Median CEO Pay Tops $10 Million For The First Time

Wage inequality impacts workers' compensation. Benefits are calculated upon wages earned at the time of the accident. Many workers hold two jobs and rates are calculated only upon one job. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.npr.org

Are you getting rich off the rising stock market? America's CEOs are. Median compensation for the chief executive of a Standard & Poor's 500 company was $10.8 million last year, according to a study by The Associated Press. That represents an 8.8 percent increase over 2012 and marks the first time that median compensation crossed the eight-figure mark. Much of the increase was due to performance cash bonuses, stock awards and options. The S&P 500 index rose 30 percent last year, while earnings per share increased by more than 5 percent, lifting CEO compensation, which is generally tied to such indicators. Bankers got the biggest raises, with total compensation on Wall Street rising 22 percent — matching the 22 percent they'd received a year earlier. Media industry CEOs also did nicely, with the top officials of CBS, Viacom, Walt Disney and Time Warner each pulling in more than $30 million All told, more than two-thirds of CEOs got a raise, according to the study, which AP and the executive pay research firm Equilar conducted using federal filing statements. Women CEOs made more than men — $11.7 million, compared to $10.5 million. But that applied only to the dozen women who were included in the sample, compared to 325 male CEOs. Last year was the fourth in a row in which CEO compensation increased, following a dip with the Great Recession. "The median CEO pay package climbed more than 50 percent over that stretch," according to the AP. "A chief...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Charts: Why Fast-Food Workers Are Going on Strike
• Wage Theft -- Another Assault on Workers' Compensation
• Heart Disease Linked to Asbestos Exposure
• Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for the Economy
• Workers' Compensation Benefits, Employer Costs Rise with Economic Recovery

The Slow, Quiet Death of Extended Unemployment Benefits

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

The Senate stumbled on a rare moment of bipartisan accord last month, when six Republicans joined Senate Democrats in passing an extension of unemployment insurance. Extended benefits for the long-term unemployed—measures enacted when the economy cratered at the start of the Great Recession—had expired at the start of the year, reverting back to the standard 26-weeks of assistance in most states. At that time, there were 1.3 million would-be-workers left in the cold. Each week since then, on average, benefits have lapsed for another 70,000 people, ballooning to just shy of three million people whose unemployment insurance has run out. Under a deal crafted by Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the Senate's bill offered retroactive payments to that cohort, and extended those benefits through the end of May, with the idea of revisiting the topic for another renewal at that point. It was a rare, triumphant moment for this do-nothing Congress. And then nothing. Since early April, any effort to help the unemployed has been bottlenecked by House Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) immediately put the kibosh on the Heller-Reed plan, rejecting the Senate's bill within days of its passage and calling on the White House to put forth a new separate plan. He demanded that any extension of the insurance program be paired with new job training programs, but he failed to offer ideas of his own, a sign that his stipulations were just a means to...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Wonkbook: Washington is reducing the deficit but abandoning the unemployed
• Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the Depression
• Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all
• Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live
• 10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe
• No Jobs, No Benefits, and Lousy Pay

Why walk-in health care is a fast-growing profit center for retail chains

Sarah Torresen, 16, left, accompanied by her mother, Dianne, middle, is seen by Katherine Skiff, at the Tenleytown CVS MinuteClinic in Washington. The MinuteClinic is a walk-in medical clinic within CVS pharmacies where customers can see nurse practitioners and physician assistants for minor ailments. It was a cold Monday in late March, and at 8:30 a.m. 23-year-old Lindsey Menard was second in line to be seen at the MinuteClinic in a CVS Pharmacy in D.C.’s Tenleytown. ¶ “It was the closest place that was open early,” she said. Her doctor’s office was downtown, and traveling downtown “just seemed like too much of a hassle when I’m dying,” said Menard, 23, who lives nearby with her parents and teaches with the Metro D.C. Reading Corps. ¶ CVS is fast expanding its MinuteClinics, exemplifying a trend of retailers opening health-care services to supplement traditional doctors’ offices. CVS, the largest retail clinic operator in the Washington area, has 800 clinics nationwide, and it expects to add 150 more this year and to have 1,500 clinics by 2017, or almost as many as the more than 1,600 retail clinics across the country now, according to the Convenient Care Association. ¶ Retail walk-in clinics are relatively new on the health-care landscape, dating to 2000. After several years of very slow growth coinciding with the recession and its aftermath, they are taking off again. Accenture, a global...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

No Spring Thaw in the Job Market

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

One of the many good things about the arrival of spring is that politicians, economists and other policy makers can no longer blame the winter weather for the slow economy and the grinding pace of job growth. The employment report for March, released Friday, indicates that weather did not have as negative an impact in January and February as originally believed; job tallies for those months were revised upward. Accordingly, the springtime bounce in employment was not as great as anticipated. The 192,000 new jobs created in March fell short of the consensus forecast for stronger growth. Monthly job growth averaged 178,000 in the first quarter, compared with the monthly average of 194,000 in all of 2013. That’s not progress. The sluggish job market is consistent with economic growth forecasts for the first quarter of 2014, which generally top out around 2.5 percent, and broader economic-growth data from the last quarter of 2013, which showed little momentum heading into 2014. In March, after almost five years of achingly slow recovery, private-sector employment finally surpassed its prerecession peak. But there is more to a healthy job market than replacing private-sector jobs that were lost. A more complete picture must also include the government jobs that have been lost since the recession but never replaced, as well as jobs that were needed to keep up with population growth but never created. All told, the economy is still short a stunning 7.3 million jobs. It...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Obama to Sign Actions Aimed at Boosting Contractor Pay Fairness

President Barack Obama will movethis week to increase the transparency of U.S. federalcontractors pay practices regarding men’s and women’s earnings,according to a White House official. Taken in coordination with the planned consideration oflegislation in the Democrat-led Senate aimed at eliminating paydisparities between men and women, the two executive actionsmark the latest push by the White House to emphasize “equalpay” proposals. Obama and his fellow Democrats have seized on equal pay asan issue ahead of November’s state and congressional elections,seeking to give a boost to low-income workers whose pay hasstagnated following the recession. Obama is using executiveorders as legislation in Congress, such as a bill to increasethe federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, stalls. Obama will sign an executive order to do away with ‘gagrules’’ that prevent individuals working on contract for thegovernment from discussing pay with one another, according tothe White House official. It would prohibit federal contractorsfrom retaliating against employees who discuss theircompensation. In a second action, Obama will instruct the LaborDepartment to draft rules requiring contractors to provide paydata by sex and race -- a proposal akin to the Senate measurescheduled for consideration this week. Obama will use his actions to call on Congress to pass thebill, which is known as the “Paycheck Fairness Act,”...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Out of Work, Out of Benefits, and Running Out of Options

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

Abe Gorelick has decades of marketing experience, an extensive contact list, an Ivy League undergraduate degree, a master’s in business from the University of Chicago, ideas about how to reach consumers young and old, experience working with businesses from start-ups to huge financial firms and an upbeat, effervescent way about him. What he does not have — and has not had for the last year — is a full-time job. Five years since the recession ended, it is a story still shared by millions. Mr. Gorelick, 57, lost his position at a large marketing firm last March. As he searched, taking on freelance and consulting work, his family’s finances slowly frayed. He is now working three jobs, driving a cab and picking up shifts at Lord & Taylor and Whole Foods. “I’m not in my basement, unshaven, unshowered, drinking a bottle of Scotch a day,” Mr. Gorelick said. “I’m out there working these jobs, meeting people and trying to make something happen. But it is exhausting. It is stressful. It is difficult.” For people experiencing such long spells without appropriate work, it is a crisis. Often, it is also a conundrum: What should a worker who finds himself out of a job for six months or more do? “There is this very pressing issue,” said Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “and there is this great gap in knowledge about what to do about it, both for policy...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

….

Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Related:
Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the ...
Dec 27, 2013
In less than a week, emergency federal unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of these jobless Americans are set to run out. Proponents of ending the benefits argue that the economy is expanding and that the benefits prevent ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
Workers' Compensation: Why Injured Workers (and their lawyers ...
Jan 13, 2014
A new basis for disqualifying workers from receiving Unemployment Compensation benefits will be called “Substantial Fault” which may include a series of inadvertent errors made by the employee and violations of work ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
Workers' Compensation: Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all
Jan 03, 2014
It would be one thing if there were a logical reason to cut off unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work the longest. But no such rationale exists. On both economic and moral grounds, extending benefits for ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe
Dec 27, 2013
Unemployment is bad. Obviously long-term unemployment is worse. But it's not just a little worse, it's horrifically worse. As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Where Have All the Raises Gone?

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Most people who work for a living know that for a long time now, raises have been few and far between. Wages typically fall or stagnate in recessions, and the Great Recession was particularly severe, exerting a drag on pay that persists to this day. But that is only a partial explanation, because declining and stagnant wages predate the latest downturn. Understanding the causes is essential for determining the policies needed to create good jobs. Research by three economists — Paul Beaudry, David Green and Benjamin Sand — goes beyond familiar explanations for wage stagnation like global competition and labor-saving technology. Examining the demand for college-educated workers, they found that businesses increased hiring of college graduates in the 1980s and 1990s in adapting to technological changes. But as the information technology revolution matured, employer demand waned for the “cognitive skills” associated with a college education. As a result, since 2000, many college graduates have taken jobs that do not require college degrees and, in the process, have displaced less-educated lower-skilled workers. “In this maturity stage,” the report says, “having a B.A. is less about obtaining access to high paying managerial and technology jobs and more about beating out less-educated workers for the barista or clerical job.” The findings help to explain the trajectory in wages for workers with...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Payroll Data Shows a Lag in Wages, Not Just Hiring

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

For the more than 10 million Americans who are out of work, finding a job is hard. For the 145 million or so who are employed, getting a raise is even harder. The government said on Friday that employers added 113,000 jobs in January, the second straight month of anemic growth, despite some signs of strength in the broader economy. The unemployment rate inched down in January to 6.6 percent, the lowest level since October 2008, from 6.7 percent in December. But the report also made plain what many Americans feel in their bones: Wages are stuck, and barely rose at all in 2013. They were up 1.9 percent last year, or a mere 0.4 percent after accounting for inflation. Not only was that increase even smaller than the one recorded in 2012, it was half the normal rate of wage gains in the two decades before the last recession. The stagnation helps explain why many people feel apprehensive even though the economy grew at a robust pace in the second half of 2013, corporate profits rose, the stock market boomed and the housing market continued to gain ground. The issue cuts across the American work force. In fact, white-collar workers did a bit worse than blue-collar workers last year in terms of wage growth. Austin Moore, 18, pictured at a career fair in Dallas, is one of many young job seekers. LM Otero/Associated Press “People are running in place in terms of their living standards,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Better Pay Now (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Tips and Poverty (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for the Economy (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Workers' Compensation Benefits, Employer Costs Rise with Economic Recovery (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Wages Stagnate as U.S. Manufacturers Reap Record Profits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

No Jobs, No Benefits, and Lousy Pay

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

There is nothing good to say about the December employment report, which showed that only 74,000 jobs were added last month. But dismal as it was, the report came at an opportune political moment. The new numbers rebut the Republican arguments that jobless benefits need not be renewed, and that the current minimum wage is adequate. At the same time, they underscore the need, only recently raised to the top of the political agenda, to combat poverty and inequality. The report showed that average monthly job growth in 2013 was 182,000, basically unchanged from 2012. Even the decline in the jobless rate last month, from 7 percent in November to 6.7 percent, was a sign of weakness: It mainly reflects a shrinking labor force — not new hiring — as the share of workers employed or looking for work fell to the lowest level since 1978. That’s a tragic waste of human capital. It would be comforting to ascribe the dwindling labor force mainly to retirements or other long-term changes, but most of the decline is due to weak job opportunities and weak labor demand since the Great Recession. One result is that the share of jobless workers who have been unemployed for six months or longer has remained stubbornly high. In December, it was nearly 38 percent, still higher by far than at any time before the Great Recession, in records going back to 1948. And yet, nearly 1.3 million of those long-term unemployed had their federal jobless benefits abruptly cut off at the end...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live
• Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all
• Jobless Fear Looming Cutoff of Benefits
• Dying Young: Why your Social and Economic Status May be a death sentence in America
• Knasas, The Next Target: Unions expect difficult legislative session in 2014
• NEOC Awards Whistleblower Client Misclassified as Independent Contractor
• NJ COLA Bill Passed by Senate

Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

To 1.3 million jobless Americans: The Republican Party wishes you a Very Unhappy New Year! It would be one thing if there were a logical reason to cut off unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work the longest. But no such rationale exists. On both economic and moral grounds, extending benefits for the long-term unemployed should have received an automatic, bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress. It didn’t. Nothing is automatic and bipartisan anymore, not with today’s radicalized GOP on the scene. In this case, a sensible and humane policy option is hostage to bruised Republican egos and the ideological myth of “makers” vs. “takers.” The result is a cruel blow to families that are already suffering. On Saturday, benefits were allowed to expire for 1.3 million people who have been unemployed more than six months. These are precisely the jobless who will suffer most from a cutoff, since they have been scraping by on unemployment checks for so long that their financial situations are already precarious, if not dire. Extending unemployment benefits is something that’s normally done in a recession, and Republicans correctly point out that we are now in a recovery. But there was nothing normal about the Great Recession, and there is nothing normal about the Not-So-Great Recovery. We are emerging from the worst economic slump since the Depression, and growth has been unusually — and painfully — slow. Only...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the Depression (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Extension of Benefits for Jobless Is Set to End (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Knasas, The Next Target: Unions expect difficult legislative session in 2014 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The Appalling Stance of Rand Paul (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• NEOC Awards Whistleblower Client Misclassified as Independent Contractor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Aid Programs Helped U.S. Survive the Great Recession (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• 10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live

NJ is going to suffer the most by the termination of the unemployment benefit extension. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Darker shading means a larger share of a state's population will lose emergency jobless benefits on Saturday. Scroll down for an interactive map. Darker shading means a larger share of a state’s population will lose emergency jobless benefits Saturday. Scroll down for an interactive map. (Committee on Ways and Means Democrats/Labor Department) A projected 1.3 million people will lose emergency unemployment benefits when they expire Saturday. Congress offered the extended benefits as unemployment ballooned during the Great Recession and has put off their expiration 11 times since. Renewing the long-term insurance is a top agenda item for the Senate when it convenes  Jan. 6, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said. The body is expected to vote quickly on a three-month extension of the benefits. Recipients still face, at best, a delay in their checks and, at worst, a permanent end to them. When the aid expires Saturday, the unemployed will only be able to collect a maximum 26 weeks of benefits in most parts of the U.S., down from about twice as much in many states. The recession may technically be over, but for many the recovery has yet to begin. The plight of the long-term unemployed — a group the benefits are aimed at helping and whose ranks have swelled — has also proven particularly difficult to solve. Studies have shown that they are more likely to suffer mental-health setbacks and are less likely to be...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Jobless Fear Looming Cutoff of Benefits (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Extension of Benefits for Jobless Is Set to End (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Aid Programs Helped U.S. Survive the Great Recession (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• NEOC Awards Whistleblower Client Misclassified as Independent Contractor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Knasas, The Next Target: Unions expect difficult legislative session in 2014 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• 10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The Appalling Stance of Rand Paul (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• NJ COLA Bill Passed by Senate (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)