Posted by marykeating on October 21, 2011 under Economic situation | 
The Department of Labor announced its intention to use and research the use of social media in linking people with jobs. The media reports that there are upwards of a million unfilled jobs in the country, some of which stay vacant for a long time. When jobs require specialized skills, their availability needs to be advertised widely. For less arcane jobs, facebook might help connect unemployed people and employers with needs. It can’t hurt, anyway. At the least, it helps facebook in its effort to become indispensable to our lives.
Posted by marykeating on September 13, 2011 under Discrimination in employment, Economic situation, Unemployment compensation |
President Obama’s proposed bill for job creation includes several provisions to support unemployment workers.
The jobs bill would extend both monetary and job services benefits. It also has a detailed plan to allow states to offer training and other support to those who wish to become self-employed.
An interesting part of the bill addresses a key barrier facing the unemployed: they are unemployed. The EEOC has been concerned about the overt preference given by employers to people who already have jobs; some ads state that they will only consider currently employed applicants. To counter that preference, the jobs bill incorporates a carrot and stick approach. First, it offers incentives to employers who hire someone who has been unemployed for at least six months. Employers can get up to $4,000 as a tax credit. Tax credits are always popular, since they are a direct subtraction from the tax liability, not just a deduction from income.
The stick is called the “Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011,” which would prohibit discrimination against the unemployed. The EEOC would have enforcement authority, much like with other forms of discrimination. This provision would eliminate job announcements that require current employment, and also ban employers and agencies from refusing to consider or hire someone on the basis that they are unemployed at the time they seek new employment. Failure to hire cases are difficult to prove, since the employer rarely states why someone does not get a job. Once the motivation is known to be illegal, such a statement would be an endangered creature. Still, with large employers or those with loose lips, the pattern of refusing to consider the unemployed may have to change.
Posted by marykeating on July 26, 2011 under Discrimination in employment, Economic situation, Pending legislation |
A number of commentators, the EEOC among them, have noted with alarm that employers seem to be ruling out unemployed applicants when they are filling vacancies. Many people who lost their jobs in the recession (you have heard it’s over, right?) remain unemployed. Employers’ insisting on currently hired people just continues the plodding pace of the recovery, and is simply unfair.
A new bill introduced in Congress would outlaw the use of unemployed status when hiring. Under that bill, an employer would be forbidden from considering unemployment, or publicly stating that it would only consider currently employed people for job openings.
As with all failure to hire cases, proof will not be easy. When someone is discriminated against on the job, the events of discrimination may be frequent, or at least witnessed by someone whom the employee knows. When someone applies for a job, he is unlikely to have friends on th inside. Unless the interviewer makes his bias obvious, the applicant can seldom tie his failure to get the job to illegal discrimination.
If the link can be made, though, this law does ease the damage proof. The person who suffered the discrimination can claim $1,000 per day, or the actual damages from the failure to hire, along with compensatory and punitive damages.
Obviously Congress is busy now with other things (or so we hope). But there is probably not a strong constituency against this bill, except that some factions don’t like any new causes of action.
Posted by marykeating on May 9, 2011 under Economic situation, Sex-based discrimination, Uncategorized, Wage and hour issues |
Last week’s Department of Labor study on Women’s Employment During the Recovery provides a framework for understanding how the female workforce is recovering from the recession. The good news: the unemployment rate among women is lower than that of men. Part of that disparity results from the fact that women are more likely to be employed in the public sector. In addition, more women have college educations than do men, though more college educated men are working full time.
Women are underrepresented in some sectors, such as engineering, computer science, and architecture. Some of the areas expected to have the highest growth rates over the next few years, other than health care, still have a distinctly male focus.
The report collects and analyzes a large amount of data, including a dispiriting analysis of the cumulative effects of the wage gap. It then discusses the initiatives designed to give women more opportunities in male-oriented jobs, enforce equal pay laws, and increase workplace flexibility.
Almost two thirds of mothers are in the workforce.
The hurdles that face a truly equal workplace can look too tall to leap over. But we mothers can change the mindsets of the children who will join the companies and institutions, so that they do not expect pay or assignments to be based on gender, family responsibilities, or race.
Posted by marykeating on April 30, 2011 under Economic situation, Government contractors, veterans' discrimination |
This week the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs issued regulations and inviting comments. The rules are intended to improve the rate of hiring of veterans by contractors receiving government funds above a certain threshold. The law already prohibits discrimination against veterans and against people in the military reserves.
Still, it is always difficult to prove that the reason someone was not hired is discriminatory. It’s extra hard when the economy is still weak, and there are many applicants for each opening. The unemployment rate for veterans remains stubbornly high.
A mandatory listing of jobs with several employment services is one way that the Department of Labor expects to improve the employment of veterans by contractors. Veterans languishing at state unemployment offices will get access to job listings that may give them a hiring preference. Even if no preference is given, information about openings is helpful. The contractors are also expected to maintain goals for increasing their veteran hiring rate, and of course must report their progress. Reports would have to include “a statement of reasons explaining the circumstances for rejecting protected veterans for vacancies and training programs.”
These proposals impose additional work on contractors, certainly, but by requiring more focus on finding veterans to apply, and scrutinizing why they were overlooked, the end result should be an increase in hiring.
Posted by marykeating on April 20, 2011 under Economic situation, Unemployment compensation |
The Baltimore Sun today reported that while employers in the state shed nearly 6,000 jobs, more people were working.
This does not seem to be the same phenomenon we’ve seen before, that many people give up looking for jobs, so they are no longer counted in the potential workforce. Maryland’s unemployment rate is now a respectable 6.9%. The article said instead that more people were commuting out of state, or had started their own businesses.
Posted by marykeating on April 13, 2011 under Discrimination in employment, Economic situation, Employment benefit issues, Maryland wage law, Pending legislation |
The Maryland General Assembly closed on April 11 for the year. The Governor signed a few bills of interest to employers and employees yesterday; a few more are expected to be signed shortly.
“An agreement to work for less than the wage required under this subtitle is void.”
I believe this is already implied in the law. Yet, it is helpful to state it outright, since not everyone understands that minimum wage is required.
As of October 1, 2011, Maryland employers may not inquire into the credit of an employee or an applicant for employment. Exceptions include banks, credit unions, investment advisor positions, or any other job in which another law requires a credit report, such as someone needing a security clearance. Another large exception involves an employer pulling a credit report for jobs in which there is a realistic concern about the employee’s access to money. The exceptions are listed, and include management position, access to money or a corporate credit card, or has access to trade secrets.
The most unfortunate compromise is that the enforcement mechanism for violations is limited to filing a written complaint with the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. Still, the knowledge that in most cases an applicant’s credit history is off-limits should help the chances of people with poor credit. The persistent recession has hurt many people financially, and credit ratings have suffered. That does not mean that they would not be ethical, diligent employees.
- Change in disability benefits law. This is an enormous change in disability insurance practice. Effective for policies sold or renewed beginning on October 1, 2011, an insurance company may not reserve sole discretion to itself to interpret the terms of the policy, or to provie standards of review that are inconsistent with the laws of the state.
The law as originally proposed would have made all discretion illegal. That kind of change would have made an enormous difference in fights over coverage, but this is a step in favor of the person who has made a claim for disability coverage.
Posted by marykeating on March 5, 2011 under Economic situation |
The New York Times reports today that the recovery is making itself felt in job gains, for the first time in many moons. The job gains are in the private sector, and economists are looking at this as the first month of a trend in gains. In fact, the paper reports that the unemployment rate may appear to rise soon. This reflects the paradoxical situation in which people who had been forgotten by the job market, so don’t figure into the unemployment statistics, enter it again when times look better.
On the public side, it’s not just wacky Wisconsin laying off government employees. The dwindling of federal stimulus funds and the decrease in tax revenues, coming from income taxes and lowered property rates, are putting states in a deficit situation. They can’t mint money, though, so they need to balance budgets or float bonds.
Overall any good news is good. There are still clouds in these silver linings, though. The average period of unemployment is almost 38 weeks, and the proportion of women in the workplace is its lowest in more than twenty years. There is still a lot of recovering to be done to get to where we were a few years ago.
Posted by marykeating on February 24, 2011 under Economic situation |
The huge economic stimulus spending from the last two years has affected employment positively, according to an economic analysis by the Congressional Budgeting Office. The report notes that the conclusions can’t be tested against how the economy would have done without the stimulus, so the estimates are reported in rather wide ranges.
The report concludes that the unemployment rate reduced by a half percent to more than one percent, and that employment rose by anywhere from 900,000 to 1.9 million people.
The CBO refers to another study that concluded that the stimulus spending had a large positive effect during the spending period (which is over now), and then fell to almost zero. Some of the jobs created were temporary, such as people employed for the big construction projects, and some state and local government employment actually contracted because of the aid to state governments for Medicaid programs.
What the reports cannot capture is whether the spending averted a second great depression, in which case the expenditure was worth it. To people on the receiving end of a new job, even if it turned out to be temporary, the spending was worth it. The future impact of all that borrowing is something we’ll all live with, and maybe dealing with it will create new jobs.
Posted by marykeating on February 20, 2011 under Discrimination in employment, Economic situation |
The EEOC held a meeting on Wednesday to determine if a trend among employers raises civil rights issues. The last year has been especially difficult for unemployed job seekers who report that many companies reject them without a first look because they are unemployed. Several people testified at the meeting that the practice has an adverse impact on women, people with disabilities, older people, and people of color. Representatives for employers did not endorse the practice, but rather thought that the extent of the problem was overblown.
