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Tag: Wages and salaries

  • Toyota accepts union demands for biggest wage hike in two decades | CNN Business

    Toyota accepts union demands for biggest wage hike in two decades | CNN Business

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    Tokyo
    Reuters
     — 

    Toyota Motor, the world’s biggest automaker, said on Wednesday it would accept a union demand for the biggest base salary increase in 20 years and a rise in bonus payments, as Japan steps up calls for businesses to hike pay.

    As one of Japan’s biggest employers, Toyota

    (TM)     has long served as a bellwether of the spring labor talks, which are in full swing at major companies. Many are expected to conclude swiftly as the government seeks inflation-beating wage hikes to ease burdens on consumers.

    The automaker’s incoming president Koji Sato said the decision to accept the union’s demands in full at the first round of talks was meant not just for Toyota but “also for the industry as a whole, and in the hope that it will lead to frank discussions between labor and management at each company.”

    Within hours of Toyota’s announcement, rival Honda

    (HMC)     Motor said it had agreed to union demands for a 5% pay increase. The average monthly base salary rise of 12,500 yen ($92.70) at Honda

    (HMC)     is the biggest jump since at least 1990.

    Toyota and the union federation representing 357,000 Toyota group workers said the base pay rise was the biggest in two decades, though they both declined to provide the percentage increase.

    With inflation running at around 4%, the highest level in 40 years following decades of deflation, Japan is under more pressure than ever before to raise wages to revive consumption.

    But with the economy struggling, it averted recession in the fourth quarter but grew much less than expected, analysts say pay increases will remain limited to big firms, such as Toyota.

    Small and medium-sized companies, which employ most Japanese workers, will struggle to afford pay rises, they say.

    Toyota said its wage increase would also apply to part-time workers and senior contract workers. It had agreed to union’s request for one-off bonus payments worth 6.7 months of wages.

    Takaaki Sakagami, deputy secretary-general of the Federation of All Toyota Workers’ Union, said the union was pleased it had been able to reach a deal with the company quickly.

    The pay agreement comes as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has stepped up calls on business leaders to accelerate wage increases, warning of a return to stagflation if pay rises fall short of the rapid increase in prices.

    “We will boost consumption and expand domestic demand by promoting efforts toward structural wage increases,” Kishida said at a lower house budget committee session on Wednesday.

    Fast Retailing

    (FRCOF)    , which owns clothing giant Uniqlo, last month said it would boost pay by up to 40%, fueling expectations big manufacturers would offer more at annual wage talks with unions this spring.

    Video game maker Nintendo

    (NTDOF)     said earlier this month that it planned to lift workers’ base pay by 10%, despite trimming its full-year profit forecast.

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  • Here are the US cities where home prices are actually falling | CNN Business

    Here are the US cities where home prices are actually falling | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Home prices are going up across the country — in aggregate. Looking at individual markets, however, some are showing prices have fallen from a year ago.

    Single-family median home prices increased 4% in the fourth quarter from a year ago to $378,700. Prices were strongest in the Northeast in the last quarter, up 5.3%; followed by the South, up 4.9%; the Midwest, up 4% and the West, up 2.6%, according to the National Association of Realtors.

    But drill down to the market level and it’s clear that prices in some areas are declining from the prior year. The positive regional numbers mask that about 11% of individual housing markets tracked by NAR — 20 of 186 cities — experienced home price declines in the fourth quarter of last year.

    “A few markets may see double-digit price drops, especially some of the more expensive parts of the country, which have also seen weaker employment and higher instances of residents moving to other areas,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

    Nearly all of the most expensive places to buy are in the West and half of the 10 most expensive cities are in California. Several of those places are seeing prices fall the most.

    San Jose, California, was the most expensive place to purchase a home in the United States in the fourth quarter. But that median price of $1,577,500 is actually down 5.8% from a year ago — and prices there have already dropped 17% from the peak $1,900,000 median price in the second quarter of last year, according to NAR.

    San Francisco had the biggest price drop in the country, year over year, last quarter, with the median price of $1,230,000 — down 6.1% from a year ago. Prices for San Francisco homes are already down 21% in the fourth quarter from the peak median price of $1,550,000 in the second quarter.

    Among the most expensive cities that saw prices falling are Anaheim, California, with the median price of $1,132,000, down 1.6% from a year ago; Los Angeles, with the median price of $829,100, down 1.3%; and Boulder, Colorado, with the median price of $759,500, down 2.0%.

    Other places with falling prices saw the big price increases during the frenzied home buying market of the past few years. They also tend to be appealing lifestyle destinations where people moved to as remote work provided more flexibility. These include Boise, Idaho, where prices fell 3.4% from a year ago and Austin, Texas, where prices are down 1.3%.

    The good news for buyers looking for price relief is that the 4% median price hike in the fourth quarter is less than the 8.6% increase in the third quarter. In addition, the price increases are smaller, with far fewer markets experiencing double-digit price gains in the fourth quarter.

    “A slowdown in home prices is underway and welcomed, particularly as the typical home price has risen 42% in the past three years,” said Yun, noting these cost increases have far surpassed wage increases and consumer price inflation since 2019.

    Throughout much of the pandemic, home prices across the country moved in a single direction: up. Some hotspots like Austin and Boise saw prices skyrocket. Other areas — particularly in the Midwest — saw prices go up more moderately. Yet, because mortgage rates were near historic lows, buyers came out in droves.

    That story changed last year, when mortgage rates spiked as a result of the Federal Reserve’s historic campaign to rein in inflation. Homebuying fell off a cliff. By the end of 2022, sales of existing homes were down nearly 18% from 2021 as would-be homebuyers left the market, according to NAR.

    Typically, a drop in demand to buy would mean excess supply and ultimately lead to prices coming down. But that’s not happening, broadly speaking, in the housing market.

    Instead, prices for single-family homes climbed in nearly 90% of metro areas tracked by NAR in the fourth quarter: 166 markets out of 186 saw prices still going up. The national median price of a single-family home increased 4% last quarter from one year ago to $378,700.

    How can this be?

    One main driver of this phenomenon is that there is a shortage of inventory due to chronic underbuilding of affordable homes in the United States, along with homeowners who don’t want to part with the ultra-low mortgage rate they secured over the past few years.

    “Even with a projected reduction in home sales this year, prices are expected to remain stable in the vast majority of the markets due to extremely limited supply,” said Yun.

    There are still places where home prices continue to climb at double-digit rates. The top 10 cities with the largest year-over-year price increases all recorded gains of at least 14.5%, with seven of those markets in Florida and the Carolinas, according to NAR.

    Farmington, New Mexico, saw the biggest price increase in the fourth quarter, up 20.3% from a year ago. It was followed by Sarasota, Florida, up 19.5%; Naples, Florida, up 17.2%; Greensboro, North Carolina, up 17.0%; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, up 16.2%; Oshkosh, Wisconsin, up 16.0%; Winston-Salem, North Carolina, up 15.7%; El Paso, Texas, up 15.2%; Punta Gorda, Florida, up 15.2%; and Daytona Beach, Florida, up 14.5%.

    In the last quarter of 2022 a family needed a qualifying income of at least $100,000 to afford a 10% down payment mortgage in 71 markets, up from 59 in the prior quarter, according to NAR.

    Yet there were 16 markets where a family needed a qualifying income of less than $50,000 to afford a home, although that was down from 17 the previous quarter. Some of those included Peoria, Illinois, where a family can qualify for a loan with an income of $33,660; Waterloo, Iowa, with an income of $40,639; and Montgomery, Alabama, with an income of $48,172.

    Nationally, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical existing single-family home with a 20% down payment was $1,969 in the fourth quarter according to NAR. That’s a 7% increase from the third quarter of last year, when the monthly payment was $1,838, but a major surge of 58% — or a $720 monthly increase — from one year ago.

    This made the affordability picture even harder for many home buyers. Families typically spent 26.2% of their income on mortgage payments, which was up from 25% in the prior quarter and 17.5% one year ago.

    First-time buyers were evidently pushed to a breaking point on affordability. They typically spent 39.5% of their family income on mortgage payments, up from 37.8% in the previous quarter. A mortgage is considered unaffordable if the monthly payment, including principal and interest, amounts to more than 25% of the family’s income. Generally, a common financial rule of thumb is to not spend more than 30% of your income on housing costs.

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  • Japan’s workers haven’t had a raise in 30 years. Companies are under pressure to pay up | CNN Business

    Japan’s workers haven’t had a raise in 30 years. Companies are under pressure to pay up | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong/Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Hideya Tokiyoshi started his career as an English teacher in Tokyo about 30 years ago.

    Since then, his salary has stayed pretty much the same. That’s why, three years ago, after giving up hopes for higher pay, the schoolteacher decided to start writing books.

    “I feel lucky, as writing and selling books gives me an additional income stream. If not for that, I would’ve stayed stuck in the same wage loop,” Tokiyoshi, now 54, told CNN. “That’s why I was able to survive.”

    Tokiyoshi is part of a generation of workers in Japan who have barely gotten a raise throughout their working lives. Now, as prices rise after decades of deflation,the world’s third largest economy is being forced to reckon with the major problem of falling living standards, and companies are facing intense political pressure to pay more.

    Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is urging businesses to help workers keep up with higher living costs. Last month, he called on companies to hike pay at a level above inflation, with some already heeding the call.

    Like other parts of the world, inflation in Japan has become a major headache. In the year to December, core consumer prices rose 4%. That’s still low by comparison with America or Europe, but represents a 41-year high for Japan, where people are more used to prices going backwards.

    “In a country where you haven’t had nominal wage growth over 30 years, real wages are declining quite rapidly as a result [of inflation],” Stefan Angrick, a Tokyo-based senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN.

    Last month, Japan recorded its biggest drop in earnings, once inflation is taken into account, in nearly a decade.

    In 2021, the average annual paycheck in Japan was $39,711, compared with $37,866 in 1991, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

    That means workers got a pay bump of less than 5%, compared to a rise of 34% in other Group of Seven economies, such as France and Germany, over the same period.

    Experts have pointed to a series of reasons for the stagnant wages. For one, Japan has long grappled with the opposite of what it’s facing now: low prices. Deflation started in the mid-1990s, because of a strong yen — which pushed down the cost of imports — and the bursting of a domestic asset bubble.

    “For the past 20 years, basically, there has been no change in consumer price inflation,” said Müge Adalet McGowan, senior economist for the Japan desk at the OECD.

    Until now, consumers wouldn’t have taken a hit to their wallets or felt the need to demand better pay, she added.

    But as inflation rises, people are likely to start making “strong” complaints about the lack of raises, predicted Shintaro Yamaguchi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo.

    Experts say Japan’s wages have also suffered because it lags in another metric: its productivity rate.

    The country’s output, measured by how much workers add to a country’s GDP per hour, is lower than the OECD average, and “probably the biggest reason” for flat wages, according to Yamaguchi.

    “Generally, wages and productivity growth go hand-in-hand together,” McGowan said. “When there’s productivity growth, firms perform better and [when] they do better, they can offer higher wages.”

    She said Japan’s aging population was an additional issue because an older labor force tends to equate to lower productivity and wages. The way people are working is also changing.

    In 2021, nearly 40% of Japan’s total workforce was employed part-time or worked irregular hours, up from roughly 20% in 1990, according to McGowan.

    “As the share of these non-regular workers has gone up, of course the average wages also stay low, because they make less,” she said.

    People crossing a street in the Ginza area of Tokyo in November. The shape of Japan's workforce is shifting, with more people working part-time.

    Japan’s unique work culture is contributing to wage stagnation, according to economists.

    Many people work in the traditional “lifetime employment” system, where companies go to extraordinary lengths to keep workers on the payroll for life, Angrick said.

    That means they’re often very cautious about raising wages in good times so that they have the means to protect their workers when times are tough.

    “They don’t want to lay people off. So they need to have that buffer in order to be able to keep them on the payroll when a crisis hits,” he said.

    Its seniority-based pay system, where workers are paid based on their rank and length of service rather than performance, lowers incentives for people to change jobs, which in other countries generally helps push up wages, according to McGowan.

    “The biggest issue in Japan’s labor market is the stubborn insistence on pay by seniority,” Jesper Koll, a prominent Japan strategist and investor, previously told CNN. “If genuine merit-based pay were introduced, there would be much more job switching and career climbing.”

    Last month, Kishida warned the economy was at stake, saying Japan risked falling into stagflation if wage rises continued to fall behind price increases. The term refers to a period of high inflation and stagnant economic growth.

    Raising wages by 3% or more a year was already a core goal of Kishida’s administration. Now, the prime minister wants to take another step further, with plans to create a more formalized system.

    Asked for details, a government spokesperson told CNN that new “comprehensive economic measures will include expanded support for wage increases, integrated with an improvement in productivity.”

    Authorities plan to roll out guidelines for companies by June, said a representative from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

    Hideya Tokiyoshi, a teacher in Japan, told CNN he had barely seen his salary go up over the last 30 years.

    Meanwhile, the country’s largest labor group, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation or Rengo, is now demanding wage increases of 5% at this year’s talks with the management of various companies. The annual negotiations kick off this month.

    In a statement, Rengo said it was making the push because workers were making “inferior wages on a global scale,” and needed help with rising prices.

    Some companies have already acted. Fast Retailing

    (FRCOF)    , the company behind Uniqlo and Theory, announced last month that it would boost salaries in Japan by up to 40%, acknowledging that compensation had “remained low” in the country in recent years.

    While inflation was a factor, the company wanted to align “with global standards, to be able to increase our competitiveness,” a Fast Retailing spokesperson told CNN.

    According to a Reuters poll released last month, more than half of the country’s big firms are planning to raise wages this year.

    Suntory, one of Japan’s biggest beverage makers, may be one of them.

    Customers browsing for vegetables at a supermarket in Tokyo in January. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is urging businesses to hike pay and help workers keep up with the higher costs of living.

    CEO Takeshi Niinami is weighing a 6% raise for its Japanese workforce of approximately 7,000 people, according to a spokesperson, adding that it was subject to negotiation with a union.

    The news may prompt other businesses to follow suit.

    “If some of the biggest companies in Japan raise wages, many other firms will follow,” if only to stay competitive, said Yamaguchi. “Many firms look at what other firms do.”

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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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • From increases in minimum wage to recreational marijuana, these new laws take effect in 2023 | CNN Politics

    From increases in minimum wage to recreational marijuana, these new laws take effect in 2023 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As President Joe Biden scored several legislative wins last year, voters across the country headed to the polls in November to decide on local measures.

    The passage of several of those measures will lead to new state laws this year. And Americans in 2023 will also feel the impact of several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that was enacted over the summer.

    Here are some of the state and federal measures set to take effect in 2023.

    Nearly half of all US states will increase their minimum wages in 2023.

    The hike went into effect in the following states on January 1: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington.

    Minimum-wage workers in Connecticut will have to wait until June 1 to see the increase, while the change goes into effect in Nevada and Florida on July 1 and September 30, respectively. The hike went into effect in New York on Saturday for workers outside New York City, Long Island and Westchester County.

    Of all states, Washington state has the highest minimum wage at $15.74, up from $14.49, followed by California, which now has a minimum wage of $15.50 for all workers, up from $14 for employers with 25 or less employees and $15 for employers with 26 or more employees.

    However, Washington, DC, continues to have the highest minimum wage in the country. The increase from $16.10 to $16.50 went into effect Sunday and another hike to $17 is set for July 1.

    The push for a higher wage across the country comes as the federal minimum wage has remained the same since 2009, the longest period without change since a minimum wage was established in 1938, according to the Department of Labor.

    Efforts by Democrats to pass a $15 minimum wage bill stalled in the Senate in 2021.

    Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg/Getty Images

    Five states – Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota – had recreational marijuana on the ballot in the November midterm elections, and voters in Maryland and Missouri approved personal use for those 21 and older.

    While legalization has taken effect in Missouri with an amendment to the state constitution, the Maryland law goes into effect on July 1.

    The law will also allow those previously convicted of cannabis possession and intent to distribute to apply for record expungement.

    Starting January 1, the amount of cannabis a person can possess in Maryland for a fine instead of a criminal penalty increases – from just over a third of an ounce, or 10 grams, to 2.5 ounces.

    One of the most significant victories for Biden in 2022 was the Inflation Reduction Act, a $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill, which he signed into law in August.

    As part of the legislation, the price of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries will be capped at $35 starting January 1.

    About 3.3 million Medicare beneficiaries used insulin in 2020 and spent an average of $54 per insulin prescription the same year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

    The cap does not apply to those with private insurance coverage after Senate Democrats failed to get at least 10 Republican votes to pass the broader provision.

    02 new laws in 2023

    Keith Srakocic/AP

    There will be changes to the tax credits for those with electric vehicles, also thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.

    The new rule stresses the use of vehicles that were made in North America, requiring much of their battery components and final assembly to be in the continent to be eligible for tax credits. It also mandates at least 40% of the minerals used for the battery to be extracted from the United States or a country that has free trade with the US.

    Upon meeting the requirements, new vehicles are eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500.

    Those purchasing used electric vehicles can receive up to $4,000 in credits but it may not exceed 30% of the vehicle’s sale price.

    Initially, buyers who purchase vehicles in 2023 will need to wait to receive the tax credit when they file their tax returns for the year in 2024. But starting on January 1, 2024, electric vehicle buyers will be able to receive the money immediately, at the point of sale, if they agree to transfer the credit to their dealership.

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  • New Year’s pay boost: These states are raising their minimum wage | CNN Business

    New Year’s pay boost: These states are raising their minimum wage | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The current period of high inflation that has significantly impacted the US economy will also influence a New Year’s tradition: The annual state minimum wage increases.

    By January 1, hourly minimum wages in 23 states will rise as part of previously scheduled efforts to reach $15 an hour or to account for cost-of-living changes. The increases account for more than $5 billion in pay boosts for an estimated 8.4 million workers, the Economic Policy Institute estimates.

    Additionally, nearly 30 cities and counties across the US will increase their minimum wage, according to the EPI, a left-leaning think tank.

    The larger-than-typical increases for a dozen states come after inflation hit a 40-year high this summer, leaving families struggling to keep up with the rising costs.

    “The fact that there’s high inflation really just underscores how necessary these minimum wage increases are for workers,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, a research assistant at the EPI. “Even before the pandemic, there was no county in the United States where you could affordably live as a single adult at $15 an hour.”

    The pandemic and the subsequent period of economic recovery has further revealed the growing chasm in America’s wealth gap. During the past two years, working conditions and low pay contributed to a swelling of labor movement activity and actions by many large corporations to raise their wage floor.

    The pandemic also led to a structural upheaval in the nation’s labor market, creating an imbalance of worker supply and demand that still persists. Employers have found themselves short of workers for most of the year, which has pushed up average annual hourly wages in the battle to recruit and retain staff. While some workers in competitive industries such as retail and dining have found their new salary outpaces inflation, most pay has been outpaced by rising prices.

    “The story is different because wages have been increasing at the low-end, much faster than inflation and much faster than in middle- or high-wage jobs,” said Michael Reich, economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “And that means that many workers, even in the $7.25 states, are already getting paid above the minimum wage.”

    In other words, he said, the minimum wage “has become less and less binding.”

    “Even though minimum wages might go up by 7%, in many states and cities, labor costs aren’t going to go up anywhere as much as they have in the past, because they already have gone up,” he said. “That also means that prices aren’t going to go up at [places like] restaurants.”

    The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour hasn’t budged since 2009, and 20 states have a minimum wage either equal to or below the federal level, making $7.25 their default baseline. The value of the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 when it was $1.60, which would be worth about $13.46 in 2022, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.

    • Delaware: $10.50 to $11.75
    • Illinois: $12 to $13
    • Maryland: $12.50 to $13.25
    • Massachusetts: $14.25 to $15
    • Michigan: $9.87 to $10.10
    • Missouri: $11.15 to $12
    • Nebraska: $9 to $10.50
    • New Jersey: $13 to $14.13* (scheduled increase also includes inflation adjustment)
    • New Mexico: $11.50 to $12
    • New York: $13.20 to $14.20 (Upstate New York); $15 (in and around NYC)
    • Rhode Island: $12.25 to $13
    • Virginia: $11 to $12
    • Alaska: $10.34 to $10.85
    • Arizona: $12.80 to $13.85
    • California: $14.50 (firms with 25 or fewer employees) /$15 (firms with 26+ employees) to $15.50
    • Colorado: $12.56 to $13.65
    • Maine: $12.75 to $13.80
    • Minnesota: $8.42 to $8.63 (small employer); $10.33 to $10.59 (large employer)
    • Montana: $9.20 to $9.95
    • Ohio: $9.30 to $10.10
    • South Dakota: $9.95 to $10.80
    • Vermont: $12.55 to $13.18
    • Washington: $14.49 to $15.74
    • Connecticut (effective July 1): $14 to $15
    • Florida (September 2023): $11 to $12
    • Nevada (effective July 1): $9.50 to $10.25 (firms that offer benefits); $10.50 to $11.25 (no benefits offered)
    • Oregon: $13.50 (effective July 1, indexed annual increase to be based on the CPI)

    Sources: State websites, National Conference of State Legislatures, Economic Policy Institute

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  • UK wages next year will be at their lowest level since 2006, report says | CNN Business

    UK wages next year will be at their lowest level since 2006, report says | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Brits hoping for a new-year salary bump to offset soaring food and energy costs may be disappointed.

    The average British worker’s pay in 2023 is expected to fall back to 2006 levels once inflation is taken into account, according to PwC. Real wages, which factor in inflation, are expected to fall by as much as 3% in 2022 and another 2% in 2023, PwC has predicted in a report on the UK economy shared with CNN.

    The report confirms that wages have stagnated in Britain even as inflation hits double digits, sparking the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades. That’s led to widespread strikes across the UK economy, encompassing railways, schools, nurses, hospitals and the postal service.

    On Friday, passport officers began eight days of strikes that are expected to hit some of the United Kingdom’s busiest airports over Christmas and New Year, including Heathrow and Gatwick in London. The government said in a statement that the military would be supporting Border Force but warned travelers to expect delays and disruptions on arrival in Britain.

    “2022 has obviously been a highly challenging year for the UK economy, and it is not surprising that these chilly headwinds will continue throughout 2023,” Barret Kupelian, a senior economist at PwC said in a statement.

    The report offered some hope. Despite the hit to wages, more than 300,000 UK workers could rejoin the labor market in 2023, reducing economic inactivity and alleviating staff shortages in highly skilled sectors, according to PwC. At the same time, increased immigration to the UK could directly contribute £19 billion ($23 billion) to the economy, boosting GDP growth by 1% “even as the whole economy contracts,” PwC said.

    “Despite a contracting economy, the UK remains an attractive destination for workers,” PwC economist Jake Finney said in a statement. UK immigration levels reached a record 1.1 million in 2022, with resettlement programs aimed at Ukrainians, Afghans and Hong Kong residents adding around 140,000 to the total, according to PwC.

    Even with record immigration, the United Kingdom has lagged behind developed nations in its post-Covid employment recovery. Vacancies hit a record 1.3 million earlier in the year, dropping to just under 1.2 million in November. Worker shortages have been particularly acute in the hospitality, retail and agriculture industries.

    Research by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee published this week concluded that early retirement has been the biggest driver of the squeeze on the UK workforce. Increasing long-term sickness, lower EU migration following Brexit and an aging UK population have also played a role.

    “The rise in inactivity poses serious challenges to the UK economy. Shortage of labor exacerbates the current inflationary challenge; damages growth in the near term; and reduces the revenues available to finance public services, while demand for those services continues to grow,” the committee said.

    PwC’s Kupelian added that UK inflation likely peaked in October and “will gradually begin to return to target over the next two years.”

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  • How much should you tip your barista? | CNN Business

    How much should you tip your barista? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A new checkout trend is sweeping across America, making for an increasingly awkward experience: digital tip jars.

    You order a coffee, an ice cream, a salad or a slice of pizza and pay with your credit card or phone. Then, an employee standing behind the counter spins around a touch screen and slides it in front of you. The screen has a few suggested tip amounts – usually 10%, 15% or 20%. There’s also often an option to leave a custom tip or no tip at all.

    The worker is directly across from you. Other customers are standing behind, waiting impatiently and looking over your shoulder to see how much you tip. And you must make a decision in seconds. Oh lord, the stress.

    Customers and workers today are confronted with a radically different tipping culture compared to just a few years ago — without any clear norms. Although consumers are accustomed to tipping waiters, bartenders and other service workers, tipping a barista or cashier may be a new phenomenon for many shoppers. It’s being driven in large part by changes in technology that have enabled business owners to more easily shift the costs of compensating workers directly to customers.

    “I don’t know how much you’re supposed to tip and I study this,” said Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University and one of the leading researchers on US tipping habits.

    Adding to the changing dynamics, customers were encouraged to tip generously during the pandemic to help keep restaurants and stores afloat, raising expectations. Total tips for full-service restaurants were up 25% during the latest quarter compared to a year ago, while tips at quick-service restaurants were up 17%, according to data from Square.

    The shift to digital payments also accelerated during the pandemic, leading stores to replace old-fashioned cash tip jars with tablet touch screens. But these screens and the procedures for digital tipping have proven more intrusive than a low-pressure cash tip jar with a few bucks in it.

    Customers are overwhelmed by the number of places where they now have the option to tip and feel pressure about whether to add a gratuity and for how much. Some people deliberately walk away from the screen without doing anything to avoid making a decision, say etiquette experts who study tipping culture and consumer behavior.

    Tipping can be an emotionally charged decision. Attitudes towards tipping in these new settings vary widely.

    Some customers tip no matter what. Others feel guilty if they don’t tip or embarrassed if their tip is stingy. And others eschew tipping for a $5 iced coffee, saying the price is already high enough.

    “The American public feels like tipping is out of control because they’re experiencing it in places they’re not used to,” said Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute and its namesake’s great-great-granddaughter. “Moments where tipping isn’t expected makes people less generous and uncomfortable.”

    Starbucks has rolled out tipping this year as an option for customers paying with credit and debit cards. Some Starbucks baristas told CNN that the tips are adding extra money to their paychecks, but customers shouldn’t feel obligated to tip every time.

    One barista in Washington State said that he understands if a customer doesn’t tip for a drip coffee order. But if he makes a customized drink after spending time talking to the customer about exactly how it should be made, “it does make me a little bit disappointed if I don’t receive a tip.”

    “If someone can afford Starbucks every day, they can afford to tip on at least a few of those trips,” added the employee, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

    The option to tip is seemingly everywhere today, but the practice has a troubled history in the United States.

    Tipping spread after the Civil War as an exploitative measure to keep down wages of newly-freed slaves in service occupations. Pullman was the most notable for its tipping policies. The railroad company hired thousands of Black porters, but paid them low wages and forced them to rely on tips to make a living.

    Critics of tipping argued that it created an imbalance between customers and workers, and several states passed laws in the early 1900s to ban the practice.

    In “The Itching Palm,” a 1916 diatribe on tipping in America, writer William Scott said that tipping was “un-American” and argued that “the relation of a man giving a tip and a man accepting it is as undemocratic as the relation of master and slave.”

    But tipping service workers was essentially built into law by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which created the federal minimum wage that excluded restaurant and hospitality workers. This allowed the tipping system to proliferate in these industries.

    In 1966, Congress created a “subminimum” wage for tipped workers. The federal minimum wage for tipped employees has stood at $2.13 per hour — lower than the $7.25 federal minimum — since 1991, although many states require higher base wages for tipped employees. If a server’s tips don’t add up to the federal minimum, the law says that the employer must make up the difference. But this doesn’t always happen. Wage theft and other wage violations are common in the service industry.

    The Department of Labor considers any employee working in a job that “customarily and regularly” receives more than $30 a month in tips as eligible to be classified a tipped worker. Experts estimate there are more than five million tipped workers in the United States.

    Just how much to tip is entirely subjective and varies across industries, and the link between the quality of service and the tip amount is surprisingly weak, Lynn from Cornell said.

    He theorized that a 15% to 20% tip at restaurants became standard because of a cycle of competition among customers. Many people tip to gain social approval or with the expectation of better service. As tip levels increase, other customers start tipping more to avoid any losses in status or risk poorer service.

    The gig economy has also changed tipping norms. An MIT study released in 2019 found that customers are less likely to tip when workers have autonomy over whether and when to work. Nearly 60% of Uber customers never tip, while only about 1% always tip, a 2019 University of Chicago study found.

    What makes it confusing, Lynn said, is that “there’s no central authority that establishes tipping norms. They come from the bottom up. Ultimately, it’s what people do that helps establish what other people should do.”

    You should almost always tip workers earning the subminimum wage such as restaurant servers and bartenders, say advocates and tipping experts.

    The option to tip at coffee shops has become ubiquitous.

    When given the option to tip in places where workers make an hourly wage, such as Starbucks baristas, customers should use their discretion and remove any guilt from their decision, etiquette experts say. Tips help these workers supplement their income and are always encouraged, but it’s okay to say no.

    Etiquette experts recommend that customers approach the touch screen option the same way they would a tip jar. If they would leave change or a small cash tip in the jar, do so when prompted on the screen.

    “A 10% tip for takeaway food is a really common amount. We also see change or a single dollar per order,” said Lizzie Post. If you aren’t sure what to do, ask the worker if the store has a suggested tip amount.

    Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, which advocates to end subminimum wage policies, encourages customers to tip. But tips should never count against service workers’ wages, and customers must demand that businesses pay workers a full wage, she said.

    “We’ve got to tip, but it’s got to be combined with telling employers that tips have to be on top, not instead of, a full minimum wage,” she said.

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  • Mexico will increase minimum wage by 20% in 2023 | CNN

    Mexico will increase minimum wage by 20% in 2023 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Mexico’s minimum wage will increase by 20% from 2023, the government announced on Thursday after it reached a deal with the labor and business sector.

    The rise will begin on January 1, where the daily minimum wage will go from 172 Mexican pesos ($9) to 207 Mexican pesos ($10.82), Labor Minister Luisa Maria Alcalde announced during government press conference in Mexico City.

    The agreement was reached unanimously between the government, the labor sector and the business sector, Alcalde said.

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  • Big moments for women at the men’s World Cup | CNN Politics

    Big moments for women at the men’s World Cup | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    An unexpected result of the US Men’s National Team reaching the knockout round of 16 at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is that the US Women’s National Team will get its largest collective payday, equally splitting $13 million in winnings with the men.

    It’s a big deal for American women who have long sought pay equity, and it amplifies the extreme sliding scale of women’s rights around the globe.

    Consider that this payday for US women was won when the US men’s team defeated Iran, a country where authorities are brutally tamping down protests by women who want basic human rights.

    The US Women’s National Team excels at soccer and fought hard for years for equal pay.

    The earnings they’ll split with the American men could grow if the men continue to advance in the World Cup.

    It’s the result of an unprecedented equal pay agreement finalized earlier this year. Read more about the prize money.

    FIFA pays bigger awards to the men’s tournament, which draws in more revenue to the international soccer governing body, than to the women’s. The agreement between the US men and women is unique.

    “To everyone it should indicate how big the disparity is that FIFA has made between their value of women’s soccer and men’s soccer, and this is the only way that equity could be achieved, if all parties agreed – and they did,” said Briana Scurry, a former US goalkeeper, appearing on CNN Wednesday.

    Not only did the US Men’s National Team advance to earn the payday, but they also agreed to this unprecedented pot-splitting with the top American women earlier this year.

    “These are Title IX males,” said Christine Brennan, the sports columnist and CNN analyst, referring to the US men’s team during an appearance on “CNN Tonight” on Tuesday. She was referring to the landmark 1972 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal funds. It has revolutionized women’s sports in the US and, Brennan argued, influenced male athletes too.

    “They weren’t raised like their dads or their grandfathers. And they have a much different outlook, not only about women’s equality in terms of pay, but these are the same men who’ve been talking about standing with the Iranian protesters,” Brennan said.

    She praised the US Soccer Federation and the Men’s National Team, who have distinguished themselves not only by advancing, but “even more so in terms of our culture and the stands they have taken.”

    Iranian women, as you’ll know from following coverage of protests in that country and at the World Cup, are fighting for basic rights.

    CNN reported on celebrations in Iran at the national team’s loss to the US. From that report:

    “I am happy, this is the government losing to the people,” one witness to celebrations in a city in the Kurdish region, who CNN is not naming for security concerns, told CNN on Wednesday.

    The Norway-based Iranian rights group Hengaw posted several videos of similar scenes. “People in Paveh are celebrating Iran’s national team lose over America in World Cup in Qatar, they are chanting ‘Down with Jash (traitors),” Hengaw said in a post.

    Meanwhile, back in Doha, Qatar, another landmark moment for women in the world’s most popular sport will come Thursday, when the first all-women refereeing team in men’s World Cup history debuts in a pivotal match between Germany and Costa Rica.

    Stéphanie Frappart, the French lead official, has already overseen matches at the top levels of European club soccer, so, “I know how to deal with it,” she said in a statement released by FIFA. This match, with a potential audience of billions, will show a woman in charge.

    If the US men and women are on the road to some sort of parity – the men still make much, much more from their clubs – there are some women in the Middle East who are just gaining access to the pitch.

    Saudi Arabia’s men’s team put in a solid show at this World Cup with their defeat of storied Argentina in the opening round. But the Saudis failed to advance past the group stage after losing to Mexico Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, women in Saudi Arabia were only allowed inside soccer stadiums in 2018, much less play.

    As Saudi Arabia weighs a joint bid to co-host the 2030 men’s World Cup, the kingdom is also in the beginning stages of building a national women’s team. It’ll surely be many years before the Saudi women can be competitive on the world stage, but simply being able to play is certainly progress.

    CNN’s Becky Anderson, who is reporting from Doha during this World Cup, talked to the German women’s team legend Monika Staab, who is coaching the nascent Saudi women’s team. She said the kingdom is developing its women through three development academies and wants to host an international tournament in 2026.

    Staab said the all-women referee team in Thursday’s match in Qatar will be a powerful symbol for Muslim women watching.

    “The women can do like the men,” Staab said on CNN International Wednesday night. “I think that is a big sign for the whole world. We in Saudi Arabia, we play football. That has a great impact on every Muslim girl who wants to play,” Staab said.

    In the US, women’s soccer has at times been a bigger draw than the men’s game.

    About 14 million American viewers watched the women’s World Cup final, featuring the winning US team, in 2019. That was more than watched the men’s World Cup final between France and Croatia in 2018, but far below the 20 million who watched the US take on England in the group stage last Saturday across Fox and Telemundo.

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  • More than 150 agents back striking HarperCollins workers

    More than 150 agents back striking HarperCollins workers

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    NEW YORK — More than 150 literary agents, whose clients include Danielle Jackson, V.E. Schwab and L.A. Chandlar, have signed an open letter to HarperCollins vowing to “omit” the publisher from upcoming book submissions until it reaches an agreement with striking employees.

    Around 250 entry- and mid-level staff members, from publicists to editorial assistants, have been on strike since Nov. 10, with the two sides differing over wages, workforce diversity and other issues that have become increasingly prominent across the industry. No new talks are scheduled.

    “While many consider publishing to be a labor of love, we agents know how quickly that labor can lead to burnout, tension, missed opportunities for advancement, and mistakes,” the letter reads in part.

    “This generation of rising publishing professionals must contend with student loan debt, the rising cost of living, and the barriers inherent in working long hours without adequate compensation. These employees, many of whom bring with them the diverse viewpoints our industry lacks, have been essential to the production of the books we are so proud of.”

    Agents endorsing the letter come from Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Aevitas Creative Management, Root Literary and other firms. The letter was organized by Chelsea Hensley of the KT Literary Agency, who noted that the effort comes during a traditionally slow time of year for deal making.

    “I wanted them (HarperCollins) to know that even if they don’t think they’re seeing the effects of the strike now, they’ll definitely be seeing it come January, which is when agents will have the most new projects to share,” Hensley told The Associated Press.

    HarperCollins is the only major New York publisher with a union; striking employees are members of Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers. A spokesperson for the publisher did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

    “HarperCollins has agreed to a number of proposals that the United Auto Workers Union is seeking to include in a new contract,” according to a statement released Monday by the publisher. We are disappointed an agreement has not been reached and will continue to negotiate in good faith.”

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  • Railway workers in Austria to strike Monday in pay standoff

    Railway workers in Austria to strike Monday in pay standoff

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    BERLIN — Railway workers in Austria are set to hold a one-day strike on Monday after a failed round of talks in pay negotiations.

    The Austria Press Agency reported Sunday that both sides said the fifth round of talks on pay for some 50,000 employees of about 65 railway operators, including the main national operator OeBB, had failed.

    That means that there will be no regional, long-distance or night trains on Monday, and that only buses and other public transport run by municipal authorities will run.

    Labor union vida has called for an extra 400 euros ($416) per month for railway employees, which it says is equivalent to an average 12% increase.

    Employers have said that would amount to a 13.3% raise and is too much. OeBB said employers were offering an 8.44% increase and strongly criticized the strike.

    Like many other countries, Austria has seen inflation surge this year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The country’s annual inflation rate hit 11% in October.

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