The Chinese Lunar Year that will fall around early February will bring job jitters for many Chinese workers as the ongoing trade war between the Washington and Beijing is creating major ripples that are reaching across industries - from autos to logistics to technology. The Danish Shipper A.P. Moller-Maersk laid off 2,000 workers from the idle since December Dongguan transport container factory. The firing succeeded an early holiday before the Lunar New Year and was mostly a one-on-one phone call or WeChat message ritual. China’s COSCO Shipping reduced the number of vessels in Guangdong as a direct response to the trade war.
Warrren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathway Inc. owned luxury plane unit NetJets went on a proactive note to avoid past burns as it extended its pilot contract by three years to avoid the labor strife it had earlier this decade. The agreement with NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilot will impact 2,500 pilots and mostly in a morale-boosting way. The 2015 agreement does not expire till 2023, but the Columbus, Ohio-based company sat through six weeks of talk to reach the accord that boosts pay and retirement benefit along with a revised compensation that pays pilots more for flying more. The pilots took the clauses positively and 81% voted in favor of the changes.
The Google walkout group circa November 2018 is back and this time they are taking up Instagram and Twitter for a campaign, spreading awareness regarding the forced arbitration clause that tech companies include in their employee agreement. The said post by the group, End Forced Arbitration has pre-recorded conversations of legal professors discussing the proposed legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of representatives to amend federal law defining employee arbitration protocols. The group also went ahead with a survey that included 30 companies and they claimed that none stands true pillars of a ‘transparent and equitable workplace’. The said names in the survey include Facebook, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb and staffing giant Adecco.
A good 86% of respondents believe that work burnout is related to job satisfaction in a University of Phoenix’s Job Burnout Poll conducted in 2008. More than half of the people currently employed have faced burnouts, while the percentage decreases to 39% for the unemployed respondents. A little above one-third of the employees said they took a day or more off for mental health opposed to a 61% taking a leave on account of physical health. And a mental health day off at least once a year is twice more likely in parents who have kids under 18 years compared to non-parents.
Tim Cook, CEO Apple Inc. said that the company will cut back on hiring for some divisions following the slump in iPhone sales and the China debacle in particular. The divisions facing hiring cuts is yet to be decided by Cook, but rest assured the crucial groups like Apple’s artificial intelligence team will continue hiring at a strong pace. On a question about Apple freezing hiring all-together Cook responded in negative saying it is not a solution. Tim who recently wrote a letter to investors explaining the difficult situation said in this particular address to employees that a cut back in hiring does not and should not define Apple’s future.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is switching its contingency plan mode on as 2019 tax filing season starts on April 28 by bringing back 46,000 furloughed employees. The plan designates 57% of the 80,000 strong teams “excepted or exempt” from the partial federal shutdown and leaves them available to process annual tax returns and refunds. The exempted employees will be working without pay till the impasse is over. The 132 page IRS contingency plan is using the legal rationale of tax returns and refunds being on a similar plain with Social Security to get the proposal moving. National Treasury Employees Union has filed for a lawsuit against the plan stating that it is illegal as it obligates a fund not obligated by the Congress.
China is all set to create more proactive employment policies in 2019 its human resources ministry said on Wednesday. The announcement comes in the wake of the country’s need to create 15 million jobs in the current year. Vice Minister Qiu Xiaoping said in a press conference that the country’s urban registered jobless rate was 3.8% for 2018. The same press briefing saw an optimistic vice industry minister Xin Guobin saying that automobile sales and production will see a good phase as per authority estimates despite the economic slowdown.
A November report by Deloitte says that about a third of U.N. employees and contractors faced at least one incidence of workplace sexual harassment in the past two years. The survey had 30,364 active respondents who completed it, which is about 17% of the eligible population. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres in his letter to staff said the response was “moderately low” and further added that they still have a long way to go before people started openly discussing sexual harassment. Two out of three times the perpetrator were men and more than half of these instances occurred in the office, while 17.1 percent of them took place in work-sponsored social events.
Amazon.com Inc. took a step back on its supposed first job listing for its Long Island, New York office and said that it is excited to kick start the hiring “later in 2019.” The company, earlier this month posted a job for software engineer and software development manager in New York, just after their announcement to build a 50 member strong team which will be a part of Amazon’s Intelligence Cloud Control Group. An earlier announcement, which was removed on Monday said that The HQ2 will provide an answer to the increasing staff demands for the ICC. The company removed all that HQ2 speculations by saying that the job posting was for the existing New York office.
An unemployment rate that ticked below 4% in 2018 did not help wages to rise with a pace that is expected from a tight labor market. San Francisco Federal Reserve published the report on Monday and also said that the wages are not expected to rise even if the unemployment rates tick down by few more notches. The 3% annual wage growth is ill-paced with the productivity and inflation rates. The sluggish wage growth led the Fed to pause rate hikes to allow the markets to tighten further giving people to earn better. While the inflation remains contained the slow wage rate may be indicative of a sluggish market than calculated. The local low unemployment rate can bring down the average national rate creating a possible mirage in this case.
With a tight labor market and turnover hitting an all-time high, employers are keen on checking-in daily with their employees. HR professionals are particular about maintaining the golden rule of responding to the applicants within 72 hours of the first contact to increase the probability of procuring the best talent. The talent retention part is also getting a facelift with HR intently focusing on engagement and development drives. Keeping a tab on employee activities and daily check-ins are the tasks, which would have attracted a lot of blank stares from the HR for being too taxing. But, technology has stepped into uncomplicated this task at hand.
As the Amazon HQ2 facility ship sails towards Northern Virginia more than half of the workers in Washington DC are all set to board this ship if the chance arrives. The 1000 worker strong survey by Eagle Hill Consulting Survey found that three/fourth of IT people and 60% of the Millennials will bid adieu to their current employers to join Amazon. The tech giant has taken the fancy of IT professionals as a whopping 92% say that Amazon is good for job seekers and an 88% of them opine that it will boost the local economy. The IT professionals also pointed out the commute might be a dark horse with 77% thinking that Amazon is bad for local traffic. The biggest reasons for choosing Amazon over the existing employers is the pay followed by the progressive and interesting work culture.
Canada air traffic controllers are passing some serious dough to their fellow American counterparts quite literally by buying hundreds of pizzas as a show of solidary as US government’s partial shutdown hits 23 days mark. Peter Duffey, Head of the Canadian Air Traffic Control association said that the initiative is a snowballed version of the drive that started as Edmonton’s Control Center collected to buy pies for their peers at Anchorage, Alaska last Thursday. The U.S. government shutdown has left about 10,000 air traffic controllers working without pay in the country. As per Duffey’s estimation about 300 pizzas have reached U.S. controllers so far over the past few days.
Bill de Blasio, Mayor New York City has proposed to bring a legislature that grants private employees 10 days paid personal time. The proposed legislation will impact companies with 5 or more staff. The said 10 days for personal time can be used for family time, bereavement, religious rituals or vacation. The Mayor’s office said that around 500,000 full and part-time employees do not get a paid personal time out and the legislature if enforced will positively impact 3.4 million employees. The opposition to the bill is the cost it will incur given the current shortfall of employees.
Geisha Williams, CEO PG&E Corp stepped down from her post as the company is reeling from the impending liabilities and a probable bankruptcy as an aftermath of the November California Camp fire that took 86 lives and is touted as the most destructive fire in the history of the state. John Simon, General Counsel will take on the interim charge as the company is looking for a strong safety and operational expertise. The companies is looking at $ 30 billion in liabilities, litigations and government investigation of the Camp fire and the blazes of 2017. The management rumble comes as the company is in middle of discussion bankruptcy financing package that could total between $3 billion and $ 5 billion with banks. The employee notification declaring bankruptcy for the $18 billion debt riddled company is yet to come.
Disability, even when covered by Americans with Disability Act aka ADA cannot be the ground for an employer putting up with a rude employee with a taste for unprofessional behavior. This pretty much sums up the mood and the verdict of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia Columbus Division in Kassa v. Synovus Bank case. Synovus Bank fired Tony Kassa who worked as a technician, over his “nothing personal, I hate working with women” comment on a female colleague while interacting with a second woman over the phone. The court held up that the Federal law does not oblige the bank to put up with the employee outburst even if caused by a disability. Kassa, a U.S. Army veteran was under treatment for over a decade for a host of neurosis, alcohol addiction and paranoid personality disorder, which he had disclosed to the employer as a request to not to put him in an interactive setting.
BlackRock Inc. plans to trim down 3% of its Global Employee count, its largest since 2006. Morgan Stanley is letting underperformers go, State Street Corp. is planning to cut its leadership positions by 15% and the Polish unit of Banco Santander SA plans a workforce 11% less than today. These are just some of the big names in finance and banking who are turning to the good old job cuts in the wake of a possible tumultuous 2019 market. The $3 trillion Hedge Fund Market will be the one to take the worst hit with a sinking performance. The slowdown in UK hiring is due to the cloud of uncertainty over Brexit and on larger scale firms are turning to technology for cost reduction. Economists forecast a hiring slowdown or even a recession at this point.
The partial shutdown of the U.S. government has left 800,000 federal employees on furlough. The 20th day of the shutdown over President Trump’s demand for border wall funding saw hundreds of employees marching towards the White House chanting “We want Pay” in a cold winter morning. The shut down due to the stand-off between Democrats and President Trump over wall funding is the second longest since the mid-1970. And with President Trump saying that the shout-down can go up to months or years, the federal employees who were told to be at home or work without pay are out of their wits. There is uncertainty over rationing food, housing, and other needs. People are forced to break into their retirement funds to sustain in the phase of indefinite furlough.
The world’s largest online social network takes its stance a little too literally, according to CNBC’s new report. According to former employees, the company has a ‘cult-like’ work environment where the staff is under pressure to socialize with colleagues for furthering their careers. A leading cause of this was said to be the company’s performance review system, where anonymous reviews on performance can either get an employee zooming ahead or being terminated. When asked about the report, the spokesperson from Facebook denied it, although they did hint that ‘collaboration’ is given a high order of priority at the Menlo Park tech giant.
Karan Bhatia, who is currently the head of policy leading the search engine giant’s stance on issues ranging from AI and user privacy to EU regulations, has initiated a stringent and complete revamp of the company’s public policy department. On the heels of Susan Molinari, who is currently moving to a consultant role based out of Washington and is all set to make her exit from Alphabet shortly. Bhatia joined Alphabet in June last year and has reportedly sent out an organogram to his staff with empty cells, sending out the fear of being laid off. Bhatia was earlier with GE and has served in the government.
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