest moral, constitutional and religious values. It’s morally inconsistent, morally indefensible, and economically insane. Why would you not want to lift 55 to 60 million people out of poverty if you could by paying them a basic living wage? Why would you not want that amount of resources coming to people and then coming back into the economy?

    Thousands of people march through through downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in what organizers describe as a

    I want to ask you about Christian nationalism. What’s wrong with saying God loves America and that the country should be built on Christian values?

    God doesn’t say it. That’s what’s wrong with it. The scriptures says God loves all people and that if a nation is going to embrace Christian values, then we got to know what those values are. And those values certainly aren’t anti-gay, against people who may have had an abortion, pro-tax cut, pro one party and pro-gun. There’s nowhere in the scriptures where you see Jesus lifting that up.

    Jesus said the Gospel is about good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, welcoming all people, caring for the least of these: the immigrant, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. Christian nationalism attempts to sanctify oppression and not liberation. It attempts to sanctify lies and not truth. At best, it’s a form of theological malpractice. At worst, it’s a form of heresy.

    When you have some people calling themselves Christian nationalists, you never hear them say, “Jesus said this.” They say, “I’m a Christian, and I say it.” But that’s not good enough. If it doesn’t line up with the founder, then it’s flawed.

    Are you an evangelical?

    I’m very much an evangelical. I tell folks that I’m a conservative, liberal, evangelical Christian. And what that means is I believe in Jesus, not to the exclusion of other faith traditions because my founder said that “I have others who are not of this fold.” I believe that love, truth, mercy, grace and justice are fundamental to a life of faith. And for me to be evangelical means to start where Jesus started.

    The word “evangel” is good news. When Jesus used that phase it was in his first sermon, which was a public policy sermon. He said it in the face of Caesar, where Caesar had hurt and exploited the poor. He said it right in the ghetto of Nazareth, where people said, “nothing good could come out of Nazareth.” He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news” — evangel —”to the poor.” That’s what evangelicalism is to Jesus. That’s the kind of evangelicalism that I embrace.

    You’ve had health challenges over the years. How do you keep going year after year and keep yourself from being burned out?

    I read the Bible one time, specifically looking to see if I could find any person in scripture that God used in a major way that did not have some physical challenge. And I couldn’t find it. That helped me get over any pity party.

    You know, Moses couldn’t talk. Ezekiel had strange post-traumatic syndrome types of emotional issues. Jeremiah was crying all the time from his struggles with depression. Paul had a physical thorn in the flesh. Jesus was acquainted with sorrow.

    Police keep watch as The Rev. William Barber and other activists demonstrate during a rally in support of voting rights legislation in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington on June 23, 2021.

    Then then I looked down through history, and I couldn’t find anybody. Harriet Tubman had epileptic-type fits. Martin Luther King was stabbed before he did the March on Washington and had a breathing disorder after that.

    During covid, I thought deeply about death and mortality. I have some immune deficiencies and challenges. I’ve battled this ankylosing spondylitis for now 40-plus years. At any time, it could shut my body down.

    During covid, as I kept meeting people, I sat down one day and I said, Lord, why am I still here? I’m not better than these people. I know I’ve been around covid. My doctor said to me if I caught covid I probably would not fare well.

    As I was musing one day, it dawned on me. That’s the wrong question. The question is never, why are you still alive? Why are you still breathing? The question is what are you going to do with the breath you have?

    Because at any given moment, the scripture says we’re a step from death. And so I’ve decided that whatever breath I have, it is too precious to waste on hate, on oppression and on being mean to people. It’s only to be used for the cause of justice.

    John Blake is the author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

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  • Wholesale inflation in US slowed further in December to 6.2%

    Wholesale inflation in US slowed further in December to 6.2%

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    WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices in the United States rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier, a sixth straight monthly slowdown and a hopeful sign that inflation pressures will continue to cool.

    The latest year-over-year figure was down from 7.3% in November and from a recent peak of 11.7% in March. On a monthly basis, the government said Wednesday that its producer price index, which measures costs before they reach consumers, dropped 0.5% from November to December.

    The producer price data can provide an early sign of where consumer inflation might be headed. The data reflects the prices that are charged by manufacturers, farmers and wholesalers, and it flows into an inflation gauge that the Federal Reserve closely tracks: The personal consumption expenditures price index.

    Rising evidence has suggested that inflation across the economy is easing after having reached a four-decade peak last summer. At the consumer level, inflation also cooled in December for a sixth straight month to 6.5% compared with a year earlier, from 7.1% in November.

    An acceleration in workers’ wages has been slowing, too, which could further help control inflation. In December, average wage growth in the United States was up 4.6% from 12 months earlier, compared with a recent peak of 5.6% in March.

    Over the past year, the Fed has rapidly raised its key interest rate in an aggressive drive to cool borrowing and spending and tame inflation, which began surging more than a year and a half ago.

    The Fed’s rate hikes have, in turn, led to higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. The average mortgage rate is still nearly twice its level a year ago, though it has dipped in recent weeks. Loan costs for auto purchases, credit cards and a range of business borrowing are up sharply, too.

    Even as overall inflation gradually slows, costs continue to surge in some pockets of the economy. Particularly in the vast service sector — everything from restaurants and hotels to airlines and entertainment venues — fast-growing wages are contributing to broader inflation pressures.

    But many other trends have joined to slow inflation and could eventually lead the Fed to suspend its series of rate hikes. Gas prices, for instance, have steadily dropped after hitting $5 a gallon in June. Nationally, they averaged $3.36 a gallon Wednesday, according to AAA, barely above their average a year ago.

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  • Small businesses to tackle long list of challenges in 2023

    Small businesses to tackle long list of challenges in 2023

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Small businesses face a mix of old and new challenges as 2023 begins. A looming recession, still high (although easing) inflation and labor woes are some of issues carrying over from 2022 that small businesses will have to tackle. There are also new regulatory wrinkles, such as a proposed change in how to classify gig workers and more states requiring pay transparency. After three precarious pandemic years, what transpires in 2023 will make a big difference in whether small businesses across the country are able to stay afloat.

    RECESSION WORRIES

    In some ways, whether the economy is headed into a recession or not is less of an issue for small businesses than day-to-day operations.

    Nela Richardson, chief economist for payroll company ADP, said small business owners should focus on bigger issues like labor and wages.

    “Recession for the most part is an academic question,” she said. “We won’t know for several months until after it happens and no one on Main Street makes that call. It’s far removed from hiring and turnover.”

    Given the economic uncertainty, small businesses will have to keep a tight rein on costs and run their operations as efficiently as possible, said Ray Keating, chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.

    Keating said technology can help with efficiency, and one way to keep costs down is to cast a wider net in terms of suppliers.

    INFLATION

    The reason businesses need to keep a firm grip on costs is inflation, which appears to have peaked last summer but remains high. According to the latest data from the government, consumer prices rose 7.1% in November from a year ago, down from an increase of 7.7% in October.

    Experts say inflation is unlikely to fall back to the levels seen prior to 2022, mostly because of higher wages and low employment. The monthly employment report released Friday showed wages rose by 4.6% year over year in December and the unemployment rate at just 3.5%.

    “We want the unemployment level to increase because if it does, wage growth will slow, and not only is there no evidence that’s happening, if anything wage growth is about to get rocket fuel this time of year when wages go up,” said David Lewis, CEO of HR firm Operations Inc., which advises small businesses.

    He said he expects inflation to stay in limbo.

    “I don’t see inflation dropping in any significant way … but I don’t see it going back up above that 8 percent level,” he said.

    LABOR

    An ongoing challenge for small businesses is hiring and keeping workers. The matter is particularly stark at the beginning of the year. Since businesses typically give raises or bonuses at the end of the year, many workers use the period from mid-January to mid-April to decide if they need to make a job change.

    “Everything we’re seeing, or hearing, suggests companies need to look at increases double to what they used to do in the last on average 15 years in order to keep up with everybody,” said Operations Inc.’s Lewis. “Unfortunately, smaller businesses have the fewest resources available to pony up.”

    Since small businesses can’t keep up with the raises at bigger companies, they will have to find new ways to retain workers in 2023.

    Keating, of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, said one solution for small businesses in 2023 could be more extensive on the job training.

    “Not that they don’t train them now, but they need to go deeper than they have in the past and train all the way across the board. That’s one of the answers to these labor challenges,” he said.

    PROPOSED GIG WORKER RULE

    The Labor Department has proposed a rule that would make it easier to classify independent workers as employees, part of a long running debate about whether gig workers like Uber drivers or Instacart delivery workers are contractors or employees.

    The Labor Department said the proposal will protect workers and “even the playing field” for businesses that classify their workers correctly, reducing the number of misclassified employees.

    Workers classified as employees can qualify for benefits such as minimum wage and Social Security. But critics of the proposed rule say gig workers don’t always want employee status and the new rule will be a burden on small businesses

    The proposed rule is “much too broad, unwieldy, arbitrary and confusing, which means it will drag countless numbers of independent contractors and freelancing individuals into a ‘misclassified’ pit, if enacted,” said Karen Kerrigan CEO of advocacy group the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.

    The proposal applies only to laws that the Labor Department enforces, like the federal minimum wage. But employers and courts often use Labor Department rules as a guideline for wider issues.

    The Labor Department’s final ruling is expected this year, likely in the first quarter.

    MINIMUM WAGE CHANGES/STATE REGULATIONS

    Finally, small businesses should be aware of regulatory changes going into effect in 2023, particularly state regulations.

    There are 27 states raising minimum wages in 2023. For example, in Michigan, the minimum wage is set to increase from $9.87 to $10.10 per hour. California is setting the minimum wage at $15.50 per hour for all employees, regardless of size of employer. That’s changing from $15 for employers with 25 or more workers and $14 for employers with fewer than 25 workers.

    Pay transparency laws are going into effect too. Beginning Jan. 1, California began requiring employers with 15 or more workers to list salary ranges on job postings. In New York State, a salary transparency bill is expected to go into effect in September requiring pay ranges on job postings.

    Minimum wage and pay transparency laws vary widely by state, so small businesses should stay on top of their local laws to make sure they follow any changes.

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  • Ousted Disney CEO Bob Chapek will get $20 million exit pay | CNN Business

    Ousted Disney CEO Bob Chapek will get $20 million exit pay | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Ousted Disney chief executive Bob Chapek is set to receive a hefty paycheck following his exit.

    The Walt Disney Company said the former CEO, who took over in February 2020 after longtime CEO Bob Iger retired, is eligible to take home a severance pay package worth roughly $20 million, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. That’s in addition to the $24 million he made last year — his $2.5 million base salary plus millions in stock options and awards. That’s down from the $32.5 million he made in 2021.

    Chapek abruptly exited the company in November after a hectic two-year stint marked by Covid-19 shutdowns, a PR debacle related to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and a significant slowdown in demand for streaming services. He was replaced by his predecessor, Iger.

    The proxy filing said that the board determined that Chapek “was no longer the right person to serve in the CEO role,” even though it had voted to extend Chapek’s tenure for three years in June 2022.

    “The significant developments and change in the broader macroeconomic environment over this period informed how the board viewed the appropriate leader in light of the rapidly evolving industry and market dynamics,” the filing said.

    Disney shares, which were trading at about $170 in January 2022, have fallen to about $100 a share.

    Iger has returned to Disney at a tumultuous time. Its streaming business lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, and Disney’s media networks are struggling as cord-cutting accelerates and once-lucrative outlets like ESPN lose household reach.

    Dan Loeb, the activist investor and Third Point CEO, made headlines in August when he suggested “a strong case can be made that the ESPN business should be spun off to shareholders with an appropriate debt load.”

    A Wells Fargo analyst also called on Disney to ditch ESPN in December.

    Disney

    (DIS)     previously revealed that Iger earned a $1 million base salary. However, that compensation comes with an annual bonus of up to $1 million, as well as an annual incentive-based award with a target value of $25 million. That means that Iger has the potential of pulling in around $27 million.

    Last week, Disney named Nike executive chairman Mark Parker as its new board chair, replacing longtime director Susan Arnold, whose term limit is expiring.

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  • Your Employee Wants A Raise. Here Are 7 Ways You Can Afford It.

    Your Employee Wants A Raise. Here Are 7 Ways You Can Afford It.

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Your employee is asking for a raise. And you can’t blame them. Inflation is running between 7-8%, and people need to, at the very least, keep up with the cost of living. This is now the norm in 2023. It’s happening everywhere. Payroll company ADP recently reported that employees received 7.3% more pay over the past months — with employees changing jobs seeing more than double that amount. And many experts say that trend will continue through this year.

    But giving raises is certainly easier said than done. Big companies may be able to absorb the additional costs. But if you’re running a small or even mid-sized business doing so isn’t so simple. The good news is that there are options. So before handing out that raise and shouldering that extra expense, here are seven things you can do that may lessen the impact.

    Related: ‘Ask For a Raise Now’: Salaries Aren’t Keeping Up With Inflation. Here’s What to Do.

    1. Tie the increase to performance

    Consider a profit a sharing plan for your employees or a bonus tied to achieving agreed-upon goals. When someone asks for a compensation increase, this can be viewed as a mutual opportunity. You can be the one to happily agree to pay that increase — perhaps even more than what’s being requested — as long as you receive something in return. People don’t have to be in sales to earn a commission. You can set specific job-related goals that either increase revenues and productivity or decrease expenses so that a specific return on investment can be achieved, with added profits shared.

    2. Offer more PTO and flexibility

    Instead of increasing pay, consider increasing paid time off. Or provide more flexible work hours. Or maybe this is the time to implement a four-day workweek program or expanded work-from-home benefits.

    Compensation does not always have to be in cash. People value their time just as much. Flexibility is important, and one of the biggest benefits of working for a small business is the ability to have that flexibility without the bureaucratic oversight experienced by employees at larger companies. Yes, paying someone not to work is still an added cost to you. But if you both agree on job deliverables, you and your employee can together make sure the work gets done on a schedule that suits you both.

    Related: Employers Need Workers. Now They’re Realizing The Untapped Talent of These People.

    3. Pay more for health insurance

    Many business owners forget that, in most cases, health insurance payments are both non-taxable to the employee while still being deductible for the employer. If you just give a salary increase, the employee gets taxed, and you have to pay employer payroll taxes. But if instead, you offer to pay more for health insurance, you both save money on taxes, and the employee gets more in their net paycheck. It’s a win-win. Of course, talk to your tax accountant to make sure there are no other factors that would impose on this benefit.

    4. Pass through the cost to customers

    If you increase your employee’s pay, you may consider passing that cost increase to your customers in the form of higher prices or fees. But be careful. You don’t have to pass on the full amount of a pay increase if you can find savings elsewhere. And if you spread the cost across your entire overhead so that it’s fully absorbed, you may find it easier to spread the price increase across many customers and products and therefore cushioning the impact.

    5. Offer a long-term employment contract

    When an employee asks for more compensation, you can also ask for something in return: a longer-term commitment. Although most employer/employee relationships are “at-will” which means that both can end things whenever they want, by entering into a longer-term contract you can not only set goals and include future benefits that can be earned, but also agree on a fixed compensation increase over the term of that contract that will enable you to better budget your future costs.

    6. Do a 401(k) match

    Instead of a salary increase, you can offer to increase your 401(k) retirement plan match for that employee. Not only does that employee receive that money on a pre-tax basis (which means that you can pay a lower amount to the employee). It also means more money in your employee’s 401(k) account, which they can put away for retirement. You also don’t fail any of the required “discrimination tests,” which limits your contributions as a higher-paid employee or owner. Also, thanks to the recently passed Secure 2.0 retirement legislation, some businesses will soon receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 per employee every year for five years when they contribute to a 401(k) plan. This means you can give your employee added compensation and the government will pay for it!

    7. Finally, consider an ESOP

    Thanks to an aging population, there has been a significant increase in interest in employee stock ownership plans or ESOPS. So rather than dolling out increased compensation to your existing workers, you can create an ESOP where you get paid for a portion of your equity that you sell to an entity owned by your employees, and then you receive significant future tax benefits on both your payback to the bank for financing the transaction and for the income allocated to that ESOP. A great resource to figure out whether an ESOP is right for your business is here.

    You’re going to have to pay your employees more this year. That’s a given. But just because your employees request (and need) a raise doesn’t mean you have to bear the entire cost burden. There are options.

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  • Tim Cook agrees to a massive pay cut | CNN Business

    Tim Cook agrees to a massive pay cut | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to cut his pay this year after shareholders rebelled.

    The world’s largest tech company said it would reduce Cook’s target pay package to $49 million, 40% lower than his target pay for 2022 and about half Cook’s $99.4 million total compensation that he was granted last year.

    The vast majority of Cook’s 2022 compensation — about 75% — was tied up in company shares, with half of that dependent on share price performance.

    But shareholders voted against Cook’s pay package after Apple’s stock fell nearly 27% last year. The vote is nonbinding, but the board’s compensation committee said it took the vote into consideration.

    “The compensation committee balanced shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance, and a recommendation from Mr. Cook to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received,” the company said in its annual proxy statement released Thursday.

    This year, the executive’s share award target has been cut to $40 million. About $30 million, or three-quarters, of that is linked to share price performance.

    Cook’s base salary of $3 million will stay the same, the company said, as well as a $6 million bonus.

    The board said it believes Cook’s new pay package is “responsive to shareholder feedback, while continuing both to align pay with performance and to recognize Mr. Cook’s outstanding leadership.”

    The tech boss, who has headed up Apple since 2011, is estimated to have a personal wealth of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.

    Apple’s share price, like other tech companies, plunged last year as coronavirus lockdowns shuttered some of its factories in China. Supply chain bottlenecks and fears that a global economic slowdown would crimp demand also dragged down its stock.

    In January last year, the tech giant became the first publicly traded company to notch a $3 trillion market capitalization, yet has has shed nearly $1 billion of that value since.

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  • This company will make employees pay a hefty fine if they bother colleagues on vacation | CNN Business

    This company will make employees pay a hefty fine if they bother colleagues on vacation | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Getting urgent work emails from colleagues even during vacation? This is a common occurrence for many white-collar workers, especially in India where employees feel overworked and underpaid compared to their global peers, according to several studies over the years.

    But one Mumbai-based firm has come up with a novel way to fix this problem.

    Dream11, a fantasy gaming platform, will fine its employees 100,000 rupees ($1,200) if they contact colleagues with “work-related calls or messages” during their time off.

    This is part of the company’s efforts to ensure that its employees get to “switch off and enjoy a healthy work-life balance,” according to a statement shared by Dream11 with CNN.

    Under the policy, called Unplug, employees log off from all office work for seven days in a year.

    “Individuals who have opted for an unplugged leave are logged out of … emails, Slack and WhatsApp groups,” the statement added.

    The spokesperson did not share when the policy was first introduced. According to a December interview with CNBC, the company’s co-founders said the policy has been effective so far.

    Founded in 2008, Dream11 has more than 1,000 employees, is valued at $8 billion and includes Tiger Global and Tencent among its investors, according to to data platform Tracxn.

    Not taking a break can be dangerous for health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), working long hours is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year through stroke and heart disease.

    In a global analysis of the link between loss of life, health and working long hours, WHO and the International Labour Organization estimated that in 2016, some 745,000 people died as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week.

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  • The owner of Uniqlo is boosting pay for Japan employees by up to 40% as inflation bites | CNN Business

    The owner of Uniqlo is boosting pay for Japan employees by up to 40% as inflation bites | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Fast Retailing, the Japanese giant that owns popular clothing brands Uniqlo and Theory, will start paying its employees much more this year.

    The company announced Wednesday that it would boost salaries in Japan by up to 40%, acknowledging that “remuneration levels have remained low” in the country in recent years.

    “This will include employees from headquarters and corporate departments responsible for the functions of the company’s global headquarters, as well as employees working in stores,” the firm said in a statement.

    The move comes just days after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called on business leaders to accelerate raises for workers, warning that the economy risked falling into stagflation if wage rises continued to fall behind price increases.

    Japan is grappling with the biggest drop in living standards in nearly a decade.

    Last Friday, the world’s third largest economy reported its worst real-wage decline in more than eight years, exacerbating conditions for workers already contending with higher costs of living.

    In the capital of Tokyo, core inflation, which measures items excluding fresh food, climbed 4% in December compared to a year ago, above the 3.8% expected by economists, according to official figures released Tuesday.

    That was “the highest seen in 40 years,” analysts at Nomura said in a Wednesday report.

    “Inflation in Japan is a factor in our considerations,” a Fast Retailing spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

    But the company is generally more focused on aligning “each employee’s remuneration with global standards, to be able to increase our competitiveness,” the representative added.

    The company will officially adjust its overall compensation system in March. Starting salaries for entry-level university graduates will jump by roughly 18%, while new store managers could see a hike of approximately 36%, according to the company.

    The retailer has also been hiking pay for staff in some of its overseas markets, leading to pay bumps ranging from 5% to 25%, the spokesperson said.

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  • Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

    Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    After months of uncertainty and feeling left in the dark, many former Twitter employees impacted by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. But some are frustrated by the offer and the conditions attached to it.

    The severance offer promises one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, saying it falls short of the “3 months of severance” that new owner Elon Musk had previously promised would be provided. (That time period appeared to include pay for the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide under various state laws.) The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

    The former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration demands or lawsuits against the company.

    “We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and not happy about only being offered one month severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another lawyer working on behalf of former Twitter employees, told CNN in a statement Monday. “We have filed hundreds of arbitration claims already and will continue to file them.”

    The severance fight comes as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    Twitter’s trust and safety team experienced at least a dozen additional cuts on Friday, according to a report from Bloomberg over the weekend.

    Bloom, who said she has also filed dozens of demands for arbitration on behalf of former Twitter employees, said the severance offer does not include pro-rated bonuses or accelerated stock vesting for eligible employees, which could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost funds for some affected workers. The company typically provided such benefits to laid-off employees prior to Musk’s acquisition, she said.

    The severance offer would also require that employees who sign agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal actions brought by third parties against Twitter. But they would also have to agree to cooperate on behalf of Twitter in its defense to “provide truthful information” as a witness in any legal action against the company, according to the attorneys.

    One Twitter employee laid off during the early November mass layoffs tweeted over the weekend urging fellow affected employees not to “click or accept ANYTHING in that package” without first speaking to an attorney. “For me personally, the money is one component,” they said. “It’s about principle. I strongly believe that we should be keeping people accountable for the promises that they make and failing to deliver on them.”

    To add insult to injury, at least one former employee claimed on Twitter that the severance offer went to their email’s spam folder.

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  • Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

    Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement.

    One former Twitter employee told CNN that they had expected to receive some information from the company by Wednesday, the last official employment date for many workers affected by the first wave of layoffs under Musk based on state and federal notice period regulations.

    As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. Other laid-off employees tweeted similar remarks this week, including one who said they had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance.”

    A spokesperson for Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing hundreds of former Twitter employees, confirmed that her clients who were hit by the Twitter layoffs in early November also had yet to receive any severance information as of Thursday. “There was some anticipation that they would be sent yesterday, but we haven’t seen that,” Kevin Ready, the spokesperson, said of the severance agreements.

    “Yesterday was the official separation date for thousands of Twitter employees, and after months of chaos and uncertainty created by Elon Musk, these workers remain in the lurch,” Liss-Riordan said in a Thursday statement.

    The employee concerns come as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. And The New York Times last month reported that Twitter was considering denying laid off employees their severance as a cost-cutting measure, citing people familiar with the talks among company leadership, adding to the sense of uncertainty for affected workers.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations department as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims it has not offered or paid any severance. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide.

    A report by Fortune on Thursday afternoon, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation and screenshots viewed by the publication, said that Twitter planned to send severance agreements to affected employees on Thursday, although it was unclear exactly when they would go out. The severance agreements were set to provide laid off US employees with one month’s base pay and would include a provision requiring employees to waive participation in pending lawsuits against the company, according to the report.

    Liss-Riordan has filed four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of employees affected by layoffs, with claims including that Twitter backtracked on promises to allow remote work and consistent severance benefits, as well as complaints related to alleged disability and gender-based discrimination. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees. Liss-Riordan said Thursday that she has also filed another 100 demands for arbitration against Twitter on behalf of former employees, after filing an initial 100 last month.

    Last month, the employees represented by Liss-Riordan scored an early win in court when a judge ordered Twitter to inform laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before asking them to sign any separation agreements that include a release of legal claims.

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  • Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

    Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Mount Sinai Morningside and West hospital reached a tentative agreement with the state nursing union on a new contract Sunday, avoiding a strike Monday morning, according to a news release from the union.

    Nurses at two other area hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Bronx, are still due to strike after not reaching agreements.

    Both hospitals are back at the bargaining table with New York State Nurses Association nurses today – if a tentative agreement is not reached, then approximately 3,625 nurses at Mount Sinai and approximately 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Bronx will strike at 6 a.m. Monday. The union said during a news conference Sunday morning that negotiations could go into the early morning.

    The new tentative agreement at Morningside and West brings the anticipated number of nurses to strike down from 8,700 to about 7,125. The tentative agreement improves staffing, protects benefits and increases salaries over three years.

    That brings seven of the 12 New York hospitals in negotiations to reach tentative agreements or new contracts.

    “The time is now to settle fair contracts that help nurses deliver the care that all New Yorkers deserve. We are fighting to improve patient care and will do whatever it takes to win,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Sunday.

    New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital is continuing to move infants out of intensive care units to other area hospitals, is diverting ambulances to other facilities and postponing elective surgeries and heart surgeries ahead of a planned nursing strike Monday.

    In a statement late Saturday, the hospital said it has been negotiating “in good faith” with the nursing union on a new contract. Mount Sinai has agreed to meet with NYSNA nurses after walking out on a bargaining session Thursday, the union said Sunday.

    A Mount Sinai spokesperson told CNN on Saturday the hospital system is actively bargaining with the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses under separate union agreements.

    But if agreements aren’t reached at several New York City area hospitals, thousands of nurses will strike on Monday morning.

    The hospital said Sunday its current wage offer “is identical” to ratified agreements at NewYork-Presbyterian and Maimonides – and would increase a Mount Sinai nurse’s base salary by 19.1 percent over three years.

    “But NYSNA’s inconsistent bargaining, unwillingness to accept this offer, and insistence on moving forward with a strike has left us no choice but to take significant actions to care for our patients,” the hospital statement said.

    Seven neonatal intensive care unit infants were safely transferred Saturday to partner hospitals in New York City, a hospital spokesperson told CNN on Sunday. Another six will be transferred Sunday from the NICUs at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai West, the spokesperson said.

    “In addition, we have transferred close to 100 patients from the affected hospitals – The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside – to unaffected hospitals within the Mount Sinai system and partner hospitals in NYC and we continue to safely discharge patients who were schedule to go home.” All elective surgeries have been postponed, the spokesperson said.

    The NYSNA hit back Saturday at comments from Mount Sinai, which said Friday it was transferring infants in its neonatal intensive care units to other area hospitals because of the strike notice, adding the hospital was dismayed by the union’s “reckless” actions.

    “As a labor and delivery nurse who helps mothers to bring babies into this world, I find it outrageous that Mount Sinai would compromise care for our NICU babies in any way. We already have NICU nurses caring for twice as many sick babies as they should,” Matt Allen, the union’s regional director, said.

    “It’s unconscionable that Mount Sinai refuses to address unsafe staffing in our NICU and other units of the hospital but is now stirring fears about our NICU babies in contract negotiations,” he added.

    In a statement Saturday, the NYSNA said nurses at BronxCare and The Brooklyn Hospital Center reached tentative agreements that will improve safe staffing levels and enforcement, increase wages by 7%, 6%, and 5% annually during their three-year contract, and retain their healthcare benefits.

    On Saturday, nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian announced they had agreed to ratify their deal, but it was a close vote – 57% nurses voted yes and 43% were against.

    “Voting on whether to ratify a contract is a key component of union democracy. Just like in any democracy, there is rarely 100 percent consensus,” Hagans said in a statement.

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  • Cooler hiring and milder pay gains could aid inflation fight

    Cooler hiring and milder pay gains could aid inflation fight

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    WASHINGTON — America’s employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in December, evidence that the economy remains healthy even as the Federal Reserve is rapidly raising interest rates to try to slow economic growth and the pace of hiring.

    With companies continuing to add jobs across the economy, the unemployment rate fell from 3.6% to 3.5%, matching a 53-year low, the Labor Department said Friday.

    All told, the December jobs report suggested that the labor market may be cooling in a way that could aid the Fed’s fight against high inflation. Last month’s gain was the smallest in two years, and it extended a hiring slowdown for most of 2022.

    What’s more, average hourly pay growth eased in December to its slowest pace in 16 months. That slowdown could reduce pressure on employers to raise prices to offset their higher labor costs.

    Average hourly wage growth was up 4.6% in December from 12 months earlier, compared with a 4.8% year-over-year increase in November and a recent peak of 5.6% in March.

    “If these trends continue, we can feel more and more confident that the strength of this labor market is sustainable,” said Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the online job site Indeed’s Hiring Lab. “The outlook for next year is uncertain, but many signs point toward a soft landing,” rather than a feared recession.

    Traders on Wall Street appeared encouraged by the report’s suggestion of milder pay growth and sent stock market futures pointing to solid gains.

    Last month’s job growth capped a second straight year of robust hiring during which the nation regained all 22 million jobs it lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the rapid hiring and the hefty pay raises that accompanied it likely contributed to a spike in prices that catapulted inflation to its highest level in 40 years.

    The picture for 2023 is much cloudier. Many economists foresee a recession in the second half of the year, a consequence of the Fed’s succession of sharp rate hikes. The central bank’s officials have projected that those increases will cause the unemployment rate to reach 4.6% by year’s end.

    Though the Fed’s higher rates have begun to cool inflation from its summertime peak, they have also made mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing more expensive.

    For now at least, the job market is showing surprising resilience in the face of higher interest rates across the economy. Employers added 4.5 million jobs in 2022, on top of 6.7 million in 2021. All that hiring was part of a powerful rebound from the pandemic recession of 2020.

    In June, year-over-year inflation reached 9.1%, the highest level in 40 years, before slowing to 7.1% in November. Last year, in an aggressive drive to reduce inflation back toward its 2% goal, the Fed raised its benchmark rate seven times.

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell has emphasized in recent remarks that consistently strong job growth, which can force employers to raise pay to find and keep workers, can perpetuate inflation: Companies often raise prices to pass on their higher labor costs to their customers. And higher pay typically fuels more consumer spending, which can keep inflation elevated.

    For that reason, Powell and other Fed officials have signaled their belief that to get inflation under control, unemployment will have to rise from its current low level.

    Fed officials have projected that they will raise their benchmark short-term rate to about 5.1% this year, the highest level in more than 15 years. If hiring and inflation remain strong, the Fed’s rate might have to move even higher.

    Technology companies have been laying off workers for months, with some, including Amazon, saying that they had hired too many people during the pandemic. Amazon has boosted its layoffs to 18,000 from an earlier announcement of 10,000. Cloud software provider Salesforce says it will cut 10% of its workers. And Facebook’s parent company Meta says it will shed 11,000.

    Smaller tech companies are also being hit. Stitch Fix, the fast fashion provider, said Thursday that it’s cutting 20% of its salaried workers. DoorDash has said it will eliminate 1,250 jobs.

    Yet outside of high tech, smaller companies, in particular, are still hiring. According to the payroll processor ADP, companies with more than 500 employees cut jobs in December, while businesses below that threshold added many more workers. And an analysis by investment bank Jefferies showed that small companies were posting a historically high proportion of job openings.

    The Fed is concerned about the fast pace of wage growth, which it sees as a reason why inflation is likely to remain high. Average hourly pay is rising at about a 5% pace, one of its highest levels in decades.

    Economists think growth likely amounted to a solid annual rate of roughly 2.5% in the final three months of last year. But there are signs it is slowing, and most analysts expect weaker growth in the current first quarter of 2023.

    Consumers barely increased their spending in November, held down by modest holiday shopping. And manufacturing activity contracted in December for a second straight month, with new orders and production both shrinking.

    And the housing market, an important economic bellwether, has taken a severe hit from the Fed’s rate hikes, which have more than doubled mortgage rates in the past year. Home sales have plummeted for the past 10 months.

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