IKEA is under the age discrimination radar yet again with a fifth lawsuit coming on its way in a span of a year. IKEA employee Brandon Paine filed a class action lawsuit stating that the retail giant is practicing “corporate culture of age bias” and is constantly in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act or ADEA. The 48-year-old IKEA employee, Paine alleged that he was denied promotion for the post he held on an interim basis earlier and four younger employees in their late 20’s were given the dole. Paine was demoted and was denied promotions despite good reports and the lawsuit alleges age discrimination as the reason behind it.
Four former women employees of Nike Inc. have won the crucial hurdle of attaining a class-action status for their lawsuit against the company alleging systematic pay discrimination. The sports apparel giant, on the other hand, lost its first attempt to scale back a class action lawsuit on account of prematurely blocking and deciding employee’s eligibility to file a lawsuit as per a federal magistrate. Nike, as the former employees allege rely on salary history for the initial pay, marginalize performance to stunt career growth and ignore the complaints of sexual harassment. Nike is trying to better its image when it comes to paying parity and increased the salary of 7,400 workers worldwide after a pay structure and parity review.
Teacher strike is back again with its version 2.0 and oversized classroom, low pay, old textbooks, lack of support staff, underfunding and a high teacher turnover rates are some of the major areas of discontent among the teaching fraternity. 2018 saw a surge in US labor movement and following a similar route 2019 has so far seen strikes in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, Virginia, and West Virginia. The results of this strike have swung in favor of teachers in terms of better work conditions and pay. The union-led strike comes despite the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case that stated that non-union members in the public sector are not obliged to pay union fees. However, it seems like the teachers’ union has dodged the bullet in this case and are conduction successful strikes.
Alex Gao, a computer science student in New York University was disturbed and offended to see archaic and insensitive labels in IBM online application form. Gao, who took to Twitter to post a photo of the application that had a drop-down list for candidates to select their ethnicity said he was forced to choose among ethnic categories that included terms like “yellow” and “mulatto”. International Business Machines Corp has since then removed the controversial question from the application and its spokesman Ed Barbini apologized stating the company’s recruiting websites solicited the information regarding the ethnicity “temporarily and inappropriately.”
Deloitte is all animated about inspiring gender diversity and breaking stereotypes and for the task has collaborated with Ella Project to develop a new graphic novel, featuring Ella the Engineer as the protagonist. Nishita Henry, CIO Deloitte says the collaboration will produce one graphic novel and four comic books with the aim to put Ella as a role model for girls who are keen to take up STEM as their field of study. The storyline will highlight Ella solving problems through her problem solving, collaboration and technology while taking help from Deloitte leaders. The aim is to incorporate real-life female role models in STEM in the edutainment venture.
Employee loyalty is at its lowest and the blame is on poor company culture. The 2019 Employee Engagement Report: The End of Employee Loyalty, a TINYpulse report found that about 43% of employees will leave their current organization for a salary hike as low as 10%, the survey, when done in 2015 revealed just 23% feeling the same. The factors like poor company culture, manager-employee relationship dynamics, engaging work, and the first impressions play a crucial part in deciding an employee’s propensity to leave. The survey also found that employees when given engaging or appropriately challenging work were keener to stay than the ones who considered their work boring.
.jpg "AMAZON.COM NAMES INDRA NOOYI, FORMER PEPSI CO. CEO AS ONE OF THE BOARD MEMBERS")
Indra Nooyi, former President and CEO of Pepsi Co. is the newest name in the Amazon.com Inc. board. The e-commerce giant named Nooyi, who stepped down as Pepsi Co. CEO last October to its board, making her the second woman to be appointed by Amazon in the span of a month. Nooyi’s appointment makes the 11-member board include five women, welcome news given the company recently faced criticism over male dominance in its board. Rosalind G. Brewer, a former Walmart Inc. executive was another name who was included earlier this month to the Amazon board. Indra Nooyi, joined the world’s second largest beverage company in 1994 to rise up to CEO, a position she would stay in for the next seventeen years.
The United States of America Supreme Court recently remanded and vacated a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said that salary history cannot be the single determining factor of gender pay parity. The Circuit Court erred in the voting as they counted Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s vote, who dies eleven days before the ruling. The counter-argument to this point was the circuit court had presented a footnote that said that Judge Reinhardt had fully participated in the hearings and had expressed his opinion amounting to the final vote that happened before his death. The Supreme Court chose to differ on the grounds of “federal judges are appointed for life, not for eternity.”
The National Association of Trade and Home Offices, the union that holds 121 collective bargaining contracts with Walmart in Mexico (Wal Mart de Mexico) or Walmex said it might go on strike, starting next month if the salary hike demands are not met. The union that represents 8,000 Walmart workers has demanded a 20% rise from its 2018 compensation structure, echoing the recent daily minimum wage increase of 16% under the new Mexican government. The union wants to come up with a sales incentive for the clerks, the first-ever structure of its kind in the country. The union has also brought forward allegations of under compensation for overtime, abuses and sexual harassment against the retail giant’s operations in Mexico.
British retailers may be shying away from making any big investments with Brexit almost knocking at the door, but Amazon, the e-commerce giant seems to think otherwise. The online retailer will create 1,000 apprentice jobs in the coming two years and intends to add them to the 27,500 permanent positions in the country. The group seems to be committed to investing in the country and 2018 saw it create 2,500 jobs in Britain. The apprentice once qualified will be deputed across Amazon’s UK corporate and operations site that includes UK head office at London and development centers in Cambridge, Edinburgh working on Alexa, Prime Video, Prime Air and other innovations like Amazon’s advanced distribution centers.
Societe Generale may lean down by 1500 investment bankers in a cost-cutting move. The bank is struggling with profitability and is under the investor’s radar to boost its revenues. The move if comes in effect will affect its French employees with 700 jobs in the line. The bank’s shares have lost 45% of their value in the last 12 months and the proposed cost saving of $567 million will be focused towards the restructuring investment banking. The proposed lay off is reported by the French Newspaper Le Figaro and will cut down the current workforce by 7.5%. The move comes after the bank lowered its targets on February 7 after a poor show last quarter.
Pay disparity has had many thought-provoking discussions under the sun, but most of it might be an exercise in futility as the top bosses of Britain’s banks receive on an average 120 times more than the median pay of UK employees in the bank. Lloyds Banking Group, the country’s biggest domestic lender is at the top of the disparity list with its CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio getting 169 times the median paid employee on $48,164. If you compare it to the bank’s lowest paying quartile, the gap increases to a whopping 237 times. And this is after the austerity measures that included pulling Horta-Osorio’s pay down from its 2017 6.4 million. The next in line of pay disparity is HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays.
The much talked about an arrest, indictments, and incarceration of Carlos Ghosn, former CEO, Nissan Motor Co. has rendered Japan business world unsure about foreigners in leadership. As Yumiko Ohta, a partner in Tokyo law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe puts, “It’s having a chilling effect.” And the arrest of the most influential foreigner in Japanese business world has started the discussion and cautionary tales about hiring a foreign national in a country with stricter laws. The arrest has already dampened Japan’s drive for diversity in its country’s business scene at the top ranks and has also made foreign nationals jittery about joining a Japanese firm.
.jpg "IT'S THE END OF FORCED ARBITRATION IN GOOGLE")
Google will scrap the clause that needs employees not to bring any claims against it in court from its employment terms and conditions. Alphabet Inc. that virtually owns all of Google has taken this move after months of protest that followed the infamous walk out of 20,000 employees against the forced arbitration. The change will be effective from March 21st and will include ceasing agreements that prohibited workers from bringing their claims as a class action. The end of forced arbitration era in Google means that workers can now speak up and bring their case to court that includes instances of sexual harassment, discrimination, and treatment of contract employees.
Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers on Wednesday stated that US manufacturers will have to fill 4 million vacancies in the coming decade and at present have 428,000 job openings. A related survey found that while 88.7% of the employers in manufacturing were positive regarding the company’s future, 68.2% found the difficulty to attract the right talent as one of their main challenges. A negative perspective towards manufacturing industry is one of the many reasons behind the talent crunch. The crunch is for skilled production workers, supply chain talent, engineers and software engineers and operations manager. NAM is banking on immigration reforms that will grant inflow to highly skilled talent in the country as a partial solution.
Udemy, the online learning platform in its new report said that conflict management is going to be the most sought after soft skill in 2019. Technological skills will continue its evolutionary path with new skills continually entering the workforce. Conflict management, as experts believe will be one skill that will be pivotal for upward-moving career and will supersede the good old organizational and communications skills. In a multigenerational workforce dictated by the change in priority for every generation, conflict management will be the one that might very well save the day. Next in line from conflict management are time management, stress management, emotional intelligence, storytelling and change management.
Credit Suisse Group AG is tightening the golden handcuffs around its Asian bankers and that includes the most senior ranks. The Swiss firm is planning to enforce repayment of the cash portions of the bonuses by the bankers if they leave within three years of receiving them. The arrangement is unique to Asia, the geography where the company adopts a unique structure, merging its wealth management, investment banking, and trading businesses into one unit. The prospect of a payout will put a damper to defections in a fiercely competitive market of investment bankers. Credit Suisse is though not the first one to adopt a strategy to keep bankers hanging around for long.
New York workers may or may not have a bad hair day but with the New York Commission on Human Rights banning discrimination based on hairstyle, there won’t be any improper hairstyle day. The enforcement guidance prohibits any employer from demoting, punishing, firing or taking any adverse actions against employees who wear their hair in adherence to their culture. The ban through a blanket-ban is focused mainly on African-Americans and people of color and their right to wear treated or untreated hairstyles, braids, Bantu Knots, Afro or keep their hair untrimmed at the workplace. The ban does not tangle with the food and health safety laws that need hair to be pinned or be in net if the rule applies to all.
The good news from Namely’s HR Career Report on workplace diversity in mid-sized companies is that 71% of HR professionals are female. The lukewarm news on diversity from that report is that almost two-thirds of HR professionals, i.e. 65% are white. Asians at 12% and Hispanics at 10% are the distant second and third making it clear that the road to an all-inclusive diversity from here will be a long one. The pay disparity, however, remains a burning issue as female HR managers earn an average of $91,981 per year, 13% less than their male counterparts who earn $103,644 annually.
.jpg "NETFLIX CONFIRMS TORONTO PRODUCTION HUB THAT WILL CREATE 1,850 JOBS EVERY YEAR")
Netflix is all set to come up with a Toronto production hub and will lease Cinespace Studios and Pinewood Toronto Studios as its initial steps towards the plan that will create 1,850 jobs per year. Cinespace Studios, based in Toronto has four sound stages, office space and support space in its 164,000 square feet space, while Pinewood Toronto Studios measures 84,850 square feet. Netflix secured an October 2017 government approval to start a $377 million product unit in Canada, its first outside the U.S. The first ones to start production in these Toronto Studios will be the film “Let it Snow” and “Guillermo Del Toro Presents Ten After Midnight”, a horror anthology series.
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