Labor and Jobs

More stories

  • 138 Shares129 Views

    in Economy

    Brexit Turns 3. Why Is No One Wearing a Party Hat?

    by

    The divorce between Britain and the European Union has become the dark thread that, to many, explains why Britain is suffering more than its neighbors.LONDON — The third anniversary of Britain’s departure from the European Union passed without fanfare on Tuesday, and why not? Brexit has faded from the political forefront, unmentioned by politicians who don’t want to touch it and overlooked by a public that cares more about the country’s economic crisis.The severity of that crisis was underscored by the International Monetary Fund, which forecast this week that Britain will be the world’s only major economy to contract in 2023, performing even worse than heavily blacklisted Russia.The I.M.F. only indirectly attributed some of Britain’s woes to Brexit, noting that it suffered from a very tight labor market, which had constrained output. Brexit has aggravated those shortages by choking off the pipeline of workers from the European Union — whether waiters in London restaurants or fruit and vegetable pickers in fields.The effects of Brexit run through Britain’s last-in-class economy because they also run through its divided, exhausted politics. In a country grappling with the same energy shocks and inflation pressures that afflict the rest of Europe, Brexit is the dark thread that, to some critics, explains why Britain is suffering more than its neighbors.“One of the reasons for our current economic weakness is Brexit,” said Anand Menon, a professor of West European politics at King’s College London. “It’s not the main reason. But everything has become so politicized that the economic debate is carried out through political shibboleths.”Years of debate over Brexit, he said, had contributed to a kind of policy paralysis. “If you look at it, it is astounding how little actual governing has happened since 2016,” Professor Menon said. “It has been seven years, and virtually nothing has been done on a governmental level to fix the country’s problems.”Inflation, though it has eased slightly, continues to run at a double-digit rate.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockThose problems continue to proliferate. Inflation, though it has eased slightly, continues to run at a double-digit rate. Britain’s National Health Service is facing the gravest crisis in its history, with overcrowded hospitals and hourslong waits for ambulances. On Wednesday, Britain will face its largest coordinated strikes in a decade, with teachers, railway workers and civil servants walking off the job.Not all these problems are wholly, or even principally, a result of Brexit. But tackling any of them, experts said, will require bolder solutions than the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has yet proposed. Owing largely to Brexit, Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party remains torn by factions that thwart action on issues from urban planning to a new relationship with the European Union.Part of the problem, experts said, is that the neither the government nor the opposition Labour Party is prepared to acknowledge the negative effects Brexit has had on the economy. The government may not ring the bell of Big Ben to celebrate the anniversary, as it did on Brexit day in 2020. But to the extent that Mr. Sunak refers to Brexit, he still portrays it as an undiluted boon to the country.“In the three years since leaving the E.U., we’ve made huge strides in harnessing the freedoms unlocked by Brexit,” Mr. Sunak said in a statement marking the anniversary. “Whether leading Europe’s fastest vaccine rollout, striking trade deals with over 70 countries or taking back control of our borders, we’ve forged a path as an independent nation with confidence.”A protest on Monday against a proposed bill to limit strikes outside Downing Street in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockHis predecessor, Boris Johnson, also cited the early authorization and rapid deployment of a coronavirus vaccine as proof of Brexit’s value — never mind that health experts said Britain would have had the authority to approve a vaccine before its neighbors, even if it had been part of the European Union.“Let’s shrug off all this negativity and gloom-mongering that I hear about Brexit,” Mr. Johnson said in a video posted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. “Let’s remember the opportunities that lie ahead, and the vaccine rollout proves it.”There is little evidence that Mr. Sunak and Mr. Johnson are convincing many people. Public opinion has turned sharply against Brexit: Fifty-six percent of those surveyed thought leaving the European Union was a mistake, according to a poll in November by the firm YouGov, while only 32 percent thought it was a good idea.And the sense of disillusion is nationwide. In all but three of Britain’s 632 parliamentary constituencies, more people now agree than disagree with the statement, “Britain was wrong to leave the E.U,” according to a poll released Monday by the news website, UnHerd, and the research firm, Focaldata.The three holdouts are agricultural areas around Boston and Skegness on the country’s eastern coastline, where immigration is still a resonant issue. And even in these places, public opinion about Brexit is finely balanced.At the same time, few people express a desire to open a debate over whether to rejoin the European Union. The prospects of doing that on terms that would be remotely acceptable to either side are, for the moment, far-fetched. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, prefers to frame his party’s message as “Making Brexit Work,” having lost an election to the Tories in 2019, whose slogan was “Get Brexit Done.”The chief executive of the N.H.S., Amanda Pritchard, from left, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain. They were visiting the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton-on-Tees.Pool photo by Phil NobleBritain’s problems are exacerbated by the fact that the one leader who proposed radical remedies, Liz Truss, triggered such a backlash in the financial markets that she was forced out of office in 45 days. To restore the country’s reputation with investors, Mr. Sunak has scrapped her tax cuts and adopted a fiscally austere program of higher taxes and spending cuts that the I.M.F. says will curb growth.“Although we no longer have lunatics running the asylum, we have essentially a lame-duck government that doesn’t have any semblance of a plan to restore economic growth,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at King’s College London.The trouble is that the bitter squabbling over Brexit has made obvious responses politically perilous for the prime minister. Even the I.M.F.’s projection for Britain’s growth ignited a storm of commentary on social media about whether it would help the cause of “Remainers” or reopen the Brexit debate.The fund’s assessment was not completely gloomy despite its prediction of contraction in 2023. Britain, it estimated, grew faster than Germany or France last year. After inflation cools and the burden of higher taxes eases, it said, Britain should return to modest growth in 2024.Professor Portes said that there were policies Mr. Sunak could pursue, from liberalizing planning laws to overhauling immigration rules to ease the labor shortage, that would stimulate growth. “If you put all those together,” he said, “there is a reasonable, feasible strategy that could make the next 10 years better than the last.”But he added, “Any coherent strategy involves repairing the economic relationship with Europe, and that will depend on the political dynamic.” More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    U.S. Wages Grew More Slowly Than Expected Late Last Year

    by

    The Employment Cost Index, which Federal Reserve officials watch closely as a gauge of pay trends, is picking up more slowly.A measure of pay and benefits that the Federal Reserve has been watching closely amid a strong labor market rose less than expected at the end of 2022, fresh data showed Tuesday.The Employment Cost Index climbed 1 percent in the final quarter of 2022 versus the prior three months, more slowly than the 1.1 percent that economists expected and a slowdown from the previous 1.2 percent reading.The data will probably reaffirm to central bankers that the economy and labor market are cooling, which could help inflation return to normal over time. While wage gains are still faster than normal, the moderation could help central bankers feel comfortable as they adjust interest rates less aggressively than they did throughout 2022.The employment cost measure picked up by 5.1 percent on a yearly basis, close to the 5 percent reading in the previous quarter’s report. In the decade leading up to the pandemic, the index averaged 2.2 percent yearly gains, underscoring the continued rapidness of today’s pace. But a measure of private-sector wages not including benefits, which economists see as a particularly good indicator of labor market tightness, slowed slightly.Fed officials are closely watching the labor market — and wages in particular — as they try to gauge how much further they have to go in their campaign against stubbornly high inflation. While goods price increases that are tied to supply chain snarls are beginning to fade, central bankers are worried that rapid pay gains could keep services costs rising rapidly. Labor is a big expense for service companies, like hotels and restaurants, and firms might pass higher wage costs on to customers in the form of higher prices. Bigger paychecks could also help sustain consumer demand, keeping pressure on prices.The Fed’s next interest-rate decision will be announced on Wednesday. Central bankers are widely expected to raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point, after raising them by three-quarters of a point per meeting for much of 2022 and by half a point at their last gathering, in December.The new adjustment would push rates up to a range of 4.5 to 4.75 percent. The question now is how many more moves the Fed will make — and how long policymakers will hold interest rates at a high level.Steeper borrowing costs deter consumers from making big purchases and businesses from expanding, which can slow the economy and weaken the labor market. Fed officials are hoping that they can cool the economy by just enough to allow supply and demand to come back into balance — causing inflation to moderate — without causing a punishing recession. But they have been clear that they are willing to accept some pain to bring price increases back under control.And they have underlined that they think the labor market needs to slow down to put inflation on a more sustainable path.“We want strong wage increases,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at his last news conference in December. “We just want them to be at a level that’s consistent with 2 percent inflation,” he said, referring to the Fed’s target inflation rate.For now, America’s rate of price increases remains much faster, at 5 percent.Mr. Powell will give another news conference on Wednesday, after the release of the Fed’s rate decision at 2 p.m. Eastern time. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    Smaller Rate Increase by Federal Reserve Likely as Inflation Cools

    by

    America’s central bank is expected to raise rates by a quarter point on Wednesday. The question now is what comes next.Federal Reserve officials are widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point at their meeting this week, further slowing what had been an aggressive pace of rate increases in 2022 as they wait to see how swiftly inflation will fade.Moving gradually will give Fed officials more time to assess how high rates need to rise and how long they need to stay elevated to fully wrangle inflation, both of which are looming and crucial questions. The answers will help to determine how much damage the Fed inflicts on the labor market and broader economy in its quest to control price increases.Central bankers raised interest rates from near zero to above 4.25 percent last year, and they are expected to lift rates to a range of 4.5 to 4.75 percent on Wednesday. Investors will be even more attuned to what may come next, and will parse the Fed’s 2 p.m. statement and the subsequent news conference by the Fed chair Jerome H. Powell for clues about the future.Fed officials predicted in December that they would lift rates to just above 5 percent in 2023, then hold them at a high level throughout the year. But incoming data will drive how high the Fed raises rates and how long they keep them at that level.Since the Fed’s last decision, inflation has meaningfully slowed, and data on the economy show that consumers are becoming more cautious and beginning to spend less. Anecdotes suggest that shoppers may be more sensitive to prices, which would make it more difficult for companies to continue passing along big price increases. At the same time, the job market remains very strong, and economists and central bankers have warned that a re-acceleration in growth and inflation remains possible. That is likely to keep the Fed wary of prematurely declaring victory over inflation.“They’re going to stay vigilant on inflation — I don’t think they’re going to break out the ‘mission accomplished’ banner just yet,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, a rates strategist at T.D. Securities. “If they don’t send the signal that they really want to get inflation under control, the market could over-interpret that as a signal that they’re done. That’s not the message they want to send.”Wall Street will be focused on one word in particular in the Fed’s policy statement: “ongoing.” In recent months, central bankers have stated that “ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate.”Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    With Layoffs, Retailers Aim to Be Safe Rather Than Sorry (Again)

    by

    Companies that ramped up hiring in areas like technology over the past few years are cutting back as customers slow their spending.The retail industry is trying to figure out its correct size.Retailers, faced with sky-high demand from shoppers during the pandemic, spent the past three years ramping up their operations in areas like human resources, finance and technology. Now, times have changed.A public that rushed to buy all sorts of goods in the earlier parts of the pandemic is now spending less on merchandise like furniture and clothing. E-commerce, which boomed during lockdowns, has fallen from those heights. And with consumers worried about inflation in the prices of day-to-day necessities like food, companies are playing defense.Saks Off 5th, the off-price retailer owned by Hudson Bay, laid off an unspecified number of workers on Tuesday. Saks.com is laying off about 100 employees, or 3.5 percent of its workers. Stitch Fix laid off 20 percent of its salaried workers this month and closed a distribution center in Salt Lake City. Last week, Wayfair said it would lay off 1,750 people, or 10 percent of its work force, and Amazon started laying off 18,000 workers, many of them in its retail division. Bed Bath & Beyond cut its work force this month as it tries to shore up its finances and prepares for a possible bankruptcy filing.While it’s not unusual for major retailers to announce store closings and some job cuts after the blitz of the holiday season, the recent spate of layoffs is more about structural changes as the industry recalibrates itself after the rapid growth from pandemic-fueled shopping. And it accompanies broader worries about the state of the U.S. economy and layoffs by prominent tech companies.“Retailers are really being cognizant of capital preservation,” said Catherine Lepard, who leads the global retail market for the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. “They don’t know how long this cooler economy is going to last, and they want to make sure they have the right cash to get through that. For retailers that are struggling, it really means tightening the belt with some cost cutting.”Sales during the all-important holiday shopping season were weaker than in years past, when growth hit record levels. December retail sales increased 6 percent from the same period last year, but that number was not adjusted for inflation, which was at 6.5 percent.Department stores posted sizable sales declines. At Nordstrom, sales in the last nine weeks of 2022 decreased 3.5 percent from a year earlier, with the company noting that they “were softer than prepandemic levels.” Macy’s said its holiday sales had been on the lower end of its expectations.Macy’s holiday sales were on the lower end of expectations, the company said. Mathias Wasik for The New York TimesThe layoffs at certain retail companies are a sign that the industry is bracing for a slowdown and another change in how people shop.“To mitigate macroeconomic headwinds and best position our business for success, we have made changes to streamline our organizational structure,” Meghan Biango, a spokesperson for Saks Off 5th, said in a statement. “As part of this, we made the difficult decision to part ways with associates across various areas of the business.” The layoffs affected divisions such as talent acquisition and supply chain.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Walmart: The retail giant is significantly raising its starting wages for store workers, as it battles to recruit and retain workers in a tight retail labor market.Tech Layoffs: The industry’s recent job cuts have been an awakening for a generation of workers who have never experienced a cyclical crash.Infrastructure Money: Government spending on initiatives intended to combat climate change and rebuild infrastructure are expected to land this year. The effects on the labor market will be deep but hard to measure.Restaurant Workers: Mandatory $15 food-safety classes are turning cooks, waiters and bartenders into unwitting funders of a lobbying campaign against minimum wage increases.Not all retailers are in a defensive crouch. For instance, Walmart announced this week that it was raising the minimum wage for its store employees in a bid to attract and retain workers in a tight labor market.Still, some retailers are becoming focused less on bringing in new customers — an expensive undertaking — and more on retaining those they gained during the pandemic.“There’s a sense of conservatism,” said Brian Walker, chief strategy officer at Bloomreach, which works with retailers on their e-commerce and digital marketing businesses. “They’re still adjusting in many ways to this omnichannel retail environment and are probably seeing this as an important time to calibrate their organizations and make sure they have the right people, and not too many of them to be pragmatic and weather a potential storm.”That means fewer projects that require lots of money and time and more investments where a company can start seeing results quickly, Mr. Walker said.Ms. Lepard agreed. “This isn’t the economy to really get creative and take on high risk,” she said. “There might be a pulling back of some of that innovation in future investment to make sure they’re pacing themselves.”It’s also a moment for retailers to assess what e-commerce abilities they need. In the early months of the pandemic, online sales exploded as many brick-and-mortar stores went dark. That growth has slowed. E-commerce traffic in North America declined 1.6 percent in the third quarter of 2022 compared with a year earlier, according to Bloomreach’s Commerce Pulse data. Conversion rates — the measure of someone’s buying an item after seeing it advertised — dropped 12 percent during the same period.“This is where people overshot the runway,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail advisory firm Customer Growth Partners, who has tracked the industry for 25 years. “This works like a ratchet. It might go up to 27 percent, but that’s going to normalize,” he added, referring to the share of total e-commerce spending for the first year of the pandemic, when many stores were grappling with Covid restrictions and closures.When online spending was rising, many companies pushed to fill roles that could help them meet the demand. Now they have to adjust to a new reality.“Unfortunately, along the way, we overcomplicated things, lost sight of some of our fundamentals and simply grew too big,” Niraj Shah, Wayfair’s chief executive, said in a note to employees last Friday. His company, which reported in November that its net revenue was down 9 percent from a year earlier, is looking to save $1.4 billion.Demand for luxury goods is still there, but those retailers say they need to restructure to continue to innovate.Mathias Wasik for The New York TimesIn the luxury sector, the shopper demand is still there, but a restructuring is needed to continue to innovate. As part of its layoffs, Saks.com also separated its technology and operations teams.“We are at a point in our trajectory as a digital luxury pure-play where we need to optimize our business to ensure we are best positioned for the future,” Nicole Schoenberg, a Saks spokeswoman, said in a statement. “These changes are never easy, but they are necessary for our go-forward success.”While reducing head count might help save costs in the short term, retailers will have trouble in the future if they do not also address how to improve the customer experience online, said Liza Amlani, founder of Retail Strategy Group, which works with brands on their merchandising and planning strategies.“With Wayfair, and as with many digital players, what we’ve seen in the last three years is that they scaled and grew too quickly,” Ms. Amlani said. “They banked on an influx of spending across digital. They didn’t invest where they needed to invest.”The retail layoffs are an about-face from 2021, when companies couldn’t hire frontline workers fast enough. After the initial jolt of the pandemic, which led many retailers to furlough or outright fire workers, many people received stimulus checks from the government. They wanted to spend that money, and when companies needed to ramp up in-store services again, they often struggled to find enough workers.Recalling that difficulty might give some retailers pause before they lay off workers this time, Mr. Walker said. If a steep downturn never comes, or if there’s a sudden rebound in demand, companies don’t want to be stuck without enough employees.But the next few months could be rough for retailers, as profit margins shrink and revenue growth slows from what it was the past couple of years. In that kind of environment, investors generally like to see large companies take steps to cut costs. And once layoffs begin, a kind of industry groupthink can set in.“Once a couple of companies start to do it,” said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who researches management and human resources, “then it creates some momentum where then you’ve got to explain why you’re not doing what everybody else is doing.” More

  • 100 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    California Voters to Decide on Regulating Fast-Food Industry

    by

    Pre-empting a law signed last year, business groups forced a ballot initiative on state oversight of wages and working conditions.LOS ANGELES — A California law creating a council with broad authority to set wages and improve the working conditions of fast-food employees has been halted after restaurant and trade groups submitted enough signatures to place the issue before voters next year.Officials from the California secretary of state’s office announced late Tuesday that Save Local Restaurants, a broad coalition of small-business owners, large corporations, restaurateurs and franchisees, had turned in enough valid signatures to stop the law from taking effect.The group, which has raised millions of dollars to oppose the law, had to submit roughly 623,000 valid voter signatures by an early December deadline to place a question on the 2024 ballot asking California voters if the law should take effect.Legislation signed in September by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, would set up a 10-member council of union representatives, employers and workers to oversee the fast-food industry’s labor practices in the state.The panel would have the authority to raise the minimum wage of fast-food workers to as much as $22 an hour — well above the statewide minimum of $15.50. In addition, the council would oversee health, safety and anti-discrimination regulations for nearly 550,000 fast-food workers statewide.More on CaliforniaA Wake of Tragedy: California is reeling after back-to-back mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.Storms and Flooding: A barrage of powerful storms has surprised people in the state with an unrelenting period of extreme weather that has caused extensive damage across the state.New Laws: A new year doesn’t always usher in sweeping change, but in California, at least, it usually means a slate of new laws going into effect.Wildfires: California avoided a third year of catastrophic wildfires because of a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions — or “luck,” as experts put it.Opponents including the International Franchise Association and the National Restaurant Association argued that the measure, Assembly Bill 257, singled out their industry and would in turn burden businesses with higher labor costs that would be passed along to consumers in higher food prices.Matt Haller, president of the International Franchise Association, said the bill “was a solution in search of a problem that didn’t exist.”“Californians have spoken out to prevent this misguided policy from driving food prices higher and destroying local businesses and the jobs they create,” Mr. Haller said.Last year, the Center for Economic Forecasting and Development at the University of California, Riverside, released a study that estimated that employers would pass along one-third of labor compensation increases to consumers.But Mr. Newsom, in signing the measure, said it “gives hardworking fast-food workers a stronger voice and seat at the table to set fair wages and critical health and safety standards across the industry.”Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, a staunch proponent of the measure, assailed fast-food corporations.“Instead of taking responsibility for ensuring workers who fuel their profits are paid a living wage and work in safe, healthy environments, corporations are continuing to drive a race to the bottom in the fast-food industry,” Ms. Henry said. “It’s morally wrong, and it’s bad business.”The effort to put the issue before voters follows a playbook used by large corporations to circumvent lawmakers in Sacramento. In 2019, state lawmakers passed a measure that required companies like Uber and Lyft to treat gig workers as employees. The companies opposed the measure and helped get a proposition on the 2020 ballot allowing them to treat drivers as independent contractors. The measure passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote.The fast-food law has been closely watched by the industry’s workers across California, including  Angelica Hernandez, 49, who has worked at McDonald’s restaurants in the Los Angeles area for 18 years.“We are undeterred, and we refuse to back down,” Ms. Hernandez said. “We can’t afford to wait to raise pay to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living and provide for our families.”Alison Morantz, a professor at Stanford Law School who focuses on employment law, said what made the law unusual was “its holistic approach to addressing a wide range of problems in a traditionally nonunionized industry — not just low and stagnating wages, but also employment discrimination and poor safety practices.”“If it takes effect, it will be closely watched and could become a harbinger of similar efforts in other worker-friendly jurisdictions,” Ms. Morantz said. More

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Walmart Raises Starting Wages for Store Workers

    by

    The retail giant said the minimum wages for those employees would range from $14 to $19 an hour, up from $12 to $18 an hour.Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, is significantly raising its starting wages for store workers, as it battles to recruit and retain workers in a tight retail labor market.On Tuesday, the retail giant said in a memo to employees that it was increasing its minimum wages for store workers to a range of $14 to $19 an hour, up from $12 to $18 an hour.In the memo, Walmart’s chief executive of U.S. operations, John Furner, said the increase was meant “to ensure we have attractive pay in the markets we operate.” The move would immediately affect about 340,000 of the company’s 1.3 million frontline hourly workers in stores across the United States.For years, Walmart has been under pressure from unions, policymakers and activists to raise its wages for workers in its stores. The raises announced Tuesday would increase the average wage across Walmart stores to roughly $17.50 an hour from about $17, though the company’s average wage still trails some competitors like Costco.“We want to make sure we attract the best associates,” a Walmart spokesperson, Anne Hatfield, said in an interview.The raises, which will take affect in March, come amid still persistently high inflation, which has been particularly difficult to navigate for low-wage workers whose paychecks are being stretched by the costs of food, fuel and other basic necessities.The move by Walmart is also a curiously optimistic sign regarding the broader economy: One of the nation’s largest companies is taking steps to retain workers, even as other large employers have been announcing layoffs.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said he was surprised that Walmart had raised wages “so significantly” given the risks of a recession.“It suggests that Walmart doesn’t think the economy will suffer a recession anytime soon, or that if it does, it will be a short-lived and modest downturn,” Mr. Zandi said in an email.The move may also reflect the longer-term challenges that retailers face in retaining workers as baby boomers age out of the work force and the labor pool shrinks, he said.Even though the raises will ease the inflationary strain on Walmart workers, they may inadvertently prolong the problem broadly by boosting wages across other sectors of the economy.“Walmart’s move to hike their minimum wage may also complicate the Fed’s efforts to quell wage pressures and thus inflation,” Mr. Zandi said, “as the decision may impact wage hikes and price increases in other labor-intensive industries such as health care, hospitality and personal services that the Fed is focused on in its fight against inflation.” More

  • 125 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    Apple Reaches Deal With Investors to Audit Its Labor Practices

    by

    The tech giant will assess its compliance with its official human rights policy, according to a federal filing.Apple will conduct an assessment of its U.S. labor practices under an agreement with a coalition of investors that includes five New York City pension funds.The assessment will focus on whether Apple is complying with its official human rights policy as it relates to “workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the United States,” the company said in a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The audit comes amid complaints by federal regulators and employees that the company has repeatedly violated workers’ labor rights as they have sought to unionize over the past year. Apple has denied the accusations.“There’s a big apparent gap between Apple’s stated human rights policies regarding worker organizing, and its practices,” said Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, who helped initiate the discussion with Apple on behalf of the city’s public worker pension funds.As part of its agreement with the coalition of investors, which also includes other pension funds for unionized workers, Apple agreed to hire a third-party firm to conduct the assessment, the coalition said in a letter to the company’s chairman on Tuesday.Labor Organizing and Union DrivesN.Y.C. Nurses’ Strike: Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan ended a three-day strike after the hospitals agreed to add staffing and improve working conditions.Amazon: A federal labor official rejected the company’s attempt to overturn a union victory at a warehouse on Staten Island, removing a key obstacle to contract negotiations between the union and the company.A Union Win: Organized labor claimed a big victory on Jan. 3, gaining a foothold among about 300 employees at a video game maker owned by Microsoft.Electric Vehicles: In a milestone for the sector, employees at an E.V. battery plant in Ohio voted to join the United Automobile Workers union, citing pay and safety issues as key reasons.The letter also laid out recommendations for the assessment, which include hiring a firm that has expertise in labor rights and that does not advise companies on how to avoid unionization. It recommended that the firm be “as independent as practicable.”Apple’s federal filing did not refer explicitly to a third party, and the company declined to comment further.Members of the investor coalition controlled about $7 billion worth of Apple stock as of last week, out of a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion. In its financial filing announcing the assessment, Apple offered few details, saying that it would conduct the assessment by the end of the year and that it would publish a report related to the assessment.Last year, workers voted to unionize at two Apple stores — in Townson, Md., and Oklahoma City — and workers at two other stores filed petitions to hold union election before withdrawing them.Many workers involved in union organizing at the company said they enjoyed their jobs and praised their employer, citing benefits like health care and stock grants and the satisfaction of working with Apple products. But they said they hoped that unionizing would help them win better pay, more input into scheduling and more transparency when it comes to obtaining job assignments and promotions.In May, Apple announced that it was raising its minimum hourly starting wage to $22 from $20, a step that some workers interpreted as an effort to undermine their organizing campaigns.Workers have also filed charges accusing Apple of labor law violations in at least six stores, including charges that the company illegally monitored them, prohibited union fliers in a break room, interrogated them about their organizing, threatened them for organizing and that it stated that unionizing would be futile.The Communications Workers of America, the union representing Apple workers in Oklahoma City, has also filed a charge accusing Apple of setting up an illegal company union at a store in Columbus, Ohio — one created and controlled by management with the aim of stifling support for an independent union.The National Labor Relations Board has issued formal complaints in two of the cases, involving stores in Atlanta and New York.Apple has said that “we strongly disagree” with the claims brought before the labor board and that it looks forward to defending itself. The company has emphasized that “regular, open, honest, and direct communication with our team members is a key part of Apple’s collaborative culture.”The investor coalition that pushed for the labor assessment argues that Apple’s response to the union campaigns is at odds with its human rights policy because that policy commits it to respect the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which includes “freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.”Mr. Lander, the New York comptroller, said that the coalition initially reached out to Apple’s board last spring to discuss the company’s posture toward the union organizing, but that it did not get a substantive response.The coalition then filed a shareholder proposal in September urging Apple to hire an outside firm to assess whether the company was following through on its stated commitment to labor rights. The company responded late last year and the two sides worked out an agreement in return for the coalition withdrawing its proposal, according to Mr. Lander.A coalition of some of the same investors, including the New York pension funds, has filed a similar proposal at Starbucks, where workers have voted to unionize at more than 250 company-owned stores since late 2021. Like Apple, Starbucks has cited its commitment to the International Labor Organization standards like freedom of association and the right to take part in collective bargaining.But Starbucks has consistently opposed its employees’ attempts to unionize, and Starbucks has not engaged with the coalition of investors to work out an agreement. Jonas Kron, chief advocacy officer of Trillium Asset Management, one of the investors pushing proposals at both companies, said he expected the Starbucks proposal to go to a vote of the company’s shareholders. The company declined to comment.The federal labor board has issued a few dozen formal complaints against Starbucks for violations including retaliating against workers involved in organizing and discriminating against unionized workers when introducing new benefits; the company has denied breaking labor laws. More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    Fed President Backs Slowdown as Support Mounts for Smaller Rate Move

    by

    Susan M. Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said she was leaning toward a quarter-point move at the central bank’s Feb. 1 meeting.Susan M. Collins, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said she was leaning toward a quarter-point interest rate increase at the central bank’s next meeting — a slowdown that would signal a return to a normal pace of monetary policy adjustment after a year in which officials took rapid action to slow the economy and contain inflation.Fed policymakers raised interest rates to a range of 4.25 to 4.5 percent in 2022 from near zero, an aggressive path that included four consecutive three-quarter point adjustments. Officials slowed down with a half-point rate move in December, and a few of the Fed’s regional presidents have in recent days suggested that an even smaller adjustment could be possible when the Fed releases its next decision on Feb. 1.Ms. Collins added her voice to that chorus — but even more declaratively, making it clear that she would at this point support slowing to rate adjustments of 25 basis points, or a quarter point. Changing policy more gradually would give the central bank more time to see how its actions affect the economy and whether they were working to contain rapid inflation.“I think 25 or 50 would be reasonable; I’d lean at this stage to 25, but it’s very data-dependent,” Ms. Collins said in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. “Adjusting slowly gives more time to assess the incoming data before we make each decision, as we get close to where we’re going to hold. Smaller changes give us more flexibility.”Ms. Collins is one of the Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents and among its 19 policymakers. She does not have a formal vote on rate changes this year, but she will join in deliberations as the decision is made.Ms. Collins said she favored raising interest rates to just above 5 percent this year, potentially in three quarter-point moves in February, March and May.“If we’ve gone to slower, more judicious rate increases, it could take us three rate increases to get there — and then holding through the end of 2023, that still seems like a reasonable outlook to me,” she said.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More